BMW says – nein – to Android Auto, TechCrunch
Mobile World Congress two thousand seventeen
February twenty seven – March Two, two thousand seventeen
Samsung secures self-driving car testing permit for California roads
SpaceX runs its Tesla-powered pusher at two hundred twenty mph on Hyperloop test track
Magna’s fresh MAX4 self-driving platform offers autonomy up to Level Four
Browse more.
MINI’s Electrified Concept still looks like a MINI, but also screams ‘EV’
BMW adds a sport package to the i3 electrical vehicle
Fiat Chrysler joins BMW, Intel and Mobileye in developing self-driving platform
Browse more.
Will the Galaxy S8 let Samsung put the Note seven behind it for good?
What MWC two thousand seventeen tells us about the state of the mobile industry
Google Assistant and Amazon Alexa clash at Mobile World Congress
Browse more.
Will the Galaxy S8 let Samsung put the Note seven behind it for good?
Weekly Roundup: Snap’s soaring public debut, major AWS outage
What MWC two thousand seventeen tells us about the state of the mobile industry
Browse more.
BMW says ‘nein’ to Android Auto
WorkJam raises $12 million to communicate with hourly workers
Like CES, the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona also now attracts its fair share of car makers. Ford was an early adopter a few years ago, and now others are joining the fray, too. I sat down with Dieter May, BMW’s senior vice president of Digital Services and Business Models (in an i3, of course).
During our conversation, we touched upon fairly a few topics, ranging from self-driving cars, to the future of car ownership and the fresh business models that in-car technology enables. “We suggest [Apple’s] CarPlay as an option but not Android Auto,” he said. “We believe the switches that are coming to the inwards of the car and the user practice — like self-driving cars — you have to control the customer interface. That’s part of the brand practice and for that, I don’t want to have an Android screen and I especially want to be able to deeply integrate these systems.”
He expects that the car of the future (especially when we’re talking about autonomous cars) will suggest far more personalization options, which in turn will enable fresh business models, too.
“If you have six screens in the car, you also get gesture control, voice control with a private assistant, etc.,” May said. “You need to have control over that user practice — maybe you can get away with it if you’re a ‘mass producer,’ but not in the premium segment.”
To do this, BMW built its own cloud platform that saves user preferences and other data about a car online and then permits drivers to take their profiles and preferences with them from car to car, for example.
Instead of Android Auto (and to some degree, CarPlay), BMW is focusing on A2A (Apps for Auto), which is part of the company’s ConnectedDrive platform. That permits apps to integrate deeply (and securely) with the car and, because it provides a stable developer interface, it permits the company to innovate quicker, according to May. That’s mostly because it permits his group to work on its part of the in-car technology stack without having to stick to the slower innovation cycle that predominates the actual hardware part of the car business.
One area where BMW is far more excited about working with third parties, however, is individual assistants. The company already showcased off prototype integrations with Amazon’s Alexa and Cortana, but May believes that none of them are presently good for everything, so what he wants to build is a system that can talk to all of them.
“We were the very first car manufacturer who launched this at scale with Amazon because we were able to lightly integrate it with our cloud platform,” he explained when I asked him about BMW’s work with Alexa in the car. He also acknowledged, however, that BMW — just like any other car manufacturer — has a lot of work left to do. “I believe this is a unique chance to position ourselves against the existing app ecosystems. It gives us a fresh chance because you’re not so dependent on them but fresh ecosystems are also on the rise. […] But if you’re sitting in a 7-Series BMW, you don’t want your customers to have to say ‘Hey Alexa, roll up the windows. And that’s all about the brand, of course.”
In his view, all of the assistants have different strengths. Bixby will very likely be superb for IoT and controlling your Samsung devices, while Google will be superb for search, Amazon for e-commerce and Cortana for connecting the car to the Skype and LinkedIn ecosystem. “In real life, you also talk about different topics with different people,” he argued, and added that he doesn’t believe one company will be able to serve all needs identically well. For a car manufacturer like BMW, that means it has to figure out how to integrate all of them inwards and outside the car.
How long will it take before we’ll see this in the car? “Our product cycle is pretty much CES-to-CES, May joked. “A year ago we showcased Alexa and in August it was on our platform and scaled up. The same goes for Cortana. We’ve demonstrated it and by next CES, we should have a production-ready version.” Indeed, he gets an annual budget for his group and the group is then expected to produce by the end of that year. That may not look like rapid innovation, but compared to what product cycles in the car industry traditionally look like, it’s utterly rapid. His group plans from quarter to quarter, while it typically takes a few years to get a car from concept to production run.
Because of this, having a platform with stable developer interfaces is key because it permits the developers to build up a degree of independence from the underlying car platform.
Like other manufacturers, BMW hopes that its platform permits it to extend its relationship with those customers beyond the showroom.
May has some interesting ideas about fresh business models, too, especially now that BMW — like other car manufacturers — is focusing on extending its relationship with its customers beyond the showroom. If all of a car’s features are managed by software, after all, then you end up with lots of fresh features you can sell, too. BMW isn’t interested in sharing revenue from hotel bookings through its in-car platform, tho’. They have to be about the driving practice. What May is thinking about is selling cars that already feature all the hardware options but then give you the option to buy access to extra features, like a heated car seat or an extra fifty horsepower for that road journey through the Alps (and your car could even suggest this because it knows if there is a lot of traffic or that you’re taking a hilly road or may want to speed down the German Autobahn).
In May’s ideal world, every feature in the car would have an IP address. You’d only produce one SKU of the car and then you could enable and disable features as needed — maybe forever or under a subscription model.
This, May says, makes more sense for a company that operates at BMW’s scale than making two Euros for a booking through TripAdvisor.
Self-driving cars will switch how people think about cars and car ownership. May acknowledged as much, and noted that the BMW of the future may measure its success not by how many cars it sells but how many miles per month people drive its cars. “It’s a truly arousing industry right now. The convergence of car and internet technologies, artificial intelligence, autonomous driving — they are all coming together,” said May. “That’s a core industry for Europe and Germany. That opens up slew of opportunities but also risks.” To challenge, BMW hired hundreds of people — but not in Silicon Valley, because May doesn’t believe it can contest with Google and the other internet companies for talent there. “These are 24-year-olds who want to work somewhere for two years as a brief gig and then stir on. Those are not the people we need — and I can’t exactly promise them that we’ll have a massive IPO that’ll make them millions, either.”
He doesn’t seem to think that Uber and others are an instant concern for the traditional car manufacturers, but he’s also clearly keeping an eye on that. “But I’m persuaded that if you’re not prompt enough, you’ll certainly lose. That’s a fact.”
BMWs tend to be swift, but like all of its competitors, the company is acutely aware that it is now operating in a rapidly switching market — and that gives competitors a chance to take market share away from it.
BMW says – nein – to Android Auto, TechCrunch
Mobile World Congress two thousand seventeen
February twenty seven – March Two, two thousand seventeen
Samsung secures self-driving car testing permit for California roads
SpaceX runs its Tesla-powered pusher at two hundred twenty mph on Hyperloop test track
Magna’s fresh MAX4 self-driving platform offers autonomy up to Level Four
Browse more.
MINI’s Electrical Concept still looks like a MINI, but also screams ‘EV’
BMW adds a sport package to the i3 electrified vehicle
Fiat Chrysler joins BMW, Intel and Mobileye in developing self-driving platform
Browse more.
Will the Galaxy S8 let Samsung put the Note seven behind it for good?
What MWC two thousand seventeen tells us about the state of the mobile industry
Google Assistant and Amazon Alexa clash at Mobile World Congress
Browse more.
For IBM’s CTO for Watson, not a lot of value in replicating the human mind in a computer
Samsung taunts fresh tablet launching at Mobile World Congress
Browse more.
Will the Galaxy S8 let Samsung put the Note seven behind it for good?
Weekly Roundup: Snap’s soaring public debut, major AWS outage
What MWC two thousand seventeen tells us about the state of the mobile industry
Browse more.
BMW says ‘nein’ to Android Auto
WorkJam raises $12 million to communicate with hourly workers
Like CES, the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona also now attracts its fair share of car makers. Ford was an early adopter a few years ago, and now others are joining the fray, too. I sat down with Dieter May, BMW’s senior vice president of Digital Services and Business Models (in an i3, of course).
During our conversation, we touched upon fairly a few topics, ranging from self-driving cars, to the future of car ownership and the fresh business models that in-car technology enables. “We suggest [Apple’s] CarPlay as an option but not Android Auto,” he said. “We believe the switches that are coming to the inwards of the car and the user practice — like self-driving cars — you have to control the customer interface. That’s part of the brand practice and for that, I don’t want to have an Android screen and I especially want to be able to deeply integrate these systems.”
He expects that the car of the future (especially when we’re talking about autonomous cars) will suggest far more personalization options, which in turn will enable fresh business models, too.
“If you have six screens in the car, you also get gesture control, voice control with a private assistant, etc.,” May said. “You need to have control over that user practice — maybe you can get away with it if you’re a ‘mass producer,’ but not in the premium segment.”
To do this, BMW built its own cloud platform that saves user preferences and other data about a car online and then permits drivers to take their profiles and preferences with them from car to car, for example.
Instead of Android Auto (and to some degree, CarPlay), BMW is focusing on A2A (Apps for Auto), which is part of the company’s ConnectedDrive platform. That permits apps to integrate deeply (and securely) with the car and, because it provides a stable developer interface, it permits the company to innovate quicker, according to May. That’s mostly because it permits his group to work on its part of the in-car technology stack without having to stick to the slower innovation cycle that predominates the actual hardware part of the car business.
One area where BMW is far more excited about working with third parties, however, is private assistants. The company already showcased off prototype integrations with Amazon’s Alexa and Cortana, but May believes that none of them are presently excellent for everything, so what he wants to build is a system that can talk to all of them.
“We were the very first car manufacturer who launched this at scale with Amazon because we were able to lightly integrate it with our cloud platform,” he explained when I asked him about BMW’s work with Alexa in the car. He also acknowledged, however, that BMW — just like any other car manufacturer — has a lot of work left to do. “I believe this is a unique chance to position ourselves against the existing app ecosystems. It gives us a fresh chance because you’re not so dependent on them but fresh ecosystems are also on the rise. […] But if you’re sitting in a 7-Series BMW, you don’t want your customers to have to say ‘Hey Alexa, roll up the windows. And that’s all about the brand, of course.”
In his view, all of the assistants have different strengths. Bixby will most likely be superb for IoT and controlling your Samsung devices, while Google will be superb for search, Amazon for e-commerce and Cortana for connecting the car to the Skype and LinkedIn ecosystem. “In real life, you also talk about different topics with different people,” he argued, and added that he doesn’t believe one company will be able to serve all needs identically well. For a car manufacturer like BMW, that means it has to figure out how to integrate all of them inwards and outside the car.
How long will it take before we’ll see this in the car? “Our product cycle is pretty much CES-to-CES, May joked. “A year ago we demonstrated Alexa and in August it was on our platform and scaled up. The same goes for Cortana. We’ve demonstrated it and by next CES, we should have a production-ready version.” Indeed, he gets an annual budget for his group and the group is then expected to produce by the end of that year. That may not look like rapid innovation, but compared to what product cycles in the car industry traditionally look like, it’s enormously rapid. His group plans from quarter to quarter, while it typically takes a few years to get a car from concept to production run.
Because of this, having a platform with stable developer interfaces is key because it permits the developers to build up a degree of independence from the underlying car platform.
Like other manufacturers, BMW hopes that its platform permits it to extend its relationship with those customers beyond the showroom.
May has some interesting ideas about fresh business models, too, especially now that BMW — like other car manufacturers — is focusing on extending its relationship with its customers beyond the showroom. If all of a car’s features are managed by software, after all, then you end up with lots of fresh features you can sell, too. BMW isn’t interested in sharing revenue from hotel bookings through its in-car platform, tho’. They have to be about the driving practice. What May is thinking about is selling cars that already feature all the hardware options but then give you the option to buy access to extra features, like a heated car seat or an extra fifty horsepower for that road tour through the Alps (and your car could even suggest this because it knows if there is a lot of traffic or that you’re taking a hilly road or may want to speed down the German Autobahn).
In May’s flawless world, every feature in the car would have an IP address. You’d only produce one SKU of the car and then you could enable and disable features as needed — maybe forever or under a subscription model.
This, May says, makes more sense for a company that operates at BMW’s scale than making two Euros for a booking through TripAdvisor.
Self-driving cars will switch how people think about cars and car ownership. May acknowledged as much, and noted that the BMW of the future may measure its success not by how many cars it sells but how many miles per month people drive its cars. “It’s a truly arousing industry right now. The convergence of car and internet technologies, artificial intelligence, autonomous driving — they are all coming together,” said May. “That’s a core industry for Europe and Germany. That opens up slew of opportunities but also risks.” To contest, BMW hired hundreds of people — but not in Silicon Valley, because May doesn’t believe it can contest with Google and the other internet companies for talent there. “These are 24-year-olds who want to work somewhere for two years as a brief gig and then stir on. Those are not the people we need — and I can’t exactly promise them that we’ll have a massive IPO that’ll make them millions, either.”
He doesn’t seem to think that Uber and others are an instantaneous concern for the traditional car manufacturers, but he’s also clearly keeping an eye on that. “But I’m wooed that if you’re not swift enough, you’ll certainly lose. That’s a fact.”
BMWs tend to be quick, but like all of its competitors, the company is acutely aware that it is now operating in a rapidly switching market — and that gives competitors a chance to take market share away from it.
BMW says – nein – to Android Auto, TechCrunch
Mobile World Congress two thousand seventeen
February twenty seven – March Two, two thousand seventeen
PSA Group and AImotive team up for French self-driving pilot
Turo raises $92M and acquires Daimler’s Croove car sharing business
The fresh two thousand eighteen Nissan Leaf offers one hundred fifty miles of EV range
Browse more.
MINI’s Electrified Concept still looks like a MINI, but also screams ‘EV’
BMW adds a sport package to the i3 electrical vehicle
Fiat Chrysler joins BMW, Intel and Mobileye in developing self-driving platform
Browse more.
Will the Galaxy S8 let Samsung put the Note seven behind it for good?
What MWC two thousand seventeen tells us about the state of the mobile industry
Google Assistant and Amazon Alexa clash at Mobile World Congress
Browse more.
For IBM’s CTO for Watson, not a lot of value in replicating the human mind in a computer
Samsung taunts fresh tablet launching at Mobile World Congress
Browse more.
Will the Galaxy S8 let Samsung put the Note seven behind it for good?
Weekly Roundup: Snap’s soaring public debut, major AWS outage
What MWC two thousand seventeen tells us about the state of the mobile industry
Browse more.
BMW says ‘nein’ to Android Auto
WorkJam raises $12 million to communicate with hourly workers
Like CES, the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona also now attracts its fair share of car makers. Ford was an early adopter a few years ago, and now others are joining the fray, too. I sat down with Dieter May, BMW’s senior vice president of Digital Services and Business Models (in an i3, of course).
During our conversation, we touched upon fairly a few topics, ranging from self-driving cars, to the future of car ownership and the fresh business models that in-car technology enables. “We suggest [Apple’s] CarPlay as an option but not Android Auto,” he said. “We believe the switches that are coming to the inwards of the car and the user practice — like self-driving cars — you have to control the customer interface. That’s part of the brand practice and for that, I don’t want to have an Android screen and I especially want to be able to deeply integrate these systems.”
He expects that the car of the future (especially when we’re talking about autonomous cars) will suggest far more personalization options, which in turn will enable fresh business models, too.
“If you have six screens in the car, you also get gesture control, voice control with a private assistant, etc.,” May said. “You need to have control over that user practice — maybe you can get away with it if you’re a ‘mass producer,’ but not in the premium segment.”
To do this, BMW built its own cloud platform that saves user preferences and other data about a car online and then permits drivers to take their profiles and preferences with them from car to car, for example.
Instead of Android Auto (and to some degree, CarPlay), BMW is focusing on A2A (Apps for Auto), which is part of the company’s ConnectedDrive platform. That permits apps to integrate deeply (and securely) with the car and, because it provides a stable developer interface, it permits the company to innovate swifter, according to May. That’s mostly because it permits his group to work on its part of the in-car technology stack without having to stick to the slower innovation cycle that predominates the actual hardware part of the car business.
One area where BMW is far more excited about working with third parties, tho’, is private assistants. The company already displayed off prototype integrations with Amazon’s Alexa and Cortana, but May believes that none of them are presently good for everything, so what he wants to build is a system that can talk to all of them.
“We were the very first car manufacturer who launched this at scale with Amazon because we were able to lightly integrate it with our cloud platform,” he explained when I asked him about BMW’s work with Alexa in the car. He also acknowledged, however, that BMW — just like any other car manufacturer — has a lot of work left to do. “I believe this is a unique chance to position ourselves against the existing app ecosystems. It gives us a fresh chance because you’re not so dependent on them but fresh ecosystems are also on the rise. […] But if you’re sitting in a 7-Series BMW, you don’t want your customers to have to say ‘Hey Alexa, roll up the windows. And that’s all about the brand, of course.”
In his view, all of the assistants have different strengths. Bixby will most likely be fine for IoT and controlling your Samsung devices, while Google will be good for search, Amazon for e-commerce and Cortana for connecting the car to the Skype and LinkedIn ecosystem. “In real life, you also talk about different topics with different people,” he argued, and added that he doesn’t believe one company will be able to serve all needs identically well. For a car manufacturer like BMW, that means it has to figure out how to integrate all of them inwards and outside the car.
How long will it take before we’ll see this in the car? “Our product cycle is pretty much CES-to-CES, May joked. “A year ago we displayed Alexa and in August it was on our platform and scaled up. The same goes for Cortana. We’ve demonstrated it and by next CES, we should have a production-ready version.” Indeed, he gets an annual budget for his group and the group is then expected to supply by the end of that year. That may not look like rapid innovation, but compared to what product cycles in the car industry traditionally look like, it’s utterly swift. His group plans from quarter to quarter, while it typically takes a few years to get a car from concept to production run.
Because of this, having a platform with stable developer interfaces is key because it permits the developers to build up a degree of independence from the underlying car platform.
Like other manufacturers, BMW hopes that its platform permits it to extend its relationship with those customers beyond the showroom.
May has some interesting ideas about fresh business models, too, especially now that BMW — like other car manufacturers — is focusing on extending its relationship with its customers beyond the showroom. If all of a car’s features are managed by software, after all, then you end up with lots of fresh features you can sell, too. BMW isn’t interested in sharing revenue from hotel bookings through its in-car platform, however. They have to be about the driving practice. What May is thinking about is selling cars that already feature all the hardware options but then give you the option to buy access to extra features, like a heated car seat or an extra fifty horsepower for that road tour through the Alps (and your car could even suggest this because it knows if there is a lot of traffic or that you’re taking a hilly road or may want to speed down the German Autobahn).
In May’s ideal world, every feature in the car would have an IP address. You’d only produce one SKU of the car and then you could enable and disable features as needed — maybe forever or under a subscription model.
This, May says, makes more sense for a company that operates at BMW’s scale than making two Euros for a booking through TripAdvisor.
Self-driving cars will switch how people think about cars and car ownership. May acknowledged as much, and noted that the BMW of the future may measure its success not by how many cars it sells but how many miles per month people drive its cars. “It’s a indeed arousing industry right now. The convergence of car and internet technologies, artificial intelligence, autonomous driving — they are all coming together,” said May. “That’s a core industry for Europe and Germany. That opens up slew of opportunities but also risks.” To contest, BMW hired hundreds of people — but not in Silicon Valley, because May doesn’t believe it can contest with Google and the other internet companies for talent there. “These are 24-year-olds who want to work somewhere for two years as a brief gig and then stir on. Those are not the people we need — and I can’t exactly promise them that we’ll have a massive IPO that’ll make them millions, either.”
He doesn’t seem to think that Uber and others are an instant concern for the traditional car manufacturers, but he’s also clearly keeping an eye on that. “But I’m persuaded that if you’re not swift enough, you’ll certainly lose. That’s a fact.”
BMWs tend to be prompt, but like all of its competitors, the company is acutely aware that it is now operating in a rapidly switching market — and that gives competitors a chance to take market share away from it.