Is the new TFT 12.3 inch screen in VW PASSAT 2015 Dashboard a real start in Mass Infotainment Spread?

Some months ago  during 2014 Geneva Motor Show VW group in its Audi flavour announced a 12.3 inch screen with TFT display with the capability to display three-dimensional, full-screen maps adding a plus respect to what we can see in the very high level Mercedes-Benz S-Class. Today during Volkswagen Passat 2015 premiere such cockpit display has been presented for the German Maker class D Passat B8 version.
This is in my opinion a great step in infotainment and graphical interface in Car world because not related to a top class car but to a middle-high car meaning that soon we’ll could see such approach also in the middle C-class cars as VW Golf.

If the apporac used in Audi TT 12.3 inch dashboard has not been changed, the TFT is powered by two Nvidia Tegra K1 mobile processors based on the same graphics architecture as that used in the world’s extreme gaming PCs and the fastest supercomputer. The “virtual cockpit” in Audi TT and I expect also in VW Passat sports High-res LCD panels with 1,440 by 550 pixel, the mentioned Nvidia twin quad-core CPUs, 4G data, natural language voice recognition, computer controlled four wheel drive, very high level navigation experience and more.

While enjoying with some videos (courtesy of worldcarfans) take note of the motors offered by new VW Passat:

– 1.4 TSI with 125 PS (92 kW) and 150 PS (110 kW)
– 1.4 TSI plug-in hybrid with 211 PS (155 kW)
– 1.8 TSI with 180 PS (132 kW)
– 1.6 TDI with 120 PS (88 kW)
– 2.0 TDI with 150 PS (110 kW), 190 PS (140 kW) and 240 PS (176 kW)
– 2.0 TSI with 220 PS (162 kW) and 280 PS (206 kW)

 

2015 VW Passat TFT Dashboard (a)

 

VW Passat 2015 Dashboard (b)

VW Passat 2015 Dashboard (c)

 

 

 

Is it Smart Innovation Time for European Home appliances Companies?

Some times ago we spoke about Samsung strategy on Home Appliances and its views on Smart World introduction in such quite old market segment. Now it’s the turn of the Europe with BSH (Bosch Siemens Hausgerate) that seems interested in such trend.

Engadget reports that Bosh and Siemens wants to be the middleman for all of your internet-connected appliances. During an event in Turkey, a spokesperson revealed that HomeConnect will become a platform that’ll let you control all of your kitchen gadgets, no matter which company makes them. That way, instead of having a smartphone chock-full of apps, each one dedicated to a separate appliance, it could all be run from HomeConnect, HomeConnect up to now used just on BSH appliances, as you can see in the video below.

The idea seems good considering that in such market many people have home appliences from different vendors.
What is not so innovative, is the fact that such controls would be limited to turning the units on and off, as well as alerts if something goes wrong and what is not still fully clear, at least to me, is the benefit that the Company has to deliver an app covering also e.g. to washing machines from other vendors.
So seeing the offered features, even if the smart revolution seems attractive for the European manufacturers, it seems that first place is still in the hand of asiatic companies (Korean in primis).
I want anyay strike a blow for European Companies, as we saw even if from a merely SW point of view they seems a little bit behind Asian Companies, they still have premium qualities in terms of washing innovation (e.g. Miele) or in terms of Energy consumption or noise level as Siemens or AEG-Electrolux.

LEDs, Lasers and now OLEDs in Car World

During CES we commented Audi proposal for Laser light in Audi Quattro prototype. Now BMW presented its solution for a sort of revolution in the shape of car lights using OLED. As reported by Engadget, “the extra-thin, uniformly lit strips promise tail lights (and some interior lights) that are both easy to see without reflectors and use just a fraction of the power of existing systems”.
The goal is to have, at least for complementing LEDs and Lasers –there are still some problems in brightness-, in a timeframe of three years.

Use of organic light emitting diodes (OLEDs) was already shown by Audi in 2012 with the so called “Audi OLED Swarm” claiming that with OLED use it is possible reacting to the approaching driver, following his movements and highlight the main contours of the vehicle or the door handle. When the driver has entered the car, restrained OLED lighting will become active inside.

One of the major  lighting companies, OSRAM, says that OLED offers completely new possibilities in lamp and luminaire design. As panel radiators they are suitable for use as signal light, taillight or even in the car interior lighting. The result: homogeneous light surfaces in all shapes and many colors, durable and energy efficient

Intel buys Basis Science, Wearable Devices Market Movers again but the Bang is from Facebook and Oculus

Intel is interested in wearable objects and already during 2014 CES in Las Vegas presented some devices even if with some false steps (the wearable objects shown by Intel in CES were ARM based). Now tries to invest further in such filed acquiring Basis Science announcing such deal today. Basis Science is a firm known for its health tracking services and devices. Up to now Intel didn’t disclose the value of the deal, but according to analysts the acquisition could be in the range of $100m (€72.5m).

Basis device in watch shape claims containing the most advanced sensors on the market, capturing heart rate patterns, motion, calorie expenditure by activity, multiple sleep stages, including REM—even perspiration and skin temperature. All of this data is captured 24/7.

Basis

 

The big stuff in today market, anyway, is made by Facebook buying Oculus Rift VR company for $2 billion with the statement by Mark Zuckerberg describing VR as the ‘next major computing platform after mobile’. Probably oculus is no a real wearable device, it is more borderline, but it is an interesting upcoming virtual reality head-mounted display, interesting also because up to now some of the founds was raised with crowdfunding via Kickstarter. Before Facebook acquisition Oculus mass production is expected (but not confirmed) to become available in late 2014 or early 2015, now with the gun power of Zuckerberg’s company some time advance could be thought.

Oculus Rift

Google Contact Lenses not only for Patology. A future in Infotainment?

Some time ago this blog covered the announcement of  Google contact lenses.
Patentbolt reports now that the US Patent & Trademark Office published a patent application from Google multi-sensor contact lens can can interact with a large set of devices, among them the most interesting smartphone navigation and/or car stereo.
Under the statement that 90% of Vehicles by 2020, as we saw here,  will Interface with Wearable Computers such new patent could have importance in the way of M2M and in general to connected vehicles.

Google contact lenses

According to Google, a device is allowed for detecting blinking of an eye via multiple sensors on or within the contact lens (multi-sensor contact lens).

The patent notes, and I would say that is quite obvious, that components on or within a contact lens are made in order to not obstruct vision.
Below from Patentbolt see Google’s patent. You can see below depicts a system #100 for detecting eye blinking or contact lens orientation using a multi-sensor contact lens.

Google Contact Lens Patent (from Patentbolt.com)

Control features of multi-sensor contact lens #110 could include issuing commands, that could be useful in automotive as example. The multi-sensor contact lens and remote device #120 (that could be wearable device or a non-wearable device) is supposed to communicate via a wireless network.

Will Chinese Giant Alibaba compete with Google, Facebook, Amazon & friends?

The importance of Chinese economy is not a surprise and it is well known, it is not only manufactured related but also it has relevant technological brands as Lenovo, Huawei and so on, but so far it wasn’t so present, at least in common man mind, in the market segment handled by Google, Facebook, Amazon. Well, now this barrier is broken, Alibaba confirmed its willingness to quote itself  in Wall Street and analysts think that it could collect about 15 USD Bln IPO, and in the more optimistic forecast it could also exceed Facebook (16 USD Bln) with so a capitalization of about 100 USD Bln. Alibaba Group is a privately owned company based in Hangzhou –China, the Wall Street Journal defines Alibaba as a sort of Amazon, eBay (with Alibaba and Taobao) and Paypal (with Alipay) mix with a bunch of Google and obvious Chinese related stuff. It has an online of slight less than 800 million products and the money flow in an year is claimed by Alibaba about 170 USD Bln (1.1 trillion yuan) , more than Amazon and eBay summed.

The importance and of Alibaba has been also highlighted by the fact that its owner, Jack Ma (Ma Yun) was named the Financial Times’ 2013 Person of the Year because he personifies the Chinese internet referring to him as the “godfather of China’s scrappy entrepreneurial spirit.”

from http://www.telegraph.co.uk

Mr. Gates says that Whatsapp is not worth 15 USD Billion

RollingStone interviewed Bill Gates and among other stuff as the role of Satya Nadella, Microsoft’s new CEO,  the Microsoft icon reported his view about the bang made in tech finance by Mark Zuckerberg with WhatsApp acquisition. Gates thinks that the acquisition is important for Facebook, and I would say that also from my humble point of view it is VERY important for Facebook as I will try to explain later.
Gates seems not in line with Zuckerberg about the price of such deal, claiming that also Microsoft was interested into SW messaging Company but not for such huge amount of dollars.

Bill Gates

As said, I see very important the acquisition because it could be a step for Facebook to differentiate its business focus considering also the fact that it seems that the social network  seems less famous among new generation people and we cannot forgot the flop made by Facebook chat.

We’ll see if the 19 USD Billion sum is a good investment, what we can see is the fact that in about one month and half the share have risen of about 25%.

Facebook Shares Performance

Is the 2014 a Good Year for Mobile for Automotive mobile, M-Commerce and Remote Work at Home?

It’s CeBIT time and the exposition official site has published a very interesting infographic about trends in Mobile market.

Among others the main focus that focused me are the opportunities in commerce, remote work and automotive.

Starting from the impressive number of 4 Billion of people on a global world population of 6.8 Billion use mobile phones is it quite easy understanding the capability that such market segment has. Regarding commerce at the moment the 10% of total e-commerce is represented by  mobile commerce and in Europe 18.2% of all transactions are via mobile sales channel. Also payments with NFC are mentioned, even if I think that such way it is just in its embryonic stage.

A very strong exploitation of mobile connectivity is in Mobile at work field considering that the 89% of employees’ mobile devices are connected to corporate networks and a signal of such trend is that the average company already have 7 desk for every 10 employees meaning that a 30% per day of workers can exploit work at home or everywhere using mobile devices, and approach is claimed very appreciated by young people. Of course such approach is not the same in all the countries, for example in Italy such approach is not yet spread enough.

The other important point that I want to highlight is the growing capability of automotive market jointly with mobile focusing on the fact that by 2020 90% of new vehicles will be connected with a market that is seen coming from a value of about 10-15 USD Billion in 2011, now in 2014 seen over 100 Billion USD and in 2022 estimated of about 400 Billion USD.

from http://www.cebit.de

Apple CarPlay and QNX, a new approach in automotive infotainment?

Apple CarPlay seems a little bit less closed than the traditional Cupertino approach. N4bb reports a statement from Paul Leroux Public Relations Manager at QNX Software Systems in which he confirms that Apple is a QNX strategic partner in automotive.

“Connectivity to smartphones and other mobile devices is a key strength of QNX Software Systems’ platform for car infotainment systems, and many automakers and tier one automotive suppliers use our platform to implement smartphone/head-unit integration in their vehicles. We have a long-standing partnership with Apple to ensure high-quality connectivity with their devices, and this partnership extends to support for Apple CarPlay.”

As already seen yesterday, at the moment CarPlay is intended to work jointly with an iPhone or a Ipad, but such collaboration with QNX opens some interesting window on additional capability that inprinciple cannot exclude some standalone systems.

QNX has presented its approach during  Las Vegas CES last January and also some collaboration with HERE solution by Nokia.

At the moment is not clear how much integrated and in some way intrusive would be the CarPlay with QNX but for sure such interest and talk in automotive infotainment is a harbinger of big things during this year.

Yesterday we saw a demo from about Volvo solution using CarPlay, let’s see now below the Mercedes approach in which also Siri capability is shown.

Apple CarPlay unveiled at Geneva International Motor Show (updated with Volvo video and info)

As rumors said, Apple today early morning announced its iOS in the Car solution during Geneva Motor Show named CarPlay.

As already posted in this blog such solution is not yet a complete and fully integrated automotive solution but is anyway a step in such environment and for sure a big step for the marketing and echoes involving from a site Apple and on the other site Ferrari, mainly, and Mercedes and Volvo.
Apple says that “CarPlay gives iPhone users an incredibly intuitive way to make calls, use Maps, listen to music and access messages with just a word or a touch. Users can easily control CarPlay from the car’s native interface or just push-and-hold the voice control button on the steering wheel to activate Siri® without distraction. Vehicles from Ferrari, Mercedes-Benz and Volvo will premiere CarPlay to their drivers this week, while additional auto manufacturers bringing CarPlay to their drivers down the road include BMW Group, Ford, General Motors, Honda, Hyundai Motor Company, Jaguar Land Rover, Kia Motors, Mitsubishi Motors, Nissan Motor Company, PSA Peugeot Citroën, Subaru, Suzuki and Toyota Motor Corp”.
I still think, anyway, that CarPlay will be a sort of mainstream solution in automotive infotainment  market because of still present involvement of external device, i.e. iPhone/iPad with iOS7 and I’m convinced that for the very high end solution the central device will be in the car and eventually could communicate with smartphones, and this seems in line with the upcoming solution from Nokia HERE and QNX,  Google with Open Automotive Alliance (OAA); solutions that still see many manufacturers also involved in CarPlay.

For sure CarPlay will help automotive and the introduction of internet-centric device in the Car exploiting  the ability of Apple to break and create new Market segments.
[Update] Volvo presented a video (see below)  illustrating the new User interface integrated in a car and in a press release claims that Apple CarPlay will be available in forthcoming Volvo models based on the new Scalable Product Architecture (SPA), starting with the all-new Volvo XC90 later in 2014.
In the same press release a statement of Håkan Samuelsson, President and CEO, Volvo Car Group is reported: “iPhone users will feel completely at home in a new Volvo. We have created a wholly-integrated user experience in our large portrait-oriented touch screen that takes the in-car mobile device experience to a new level. That, coupled with the obvious driver safety benefits of an advanced voice control system like Siri, made Apple a perfect match for Volvo”

From what we can see, it seems that Volvo considers the Apple CarPlay as a very important added value to its automotive infotainment solution, that in principle could act without CarPlay.