There was some automotive connected car news this week that was too short to report- a fact or statement that doesn’t need further explanation. Companies in the news include Automatic, USAA, GM, Cisco, Microchip, Green Hills, Freescale, Zendrive and Garmin.
Automatic Funding by USAA
Connected car platform Automatic, announced it received $24 million in Series B funding, led by the investment arm at USAA, an insurance and financial services provider for military families with 11 million members.
GM May Share Car-to-Car Network using Cisco
GM is testing new Cisco Systems technology that could allow connected cars to share radio communication (V2V) bands with roadside Wi-Fi devices. The testing was reported in statement to a House committee. Vehicle-to-Vehicle technology would allow cars to communicate to each other and avoid collisions, using the 5.9 GHz radio spectrum however, e-commerce companies want to use the same spectrum for roadside Wi-Fi services that could interfere with signals.
Microchip MOST150 for Kia Volvo
Microchip Technology announced that its chipsets are being using the Kia K900 (Quorix) infotainment system with smartphone connectivity. The latest MOST150 standard in being implemented in the Volvo XC90. MOST150 provides 150 Mbps performance and proven electromagnetic-compatibility (EMC) behavior.
Green Hills Freescales
Grreen Hills Software, extended its popular INTEGRITY automotive consolidation platform to the Freescale i.MX 6 series Smart Application Blueprint for Rapid Engineering (SABRE) for automotive infotainment board.
Toshiba & Microsoft Partnership
Toshiba and Microsoft announced that they will jointly develop solutions for the Internet of Things (IoT), using Toshiba’s innovative IoT devices with Microsoft’s Azure IoT Cloud infrastructure.Together Toshiba and Microsoft will offer innovative IoT enterprise solutions, starting with the transportation and logistics market in calendar year 2015.
Zendrive Drives Guild Discounts.
Zendrive announced it has partnered with Guild, a new insurance platform to offer insurance at deep discounts to on-demand fleets such as Lyft and Uber using Zendrive technology for dynamic pricing based on safe driving.
Garmin Keeps on Truckin’
Garmin launched the dēzlCam, its first all-in-one trucking sat nav with a built-in dash cam that serves as an onboard eyewitness. Truck drivers can rely on firsthand video footage that continually records1 the drive and automatically saves video footage on impact