Audi to Build 1 Million ‘Connected Cars’ by 2015

By 2025, every car will be connected, according to the wireless industry trade group GSMA

Audi will be helping to reach that number by building 1 million connected vehicles by 2015, according to Mattias Ulbrich, the automaker’s chief information officer.

But Audi, which already has 200,000 connected cars on the road, isn’t starting from scratch. The luxury automaker currently offers its Audi connect package, which creates a Wi-Fi hotspot in the car and includes music streaming and a navigation system with Google Earth, Google Street View and online traffic information.

Ulbrich, at the automotiveIT Congress in Hanover, Germany, last week, said the goal of Audi’s connected-car initiatives is to increase the brand’s competitiveness by focusing on technology that’s customer-focused. “For carmakers there are three priorities,” he said. “Customers, customers and customers.”

Ulbrich added that close cooperation with parent company Volkswagen Group and its various business divisions will yield better connected services for Audi customers. But sister brand Porsche won’t be moving as speedily into the connected-car race.

Porsche is moving slower with the implementation of car connectivity than the premium auto makers, the brand’s IT manager, Sven Lorenz, said at the same conference. “That’s because our drivers really want to drive, rather than play,” Lorenz told an audience at automotiveIT.

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Source: Doug Newcomb | Driving the Conversation on Car Technology