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Automakers don't love the idea of Apple CarPlay or Android Auto having so much sway in the dashboard. Ford is one automaker doing something almost information technology with Sync AppLink, an interface betwixt smartphones and the car'due south LCD. At CES 2016, Ford appear support for another half-dozen AppLink apps and welcomed Toyota as an AppLink supporter…at the aforementioned time it announced all 2017 Fords will support CarPlay and Android Auto.

Meanwhile, Toyota underscored its support for SmartDeviceLink, the open version of AppLink. Unlike Ford, the globe's largest automaker is not supporting either CarPlay or Android Motorcar, and in a backhand slap at Apple and Alphabet/Google, notes how AppLink/SmartDeviceLink can be tailored more to each automaker's distinctive interface look and feel, while CarPlay and Android Machine wait about the aforementioned in every automaker's dashboard.

Separately, Ford says it's exploring the integration of Ford Sync with smart home devices such as Amazon Echo and the Wink smart domicile platform. And, in a nod to one of CES' hottest product categories, drones, Ford is working on ways to link drones and Ford pickup trucks.

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Six new apps, all using automobile-provided GPS

The six new AppLink applications all brand use of data provided by the host vehicle, primarily GPS (possibly a stronger fix than the smartphone's onboard GPS), as well as mileage and fuel level. They are:

  • AAA/CAA. The auto club-but app provides access to fuel prices, gas station location, and Here2there route planning with traffic flow information.
  • Agree. Information technology provides the underpinnings of business mileage logging. With each engine offset, the commuter is asked if the trip is for business; if so, the fourth dimension and distance until engine finish is considered one trip. All business trips for the twenty-four hour period go into a log the driver tin reconcile later. The but obvious downside is that Concord records a 30-mile taxation-deductible trip equally thirty miles, non, say, 45.
  • Eventseeker. Based on the existing app and using your profile of musical and amusement interests, information technology tells you if, say, there's a bluegrass festival nearby when you lot're driving through western Kentucky. Ford would likely share in the revenue stream if you lot book tickets from inside your Ford motorcar.
  • Cityseeker. The app finds "the best restaurants, nightlife, and other attractions" in 500-plus cities worldwide. Again, Ford would likely share in revenues from booking.
  • Tencent Chelian.This is the most pop social media platform in Red china, including messaging, existent-time traffic, and streaming audio.

SYNC 3 and Android Auto

Handful of existing AppLink apps, but where'southward the mapping?

The compatible applications for AppLink (and SmartDeviceLink) before this week's announcements include:

  • Pandora
  • Spotify
  • iHeartAuto
  • Glympse
  • MLB At Bat

This gives Ford customers several streaming music sources. Most other automakers take one or more than streaming media applications — they're at a competitive disadvantage if they don't — but each automaker has to customize each app to the diverse head units offered. With AppLink, the software is tweaked just in one case.

It should be noted what appears to be missing from Ford's list of AppLink / SmartDeviceLink applications: navigation. For users, if not for the automakers, the No. i app would be the 1 that lets you lot avert paying $500-$1,000 for embedded navigation, when there's perfectly expert navigation congenital into your telephone. Users only want a fashion to replicate the smartphone screen to the colour LCD that automakers (almost) have to accept built into the dash to allow for mandates such as rear cameras.

AppLink availability on Ford, Toyota

AppLink is widely available now on Ford and Lincoln products. Toyota says it will make SmartDeviceLink bachelor on the adjacent generation of Toyota infotainment systems, which could be rolled into an existing model without waiting for the full model changes that have 4-vii years.

Toyota's stance is more powerful than Ford's: Toyota at this point is forging ahead without supporting Apple tree CarPlay or Android Auto. Ford will support CarPlay and Android Machine on all 2017 Fords with Sync 3 (substantially all Fords and Lincolns), and later in the year in that location at that place should be an upgrade for compatibility with 2016 models that have Sync 3 now. The offset Ford with CarPlay and Android Auto will exist the 2017 Ford Escape, an all-new model, shipping in mid-2016. It volition compete in the industry's biggest growth segment, meaty SUVs.

Several other automakers say they're studying SmartDeviceLink, including PSA Peugeot Citroën, Honda, Mazda, and Subaru. Toyota-Lexus is more important because information technology'southward the world'due south biggest automaker, with an expected 9 million sales in 2015, overtaking Volkswagen-Audi-Porsche-Bentley-SEAT in the wake of DieselGate. Ford as well announced SmartDeviceLink volition be supported by QNX software, which is used by the majority of automakers to control car dashboards, including Fords with Sync 3 afterward Microsoft provided the software in Sync 1 and Sync 2.

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Other Ford CES announcements

Ford was the first of a one-half-dozen automakers to deliver a keynote or major speech communication at CES. (Remember when "keynote speech" was a singular term?) In brief, CEO Mark Fields covered a range of topics Ford has been doling out at various events since late fall, plus some truly new announcements. Fields said the world will shortly have 40 megacities (10 million population or more), of which just New York City and Los Angeles are in the US, all with pollution problems and all in need of electric vehicles, parking, and new means for people to move nearly. By 2020 Ford will have added 13 new EVs after investing $4.5 billion. Transportation services (buses, subways, Uber, ride-sharing) will get a bigger market than the traditional car and Ford will invest in that through its Smart Mobility projects, including a Dynamic Shuttle ride-sharing service and peer-to-peer car sharing service.

Fields noted in that location are 15 million Ford and and Lincoln Sync vehicles on the route now, with 43 one thousand thousand by 2020. Ford will finally brainstorm offer Sync Connect, or OnStar-liked embedded telematics, on Lincoln (already on Lincoln MKC) and Ford vehicles over the adjacent yr at present that the cost has dropped. Now Ford owners tin get the remote lock/unlock, remote get-go, EV battery status, and vehicle find features that don't work when the connection is via a smartphone. For drivers who don't partake of Sync Connect, you can still apply a connected smartphone for some telematics services, peculiarly 911 emergency notification.

Ford will be part of the IoT (Internet of Things) with the integration of Ford Sync to Amazon Echo and to apps and other gateways that command the smart home. Much of this tin be done already from smartphones in the car, simply not connected to the car. It remains to be seen what happens once safety zealots weigh in and and gripe that no one needs to remotely turn on your TV from the nuance of a connected car; Fields demo'd that likewise as more mainstream needs such equally turning upwards the estrus. He also showed an IoT app that automatically opens your garage door when you get shut to home, doing the same thing as the $15 remote now attached to your sun visor.

DJI-phantom-4k

Drones and hockey puck-size lidar sensors

In the exercise-gooder realm, Fields talked about a relationship with DJI, maker of serious drones (not missile conveying, simply non hobbyist-grade either) and how they'd work with Ford pickup trucks (as a mobile docking platform) in times of disaster such equally earthquakes or floods.

Velodyne_VLP-16_HandFord says it will triple the size of its autonomous driving fleet of test vehicles, making it the industry's largest. To make cocky-driving cars cheaper and the sensors more than compact, Ford showed off a 3rd-generation Velodyne lidar sensor the size of a couple of stacked hockey pucks that scans for nearby hazards. Ford says it'due south prepared to build cars that reach the fourth level (out of 5) of NHTSA'south democratic driving capabilities, on suitable roads (limited access highways), where the car completely takes over for the driver for extended periods, and then provides a "comfortable" transition menses (say, 10 seconds) to manus control back.

Dorsum to the future (Jacques was correct)

Much of what Ford is doing is a replay of Ford Motor Company circa 2000, when so-chairman Jacques Nasser bet his job (and lost) on turning Ford into a connected car services company that likewise manufactured vehicles. It turns out Nasser was wrong only on timing. What he wanted to exercise in 2000 was incommunicable then — and merely a few years away now.