Little by little, Android Auto and Android Automotive are becoming the favorite options of drivers and manufacturers to take advantage of touch screens in cars safely.
Now it is the turn of another manufacturer to make the leap to Android in the car, and this is one of the greats: we talk about Stellantis, the automotive giant of which brands such as Fiat, Peugeot, Citröen, Opel and Maserati.
In Stellantis they knew the importance of new technologies in the car, and in 2021 their managers raised an ambitious plan to have 34 million connected cars by 2030; But they couldn’t do it alone.
Stellantis signed an agreement with Amazon three years ago to Create cars softwarethat prioritized connectivity and services, in which allies such as BMW, Foxconn and even Waymo also participated.
This ambitious plan involves the creation of A “brain for the car”, called Stla Braina combination of hardware and software and connectivity with the network, which would serve as the basis for the rest of the components.
One of these components will be BMW Autodrivethe possible autonomous driving platform thanks to the advances of the Bavarian brand that aim at level 5, complete automation without driver.
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For its part, Amazon was going to be in charge of developing an app platform, Stla smartcockpit, which would include NAvegation, voice assistant and even electronic commerce. The use of AI and multimodal interfaces (voice, touch, gestures) would be vital.
The involvement of Amazon on Smartcockpit made sense, since the Internet giant already has its own platform with Fire and its own apps store, in addition to projects such as Vega that do not use Android code.
Smartcockpit was presented as a modern system, which was going to be able to adapt to driver’s needs Learning from their customs, offering a very personalized and synchronized experience with the smartphone.
The Stellantis and Amazon platform was going to have their own apps
The free android
Amazon’s work was already relatively advanced, with a team called “Project Quattro” to create the Cabin digital platform that could compete against Google and its Android Automotive.
As part of the agreement, Stellantis was going To pay Amazon for access to your software in each carin addition to its cloud platform, AWS. For its part, Amazon would pay for each user to hire their services in the car.
However, now Reuters informs that The agreement between Stellantis and Amazon has been completed; It is a mutual decision and Stellantis states that Amazon remains a valuable ally, but will not use its platform.
It is a surprising announcement, which reveals the difficulty in developing an own platform for the car, even for the most powerful technological companies like Amazon.
Fortunately, the Stellantis platform for the car will continue, with one difference: Now it will be based on Android. The company has confirmed that Smartcockpit is now being developed in the free system.
However, that does not necessarily mean that the next Fiat and Peugeot will come with Google apps, such as Google Maps, pre -installed; The Android system is independent of the agreements with Google.
