Ford India as part of the initiative ‘car as an IT platform’ has opened its research platform OpenXC to application developers such as HCL Technologies to develop convenience applications for automobiles. HCL Technologies has already developed an application for the company that can assist the driver of the car in transmitting intelligent information regarding traffic conditions and the delay time to reach the destination.
According to Ford, such initiatives are underway in the US as well in collaboration with universities such as MIT, Stanford and Michigan and are in their beta phase. According to Mr. K Venkatesh Prasad Senior Technical Leader Open Innovation Ford Motor Company, the initiative of the company is directed at providing benefits to the customers.
OpenXC is an open source hardware and software platform developed by Ford Research and Innovation in collaboration with Bug Labs and enables developers to take advantage of the mobile connectivity and also to read data from the vehicle’s internal communication network.
Other applications being developed by Ford are vehicle to vehicle communications (V2V) and an application that conducts a health check on the driver.