Time for Smartcars from Toyota Connected

We are a smart generation living in the times of smart technology enveloping us all around. And catering to this appetite, Toyota and Microsoft have teamed up to create a world where cars are giant smartphones that you ride in, with a virtual assistant that knows the best route to take, whom to inform if traffic makes you late for a meeting, how is your blood pressure and pulse rate doing during stop-and-go, and what restaurants at the next exit might be most to your liking.

Toyota has created a new data analytics company - Toyota Connected - in partnership with Microsoft to develop Internet connected-car technologies that will humanize the driving experience. The new company will serve as the carmaker’s data science hub as it seeks to connect cars to people’s daily lives. Microsoft’s Azure will be the cloud computing platform, providing a hybrid solution for everything Toyota Connected creates as it works to make driving more personal, more intuitive and safer.

“Our goal is to deliver services that make lives easier, Toyota Connected will help free our customers from the tyranny of technology,” said Zack Hicks, chief information officer at Toyota North America and the chief executive of the new company, in a statement. "They will range from telematics services, which merges telecommunications and informatics, learned from your habits and preferences to use-based insurance pricing models that respond to actual driving patterns, to connected vehicle networks that can share road condition and traffic information."

These new services will be characterized by a steering wheel that monitors a driver’s heartbeat and a seat that becomes a scale, vehicle-to-vehicle technology enabling cars to communicate with each other to observe hazards ahead, or a virtual assistant that uses predictive analytics to determine not only where the driver is headed, but the best route to avoid traffic.

“The automotive industry is undergoing a massive transformation as drivers increasingly see their cars as mobile devices that extend their digital lifestyle,” said Kurt DelBene, Microsoft’s executive vice president of corporate strategy and planning. “That means people now care as much about their car’s computing power as its horsepower. So we’re working closely with carmakers, including this deep partnership with Toyota, to make automobiles more intelligent with sensors, screens, connectivity and vast networks of data that will help improve the whole driving experience.”

Microsoft and Toyota didn’t specify when these products might appear in cars. But whatever they develop will initially rollout in North America and then expand into other markets, according to Microsoft.

The collaboration illustrates a recent trend among automakers to do more with the data they’re capturing from drivers. Automakers have thrown a lot of technology into cars in a bid to catch up to the functionality of smartphones, on which people have come to rely.