BUSINESS JOURNAL PHOTO | Anthony Bolante
Pranish Kumar, Microsoft group project manager for the automotive team, sits in a newly unveiled Ford C-MAX Energi plug-in hybrid car on display at the Seattle Auto Show on Wednesday. Kumar's team developed some of the digital interface technology.
In the five years since Microsoft officially began its partnership with Ford to make in-car entertainment systems, the market has changed significantly.
Fully electric cars like the Ford Focus Electric I drove and wrote about recently are becoming more mainstream and Wednesday at the Seattle Auto Show, Ford debuted a new plug-in hybrid, which can drive from Seattle to Boise on one fill-up/charge.
In fact, the EV Project, an electric-vehicle and charging station promotional group, has seen a 35 percent increase in the number of miles Washington drivers log using electric vehicles: 1.7 million miles in the third quarter of this year.
Electric and hybrid-electric vehicles offer some unique opportunities for in-car entertainment system designers like Microsoft.
?Range anxiety is something that needs to be addressed,? said Jim Buczkowski, Ford?s director of electrical and electronics systems.
Ford worked with Microsoft to build an app that lets electric car owners check on their vehicles even when they?re not inside them, something other in-car entertainment designers have also done. Car owners can view how far the car can go on its current charge, how much longer it would take to fully charge the car and other features unique to electric vehicles.
But it?s not just electric cars that are driving changes to in-car entertainment. It?s also smartphones.
?Five years ago, we could see the mobile device was becoming more prolific,? said Walter Sullivan, the senior program manager for Microsoft?s automobile group.
He said there was no need to build an entertainment system that was separate from mobile devices.
Emily Parkhurst covers the technology industry for the Puget Sound Business Journal/TechFlash.
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