Ericsson and Intel among founders of Automotive Edge Computing Consortium

A bunch of Japanese companies have got together with Ericsson and Intel to create a new collaboration group devoted to improving the connection between cars and the cloud.

The Automotive Edge Computing Consortium also features Toyota, NTT Docomo, and Japanese automotive tech company DENSO. Its stated aim is to ‘develop an ecosystem for connected cars to support emerging services such as intelligent driving, the creation of maps with real-time data and driving assistance based on cloud computing.’

The thinking is that as the connected/smart/autonomous car becomes increasingly commonplace, the amount of data flying backwards and forwards between them and the cloud will increase exponentially. It seems reasonable for companies in every part of the connected car food chain to collaborate on the best way to make this work.

As the name implies there is a focus on edge computing and ensuring that this already significant tech trend takes sufficient account of the needs of connected cars. There is also a nod to good, old Big Data although, as ever, it’s not immediately apparent how all fresh mound of steaming data will be put to profitable use.

That’s it for now. The founding members have vowed to try to grow the group in the coming months, although it would be far from surprising to see rival ones crop up before long.