NXP and Continental demonstrate concept car with embedded NFC

NXP is showcasing a concept car developed by automotive supplier Continental at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona this week.

The Continental concept car is designed to demonstrate how NXP’s NFC technology and Continental’s automotive expertise can be combined to enable new applications to enter the automotive market, “merging the consumer’s mobile experiences with those of the car”.

“Using NFC consumers can open their car in the morning by presenting their NFC enabled phone to the door, triggering an authentication cycle between the phone’s secure element and the car,” says NXP. “The car will give the driver a personal welcome message, set their comfort preferences and then by simply placing the phone in a dock on the dashboard, it becomes part of the on-board entertainment and communication system, presenting a selection of personal music choices, facilitating audio streaming and setting up hands free calling.”

“The secure mobile device can also disarm the engine immobilizer and allow the engine to start and the NFC phone is able to receive important diagnostic data such as fuel consumption, mileage and service data to be viewed away from the car at a later time,” the company adds. “Using GPS the location coordinates of the car can also be sent to the phone via NFC, enabling consumers to easily locate their vehicles in a new city or large parking lot.

“NXP and Continental have been working together for many years, delivering significant innovations such as keyless entry systems and now, the world’s first NFC concept car,” explains NXP’s Ruediger Stroh. “Imagine, with an NFC enabled mobile device, we’ll be able to easily and seamlessly interact with technology and applications as we transit between our home and office, making driving a truly personal experience,”

“This concept car is an amazing example of how we will all use NFC in our cars in the next few years and, as an increasing number of NFC-enabled handsets with embedded secure elements enter the market, we now begin to see the development of increasingly innovative applications, which put the mobile phone at the heart of the consumer experience,” he added.

“Near field communication is a step forward that we make with our technology partner NXP in order to turn our vision of Always-on into a reality,” says Continental’s Andreas Wolf. “With NFC we will help car manufacturers worldwide connect future cars more smoothly to fast, evolving consumer electronics. We will see totally new functions facilitated by the NFC-based connections between cars and mobile phones.”

Interest in NFC from the car industry is currently swiftly gathering pace. This week, Morpho and Simlink unveiled an NFC key fob that connects to any WiFi-enabled phone to enable consumers to pay for items at the point of sale with their existing mobile device. In the same article, NFC World also reported on a white paper published by BMW, which has been working on NFC solutions for a number of years.

And, in October 2010, automotive components supplier Valeo partnered with Orange to demonstrate a near field communication-based solution for sharing vehicles between several drivers. The same month, automotive electronics specialist Delphi introduced an NFC key fob pitched as a low cost way to enable vehicle manufacturers to customise the driver experience according to regional requirements and to provide drivers with a way to access data about their vehicle from their smart phone.

The Continental concept car is on show at the Mobile World Congress on NXP’s stand in Hall 1.

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