Nissan hiring 300 to develop common connected car tech
The top executive overseeing connected vehicles at Nissan and Renault believes the benefits of developing a common technology for connectivity within the Japanese and French auto partnership outweigh the risks of sustaining huge damage from a possible defect or cyberattack.
Ogi Redzic, senior vice-president at the Renault-Nissan Alliance, oversees such connected services, including staying connected with family, navigating best routes and remote control of vehicles — an area where all the world’s automakers are trying to gain an edge. Redzic, formerly of Motorola and Nokia, was tapped for the post at the alliance earlier this year. He told reporters Tuesday at Nissan’s Yokohama headquarters that the alliance has begun hiring 300 people to build such software applications for future cars, in addition to 300 employees at Nissan Motor Co and 300 at Renault SA, already working on the effort. Nissan-Renault hopes to lead in connected vehicles, in addition to green cars and selfdriving cars, the two other increasingly vital auto technologies. But Redzic was vague about what might be expected, although he stressed Nissan hopes to be different from rivals in the connected services, even if companies cooperate on a standard technology. He stressed that Nissan-Renault plans to work on a single platform across the alliance, including luxury models.
Nissan-Renault will also be seeking out partnerships. Last month, the alliance said it had a partnership with Microsoft Corp to develop next-generation connected services for cars powered by Microsoft Azure, one of the company’s cloud offerings. (AP)