The Age of Smart Cars: Toyota and Microsoft Team Up

A $12 million partnership between Toyota and Microsoft was announced on Wednesday. The industry giants are teaming up to give rise to a new breed of smart cars. The purpose of the partnership is to create for the Toyota cars an advanced digital information and communication system. The joint venture is targeted at developing and deploying telematics to the automaker’s cars.

There are numerous smart cars that all customers to remotely unlock the car, make calls and receive direction, etc. Toyota and Microsoft plan to take this to the next level. They propose to develop an energy management services system. Their system will make it possible for the cars to communicate with the eclectic grid and then schedule to charge themselves in the cost efficient and environment friendly manner. The foresight here is that as electric plug-in cars grow in number, the load or demand on the electric grid also increases. The telematic system proposed will ensure that not all cars are charged simultaneously but arranged an efficient manner to reduce the load on the grid.

An embedded connectivity technology will be used that will allow the cars not just to communicate with the electric grid but also communicate with each other (other cars).

also plan to integrate smart phones to car’s system. This will make monitor of electric cars through the smart phone. Users will be able to check battery life, driving range, control various components of cars such as windows, music, air conditioning, etc and also track the nearest charging station.

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Posted by explorer on Apr 7 2011. Filed under Business, Gadgets, Technology. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can leave a response or trackback to this entry