Sync 3, revealed late last year, will start to appear in production cars in 2015 and will be offered across Ford and Lincoln’s U.S. lineups by the end of 2016.
Ford Motor Co., seeking to beam down wireless software updates to its next generation of cars, has assigned the task to an old, familiar friend: Microsoft Corp.
Microsoft developed the first two generations of Ford’s Sync infotainment system before being replaced by Blackberry’s QNX for the third iteration, Sync 3. That system, revealed late last year, will start to appear in production cars in 2015 and will be offered across Ford and Lincoln’s U.S. lineups by the end of 2016.
The cloud computing deal, announced today at a conference in Atlanta, shows the evolving nature of Ford’s relationship with Microsoft, which is pivoting its business under CEO Satya Nadella to focus on selling cloud-based software.
“We’ve obviously had a good, long relationship with Microsoft,” Don Butler, director of connected vehicles at Ford, said in an interview. “Microsoft understands the automotive environment and the kinds of experiences that we’d like to enable.”
A car equipped with Sync 3 will be able to connect to the Internet over a Wi-Fi connection and download new features straight onto its hard drive, just as a smartphone or personal computer can. By partnering with Microsoft for cloud services, Ford will be able to host these software updates on Microsoft’s global network of data centers, which Butler said will offer a quicker rollout of new features and more reliable downloads around the world.
