Mexican Media Brands
Renault Alliance Adopts Google’s Android Platform
The Renault-Nissan-Mitsubishi alliance has agreed to power its next-generation infotainment systems with Google’s Android operating system.
#electronics
Share
The Renault-Nissan-Mitsubishi alliance has agreed to power its next-generation infotainment systems with Google’s Android operating system.
The first of the new systems will debut in 2021, according to the companies. The in-car platform will integrate Google’s maps, app store and voice-activated Alexa digital assistant.
Experts note that consumers already favor the apps in their smartphone over those created by carmakers. Most companies have been wary about surrendering control of their vehicle’s infotainment system to an outside vendor.
But Kal Mos, the alliance’s head of connected vehicles, tells The Wall Street Journal that Google won the trust of the group’s leadership in the past few years. One reason: Google has been open-sourcing its software for more than a decade.
Neither company has divulged details about the new partnership. Mos says Google will have access to data generated by its in-vehicle Android apps—but only after customers grant permission to do so.
The Journal notes that the deal will eventually spread to millions of vehicles made by the alliance, which last year sold about 10.6 million cars and trucks worldwide.
RELATED CONTENT
-
Chevy Develops eCOPO Camaro: The Fast and the Electric
The notion that electric vehicles were the sort of thing that well-meaning professors who wear tweed jackets with elbow patches drove in order to help save the environment was pretty much annihilated when Tesla added the Ludicrous+ mode to the Model S which propelled the vehicle from 0 to 60 mph in less than 3 seconds.
-
Honda Re-Imagines and Re-Engineers the Ridgeline
When Honda announced the first-generation Ridgeline in 2005, it opened the press release describing the vehicle: “The Honda Ridgeline re-defines what a truck can be with its true half-ton bed payload capability, an interior similar to a full-size truck and the exterior length of a compact truck.” And all that said, people simply couldn’t get over the way there is a diagonal piece, a sail-shaped buttress, between the cab and the box.
-
2018 Ford EcoSport: Small Is the New Big
Eric Loeffler, chief program engineer for the 2018 Ford EcoSport, recalls driving home from work one day from the product development center in Brazil where work was underway on developing the vehicle that will be coming to the U.S. in 2018, having been launched in 2003 in South America and is now become available in 140 countries around the world.
