Amazon is emerging as a key supplier to the auto industry of cloud-based computing services, which will play a larger role in the car business in the years to come.
It already has developed close ties to the world’s two largest automakers, Japan’s Toyota Motor Corp. and Germany’s Volkswagen AG. The relationships have just gotten a bit more intertwined with two new agreements.
Toyota Motor and Amazon Web Services, an Amazon subsidiary, said this week they are expanding a global collaboration to grow Toyota’s Mobility Services Platform, or MSPF, a system used by Toyota engineers to develop, deploy and manage data-driven mobility services for driver and passenger safety, security, comfort and convenience in cloud-connected vehicles.
(Toyota surprises analysts, turns small Q1 profit.)
In expanding Toyota’s relationship with AWS, Shigeki Tomoyama, chief information and security officer and chief production officer at Toyota, said, “Connectivity drives all of the processes of development, production, sales and service in the automotive business. Expanding our agreement with AWS to strengthen our vehicle data platform will be a major advantage for CASE activities within Toyota.”
Toyota’s MSPF uses the reliability and scale of AWS’s global infrastructure, as well as development expertise from its Professional Services, to meet the challenge of processing and analyzing data from operations within Toyota’s worldwide fleet of connected vehicles, Toyota officials noted.
The MSPF and its application programming interfaces enables Toyota to collect data from connected vehicles and apply it towards vehicle design and development, new contextual services such as car share, rideshare, full-service lease, and new corporate and consumer services such as proactive vehicle maintenance notifications and driving behavior-based insurance.
“Toyota is leveraging the unmatched breadth and depth of AWS services to transform how it develops and manages new mobility services across its entire ecosystem of connected vehicles around the world,” said Andy Jassy, CEO of Amazon Web Services.
“By running on AWS, with its high performance, functionality, and security, Toyota is able to innovate quickly across its enterprise and continue to lead the automotive industry in delivering the quality of experiences that customers expect.”
(Toyota CEO vows to stay in black despite pandemic, global recession.)
Meanwhile, Volkswagen, together with Amazon Web Services and integration partner Siemens, is opening the industrial Cloud to a growing range of industrial software applications for VW plants will be created.
As a first step, eleven pioneering international companies, ABB, ASCon, BearingPoint, Celonis, Dürr, GROB-WERKE, MHP, NavVis, SYNAOS, Teradata and WAGO, will be joining the Industrial Cloud project
“With the Industrial Cloud we are creating a platform allowing partners to contribute their solutions. This will help the Volkswagen Group achieve global efficiencies at its plants. At the same time. we are creating the pathway for partners to scale their applications and optimize their own operations. This way, everyone will benefit,” said Nihar Patel, executive vice president, New Business Development at Volkswagen AG.
In future, the Industrial Cloud will cover all Volkswagen’s factories throughout the world and its global supply chain and will facilitate data interchange between systems and plants. The system is based on AWS technologies in the fields of Internet of Things, machine learning, data analytics, and computing services, which have been extended specifically to meet the requirements of Volkswagen and the automotive industry.
“Today’s news continues our initial mission of the Industrial Cloud project to help Volkswagen together with Siemens and their partners to focus their resources on optimizing production, creating new business opportunities for smart products, and improving operational efficiency across the entire value chain,” noted AWS Dirk Didascalou, Amazon Web Services vice president.
(Amazon buys self-driving tech firm Zoox for a reported $1.2 billion.)
“We look forward to watching the marketplace collaboration flourish as participants take advantage of the AWS native open architecture of the Industrial Cloud,” he said.
