- today ford and google formed a partnership to use google's cloud platform and android operating system in fords and lincolns beginning in 2023.
- the infotainment system will be ford branded but will have native access to google maps, google's voice assistant, and the google play store.
- google's cloud platform will be used to help with supply chain management and training.
the partnerships between automotive and tech powerhouses continue with ford and google announcing today that they will enter a new partnership called team upshift. part of the deal is that in 2023, new ford and lincoln vehicles will have an infotainment system that uses the android operating system. on the business side, ford will also use google’s cloud platform to help with manufacturing, train its artificial intelligence (ai) and machine learning systems, and train ford employees.
as part of the use of the android operating system, starting in 2023 fords and lincolns will have be outfitted with an infotainment system that natively uses google’s voice assistant, google maps, and will have access to the google play store to add additional applications to the vehicles. while the visible portion of the system will be a uniquely ford and lincoln experience according to the automaker, the android operating system will be the underlying platform. in other words, it won’t look like the android automotive experience found in the polestar 2 and volvo xc40 recharge.
on the back end, ford will make google its preferred cloud partner to help facilitate the training of ai and machine learning to help streamline manufacturing and make it easier to send personalized notifications to customers. the google cloud system will also be used to push over-the-air updates to the vehicles outfitted with the android operating system.
today’s news is part of a trend of automakers partnering with tech companies to help deal with processing issues around ai and over-the-air-updates. in january, gm and microsoft announced a deal that would make microsoft’s azure cloud platform the automaker’s preferred platform service to help gm build its autonomous driving platform.