Tech alliance formed to develop the 'connected car' of the future

24 Feb 2016

SEAT, Samsung Electronics and SAP SE have created a technological alliance to develop future projects for the connected car. At the 11th edition of Mobile World Congress (MWC), the three companies showcased cutting-edge concepts developed by pooling their innovation and expertise.

Last year SEAT and Samsung concluded an agreement on initial technology solutions that are currently featured in some SEAT models. This year the agreement is strengthened with the arrival of SAP.

The aim of this alliance is to keep users safe and connected while on the road. The R&D teams of SEAT, Samsung and SAP have joined forces to present several future connected car concepts at MWC. These include:

Parking app

An app that lets you reserve a parking spot and enables you to pay for the service without leaving your car. Following the success of the Samsung Pay platform in South Korea and the U.S., Samsung’s simple, secure mobile payment service is expected to reach the European market in the coming months. In Q4 2015 SAP succesfully launched SAP Vehicles Network (SVN) in the U.S. and Europe with Samsung Pay as a launch partner focusing vehicle-centric services such as connected parking and connected fueling.

Under this premise, SEAT, Samsung and SAP have developed a future concept that can be accessed with the SEAT ConnectApp. The plan is for this app to enable users to reserve a parking space from any location through fingerprint recognition, navigates the driver to the location and automatically raise the access gate when the car approaches. When the driver exits the carpark, payment is planned to be made directly from the app without leaving the car.

This futuristic concept, which can be experienced at the MWC, is the result of a joint collaboration with car park operator Saba, SVN members (such as EasyPark) and Mobile World Capital. In addition, this connected car experience also forms part of the “Mobile Ready” initiative, a showcase of innovative experiences in a real city context to highlight mobile technology benefits to citizens, industry and public institutions, supported by the Mobile World Capital Barcelona, the initiative driving the mobile and digital transformation of society while helping improve people’s lives globally.

Digital key sharing

Digital key sharing: “fingertip authorisation for anyone, anywhere to use your car”. Additionally on-hand at MWC, SEAT and Samsung are presenting an evolution of last year’s digital key proposal, which was a solution for locking and unlocking the doors, turning on the air conditioning and opening and closing the windows remotely, from a smartphone or wearable.

The innovative solution this year is a function that can be accessed in future in a SEAT car, whereby authorisation can be given for another person to share the car without the need to transfer possession of a key, even if both people are in different locations. The function consists in issuing a completely secure authorisation to another person to share the car by transferring a virtual copy of the car’s digital key to the other person’s smartphone or mobile device for a duplicate key at your fingertips.

A time limit can be set on the duplicate of the digital key. When it expires, the sharing capability ends. This app project also includes the management of the virtual keys. In a more advanced stage of the project there is even room for configuring and restricting a series of car functions or performance such as setting a maximum speed or specifying the driving mode to increase efficiency, among others.