National Press Release

Industry Collaboration Will Accelerate Innovation and Time-to-market

While Reducing Development Costs

SAN RAMON, Calif., March 2 /PRNewswire/ -- Leading automobile manufacturers and suppliers announced today the formation of the GENIVI Alliance, a non-profit organization committed to driving the development and broad adoption of an open source In-Vehicle Infotainment (IVI) reference platform. The new alliance will unite industry-leading automotive, consumer electronics, communications and application development companies investing in the IVI market and driving innovation. The effort will result in both reducing time-to-market and total cost of ownership.

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GENIVI Alliance founding members BMW Group, Delphi, General Motors Corp., Intel, Magneti Marelli, PSA Peugeot Citroen, Visteon Corp., and Wind River are collaborating to create a shared GENIVI platform - a common software architecture that is scalable across product lines and generations. The GENIVI platform will accelerate the pace at which automakers can deliver new solutions, bringing them closer to the lifecycle of consumer devices, and accelerating new business models, such as connected services.

"GENIVI will challenge the traditional approach of proprietary solutions and spawn a level of creativity not yet seen in this segment," said Graham Smethurst, GENIVI spokesperson and BMW Group General Manager, Infotainment and Communication Systems. "Collaborating on a common reference platform in non-differentiating areas of the architecture will allow GENIVI members to focus on the development and integration of innovative customer functionality."

"Having a common reference platform will be critical for the greater auto ecosystem in developing innovative and sophisticated in-car entertainment applications," said Hans-Georg Frischkorn, Executive Director of Global Electrical Systems, Controls and Software at GM. "The GENIVI Alliance will enable this and allow us to collaborate closely with our industry partners - sharing development costs and improving our overall speed to market."

"The automotive business needs to improve its efficiency continuously through open competition and the avoidance of unnecessary rework on mature technologies, which is especially true in this current economic environment," said Gerulf Kinkelin, PSA Innovation Area Manager. "We firmly believe that GENIVI is the right forum to put in place as it will drive business efficiency through an open environment and foster a rich ecosystem that will likely go far beyond what we can imagine today."

The GENIVI platform will streamline elements of the IVI development process that have historically been duplicated across the industry. The alignment of the automotive industry on an open source platform will provide a common foundation for automobile manufacturers and their suppliers to build their differentiated products and services, and create opportunities for companies that previously found it difficult to enter the automotive domain.

Development of the open source GENIVI platform is well underway, with a summer 2009 launch for the first technical deliverable. This deliverable will be based on a tested and proven automotive prototype - running on the Intel(R) Atom(TM) processor and Wind River Linux - that was developed over the last 18 months by GENIVI members. The reference implementation will be made available as open source code to stimulate innovation among developers.

GENIVI Alliance member, Graham Smethurst from BMW Group, will deliver a keynote at the CeBIT conference on March 5, 2009 to address the growth and development of IVI solutions in the automotive ecosystem with focus on the role that GENIVI will play. A panel discussion following the keynote will feature speakers from member companies addressing their vision and initiatives surrounding the GENIVI platform. These activities will take place from 2:00 - 3:30 pm in the Open Source Forum, hall 6, room E50. For more information, or to become a GENIVI member, visit www.genivi.org.

About GENIVI Alliance

GENIVI Alliance is a non-profit industry association whose mission is to drive the broad adoption of an In-Vehicle Infotainment (IVI) open source development platform. GENIVI will accomplish this by aligning requirements, delivering reference implementations, offering certification programs and fostering a vibrant open source IVI community. GENIVI's work will result in shortened development cycles, quicker time-to-market, and reduced costs for companies developing IVI equipment and software. GENIVI is headquartered in San Ramon, Calif. www.genivi.org.

Additional Supporting Quotes

"Aligning with an open source community is important to Delphi's success in infotainment. The desire of consumers to have new and exciting infotainment products in their vehicles has resulted in an explosion of devices, content and delivery methods simultaneously," said Ken Erickson, General Director of the Entertainment and Communications Product Business Unit of Delphi's Electronics and Safety Division. "With the development of an open source platform, we will be able to increase our pace of innovation and provide the real-world infotainment solutions our customers want in their vehicles."

"Magneti Marelli has been working for years on an 'open system' concept in response to growing complexity in the infotainment market. The approach is required to meet the challenges of greener, safer integrated mobility, and to reduce the time to market required by OEMs," stated Giuseppe Rosso, Head of Electronic Systems Division of Magneti Marelli. "GENIVI is a great opportunity to focus our efforts in one direction."

"With GENIVI, the development window can be dramatically reduced and the feature content extended," said Visteon Corporation's Christian Feltgen, Global Director, Audio and Infotainment Systems. "By adopting an open source platform, Visteon is able to focus efforts on in-vehicle intellectual property - where we have core knowledge and capability - and leverage the software from a wider development community to incorporate more consumer features and services."

SOURCE GENIVI Alliance