Tata Motors, Microsoft ink deal for connected cars

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Swaraj BaggonkarMoneycontrolIndia’s largest automobile company Tata Motors on Thursday announced a partnership with Microsoft India to integrate digital practices with everyday driving in an effort to appeal to the next-generation car buyer. Under the partnership, Tata Motors will offer a digital driving experience which will allow drivers and travellers advanced navigation, predictive maintenance and vehicle-centric services, remote monitoring of car features, external mobile experiences and over the air updates.The solutions derived by Microsoft are different than Android Auto or Apple Car Play which are basically meant for infotainment needs.Guenter Butschek, Chief Executive and Managing Director, Tata Motors, said, “We are using Microsoft’s connected vehicle technologies on Azure intelligent cloud to bring the digital lives of our customers into the cars they drive.”These offerings will be powered by Microsoft Azure cloud and services such as advanced analytics, machine learning, internet of things and artificial intelligence. The two companies began working with each other last year.Tata Motors will, in fact, showcase a new car under brand TAMO with this technology at the Geneva Motor Show next month. TAMO will provide a digital eco-system which will be leveraged by Tata Motors to support the mainstream business in the future.Such a partnership, however, is not unique to Tata Motors. Open-ended mobility solutions by the IT giant have been explored by Renault and Nissan too since 1999 and with Volvo and BMW. Using Microsoft technology will empower Tata Motors to provide connectivity features on mainstream, mass-market vehicles at affordable prices. This partnership will act as a new revenue stream as well as provide opportunity for data collection from cloud, participate in smart city development while enhancing brand perception with youth.Tata Motors will continuously develop and launch new connected services and application that make it easier for people to stay connected to work, entertainment and social networks, with greater safety and security as well as services to maximise the use of newly found in-car free time.The different driving scenarios being explored for the future are based on driver profile and location data, vehicle owners can receive proactive point-of-interest, shopping and route assist recommendations, pre-emptive service alerts based on vehicle health data, remote upgrading of key vehicle settings on-the-go.By unifying navigation data elements like maps, weather, traffic and parking, the solution can deliver optimised routing and location based services to vehicle owners.Microsoft will use its products like Office 365, Outlook, Power BI and Skype for Business. Outside of India the US-based company has tapped other additional services like Cortana, Bing and Dynamics which are part of the Microsoft Connected Vehicle Platform.According to a research and endorsed by Microsoft by 2020, 90 percent of all new cars will be connected and by the same time 10 percent of drivers will give up ownership for on-demand access. By 2030, 15 percent of cars will be self-driving.