The day when we’ll be sitting at the wheel of a car traveling at 100 miles per hour and responding to our work emails on an iPad may be a few years away yet, but Microsoft and Mercedes are creating something that will allow you to be more productive while you drive.
What Does “In Car Office” Do?
The idea behind this partnership is to turn your Mercedes into a virtual assistant. For example, no more scrambling for your calendar app with your right hand while you handle the car with the other.
The car will automatically pick up your schedule and dial you into that conference call at the right time. It will be able to pull up any route you regularly use and show you the one with the least traffic. They’re also testing social media app integration with Chinese company WeChat, but pretty soon you’ll be able to log into any messenger or social app and send messages to specific contacts and so on.
The project is still under development but we know that Microsoft is already heavily focused on workplace productivity with their Office 365, Surface tablets, Stream corporate video-sharing app and several other products in the works.
That means Mercedes could be looking at having a Windows 10 Surface touch interface installed into the center stack, similar to what you’d see on any Tesla Motors electric vehicle.
It’s almost certain that the artificial intelligence component will be none other than Cortana, and she’ll do all the heavy lifting of app integration, navigation, calendar management and so on.
A Precursor to Fully Autonomous Cars?
Neither Microsoft nor Mercedes have revealed what these upgrades to your Mercedes will cost, but it’s likely to set you back a few thousand dollars extra. Not that it would make much of a different because it’s a Mercedes, after all.
This could be the entry point to achieving their end goal of creating truly smart cars capable of driving themselves and handling all your digital needs. The project holds a lot of promise because if it’s a hit with Mercedes owners, Microsoft will have created a fully integrated on-board virtual assistant that can be easily installed in any vehicle of your choice.
It is not known whether either company holds any exclusivity with this project, but knowing Microsoft they’re not going to want to tie themselves down to just one car maker. This technology goes beyond Mercedes, and possibly even beyond Microsoft.
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