Anker is cancelling its Roav Dashtop

You may remember late last year that Anker announced the Roav Dashtop, a device which aimed to fix a pretty serious problem — checking your phone while driving. The Dashtop computer featured a small screen that sat above your steering wheel. It was supposed to display incoming calls and text messages, provide directions and real-time traffic updates, as well as play music and provide trip statistics.

Since the Dashtop was controlled via your voice, all of this would be possible while keeping your hands where they belong — on the wheel. Priced at $499 for the Wi-Fi version and $599 for the LTE version, the Roav Dashtop was not cheap, but customers were offered a $200 discount for pre-ordering.

Unfortunately, it looks like the Roav Dashtop will never see the light of day. Throughout the last week, customers have been receiving cancellation emails letting them know that the device wouldn’t be coming to market and the pre-orders would be refunded. Anker blamed the cancellations on technical difficulties, specifically not being able to integrate third-party GPS navigation services with the HUD. Here’s the full quote from Anker:

From the beginning, we have firmly believed that the Roav Dashtop would be a revolutionary product, providing a smarter and safer driving experience. Unfortunately, due to technical difficulties beyond our control (such as third-party navigation apps not supporting HUD use), we recently determined that the Dashtop does not currently meet our promise to deliver a seamless in-car experience. Therefore, we have fully refunded all the pre-orders.

We are in the process of developing new solutions that will take time to fully optimize to create a high-performance Dashtop for our valued customers. The Roav team remains committed to creating innovative in-car experiences. We will have more to share in the upcoming weeks.

The dream may not be over yet, however. In the cancellation email from the Roav support team, they say it could take two or more years to fully optimize the Dashtop to meet their expectations, which is why they decided to refund orders now.

Did you pre-order the Roav? Let us know down in the comments what you think about this move.