Ford's Open Source OpenXC Platform as Gateway to Future High Tech Car Gizmos

Ford, like most other automakers, is heading towards a vision of the car as a platform for high tech wizardry and gizmos. Consumer electronics need not be limited to our living rooms or mobile computing devices, but can also be on-board the car. The OpenXC platform is a step in this direction, being an open source hardware and software stack allowing 3rd parties to connect gizmos to an OpenXC-compliant car.

Ford is positioning OpenXC as a channel for collaboration between Ford and 3rd party application developers. If "your car is as easy to program as your smartphone," it stands to reason that future cars could generate as much innovation and excitement as todays smartphones are generating.

The company announced last week they were making the OpenXC source code available, in beta form, to developers and universities around the world. Ford demonstrated a sample third-party mobile app created with the OpenXC toolkit at NASSCOM India Leadership Summit, held last week in Mumbai India. At NASSCOM the message was to not only open Ford's vehicles for 3rd party applications, but to enable development of market-specific applications for each country. The OpenXC source code is expected to be opened to the public via repositories on github, and documentation is available today on the openxcplatform website...