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Enabling choice, the GENIVI way

Megatrends talks to the GENIVI Alliance about its Android Auto interface and the news of Daimler’s decision to become a member. By Martin Kahl

In January 2015, to coincide with International CES, the GENIVI Alliance made a series of key announcements, including the news that GENIVI will fund a project to deliver an open interface to Android Auto. It also confirmed that in the first quarter of 2015, it will publish its GENIVI Development Platform, and that Daimler has joined the GENIVI Alliance, taking the number of OEM members to 13; established in 2009, the organisation now has over 160 members.

At the annual GENIVI Showcase, a networking event held in Las Vegas at the same time as CES, Megatrends sat down to discuss these developments with Kyle Walworth, John Lehmann and Steve Crumb. Walworth is VP Automotive Solutions and Strategy at Symphony Teleca and GENIVI Secretary and Treasurer; Lehman works at Jaguar Land Rover’s Open Software Technology Centre as Infotainment Strategist, and Crumb is the Executive Director of the GENIVI Alliance.

How does the GENIVI Alliance’s funding and development of an open source interface for Android Auto fit with the GENIVI Alliance’s strategy, and ensure that GENIVI members and the Open Automotive Alliance (OAA) – announced at CES 2014 – are all happy with the way things move forward?

Kyle Walworth: The GENIVI Alliance focuses on middleware for all infotainment features, including smartphone interfaces. Our SmartDeviceLink was Ford’s, but is now maintained by Ford and hosted by GENIVI. We’re very happy to integrate, and to create this open-source interface into Android Auto as it’s a feature that everybody wants for their smartphone, to work seamlessly and drive their system. I must emphasise what this is not: Google has not come out and said it will create a full OS top to bottom. Android Auto is an interface of the phone. It does touch into car communications, but it’s all about using what’s on your smartphone. It’s generated in your smartphone, in your vehicle, in your vehicle screen.

Steve Crumb: Our strategy is to enable choice. Our architecture is intended to be a pick ‘n mix architecture. There are mandatory elements of our architecture where we think it doesn’t matter because it’s a commodity and everybody is just going to pick whatever is available, and it just has to run. And there are other parts of our architecture where there are so many different commercially available options that we, as a not-for-profit organisation, are not going to tell OEMs what to pick. They’re going to choose what they want. If an organisation wants Android Auto and Car Play and SmartDeviceLink, we want to enable that in the most open way that we can. This project is an attempt to build this open layer, make it available to anybody, not just GENIVI members but any organisation with an interest in interfacing Android Auto, and make it available in an open way. That’s really our goal – to provide open solutions that enable choice to the OEMs and the Tier 1s.

John Lehmann: That’s been a goal since GENIVI was established. You enable choice by being open to working with anybody that the OEM community is going to want to work with for that functionality, and create an open-source way to address that.

KW: Open-sourcing the interface makes it easy for everybody to be able to integrate those technologies more quickly, and that’s what we’re all about. Look at GENIVI in general, and you’ll see that we’re in a series of very automotive-specific projects that help open-source be utilised for IVI. This is a perfect example.

You’ve confirmed plans to launch the GENIVI Development Platform in the first quarter of 2015. Can you please provide some more information about that Platform?

SC: We have not yet had a full stack reference platform. Software is not very tangible unless it’s used. It’s nice to have standard interfaces or individual components, but how do you make those tangible? You have to put them in the context of a full stack. So we’re coming out with a technology demonstrator. It’s intended to be given to solution architects and developers so that they can see how our interfaces work and how our individual components operate to do different things. And we hope that this demonstrator will help people understand the value of what technology is being produced by GENIVI and get more adoption, greater enhancement of those features, and more software.

KW: The demonstrator itself is an automotive board – a display and a software stack that runs some demonstration type applications that exercise the full GENIVI stack.

JL: It all comes down to making the work of GENIVI accessible and visible and, ideally, easy to get hold of and use. Things like the demonstrator are a step along the way. But it is going to be a continuing process and there’s nothing keeping it from evolving, for GENIVI members initially, but later non-members, universities, anybody. We want everybody developing their automotive applications on this technology, ideally.

Your other big news is the membership of Daimler, which brings another premium vehicle manufacturer into the group and takes the number of OEM members to 13. What do you see as the benefits both to Daimler and to GENIVI of Daimler joining?

SC: Daimler had known about GENIVI for a long time, and became convinced to join for a number of different reasons. One of those reasons was because their Tier 1s were in love with GENIVI, and they were providing GENIVI solutions. I think more and more OEMs out there are realising that GENIVI solutions are becoming increasingly accessible on the market and they feel they too should be part of it.

KW: Look at the Linux movement and the gravitation towards GENIVI of those companies who were interested in Linux. You have some OEMs that maybe didn’t officially hit GENIVI compliance but have numerous GENIVI components inside. And that was planned by the OEM. The majority of all our Linux projects have membership here in GENIVI, or are gravitating in, and I think Daimler joining GENIVI is fantastic for the Linux movement and the GENIVI ecosystem because it’s one more stamp for the Linux movement in automotive.

Martin Kahl

This article appeared in the Q1 2015 issue of Automotive Megatrends Magazine. Follow this link to download the full issue.

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