ACCESS Europe GmbH today announce that the BEAN TECH integrated in-vehicle infotainment (IVI) system powered by the ACCESS Twine™ for Car (Twine4Car) platform has been chosen by Great Wall Motor Company (GWM) in Europe to provide IVI in its GWM ORA and WEY models. GWM debuted the joint solution in its new energy WEY Coffee 01 PHEV car at the IAA Mobility event in Munich in 2021. Content for the service is being provided by ACCESS Europe’s subsidiary NetRange MMH GmbH(‘NetRange’), the global provider of Smart TV and OTT ecosystems.
Twine4Car with NetRange is a highly cost-efficient, bundled solution that saves customer costs on content and services integration, technical QA testing process, and software licensing and integration. The combination of theTwine4Car and NetRange solution provides automotive OEMs with access to the widest range of content based on a proven track record delivering to smart TV platforms, including leading international premium VoD programming, sports, games, news, and linear TV channels through hundreds of apps from over 100 countries. It removes the headaches of negotiating complex rights deals across multiple countries, which are essential in launching a modern, adaptable and worldwide entertainment solution for the car, allowing BEANTECH to concentrate on its core intelligent driving services.
Strategy & (part of the PwC network) forecast that 50% of cars in Europe will be connected by 2025. Meanwhile, Counterpoint predicts a greater trajectory, reporting that 75% of cars will be connected to the internet by 2025. GWM aim to be at the forefront of this trend by offering new connected services to its customers. Falling data costs for 4G and 5G and a desire from consumers to replicate their entertainment experiences on mobile, tablet and smart TV in the car will drive the connected in-car experience.
There is also a significant opportunity for automotive OEMs such as GWM to create new services-based revenue streams through user-data. Twine4Car enables OEMs to control their user-data through a branded interface. It is designed as a white-label software development kit (SDK), providing BEAN TECH with full flexibility to implement its own launcher to GWM’s look-and-feel for the content service in its vehicles.
GWM is among several Chinese electric vehicle (EV) companies expanding into the EU and other regions, and it wants to use access to connected services as a crucial differentiator as the demand for infotainment with rich content increases. This is the first European project between BEAN TECH and GWM, which has been aided by ACCESS Europe having a Chinese sales and business development team alongside its European engineering and content teams. ACCESS Europe provides the necessary support to react quickly to incoming requests, with its German legal team ensuring the legitimacy of content use.
“We are delighted to kick off our partnership with BEAN TECH by enabling Great Wall Motor to deliver connected content in Europe,” says Michi Uematsu, CTO,ACCESS CO., LTD.“The combination of ACCESS Twine4Car and NetRange content solves a big problem for automotive OEMs today. ACCESS has a unique set of experience to help OEMs navigate the global shift to in-car entertainment. We bring together the knowledge and wherewithal of providing software solutions for over 30 million cars worldwide. Through NetRange, we bring OTT know-how and content that is simply unmatched anywhere else.”
ACCESS’ innovative Twine4Car system is a unique content aggregation platform for automotive that brings together the latest in IVI technology and premium content for the first time in an OEM-branded interface. Twine4Car acts as a central hub for all in-vehicle services and brings content from a number of media partners and a wide range of apps, TV services and VOD offerings for a multitude of markets. Twine4Car is a flexible solution that will work on any OS, including Android, Linux and QNX-based systems, and is pre-integrated with major DRM solutions, with content options including theTwine App Store, a dedicated hybrid in-car app store.
Other features in Twine4Car include:
- Native Android app support:Twine4Car allows for the seamless integration of native applications, creating an immersive user experience via the OEM-branded IVI interface. This enables OEMs to fully control the services and create an ideal UX for both native apps and embedded or API-based services.
- Sync Play:Twine4Car enables two devices to synchronise the playback of the same video content, enabling passengers to enjoy content on the screen in front of them at the same time as other passengers.
- Parental/Remote Control:Along with content related control from any screen in the vehicle, Twine4Car can put parents in charge of the type and length of content consumed by their children.
