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In the beginning was an idea: let’s build the world’s first in-car voice assistant. That idea became a huge stack of paperwork, sketches and meeting requests which eventually was given the name ‘Chris’.

CES 2020 is almost on us, so we sat down with Holger to find out what he’s looking forward to.

Voice AI implementations can have dramatic cost savings across the chain for fleet operators. With a transport market valued at almost €7 trillion and rising, that amounts to a significant impact on operational expenditure.

Voice assistants are ubiquitous these days. But it doesn’t always follow that a domestic voice assistant is the best choice in-car.

In the near future, a crowd of voice assistant environments will compete for our attention. How do we make sense of the noise, and what does it mean for the mobility and automotive sectors?

German Autolabs CEO, Holger G. Weiss, on the most exciting tech of CES 2019 and the future of intelligent co-drivers.

Did you know that over 1.25 million people die each year as a result of car accidents? According to the World Health Organization, without sustained action, car accidents are predicted to become the seventh leading cause of death by 2030.

Autonomous cars are likely a long way from widespread adoption. But we can’t wait decades to make driving smarter and safer.

On one hand, so much has changed in the automotive and tech industries over the last year. But it also feels oddly familiar. Let me explain.

What exactly can we expect from the future of the auto industry? Smart cars are clearly here to stay, but they’re not quite ready for the average consumer. Based on current tests and trends, we can anticipate new technology we’re likely to see introduced in the near future. Here are 5 future smart car technologies you’re sure to be excited about.

While you’ll never be able to prevent all accidents while driving, you can take a lot of effort to ensure you’re a safe driver. Whether you’re new to driving or you want to freshen up your safety skills, read through these tips to guarantee your own safety while operating a motor vehicle.

Smartphone addiction is a serious and growing problem. This problem is worrying enough without considering its implications for drivers - studies have found that smartphone addiction can have drastic effects on mental health.

Insurance companies and drivers have a problem: distracted driving. It’s causing the number of accidents to rise and insurance premiums to increase. Fixing the problem requires a radical rethink of our priorities.

A recent report by Zendrive monitored 4.5 million drivers, who between them traveled 7.1 billion miles. They compared the results with a period a year earlier. Around two-thirds of those monitored used a mobile phone at the wheel at least once. Phone use increased dramatically across the US. So what’s the solution?

German Autolabs and the rest of the tech world descended on SXSW in Austin, Texas last week. We presented Chris, our digital assistant for drivers, in the exhibition hall, in pitches and on panels. It was great to be able to meet so many people and tell them about Chris, and to hear the excitement around the product.

So what’s next? We’re leaving the internet of people behind. The next stage is an internet based around machines. Often termed the Internet of things, this includes household appliances such as your lightbulbs and your fridge, and extends to infrastructure and transport, such as autonomous cars.

We just finished at CES 2018 in Las Vegas, and I’ve travelled from the desert to the Valley to meet some more great people to talk about what we’re building here at German Autolabs. I’d like to share my thoughts about the year ahead in technology and the automotive sector. Here’s what I learned at CES 2018.

Laws around the use of cellphones while driving are becoming more and more strict. What are the facts around bans on texting and cellphone use while driving, and how do laws differ from state to state?

Thanks to our phones, we are nearly always connected to other people. Every driver has been tempted at one point or another to check their phone whilst driving because it beeped, or maybe to look up the monument they just drove past. And yet we all know that the use of mobile phones whilst driving is forbidden and can be very dangerous.

Recent surveys suggest that our cars are more connected than ever, with many drivers taking advantage of their vehicle’s inbuilt infotainment system. But there’s still a long way to go before users are happy with their in-car media experience.

Voice user interfaces seem to have been almost tailor-made for the car, as they allow the driver to focus on traffic while allowing them to write messages or play music. Despite this, voice control is by no means common in cars today, and even major companies have struggled to create an acceptable product for motorists.

The Droidcon – a global developer conference series – serves as a networking hub for the best of Android. This time, however, it showed one thing above all: Android is becoming more and more popular in Europe. Does this mean that Android is going to push iOS down to second place for the first time ever?

Dumb messenger chatbots are fuelling the question if conversational AI is more hype than substance. Our AI mastermind Nadav Gur has a clear opinion: Dialog Management is the real brains behind conversational AI - and if your Dialog Management isn’t smart, it’s like having a user interface with no intelligence behind it.

The media (and even the German chancellor Angela Merkel) are predicting the decline of the German automobile industry. Everyone knows that Germany’s flagship industry will not survive in its present form. But perhaps it doesn’t have to.

"Soon you'll never have to look at your phone in the car again”, says Thrillist. Originally built into fighter jets, the head-up displays (HUD) which are now available in high-end cars, are designed to keep the eyes on the road. But do they really help with distracted driving or just add more of a cognitive overload?

In the automotive industry, a drama is unfolding. One that could dominate also German car makers, some of the most highly regarded in the world: Software eats car. Silicon Valley have a drastically different idea of the future of the automotive industry, and they put it under intense pressure.

Texting while driving is illegal and highly dangerous. But we are in the digital age and addicted to always stay connected through our digital devices – even while driving. The automotive market needs connectivity and mobility technology for the road as Tesla and others have promised, but we’re betting on the future, while the mass market needs access now.

When you launch your product on Kickstarter, the hope is always to raise the money you are asking for. Thanks to our backers we raised more than $ 300,000 and overshot our goal by over 550%. But more importantly, we wanted to build a wonderful community. We did just that.

The first two weeks of our Kickstarter campaign are over. In just 8 hours we reached the funding goal. As of today, the campaign is over 400+ percent pledged! Best of all though, we received some wonderful feedback from the people that matter most - our backers. You can’t get a stronger motivation for the future than that.

All companies were started with big dreams. This is what we had: we wanted to make driving pleasant, distraction-free and valued through Artificial Intelligence. Our dreams have been realized: we finally announce Chris – your digital co-driver.

67 years ago, a computer scientist called Alan Turing developed a test to determine whether a machine could communicate and behave as if it were a human being. During the 1950’s this was the stuff of sci-fi comics. Today’s computers are more than capable of mimicking humans. But how can us human beings benefit from this?

In the second post of our connected car series, we will take a closer look at Apple’s CarPlay in-car infotainment product. In 2017, almost every relevant OEM, with very few exceptions, will have CarPlay available to consumers in large sections of their portfolios.

We live in turbulent times, and I’m not just referring to politics. It’s quite remarkable how fast things move these days. It’s an era of disruption and uncertainty in almost every business, and innovation seems the only way to stay afloat. But what does it mean to be truly innovative in the automotive industry?

Amazon’s Alexa was the life and soul of CES 2017. She was everywhere, and everyone was impressed. The dominance of Amazon’s voice platform has been the talk of the town at the turn of the year. Team Alexa is doing a great job. Android Auto? CarPlay? No one even mentioned either of these products. CES 2017 was all about ‘HER’.

Now that we have been pushing the digital frontier into the car for a couple of years it’s a good time to take a step back and take a look at how far we got. We’ll start at the point where the journey begins for most customers – the buying experience.

“A man´s home is his castle” has been true since the Roman times. But in the current 24/7 juggle of commitments that defines today´s life, the car became a man’s castle. As cars are waking up and coming online, people are beginning to voice concerns about privacy. Flight Mode 4.0 might be the solution - but one big question remains.

Mobile phone usage while driving is commonplace in today’s world, but it is also highly dangerous. As a result, the number of accidents caused by distracted drivers has significantly increased in the last decades. As a countermeasure, many countries are beginning to implement strict laws to ban the use of phones in the car.

The heat is on: The weeks following the official press release on November 2nd have seen an incredible amount of hard work and commitment. We are extremely proud that our vision of building an AI-powered digital co-driver for a safer and smarter mobility experience has resonated so strongly with the tech and business press.

The excitement about the automated car – aka autonomous aka self-driving car – is unstoppable. While few years ago only some industry insiders and nerds discussed about automated systems that will be part of our urban traffic tomorrow, it has now turned into a mainstream topic. As usual if tech trends turn super popular, Silicon Valley is involved ...

“Your self-driving UBER will arrive in 5 minutes” - users of the prominent mobility service in Pittsburgh have been reading this remarkable message on the app since September 14th 2016. This was the date that UBER launched its first fleet of self-driving cars, just weeks after a similar service was launched in Singapore - yet there still is a driver ...