Genivi Alliance is setting the standards for an open source IVI reference platform

I recently returned from a business trip to Munich where I attended the second Genivi member meeting. Genivi is a non-profit automotive and consumer electronics industry association, driving the development and adoption of an open in-vehicle infotainment ( IVI ) reference platform.  There are currently 79 members in the association, and that number is expected to grow as more industry and non-industry players join.

During that very same trip, I had a hands-on experience with infotainment systems.  My colleague and I rented  a gorgeous German car to visit a client. For a rental car, it was well-equipped and had a sufficient level of bells and whistles.  Early in the morning, we were in a hurry and wanted to secure a punctual and trouble free arrival by letting the navigator guide us to our destination.  Should’ve been easy…

Well, after 15 minutes of desperate trial and error, we finally called the rental guy for help with the settings, and after another 15 minutes of fumbling, we finally stepped on the gas and floored it on the Autobahn. Unlike with the Autobahn we had a very BAD USER EXPERIENCE with the navigator.  It seemed the engineers forgot about the users?

User experience is the driving force in the development of any handheld, consumer, even industrial device or system. In the case of a car, it is important to create an excellent user experience without distracting the driver (mind you that a terrible user experience before starting the engine can be equally distracting!) Safety still comes first, and creating a positive user experience for the dashboard is about optimizing technologies and system performance by intelligent software implementations. This is not and most probably will not be the core competence of car manufacturers nor of Tier1s. At any rate, high-level multimedia and graphics expertise are scarce resources in the industry.

The In-Vehicle-Infotainment system is a perfect example of converged technology: internet connectivity,  navigation, systems,  communication technologies, data acquisition systems, just to name a few. The sky is the limit for innovation and for companies to develop the iPhone of the infotainment system industry.

The automotive industry, as long as it has existed, has been a traditional and closed community. Now as electronics and software as we have seen them in mobile devices and consumer electronics are penetrating the dashboard, the industry players have realized that there is no point in reinventing the wheel. Genivi was established to bring industry internal and external knowledge to build a reference IVI platform with the ultimate goal of achieving considerable cost savings and more efficient product development processes. The future Genivi platform will compete with QNX, Microsoft, Microlton and other Linux variants. Those able to read the crystal ball predict that Microsoft and Genivi will rule the market for infotainment platforms.

Genivi welcomes new members, especially ISVs who can help solve complex user experiences and integration challenges, as well as those who have an in-depth understanding of the challenges of convergent devices and systems . User experience, open source technologies (especially Linux), convergence and internet connectivity are the driving forces in the development process.  Genivi has a very good understanding of the future requirements of infotainment systems.  Now it’s just a matter of implementing them.

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