Honda enters Silicon Valley

Silicon Valley in San Francisco, California, United States, catering to world’s leading hi tech corporations such as Facebook and Google is attracting car makers around the world as well in recent times. Honda the Japanese carmaker company launched its facility for research and developments in the Mountain View for 2016 Honda accord car. The site is world famous as it features as a premier hub for technological advancement and innovations.

Although, it is widely known as a fact that most car companies uses auto shows, promotional events and many other events to showcase their new products but considering the crucial role Silicon Valley has already begun to play in the auto world, it tempted them to choose the bay area as their latest hub. Also the fact that Honda Accord remodelled version will be the first ever Honda product to be included in Google’s Android Auto along with Apple’s CarPlay, this seems to be a very good decision made by Honda authorities to shift their attention slightly towards the Silicon Valley. This step has been very hugely appreciated by the Auto gurus across the world and proves once again that when it comes to reaching new grounds in the auto world whether it is regarding the crazy innovation in cars or the promotional events, Honda will always be in the game.

However many other car companies has been spending a lot of time in the bay area for quite some time now as most of them have some kind of their facilities there as it is slowly gaining the importance in car world. Leading executives from these companies have been known to visit the area once in a while.

President of Honda Americas, the research and development wing, Frank Paluch said recently that almost all their top competitors are shifting some of their important operations here leading us to believe that they can also be profited to some extent by considering shifting some of their work to the valley. He also said that the future of the automobiles sector will involve maintaining a very healthy competition among the companies and at the same time co-operating with each other as an industry.

Like always, Honda has taken a slightly different route compared to other car makers when it comes to integrating mobile technology with their cars. While most of other makers are focusing solely on providing a standard infotainment and navigation system within their cars, Honda is expecting that working with the leading mobile phone software platform Android will help them reach a new height in term of technical advances, much ahead of its competitors. The navigation in the new Honda Accord runs on the version of Android which has been customized.

Nick Sugimoto, senior program director, was seen as he quoted at a conference held in May that Honda doesn’t want to differentiate on Pandora. He also added further that most apps are already running on Android that the consumer wants in their cars.

However, the CEO of Ford, another leading car producer, has said that it is really dangerous to let Google or Android run the cars.