Huawei’s connected car push includes Audi and Volkswagen partnerships

Chinese networking giant is going big on the connected car market this week, with the announcement of partnerships with German car makers Audi and Volkswagen.

Today’s news specifically concerns Volkswagen, with the demonstration at CES Asia of some MirrorLink-based technology that enables smartphones apps to be used on the vehicle-mounted systems. While this sort of thing has been around for a while, it seems that Huawei is facilitating the integration of MirrorLink technology in VW cars, all of which will feature it by next year.

“Our cooperation with Huawei will seamlessly blend the capabilities of users’ smartphones with the systems in their cars,” said Sven Patuschka, EVP for R&D of Volkswagen Group China. “All content on the phone will be shown in real time on the car’s infotainment touch screen. The result is smart and convenient interaction between phone and car.”

Earlier this week at the same show Huawei unveiled an R&D partnership with Audi, but this time focused on “interconnected car technology”, which seems to mean embedded modems.

“We see the unlimited opportunities available in the interconnected car market and we are excited about our partnership with Audi Group,” said Richard Yu, CEO of Huawei Consumer Business Group. “By partnering with industry-leading automobile companies like Audi, Huawei aims to bring the best interconnection services and solutions to the next generation of cars, while actively promoting interaction between cars, smartphones, wearables and people, creating a seamless communication experience and driving environment.”

The connected car has long been viewed as the next major opportunity for the tech industry, but it has been slow to develop. One of the main reasons is the relatively long lead times in the automotive industry, which means bets have to be made on embedded technology standards that may be obsolete by the time the car comes to market. The answer, of course, is open standards, but as ever we have to wait for the proprietary land-grab to exhaust itself first.

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