Toyota snubs Apple, Google in favour of Ford car phone app
JAPANESE AUTO MAJOR IS MAIN HOLDOUT AGAINST SILICON VALLEY ENCROACHMENT
Toyota has chosen to use a technology originally developed by rival Ford to connect smartphone apps to its cars’ dashboards, snubbing Apple’s CarPlay and Google’s Android Auto in the latest sign of tensions between the automotive industry and Silicon Valley.
In a related announcement, Ford said it would offer both CarPlay and Android Auto as standard in its 2017 models while maintaining its own AppLink software.
So-called “infotainment” systems that allow music or navigation apps from a smartphone to be displayed on the dashboard have become the site for an early turf war between traditional automakers and Silicon Valley companies.
Automotive companies have been reluctant to hand over control of the in-car experience to software makers such as Apple and Google for fear of losing a key point of competitive differentiation.
However, Ford’s adoption of CarPlay and Android Auto leaves Toyota as the main holdout against Apple and Google’s encroachment.
The two smartphone platform leaders have in recent years begun to build simpler ways to connect their devices to cars. CarPlay and Android Auto both provide features such as voice control, driving directions and music in a way that their developers say is safer and easier to use than the interfaces created by carmakers.
Ford is hedging its bets after releasing its rival technology, SmartDeviceLink (SDL), as open-source software three years ago. Toyota is the first carmaker to adopt SDL, while PSA Peugeot Citroen, Honda, Subaru and Mazda say they are “investigating” whether to adopt the standard.
QNX Software Systems and UIEvolution, two leading suppliers of auto software, also said they would support SDL in their future products.
Developing a safer and more secure in-car smartphone connectivity service ... is exactly the value and advantage an automaker can offer customers.”
Shigeki Terashi Toyota
Support from a larger number of manufacturers is likely to boost SDL’s appeal among app makers. Music services Spotify and iHeartRadio are among the developers that have already built integrations for SDLbased voice commands and dashboard controls.
China options
Ford said that continuing to offer AppLink, its incarnation of SDL, at the same time as CarPlay and Android Auto would provide choice to customers while maintaining flexibility and opportunities for differentiation for the company, especially in China, where Google services are blocked. A software update to Ford’s Sync 3 platform will bring CarPlay and Android Auto to some 2016 models, too.
Toyota said that while it continued to evaluate app connectivity services, it has “no specific plan” to build Apple or Google’s software into its vehicles.
“Developing a safer and more secure in-car smartphone connectivity service which better matches individual vehicle features is exactly the value and advantage an automaker can offer customers,” said Shigeki Terashi, executive of Toyota.
Toyota’s support for SDL is a significant boost to Ford’s attempt to rally automakers around a single industry standard that still offers the opportunity for individual companies to customise the screens inside their cars.
“Ford is making the software available as open source because customers throughout the industry benefit if everybody speaks one language,” said Don Butler, executive director of Ford’s connected vehicle and services unit.
Also at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, Toyota said it would expand the number of vehicles that could connect to the internet using its Data Connection Module (DCM), starting with 2017 models in the US. The carmaker is building a data centre to help process the information sent by its telematics system and pledged to establish a single global technical standard for DCM by 2019.
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