By Several years ago, for April Fools Day, I published an article about Ford & GM partnering to create an Android Car. While it was an April 1st hoax, I’ve always strongly believed that the automotive industry offers a huge area for potential Android expansion. We’re seeing more and more crossover between consumer electronics and the automotive industry, but Android has yet to make a strong push into the everyman’s vehicle.
I wouldn’t call a Lamborghini an “everyman” vehicle, but seeing NVIDIA pushing in-car technology with an Automotiver division makes me extremely excited for what the future holds.
As you probably know, NVIDIA entered the Android fold several years ago and today is a dominant player in smartphone and tablet processors and partnerships. Although their current automotive partnerships revolve around proprietary operating systems based on Linux, there is a very real possibility that car manufacturers – some of which have already shown an interest according to an NVIDIA rep – will adopt Android into their future vehicles.
Imagine getting into your car, docking your phone into the dashboard, and having your car automatically adjust to meet your needs. You’d have touchscreen navigation in the center console, similar displays for your various gauges such as speed/fuel/temperature, tablets docked in the headrest for entertainment, and all built with the in-car experience in mind. Perhaps best of all, it would be connected to your Google account and Android Market, meaning everything you’ve purchased (content / apps / games) would all be available at your fingertips.
NVIDIA (or any other company for that matter) haven’t announced any plans for a complete Android automotive solution, and it would likely take a couple years for a full solution to materialize, but I’m willing to bet that by CES 2014 we’ll be seeing a LOT more from automotive Android. Based on everything I’ve seen thus far, I’m hoping a bunch of that will come from NVIDIA.
Aventador… sick ass car.
Audi also announced a Tegra 3 powered LTE connected in car solution this year. I’m not sure if they are specifically mentioning Android, but they do make mention of Google Maps and Street View. They also say the system has a “Traffic Jam Assist” that will pilot the car automatically in stop and go traffic up to 37MPH.
You’re kidding right? I posted that all over the interwebz (including here) almost a year ago.
http://www.gadgetreview.com/2011/03/lamborghini-aventadors-interior-drips-with-tegra-power.html
I know Phandroid isn’t always first out of the gate, but that’s year-old news.
yeah, but this is from the booth this year. i didn’t see your article a year ago, so i’m glad they were at the NVIDIA booth in 2012 ;-)
It wasn’t *my* article lol. I simply posted them along with links with videos of the dashboard and the things that can be done with it, which, remarkably, is identical to what was in this year’s video at the NVIDIA booth. I not only posted the links and videos here, there, and everywhere, I also tipped them to Phandroid – with the links and videos, and nothing was said (I wasn’t the only one who tipped them about it, I’d talked to two other people who did the same). I don’t care what Phandroid reports on, because I obviously knew about this anyway (like 99.9% of what Phandroid blogs about these days), and I wasn’t looking for any credit for the heads-up – I didn’t leave my name on the tip page when I used to waste my time trying to give them tips.
Phandroid, despite the fact that it’s grown from Rob writing every practically every blog (honestly, I think it was a lot better then, and not because of the current bloggers, who I enjoy for the most part – with the exception of Kevin, who doesn’t know jack shit about Android,) to having 3.1 bloggers, they’ve spent more time in the past eight or ten months feeding the latest spaz-fest with stupid shit like “even more imminent” or “imminent launch date now imminent”, “accessories on sale for imaginary phone that won’t hit shelves until 2017” while ignoring the rest of the Android world (and yes, I know that the NVIDIA thing isn’t actually Android news). I understand completely that traffic=revenue,and how revenue is generated, and how they generate more readers (spaz-fests) but when there are things that people would probably like to know about are ignored so they can write yet something else stupid about the EVO3D, the GNex, or whatever current wave they’re trying to ride, they’re not a good source of information, which at one time, they were. I’ve noticed now that they’re trying to stir up a spaz-fest with the D4 (sorry, it won’t work as long as Moto is encrypting their bootloaders, guys).
Don’t hesitate to refrain from pointing out that there are a ton of other Android blogs – I know, that’s where I look more often than not these days when I’m looking for the latest Android info, because God knows, you won’t be getting it here – especially when they’re blogging about something that’s been around so long, it’s not news, or even olds – in the tech world, it borders on being an ancient scroll, but they’re treating it as if they’d never heard of it before.
-smh- It’s a damn shame, this used to be such a better site. Actually, after they wrote that silly “Adult Swim – Little Kids Out Of The Pool” article http://phandroid.com/2011/03/24/comment-adult-swim-little-kids-out-of-the-pool/ and started using Disqus, they’ve started slipping. I think this line from the aforementioned blog was a foreshadowing more than commentary “…They took advantage of the Editorial Team’s relentless pursuit of quick, reliable, thorough Android news coverage and as a result our comment system quickly became a chaotic battleground.(pssst…they’re bloggers, not mods, let them do their job)
“No more. Hide your kids. Hide your wife. We’ve installed DISQUS”. <–Hide your wife and kids? Why? Because they're going to focus more on the comments than the content of the blogs themselves?
"Little kids out of the pool – you’ve peed in it far too long. It’s adult swim and Phandroid is about to reach a new level of community sophistication when before there was mostly just awkwardly warm water." <- I think you guys went backwards, it's really ashame, but it is what it is. I'm glad Rob doesn't have to write all the blogs himself anymore, and that he's bringing in solid revenue, but as much as I hate to say it, this site may be bringing in more money, but the quality and definitely the content has been on a steady decline since for whatever reason.
At least they got rid of Richard.
Android has NO place in anything mission-critical or in anything that could cause a safety problem. It is not stable enough. Real time OSs FTW on stuff like this. infotainment maybe, but nothing that could compromise safety in the event of a failure. Plus it would be a PR nightmare.
While high end tablets with tegra 3 will cost $600, the package upgrade in these vehicles will be at least $6000 lol.
Would i need a data plan for something like this?