Report: Google to Unveil Android-Based In-Car Operating System to Compete with Apple CarPlay

Courtesy of a report on Automotive News this week, it appears that Google is developing its own in-car operating system to compete with Apple’s recently unveiled CarPlay project.

The project, going under the name Google Auto Link (GAL), will reportedly be unveiled at its annual developers conference next month, and will be the first product built for the “Open Automotive Alliance,” a Google-headed group that includes Audi, General Motors, Honda, Hyundai, and Nvidia.

Sources of Automotive News also claimed that GAL is not a conventional embedded information and entertainment system in the dashboard, but what they call a “projected” system. This reportedly means a system that has its own controls and display screen, but controls a smartphone (also in the car) that runs Google’s mobile operating system, Android.

This is similar to how Apple’s CarPlay works.

The developers conference mentioned earlier, called Google I/O, is where the company reportedly plans to unveil the interface as well as provide demonstrations to interested developers. Google I/O will happen on June 25 and June 26 in San Francisco, but the company will apparently avoid announcing further details regarding the model it will use.

Earlier this January, the Open Automotive Alliance, which Google leads, claimed that they would bring the Android operating system to cars “starting in 2014.”

How Google moves forward with this alleged system remains to be seen, and more importantly, we know very little regarding how it will realistically compete with Apple’s CarPlay, which offers a similar smartphone-driven system.

[Source: AutoNews]