LG and Volkswagen have signed a memorandum of understanding to work together on building the smart cars of the future — cars that live their lives constantly connected to the internet, and connected to your smart home.
Image credit: Volkswagen
It makes sense: LG is a company with a long background in mobile technology — it has been building internet-connected smartphones since Android’s debut. VW has been making cars for almost as long as cars have been around, too — the two companies are equally distinguished in their fields. LG also has a bit of experience in the connected home market, and that is what VW is after.
According to a LG press release, LG and VW will collaborate to:
- Develop technologies that bring together the connected car and the smart home, giving drivers the ability to control and monitor smart devices in their homes — such as lights, security systems and household supplies — from the road.
- Develop a notification center that understands context and delivers notices in an intuitive and safe manner and also provides optimized recommendations for drivers to respond based on real-time situations.
- Develop optimized next generation infotainment technology for connected cars.
The future that the two are imagining is clearly centred around bringing your smartphone and your car closer together, and showing those notifications that control your life on your smartphone in a more understandable, safer way while you’re driving — in much the same way that Apple CarPlay and Android Auto already do in a basic sense. Expect your VW in the future to be able to turn on your air-conditioning when you get closer to home, too, as well as unlock your door when you pull up and slam it into park.
The two companies have actually been working together for some time — LG has had a vehicle components division since 2013, and has been supplying VW’s in-car screens and audio-visual tech since 2007. We don’t quite know what this partnership will produce in the near future, but you can expect something like VW’s BUDD-e — a connected car that can talk to your other gadgets — to move closer to becoming a reality. [LG]