Commentary

Keep Your Friends Close, And Your Rivals Closer

It’s always curious when normally rival automakers join together for projects. In this case, it’s several rivals. 

Ford and Toyota Motor announced in a joint statement today at the Consumer Telematics Show in Las Vegas that they are forming SmartDeviceLink Consortium, a nonprofit organization working to manage an open-source software platform with the goal of giving consumers more choice in how they connect and control their smartphone apps on the road. Both automakers will be demonstrating the capability at CES beginning tomorrow when the show opens.

Mazda Motor, PSA Group, Fuji Heavy Industries Ltd. and Suzuki Motor are the first automaker members of the consortium. Elektrobit, Luxoft, and Xevo join as the first supplier members. Harman, Panasonic, Pioneer and QNX have signed Letters of Intent to join.

SmartDeviceLink provides consumers easy access to smartphone apps using voice commands and in-vehicle displays. Adopting the open source platform gives automakers and suppliers a uniform standard with which to integrate apps. 

Developers benefit, and they must be sighing with relief, because it means they can focus on creating the best experience for customers by integrating one linking solution for use by all participating automakers.

SmartDeviceLink technology is based on Ford’s contribution of its AppLink software to the open source community in 2013. Ford AppLink software is currently available on more than 5 million vehicles globally. Popular apps such as Pandora, Spotify, iHeartRadio, AccuWeather and others are already available to Ford AppLink users.

“Encouraging innovation is at the center of Ford’s decision to create SmartDeviceLink, and this consortium is a major step toward that goal,” said Doug VanDagens, global director, Ford Connected Vehicle and Services, and a board member of the consortium, in a statement. “Consumers will win with new, innovative app experiences from increased collaboration and developer engagement.”

Connectivity between smartphones and the vehicle interface is one of the most important connected services, adds Shigeki Tomoyama, president of Toyota’s Connected Company. 

I would have to agree. Being able to stream your smartphone’s music collection through your car speakers or connecting your cell phone to the car’s speakers to allow simple hands-free conversation are two of the perks of this technology that I use every single time I drive my car. If you don’t have a built-in navigation system in your vehicle, connecting your smartphone to it allows the verbal directions from Mapquest or Google Maps to come right through your stereo speakers, which beats having your phone’s speaker and the instruction compete with whatever music or news you have playing through the car’s speakers. 

The SmartDeviceLink takes that connectivity a step farther in that it enables smartphone app developers to integrate their app functions with in-vehicle technology such as the vehicle display screen, steering wheel controls and voice recognition. With this new level of integration, drivers enjoy their favorite apps on the road in an enhanced, user-friendly way. Instead of just hearing the Mapquest directions, I would actually see them on my display screen. Toyota plans to commercialize a telematics system using SmartDeviceLink around 2018.

The move by the automakers isn’t completely altruistic. According to Bloomberg, it’s a step toward preventing Apple and Google from controlling how drivers connect smartphones to their cars and trucks. Toyota has resisted offering Apple’s CarPlay and Google’s Android Auto in its vehicles, citing concern that doing so would diminish safety and security. Ford offers them on all its 2017 model vehicles. But the No. 2 U.S. automaker still wants an open-source software platform that all app developers can use as an alternative to those of Google and Apple. 

Industry-wide adoption of SmartDeviceLink is expected to give app developers broad scale as their innovations could be applied to millions of vehicles worldwide.

Participating companies and suppliers will be able to deliver user experiences that meet their individual standards while retaining control over how much access apps have to vehicle data, according to the automakers. So it’s the proverbial win-win for consumers-automakers. You can’t beat that, rivalries aside.

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