Image used with permission by copyright holderWho needs an office when you have a car? At least, when that car is a Mercedes. A new project known as “In Car Office” from the German automaker hopes to feed your workaholic habits by adding both Microsoft Exchange support and integrations with your work calendar into your vehicle.
While the idea isn’t necessarily to enable you to work from your car, the new features will help you become more productive while you’re on the go. So even if you’re stuck in traffic, you can be efficient. For example, In Car Office will use data from your to-do list to suggest calls you need to make, or places you might want to go. Your Mercedes can even pre-populate your navigation system with information from your calendar. Because who has time to waste actually inputting an address into your car’s GPS?
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Microsoft has worked with other car companies before to bring productivity to the pavement, joining forces with Volvo earlier this year to bring some of Office 365’s functionality into its cars. But while other big tech companies are working on autonomous technology of their own, Microsoft seems content just helping for now.
In July, Microsoft’s Peggy Johnson noted, “We won’t be building our own autonomous vehicle, but we would like to enable autonomous vehicles and assisted driving as well. We can certainly do the operating system of the car. You’re sitting in the car for many, many minutes a day. Can that be part of your new office, can it be your new desk, a place where you actually get work done? We believe it can. Each of them [automakers] had a little something different that they wanted, and we were able to help enable them.”
And Microsoft will be enabling Mercedes within the next few months, as In Car Office is slated to make its debut in the first half of 2017.
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Scheduled to go on sale in the U.S. this fall, the Maybach is an unusual EV proposition, taking what is supposed be a forward-thinking design and wrapping it in old-school luxury. Ahead of its launch, Digital Trends got an up-close look at the Maybach EQS SUV to see how Mercedes is trying to balance those two aspects.
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Daimler-Benz took control of Maybach in the 1960s, but left the passenger-car business dormant. Mercedes then revived the Maybach name in the early 2000s as a competitor to the likes of Rolls-Royce and Bentley, both of which are owned by rival German automakers. Given Wilhelm Maybach's history with Mercedes, it essentially brought things full circle.
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Microsoft has worked with other car companies before to bring productivity to the pavement, joining forces with Volvo earlier this year to bring some of Office 365’s functionality into its cars. But while other big tech companies are working on autonomous technology of their own, Microsoft seems content just helping for now.
In July, Microsoft’s Peggy Johnson noted, “We won’t be building our own autonomous vehicle, but we would like to enable autonomous vehicles and assisted driving as well. We can certainly do the operating system of the car. You’re sitting in the car for many, many minutes a day. Can that be part of your new office, can it be your new desk, a place where you actually get work done? We believe it can. Each of them [automakers] had a little something different that they wanted, and we were able to help enable them.”
And Microsoft will be enabling Mercedes within the next few months, as In Car Office is slated to make its debut in the first half of 2017.