#VW Teams Up With LG To Create "Connected" Cars [Auto Styling News]

Today's marriages of tech companies and car companies continues, and is likely to give birth to amazing technological advances in the next decade.

The Volkswagen Group and LG Electronics are the latest to team up. Earlier this month in Wolfsburg, Germany, both signed a memorandum of understanding on the joint research and development of a next-generation connected car service platform.

The two companies have pledged to work together on Volkswagen's Cross-Over-Platform, which is aimed at enhanced vehicle connectivity and convenience. Using the latest in cloud technology, it will offer drivers seamless digital access to extensive features such as smart home and location-based services.

Vehicles like the VW zero-emission BUDD-e electric van concept (at left) imagined as a 2019 vehicle, will likely benefit from this alliance.

Another beneficiary will be concepts like the GEA, unveiled at the Geneva Motor Show in 2015. It was already a collaboration between LG Electronics and VW, having seven key components supplied by LG, including the holographic display, connected smart watch, tail lights and rear camera. In July, LG was selected as Volkswagen's strategic electronics supplier and also listed as a partner company on its FAST (Future Automotive Supply Tracks) program. At CES earlier this year, the two companies attracted great attention showcasing a smart home system that could be controlled remotely from the vehicle.

Over the coming years, the two companies say they will be concentrating on:
• Developing technologies that bring together the connected car and the smart home
   so that drivers are able to control and monitor smart devices in their homes —
   such as lights, security systems and domestic appliances — from out on the road.
• Developing a context-sensitive notification center that can deliver messages in an
   intuitive and safe manner and provide optimized recommendations to the driver in
   real time.
• Developing next-generation infotainment technology for connected cars.

LG was one of the first electronics companies to commit itself to the automotive industry. It has been supplying audio-visual products for vehicles since 2007, establishing a reputation for reliability and technological innovation.

#BMW Collab. Promises Driverless Cars By 2021 [Auto Styling News]

BMW, Intel, and Mobileye are teaming up to make self-driving autonomous vehicles a reality by 2021. The collaboration could be a very positive sign that even driverless cars could be headed to our driveways within a decade.

Announced at a July 1 press conference in Munich, Germany, leaders from the three companies - leaders in the automotive, technology and computer vision and machine learning industries - announced their collaboration.

BMW believes the path to get to a fully autonomous world is complex and will require end-to-end solutions that integrate intelligence across the network, from door locks to the data center. Transportation providers of the future, they said, must harness rapidly evolving technologies, collaborate with totally new partners, and prepare for disruptive opportunities.

The BMW iNEXT model will be the foundation for BMW Group’s autonomous driving strategy and set the basis for fleets of fully autonomous vehicles.

The goal of the collaboration is to develop future-proofed solutions that enable the drivers to not only take their hands off the steering wheel, but reach the so called “eyes off” (level 3) and ultimately the "mind off" (level 4) level transforming the driver’s in-car time into leisure or work time. This level of autonomy would enable the vehicle, on a technical level, to achieve the final stage of traveling "driver off" (level 5) without a human driver inside.

BMW believes this technology lays the foundation for entirely new business models in a connected, mobile world. If it comes about, this could clearly revolutionize the way we view vehicles, and could disrupt driving as much as Uber and Lyft have disrupted the taxi industry, or cellular disrupted the old "tethered" telephones our parents grew up with in the 20th Century.

Dangers for the project are not more clearly highlighted by the first fatal accident involving a self-driving Tesla S in May, which raised serious questions about the viability of the autopilot technology at this stage. Mobileye supplied some of the tech behind Tesla's automated driving car. It was founded in 1999 and was a pioneer in developing advanced collision avoidance systems.

BMW is wise to reach out to tech leaders to collaborate in this way. Hopefully the technology really will be ready to deliver what's being advertised by 2021.