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AVA-Automotive Voice Assistance

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How To Build Better Voice Assistants: Arbitrate
May 14, 2019
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Holger G. Weiss
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?
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CES 2019: Automotive Virtual Assistants

January 17, 2019
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Holger G. Weiss
German Autolabs at CES 2019 in Las Vegas
German Autolabs CEO, Holger G. Weiss, on the most exciting tech of CES 2019 and the future of intelligent co-drivers.
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Will Driverless Taxis Hit the Road by 2019?

December 3, 2018
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Amanda Peterson
Waymo Chrysler Pacifica in Los Altos
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.
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The Trouble with Self-Driving Cars? People

October 25, 2018
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Sam Diamond
Autonomous cars are likely a long way from widespread adoption. But we can’t wait decades to make driving smarter and safer.
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In-car Voice Assistants--What’s the State of Play?

September 24, 2018
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Holger G. Weiss
In-car Voice Assistants-
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.
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5 Future Smart Car Technologies You'll Love

September 17, 2018
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Ashley Lipman
Smart Car Technologies
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.
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Security Tips to Guarantee Your Safety While Driving

July 10, 2018
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Ashley Lipman
Driving in the countryside
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.
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Smartphone addiction is a growing problem--let’s keep it out of the car.

June 11, 2018
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Sam Diamond
Smartphone addiction is growing
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.
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How Technology Can Help Fix One of the Insurance Industry’s Biggest Problems

May 4, 2018
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Holger G. Weiss
Distracted Driving- one of the Insurance Industry’s Biggest Problems
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.
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Distracted driving is getting worse and legislation isn’t working.

April 20, 2018
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Sam Diamond
distracted driving
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?
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What We Learned at SXSW 2018

March 23, 2018
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Daniel Mieves
German Autolabs at SXSW
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.
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Getting Voice Assistants Right in the New Machine Age

February 22, 2018
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Sam Diamond
Chris-voice assistant
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.
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CES 2018: Voice Assistants, Connected Cars, Alexa vs. Google...and Chris

January 17, 2018
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Holger G. Weiss
CES 2018_Westgate
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.
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Which States Ban Cellphone Use While Driving?

January 15, 2018
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Sam Diamond
US cell phone ban map
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?
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Mobile phone driving bans in Europe

November 29, 2017
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Kaya Weissert
Europe mobile phone driving ban map
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.
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How to fix the infotainment problem

November 16, 2017
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Sam Diamond
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.
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Understanding user needs in the car

October 19, 2017
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Klaus Engelbrecht
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.
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Europe's Android scene is still rising

October 12, 2017
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Mohsen Mirhoseini
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?
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Why (most) bots and voice assistants are dumb…

September 18, 2017
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Nadav Gur
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.
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Don’t mention the Diesel!

August 24, 2017
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Holger G. Weiss
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.
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Talk to me: Natural voice recognition in the car

July 26, 2017
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Svenja Borgschulte
"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?
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Will the Valley win?

June 26, 2017
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Holger G. Weiss
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.
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Distracted driving can't wait for Tesla

May 30, 2017
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Holger G. Weiss
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.
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Kickstarter: It’s not about the money

May 16, 2017
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Svenja Borgschulte
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.
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The world is united by the same problems

April 13, 2017
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Holger G. Weiss
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.
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Chris finally hits the road

March 13, 2017
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Svenja Borgschulte
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.
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Machine Learning: Language is the key to success

March 9, 2017
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Holger G. Weiss
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?
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The State of the Connected Car (Part II): The CarPlay experience

February 28, 2017
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Patrick Weissert
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.
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The winds are changing in the world of cars

February 10, 2017
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Holger G. Weiss
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?
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CES 2017: Alexa, Drones, IoT & Automotive

January 17, 2017
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Holger G. Weiss
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’.
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The State of the Connected Car (Part I): The buying experience

January 9, 2017
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Patrick Weissert
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.
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Flight Mode 4.0 for the Connected Car

December 15, 2016
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Daniel Mieves
“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.
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The Law: Mobile phones at the wheel

December 8, 2016
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Lucrecia Velez Wolff
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.
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Tech and business press are sharing our vision of an AI-driven digital co-driver

November 22, 2016
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Daniel Mieves
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.
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“It’s not just about technology, dude!” - The human ingredients to make autonomous cars successful

October 11, 2016
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Holger G. Weiss
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 ...
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Autonomous driving is not rocket science. But keeping people safe in a car is.

November 7, 2016
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Holger G. Weiss
“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 ...
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