Ford buys software startup Livio

Ford Motor Company has made its first technology acquisition in thirteen years, with the purchase of startup company Livio, in a bid to accelerate its efforts to help drivers safely access content on their smartphone while on the road. Livio, which is based in the Detroit suburb of Ferndale, Michigan, develops software that enables drivers connect to their smartphones through their car radios or dashboard infotainment systems.
October 4, 2013 Read time: 2 mins
278 Ford Motor Company has made its first technology acquisition in thirteen years, with the purchase of startup company Livio, in a bid to accelerate its efforts to help drivers safely access content on their smartphone while on the road.

Livio, which is based in the Detroit suburb of Ferndale, Michigan, develops software that enables drivers connect to their smartphones through their car radios or dashboard infotainment systems.

Ford paid less than US$10 million for the eleven-person startup, said Paul Mascarenas, Ford's chief technical officer. Though owned by Ford, Livio will continue supplying its current customers, including 948 General Motors.

Mascarenas said Livio complements Ford's efforts to allow drivers to safely access phone apps from their cars. Ford's AppLink system, which lets drivers access their apps through voice recognition, will be inside an estimated 7 million vehicles by 2015, Mascarenas said.

Livio was founded five years ago by Jake Sigal, who said joining Ford will help his company's efforts to promote a single standard for in-vehicle connectivity. Car companies are now using a variety of systems, which makes it harder for app developers to bring apps to market quickly. Ford has also promoted the development of a single standard.

"This helps us accelerate the industry standard, which is desperately needed," Sigal said. "It's a lot easier pushing a standard when you're not just a startup in metro Detroit."
Location Based Systems

For more information on companies in this article

Related Content

  • Improving traffic flow with the SignalGuru app
    September 19, 2012
    Researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology have developed SignalGuru, an app that uses dashboard-mounted smartphones to help drivers avoid red lights and reduce fuel consumption. Researchers say that SignalGuru predicts when a traffic signal is about to change, and the speed that should be driven when approaching an intersection in order to cruise through without stopping.
    Read More
  • Open communication platform to support cooperative infrastructure
    July 23, 2012
    Within the European Commission's CVIS project, work is going on to shrink the open vehicle communication platform to make it more market-ready and to remove barriers to the creation of appropriate applications by those external to the project. Here, ERTICO's Zeljko Jeftic and Paul Kompfner and Q-Free's Knut Evensen discuss progress. Development of the open communication platform which will support the various applications developed by the European Commission's (EC's) Cooperative Vehicle-Infrastructure Syste
    Read More
  • Growth of OEM telematics in new passenger cars
    March 3, 2016
    The latest research by ABI Research forecasts the global penetration of embedded and hybrid factory installed OEM telematics in new passenger cars to exceed 72 per cent by 2021. Growth will mainly be driven by key volume car OEMs in the US, European Union and China markets. Brands within these markets showing accelerated growth include GM, which expects to reach 12 million OnStar subscribers globally by the end of 2016, including its Opel brand in Europe and Cadillac in China; and Ford, which claims to have
    Read More
  • Autonomous vehicles, smart cities: moving beyond the hype
    February 21, 2018
    There is a lot of excited chatter about autonomous vehicles – but 2getthere’s Robbert Lohmann suggests we might need to take a step back and look realistically at what is achievable. You might be surprised that the chief commercial officer of a company delivering autonomous vehicles would begin an article with the suggestion that we need to get past the hype. And yet I do; because we have to, and urgently so. The hype prevents the development of autonomous vehicles that address actual transit needs. And
    Read More

Highlighted Content