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| There are currently more than 100 GENIVI-member companies. |
SEMA’s continual quest to keep its members aware of significant new trends and activities in the automotive world increasingly means delving into new technical areas. As automobiles become more complexly populated with electronic devices, the OEMs and their suppliers have sought to standardize the interfaces among the hosts of products they offer and support. Knowledge of these industry standards can give a SEMA member ready access to a vehicle’s electronic “nerve system” for application of their aftermarket offerings when that vehicle is introduced to the public. If your company offers infotainment or infotainment-related products (including telematics), one initiative you should be aware of is GENIVI.
The GENIVI (pronounced gen-ee-vee) Alliance was officially launched in March 2009, heralding a new era of cooperation among automakers, suppliers and technology providers in the interest of streamlining the development and support of In-Vehicle Infotainment (IVI) products and services.
IVI is a rapidly growing and evolving field that encompasses automotive infotainment products and services, including music, news, Internet and multimedia, navigation and location, and telephony. Automobile manufacturers and their suppliers must develop, test, deploy and support these IVI products and services across multiple automobile models and generations, which is becoming increasingly complex and expensive as the rate of innovation and number of applications continues to expand exponentially.
GENIVI is developing a reusable, open-source IVI platform. Founding members include BMW Group, Wind River, Intel, GM, PSA, Delphi, Magneti-Marelli and Visteon.
“GENIVI allows its members to share the risk of accelerated innovation by providing IVI software that the members improve with each generation of product,” says Joel Hoffmann, GENIVI Board of Directors member and Intel automotive business strategist. “By aligning the industry to a common set of standards, not only can money be saved, but also new applications can be built on top that are appealing to the customer and, thus, increase car sales.”
GENIVI’s mission is to drive the broad adoption of an open-source development platform by aligning automotive OEM requirements and delivering specifications, reference implementations and certification programs that form a consistent basis for further open-source and ISV development.
SEMA believes that GENIVI’s activities are something its members offering IVI products should be keenly aware of. To find out more about GENIVI, visit their website www.genivi.org.
If you are interested in SEMA presenting a webinar about GENIVI and how it could impact your product offerings and new business opportunities, please send an e-mail to editors@sema.org with "SEMA Vehicle Technology" in the subject line.
Strategic Initiatives:
- Accelerate the development and implementation of the fully connected vehicle for infotainment applications.
- Deliver a platform consisting of standardized middleware, application layer interfaces and frameworks.
- Extend open-source community innovations to support the automotive domain.
- Engage developers to deliver compliant implementations.
- Sponsor technical, marketing and compliance programs.
Benefits Delivered by the GENIVI Platform:
- Speeds time-to-market.
- Accelerates the pace at which new and compelling automotive applications are developed.
- Dramatically reduces development costs.
- Provides code transparency.
- Broadens options for integrating and customizing solutions.
- Increases IVI interchangeability across vehicle makes and models.
- Grows the entire IVI ecosystem.