14 July 2010

Nokia's Terminal Mode Technology Demoed
On Nokia N97 And Volkswagen's Passat CC

Couple of week ago, Nokia and CE4A (Consumer Electronics for Automotive) working group have released the Terminal Mode technology specification as a proposed industry standard for the integration of mobile applications into the car environment and now thanks to god folks over at Engadget we got the first glimpse of Terminal Mode in action!

At MobileBeat 2010, Volkswagen's engineers showed off the video which shows VW Passat CC’s head unit connected to Nokia N97 which is completly controllable through larger touchscreen on the head unit.

Unfortunately, according to Engadget and VW’s engineers this technology is still a couple of years away from commercial integration into vehicles so don’t expect to see it as an additional equipment for the latest generation of VW Passat, but at the same time they are expecting to see third parties selling Terminal Mode add-on kits and the like a bit sooner.

Nokia has also recently established collaborations with Alpine Electronics, Continental, Fiat, Harman Becker, Magneti Marelli and Valmet Automotive to interlink car infotainment systems with smartphones and their applications.

Timo Ali-Vehmas, Head of Compatibility and Industry Collaboration at Nokia believes that the release with CE4A of the Terminal Mode specification demonstrates Nokia’s commitment to extend its partnership with the car industry and other mobile manufacturers. “Nokia is an active member of many open standardization initiatives and forums globally, and is keen to enable open collaboration and broader use of innovation for the faster adoption of new services and products for the benefit of consumers.”

Developed in co-operation with Nokia Research Center, Palo Alto and CE4A, Terminal Mode integrates smartphones into an in-vehicle infotainment system. Once connected, the full range of smartphone features, services and applications, such as navigation and music from Ovi by Nokia can be made available through screens and audio systems embedded in the car. It also enables information exchange between the smartphone and the car systems.

The CE4A consortium promotes an active standardization of mobile device interfaces. Members of the working group include Audi, BMW, Daimler, Porsche and Volkswagen. For more information, please visit http://www.ce4a.org/