Open-source software was once something that large businesses shied away from, but over the course of the last few years, it’s made inroads into virtually every enterprise company. With Automotive Grade Linux (AGL), the Linux Foundation hosts a project that aims to bring open source to the car industry. As the AGL group announced at CES in Las Vegas today, Toyota is now using AGL in production and Amazon has signed up to support the project.
Toyota is using AGL in the 2018 Camry. Amazon opted to support the project at the silver level. You may have seen another Toyota and Amazon mashup today, which is probably no coincidence.
With this, Toyota joins other car manufacturers like Ford, Mazda, Honda, Subaru and Suzuki, as well as suppliers like Denso, Panasonic, LG and chip industry giants like Nvidia, Intel and ARM. Overall, the foundation now has 110 member companies. With NTT Data, the organization has also recently brought on a major telecom company. “We’re also in discussion with a lot of the big telecom equipment providers,” AGL executive director Dan Cauchy told me. “You know, the Ciscos of the world and the Ericssons of the world. All of them have some kind of connected car group and they are all interested.”