Microsoft's Azure cloud will boost Toyota hybrid and electric cars
I’ve been driving Toyota vehicles for about a decade now (with no safety problems, I should add), but until today I had no idea there was something my Toyota Avalon and the Camry before it were missing: Microsoft software.
Not content with selling 300 million copies of Windows 7, Steve Ballmer has inked a deal with Toyota to build plug-in hybrid and electric cars that are connected to Windows Azure, Microsoft’s cloud service.
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Microsoft previously teamed up with Ford to create Sync, an in-car communications and entertainment system for hands-free phone calls and controlling music with voice commands. But this is a bit different.
Instead of focusing on in-car entertainment, the Microsoft/Toyota partnership involves a $12 million investment geared at helping car owners use their vehicles more efficiently.
Starting next year, Toyota’s hybrid and electric cars will be connected to applications running on Windows Azure, helping them control heat and air conditioning, monitor mileage use, or even use a smartphone to check battery power and maintenance information remotely.
“Imagine telling your car to charge at the time of day when energy demand is low,” and therefore less expensive, Ballmer said in a press conference held with Toyota and the Gartner analyst firm.
I’m not sure I really need remote control over my car’s heat and air conditioning, but the idea of using a phone to check battery power and maintenance details, and control the time a vehicle charges to get a better energy price sounds pretty spiffy.
“The automobile will become the ultimate mobile device,” said Gartner analyst Thilo Koslowski. “By 2016, a majority of customers will demand Web-centric data connectivity in cars.”
From what I understood from the press conference, it sounds like these applications are for use when the car is plugged into the electric grid, and not while you’re driving.
But Microsoft and Toyota said they will expand beyond these first use cases.
“We have a desire together to work on a broad range of applications, but the first target endpoint is the electric vehicles and the plugin hybrids, and the applications certainly need to relate to electric charging,” Ballmer said. “But you may well see applications that go beyond that with the launch of the first cars.”
The applications will all fall under the broad umbrella of telematics, which Microsoft describes as “the fusing of telecommunications and information technologies in vehicles; [using] GPS systems, energy management, and other multimedia technologies.”
Although the goal is to connect Toyota cars to Windows Azure by 2012, Toyota said by 2015 it will “establish a complete global cloud platform … that will provide affordable and advanced telematics services to Toyota automotive customers around the world.”
While most drivers are still using traditional gas-powered cars, Ballmer said the Microsoft/Toyota partnership is looking forward to a time when many more consumers go for environmentally friendly vehicles. “You have to shoot ahead of what the customers think they’re interested in today,” he said.
