Continental and IBM enter Connected Vehicle Collaboration

Continental and IBM announced at the Frankfurt Motorshow a collaboration agreement that will see the companies jointly develop fully-connected mobile vehicle solutions for car manufacturers around the world.

Central to the agreement is development of a highly scalable cloud platform that will enable automotive manufacturers to deliver a range of new mobile in-car services. It will enable software updates and vehicle control device functionality to be delivered over the Internet, removing costly and inconvenient workshop visits. Giving automobile manufacturers the opportunity to offer their customers a vast array of new features, this solution may equally prove beneficial in other industries such as public transportation, insurance and retailing.

Dr. Elmar Degenhart, Chairman of the Executive Board at Continental said, "With IBM, we now have one of the world's technology leaders at our side, and together we can deliver highly secure, robust fully connected vehicle solutions for all our customers worldwide"

Dirk Wollschläger, General Manager Global Automotive Industry, IBM said: "As innovators in our respective fields, Continental and IBM will accelerate the convergence of automotive and IT industries, enabling car manufacturers to integrate multimedia mobile services personalised in-car experience, infotainment and traffic flow management to the realization of a truly connected car.”

Anticipatory driving will be enhanced by Continental and IBM to develop a next generation 'electronic horizon' platform, which will ultimately make highly automated driving a reality. Vehicles with embedded sensors will not only receive data, they will also transmit information such as position, speed or deceleration to the Cloud where data will be processed, analyzed and acted upon. The result will be a real-time map that will enable a vehicle to literally 'look around the corner'.