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Google has announced the creation of the Open Automotive Alliance (OAA), a coalition that aims to bring you the Android platform in cars. This alliance includes the car manufacturers Audi, GM, Honda and Hyundai but also the processors manufacturer NVIDIA. The OAA intends to bring together the know-how of the various companies that form it to create a common platform to drive innovation to make technology in the car more secure and intuitive for everyone.

With the OAA, Google will try to do in the field of cars what it did in that of mobile devices. In 2007, the Mountain View company created the Open Handset Alliance (OHA), a consortium that put together device manufacturers, telecom carriers and processors manufacturers. The aim was to promote the Android platform, at the time just announced.

Various systems of In-Vehicle-Infotainment (IVI) have existed for some time, but so far every company developed its own platform, though in the end most of them were based on the Linux operating system while Apple launched a few months ago the iOS in the Car (iOSitC) initiative to bring its operating system to cars.

The OAA aims to create a standard platform based on Android, which is also based on Linux, already used by millions of people on mobile devices. For those users, it should be easier to use Android in their car rather than getting used to a different platform. Android also has its own ecosystem with many applications, an added benefit for those wishing to adopt it in the car.

Some members of the OAA are already part of the GENIVI Alliance, a consortium founded in 2009 specifically to create an IVI platform based on Linux. At this point, they could do like Samsung, which produces smartphones with different operating systems, or gradually switch to the Android platform. As it happened in the field of mobile devices, two different platforms both based on Linux could merge.

Currently there are many details and the site of the OAA is decidedly lackluster. More “substantial” announcements should arrive later this year. Considering the companies involved, surely the news will be interesting and the new challenge with Apple will be tough.