BlackBerry IVY: Rapid Progress and the Road Ahead
The software-defined vehicle (SDV) revolution is moving faster than traffic on the unrestricted parts of the Autobahn. BlackBerry® IVY® is matching this pace. The leading platform for SDVs — which started on the back of a napkin not long ago — now features an impressive list of partners, including several major automotive brands.
IVY standardizes data from across all systems in the vehicle and enables ML (machine learning) processing at the vehicle edge. This approach is unlocking the potential for new data-driven services, reducing operational costs and creating new value for both manufacturers and drivers.
Welcome to Season 3, Episode 2 of “Get In: The Software-Defined Vehicle Podcast from BlackBerry.” This series explores the possibilities created by — and technologies behind — the revolution in global transportation we are witnessing today. In this second episode of Season 3, we visit the Consumer Electronic Show (CES®) 2024 to talk to Senior Vice President and General Manager of BlackBerry IVY, Vito Giallorenzo. We discussed the CES “buzz” around IVY and the demos at the show, plus what’s ahead for IVY in the next year.
Foxconn Mobility In Harmony and IVY
“BlackBerry IVY is a cloud-connected, embedded edge platform that helps automakers and their partners to deploy applications in vehicles much faster using AI and data from the vehicles in a more cost-effective way,” explains Giallorenzo. IVY is now rolling out into production vehicles, in commercial fleets, and to consumers. “We launched IVY general availability just six months ago. We have made huge progress in just six months. You could see here at the show the commercial and market penetration that we have achieved in our channel and customer reach, as well as in the growth of our ecosystem of partner solutions.”
BlackBerry had a lot of IVY implementations on show at its booth during CES 2024. “First of all was our latest customer win,” says Giallorenzo. This is MIH (Mobility In Harmony), Foxconn’s electric vehicle (EV) division. Taiwan-based Foxconn is one of the premier electronics companies in the world, and is famous for being the manufacturer behind brands like Apple and several leading game consoles from Sony, Microsoft, and Nintendo. “Foxconn has selected BlackBerry IVY to power both its EVs, which are going to start production in 2025, as well as the platform that it offers to third-party OEMs. That's a very exciting win because it's Foxconn, with its reach and penetration in the market both in Asia and globally. It's a big milestone.”
At CES 2024, the IVY team demonstrated the partnership between Foxconn and BlackBerry. “We are showing four use cases powered by IVY tailored to Foxconn fleet management solutions for their commercial vehicles,” states Giallorenzo. “Using IVY technology and machine learning powered by IVY in their vehicles, Foxconn is going to be able to offer the ability to monitor the performance of those vehicles, their state of health, if they need maintenance, and the state of health of their battery. They're going to be able to monitor how the driver performs both for fleet applications and for insurance purposes. They're going to be able to monitor the cybersecurity posture of the vehicle,” he says.
“All those capabilities are powered by partner solutions that we have: Electra Vehicles, CerebrumX, COMPREDICT, and VicOne,” continues Giallorenzo. “Those are just four examples of what the IVY ecosystem offers that we're showing at our MIH booth. There are over 20 solutions that we are showing across the floor powered by IVY covering a range of applications.”
IVY and Fleet Management
Having one platform to aggregate telematics promises a step change in fleet management, compared to the add-ons required before to offer even some of the same functionality. “All these solutions feed into each other,” says Giallorenzo. “You need AI and machine learning to process the data, then you generate insights that can empower different applications. For example, you can detect the driver behavior, the load that is on the vehicle — passenger or commercial — and then all that information gets delivered to other applications, whether it's for personalization of the cabin experience, predictive maintenance, or charging. You know how long and when the charge is going to be required based on how heavily the vehicle is used. You need to use a machine learning model and synthetic sensors, which IVY does to build this great experience.
“Some of the experiences we're showing here in our booth include a lot of driver and passenger monitoring, powered by several of our partners whether it's IdriveAI, emotion3D, Cinemo or CorrActions,” continues Giallorenzo. “They monitor the driver and the passenger for identification, so they can personalize experiences. They monitor for safety, whether it's detection of drowsiness or distraction. They monitor for attention, where they are looking, for example, for advertising. They monitor for personalizing the infotainment experience, which is what Cinemo does. We are also showing crash detection with first-loss notification and reconstruction.
“That will improve the bad experience that we all have if we have a crash,” explains Giallorenzo. “You need to call emergency services and there are a lot of things that you must do with insurance. All that will be automated because machine learning will detect and collect the necessary data. That process will be simplified. We are showing payments with Car IQ. That’s a very important one for fleets. Instead of using cards, which are subject to fraud, the vehicle just pays by itself. We are showing cybersecurity with upstream security. For peace of mind, there's going to be an agent powered by IVY that can analyze the behavior of the vehicle in real time in case of an anomaly. These are just some examples of the many solutions that we're showing here, which will improve the safety, the experience, and the business of these vehicles.”
“The Mitsubishi Electric booth also has a demo car that is powered by IVY,” adds Giallorenzo. “A couple of months ago they announced that they have selected IVY as their data framework for FLEXConnect. This is their in-cabin software platform for driver monitoring, personalization, and safety features. We have a lot of system integrators who are using IVY to deliver their services faster, so they have all developed IVY engineering capabilities to offer to automakers. We have Bosch powering the cockpit in our car. IVY helps our automaker partners to bring a lot of solutions into vehicles very quickly with few resources.”
Michelin’s Star Features and IVY
A particularly significant partnership on show at CES involved leading tire manufacturer Michelin. “They are deploying a tire wear solution using IVY data,” says Giallorenzo. “They take signal data from a vehicle and estimate the deterioration of the tire. That is important in safety and to drive business and dealership tire replacement opportunities. They are realizing that the data needs to be processed in real-time inside the vehicle to save cloud and connectivity costs — rather than stream it all to the cloud and do the processing there. Now they can leverage the compute power that already exists in the vehicle.”
SDV Revolution and IVY
It’s been an incredible last twelve months for BlackBerry IVY and software-defined vehicles. “It's a revolution in the industry,” confirms Giallorenzo. “The SDV encompasses a lot of transformation for automakers and their partners. This year, there is a sense that the SDV strategies of automakers and partners are clearer. Last year we were still in a phase where everybody was trying to figure out what to do in-house, and what to outsource from companies like us. Many customers who are deploying and prototyping IVY realize that the middleware — the foundational software that we provide — is hard to do. It must be extremely safe and robust. They should take it from us, so they can focus their resources on differentiating higher up the software stack. There is a clearer definition of what to buy versus what to build. This also really helps our business going to market and that's why we feel extremely good about the traction that IVY will gather over the next few months with other customers.”
Listen to Season 3, Episode 3 of “Get In: The Software-Defined Vehicle Podcast from BlackBerry,” below.
