A couple of weeks ago, we saw Microsoft join hands with Mercedes in a bid to improve the in-car experience for both car owners, and drivers. Today, the company is embarking upon yet another alliance with an automobile firm and has a somewhat similar objective in mind. The company has teamed up with Renault-Nissan to bring Office tools inside your car.
The primary aim of this partnership is to develop new and enhanced connectivity schemes using Microsoft’s Azure cloud services. Along with this, the two companies will also be working to create, secure and transfer driver profiles and settings from one car to another, bring productivity software applications inside cars and a lot more. Arguably, the transfer of driver profiles will go a long way towards easing things once the concept of smart, connected cars is picked up by the masses.
The alliance will also be working upon other futuristic technologies. Such as the Tesla-like over-the-air software update service, which will be able to introduce features like autonomous drive software. Remote controlling and monitoring of vehicles will also be one of the projects Microsoft and Renault-Nissan will be cooking up together.
Microsoft’s last partnerships with a carmaker was a hotly-discussed topic. The company had teamed up with Mercedes to provide drivers with suggestions about destinations and phone calls to make based on their schedule. The new partnership is similar to the previous one. The only difference is that in the Microsoft-Renault-Nissan union, the companies are working on far more productivity tools and software enhancements than the Mercedes-Microsoft union.
Renault-Nissan had already professed their aim of building a self-driving car by 2020. The aim appears to have become a lot clearer after Microsoft has joined the mix with all its technologies. The Renault-Nissan alliance has been hard at work in getting its self-driving automobiles out in the open as soon as possible. It was with this aim in mind, that the group hired former Nokia executive Ogi Redzic to lead its connected car efforts.
If things go as planned by the group, the first batch of 10 vehicles with autonomous drive technology will be released by 2020. More cars are expected to follow later depending upon the results from the first crop.
Automakers teaming up with software giants has currently become a trend. Apple, Google and now Microsoft are only some example of tech behemoths who have teamed up with car makers and cab aggreagators to make self driving cars a thing of the present. Meanwhile, the race to get an autonomous vehicle on road, has just gotten its latest heavyweight in form of the Renault-Nissan-Microsoft alliance.
