Ford has teamed up with startup Autonomic and Amazon Web Services to power its Transportation Mobility Cloud platform (TMC), which will build a portfolio of ‘smart’ car applications for real-time data and connectivity in various vehicles.
The TMC is available for all car manufacturers, and beyond offering a multitude of different applications, it can also connect vehicles to city infrastructure, public transit systems, and a host of other ‘smart’ city platforms.
Mashable Australia points out that TMC could become particularly valuable for Ford as connected cars become more common. Some estimates indicate that there could be upwards of 152 million connected cars on the roads by 2020. The Blue Ovalis currently working with Argo.AI to develop a number of self-driving vehicles, and using TMC would provide them with things such as live-traffic information, which would instruct the vehicles to avoid construction zones or street festivals.
Will others adopt Ford’s solution?
While Ford’s ‘app store’ for cars does have promise, it is unlikely to be a solution adopted by a wide range of car manufacturers, particularly since many are pursuing their own solutions or working to bring services like Android Auto and Apple CarPlay to their vehicles.
In a statement regarding Ford’s work with Amazon Web Services on the Transportation Mobility Cloud, it is noted that the platform “securely ingests and enriches vehicle data in real time, and it gives software developers easy access to the processed data to be able to create rich applications for drivers, fleet-owners, and vehicle manufacturers.”
