Mercedes-Benz announced today on the occasion of IFA 2016 in Berlin that it is working on a new project called ‘In Car Office’ that will essentially integrate a number of new smart productivity tools right into the dashboard of your car. The company added that it is working with Microsoft in order to maximise the number of features it can provide.
According to the carmaker, the new feature will be implemented into its vehicles in the first half of 2017. While that’s a go, you might be wondering what role Microsoft plays in all this. The Redmond giant is going to integrate the Microsoft Exchange support and other related solutions in order to allow In Car Office access to your work calendar, to-do list and contacts.
This, in turn, will allow your car to make your decisions for you, minimizing distractions and making your tasks that much easier. The service will offer up suggestions about destinations based on your work calendar appointments, calls based on people whom you have any plans with and more.
Mercedes isn’t aiming to convert your car into a mobile workstation. Rather the automaker wants to help you more easily accomplish work-related tasks that you’d probably want to take on-the-go anyway.
The service will not only pre-set a handful of destinations in the car’s navigation system based on your appointments, it will also provide notifications offering to make calls using the in-car voice call system in case you have an upcoming meeting marked on your calendar. All this, thanks to the integration of the service with Microsoft Exchange.
While most of the major fronts are seeing huge developments in this age, transportation is one sector where growth rate has been slightly lower than others. This seems to be changing rapidly now, though. Not just Mercedes-Benz, there have been other carmakers that have also taken similar takes in trying to make driving less distractive.
