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Toyota's Car OS vs. Ford's Sync (Microsoft Windows Automotive)

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Ok -- let me come clean right up front: the headline here is slightly misleading because Toyota's Car OS and Ford's Sync are not really directly comparable.  For one thing, Toyota's Car OS does not appear to exist yet -- though it reportedly is under development.  They also have a somewhat different (but overlapping scope) scope.  Even so, both efforts represent a keen interest in vehicle software.  Both companies clearly think software in the vehicle is important enough to invest in, and while they could have made very similar choices they instead decided to take a very different approaches.  The choices each company made can tell us something about how they're view on the market, and also themselves. 

 

So what sort of things would likely be true for Toyota's Car OS strategyt make sense?   From what I can get from the article, I think Toyota's strategy can make sense for an environment where:

1.  A delivery time of 4-5+ years is acceptable, AND

2. Collaboration between various internal stakeholder groups is strong, AND

3. You have (or can quickly invest & build) and can continue to develop the relevent deep technical competencies to deliver, OR

4.  You believe it's important to increase the share of intellectual property in your vehicles that you own or control (increase vehicle margins by lowering costs and supplier dependencies), OR

5.  You think others will buy your technology to create a defacto standard or enable adjacent revenue streams to defray your own investment/variable costs (e.g., OnStar); OR,

6.  You believe you can realize a greater ability to define subsystem interactions that will enable the creation of new, saleable features/attributes that are difficult for competitors to duplicate at cost - if at all (e.g., managing driver cognitive load by modifying the vehicle displays based on vehicle and environmental state, or whatever other use case you want to invent.) (improve brand, net pricing, margins). 

On the other hand, what does Sync say about Ford?  As I understand it, the Sync strategy make sense in an environment where:

1.  You want at least some functionality fast(er); OR

2.  You want to leverage market forces because operability and interop of 'third-party content' is integral part of customer experience; OR

3.  You want to leverage market forces to ease acquisition/development of competencies; OR

4.  You want to focus less on what you own/control, and more on what you enable for the consumer (e.g., sell more vehicles & raise net pricing because of a stream of cool, new stuff that enhances brand); OR,

5.  You have a goal is to deliver specific, constrained use case/feature (eg., 'infotainment hub - yes'; 'control systems - no'), but not a mandate to change how we understand what a vehicle is (in other words, you're delivering features, not changing how people conceive, design, manufacture, service, use, and recycle/remanufacture vehicles); AND

6.  You have a strategy for 'non-Sync-related' computing needs that complements Sync well.

BTW, IMHO, Re: #5 and #6 conditions that help the Sync strategy, they may or may not be related. If you have #6, then the potential probably exists to capture most of the benefits I'm imagining for Toyota's described approach, in addition to the Sync benefits. They do seem like they would need to be pursued in parallel, though.

Comments

  • Anonymous
    February 06, 2007
    Why doesn't Microsoft just go up to Toyota and say "Here is a tried and tested OS, now use it (and pay us)"? Microsoft always seems so proactive in selling their products - it's always expected that they'll sell themselves.

  • Anonymous
    July 10, 2007
    Welcome back for Part 2! I didn't expect this to be a series when I wrote the original post , but two

  • Anonymous
    June 08, 2010
    For the continuous technological advancement especially on auto industry,softwares are really important.It contributes a lot in many features highlighted by auto makers for producing a more convenient and reliable car.Gadgets associated with entertainment,maps and other technology needs a software to be installed on a specific car model to work.

  • Anonymous
    August 18, 2010
    Welcome to this new technology.  This new technology implement in the future of  cars.