Android Auto is lacking a lot of features as opposed to the mobile phone app.
Many of them are already requested here, but I just see Ella (Waze team) marking them all as "NOT RIGHT NOW", without much extra info as to why not. ("Great thinking! We’ll share with the team; they’re always interested in new feature ideas.")
@Ella please take the time to think them over a bit more critically, some are just absurd why they are not going to be implemented.
For example one critical missing feature is reporting is road closures, triggering a reroute without that road. No way to do it.

• Another missing feature is the "progress bar" while driving through an average speed check zone. I can imagine it would be pretty low effort to put a colored line at the side of the screen, especially since the Android app already has the logic for it.

• Showing comments: no way to read a comment on the map (or even have it read out loud by assistant or something). This can often contain some critical information about an accident or closure.

• When selecting a new destination, there is no option to select a planned drive or upcoming events from your synced calendars.
  I'm actually pretty certain this was actually there at one point. Where did it go?!

There's a lot more, and it currently feels like Android Auto is just ignored a bit at the Waze offices.
Please take this suggestion as a cry for help from an increasing number of vehicles with Android Auto built-in who really like Waze on their phone, but find the missing features really breaking the experience.
Please try to have some more developers put on the Android Auto development for a few weeks / months to crank out some much needed features.

If this isn't possible, at least try to get it done that we can use Waze on our phone while android auto is running. Now we can't even access the missing features without completely disconnecting our phone from the car to just report a road closure or something.

Please, please help.