W3C Strategic Highlights: Meeting Industry Needs (Automotive)

(This post is part of a series recapping the October 2018 W3C Strategic Highlights. This post does not include significant updates since that report.)

The W3C Automotive Working Group is delivering a service specification to expose vehicle signals (engine temperature, fuel/charge level, range, tire pressure, speed, etc.), with a goal to create a rich application ecosystem for vehicles and other deviced allowed to connect to the vehicle.

Consumers today expect their cars to be another connected device capable of delivering the same information and high-performance applications they expect from their Web-enabled laptops, mobile phones, and televisions. To achieve this kind of interoperability, the automotive ecosystem is turning to established technical Web standards powering the Open Web Platform, developed by W3C.

While the Vehicle Information Service Specification (VISS) is a Candidate Recommendation, it is being converged with a submission from Volkswagen to the W3C (ViWi), for a second, more robust means of accessing vehicle signals information and the same paradigm for other automotive needs including location based services, media, notifications and caching content.

The Automotive and Web Platform Business Group acts as an incubator for prospective standards work, and has recently focused on a W3C automotive big data task force.

The Automotive technical roadmap also includes location-based services, media, user notifications, and security.

Access to the wealth of information that W3C's auto signals standard exposes is of interest to regulators, urban planners, insurance companies, auto manufacturers, fleet managers and owners, service providers and others (see All Automotive specifications ).

To learn more or get involved in this exciting work, see the Automotive WG page.