Android ‘Ice Cream Sandwich’ coming to a Honda dashboard near you
Paris is good for more than just fashion shows. At this week’s Paris Motor Show, Honda Motor Company, Ltd and Nvidia announced they are teaming up on the automaker’s new industry-first Android-based infotainment system, called Honda Connect. Honda Connect will be powered by the Tegra 3 system-on-chip.
Honda may not be the first auto manufacturer to reveal plans to use Android for an infotainment system, but they should be the first to bring such a system to market in its cars. In March 2011, Saab showed a concept car, called ‘Phoenix’, at the Geneva Motor Show with Android-based system dubbed iQon. Sadly, shortly after that Saab became insolvent and neither the car, nor iQon were seen again.
Honda is unlikely to go under any time soon, so the Android-based Honda Connect should appear in updated models of the Civic, Civic Tourer and CR-V in early 2015 – but only in Europe for now. Honda has not revealed any possible release dates for its North American models.
“Nvidia has been providing processors for automotive applications for 10 years now and Honda is the 19th automotive brand to adopt our automotive-grade chips,” said Danny Shapiro, senior director, automotive at Nvidia, in a company blog. “The Tegra 3 SoC used by Honda is based on the same architecture previously used on smartphones and tablets but optimized for the automotive environment including temperature and shock resistance.”
Unfortunately Honda Connect is built on top of and older version of Android, Android 4.0.4 or ‘Ice Cream Sandwich’ as it’s more commonly known. Due to rigorous testing and safety requirements in the auto industry that create long lead times to validate systems such as infotainment, development of the system started long before the January 2014 announcement of the Open Automotive Alliance and Android Auto.
A custom interface serves up a grid of six large buttons on a seven-inch capacitive touchscreen. These give access to navigation, radio, rear camera and other relevant vehicle data. The system will include access to the Honda App Center, allowing drivers to download other compatible apps for in-vehicle use. Nothing fancy is expected – just standard Android apps that are deemed safe for use while on the move.
Also included is the pre-installed Aha Radio app to play a range of media and MirrorLink for compatible phones to push the phone display to the infotainment screen.
Image courtesy of Honda
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