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Written by: Antonius Dalezios, Co-Founder and CEO of AppYourCar;
As January brings a flurry of new gadgets to market thanks to events like CES, you’re going to hear a lot about connected devices, enchanted devices and the “internet of things”. In most cases, that connectivity comes at a cost. We’ve seen that first hand with cars and have set out to change that.
As long as mobile phones have been in existence, drivers have wanted to integrate them with their cars. The advancement of smartphone technology has increased that desire. In many cases, car manufacturers have stepped up to the challenge, but the fact remains that today, consumers have limited, unruly and unsafe options available to them for integrating their existing cars and, in the case of new cars, consumers have to buy their car according to the phone they use, and that shouldn’t be the case.
At AppYourCar, we are taking advantage of the convergence of car and smartphone technology to bring a consumer product to market for drivers of any car. People want to use interfaces they’re familiar with at home, in the car and in daily life and we’ve incorporated that desire into AppYourCar.
AppYourCar provides a safe and affordable way for drivers to use their favorite apps without having to take their eyes off the road or their hands off the steering wheel.
Instead of trying to stream every tiny bit of data from the phone to the car, we leave the data and the handling of the data to the phone. There isn’t a need to stream all phone data to your car, only the essential and safe areas of interest.
We also recognized that car technology moves at a much slower rate than smartphone technology. Why? Because the development and production cycles of cars are long (roughly about eight years). This, combined with the almost non-existent ability to update the system in your car, the idea of not using the power of your smartphone and instead using a car system is ludicrous!
But the really interesting thing about this situation is, that no other company came up with our idea: Instead of using a separate device that connects to your smartphone, just use your smartphone! Even all those other retrofitted solutions (e.g. Parrot, Sony, etc…) always come with a separate device that then acts as the “car system”.
People are comfortable with using their smartphones in their car, but we wanted to create an interface that kept the drivers hands on the wheel and their eyes on the road. To do this we had some significant challenges to overcome:
● We needed to find a way to control your smartphone in the context of being behind the wheel of a car: It should be easy and it should be safe
● The touchscreen had to be taken out of the equation. Why? Using any touchscreen while driving, even one built into a car, is quite dangerous. Even taking your eyes off the road for a second increases your risk.
● Recognizing the limitations of voice commands. There are a number of situations where voice commands are great: Dictating a short message or enter an address into the navigation software. But the fact remains that the technology is not there yet.
AppYourCar addresses all those requirements without making the same mistakes other have made: No touchscreen, hands on the steering wheel and eyes on the road. And where there are voice recognition strengths (i.e., Siri and Google), AppYourCar doesn’t take any functionality away from the phone.
AppYourCar team
Additionally, connecting a smartphone to the car takes both the data connection and the physical connection. On the latter, AppYourCar connects with a dashboard mount that features wireless charging. It connects your phone to your car sound system (if your car does not have its own Bluetooth hands free connection) and gives you a great way to place the phone close to your field of vision while driving.
We’re big believers in car connectivity that keeps the driver in control.
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