Yahoo Launches BMW In-Car Entertainment Project With Xperi

Yahoo is teaming with Xperi to bring in-car video content to BWM drivers.

The partnership between the tech company and the automotive entertainment platform, announced Monday (Oct. 30), will bring video content from Yahoo Finance, Yahoo Sports, and In the Know to Xperi’s TiVo-powered DTS AutoStage video service.

“From taking a break between errands to sitting in line at school pick-up, drivers spend a significant amount of time idle in their vehicles,” Lara Davis, Yahoo’s chief strategy officer, said in a news release.

“Through this partnership with leading automotive entertainment platform Xperi, we are now able to offer snackable content in a way that fits seamlessly into people’s daily routines, where they already spend time,” Davis added.

The offering is being rolled out first the all-new BMW 5 series and future BMW models, and will be available for drivers in the U.S., U.K., Korea, Italy, France, Spain and Germany.

The partnership follows an earlier connected-car initiative involving BMW. As PYMNTS wrote in May, the German car maker has been working with Meta since 2021 to examine how augmented reality (AR) and virtual reality (VR) could be integrated into smart vehicles.

The obstacle facing the companies is that VR headsets’ inertial motion sensors (IMUs) have historically had trouble tracking objects in a moving environment like a car.

To address this problem, Meta worked with BMW to incorporate IMU data from a BMW vehicle’s sensor array in real time into Meta’s Project Aria research glasses’ tracking system, allowing the system to calculate the glasses’ location relative to the car.

“That was a huge feat because after transferring the tracking system to a Meta Quest Pro, it allowed us to accurately anchor virtual objects to a moving car using a digital twin of the car,” Meta said. “If we get it right, this technology could revolutionize travel in cars, trains, planes and beyond, unlocking new forms of hands-free communication, entertainment and utility.”

Elsewhere on the connected car front, PYMNTS Intelligence found a significant consumer demand to integrate AI-assisted in-car ordering into coffee drinkers’ daily routines.

According to PYMNTS Intelligence’s report “How Connected Devices Enable Multitasking Among Digital-First Consumers,” a number coffee drinkers want their cars to auto-populate their go-to orders and have it ready for purchase.

“Specifically, 34% of connected device users reported that they would be very or extremely interested in having their car or smartphone recognize their commute and ask them if they would like to pick up coffee on their way to their destination, such that, if they said yes, their regular coffee order would be automatically ordered and paid for, scheduled for pickup at the most convenient coffee shop,” PYMNTS wrote earlier this month.