Nuance's Dragon Drive Powers TCL Cartel's New In-car Aftermarket Navigation and Infotainment System

TCL Cartel’s Innovative Smart System of Connected Drive and Information Service Now Features Hands-Free and Eyes-Free Connected Car Experience December 18, 2013 08:00 AM Eastern Standard Time

BURLINGTON, Mass. and BEIJING--Dec 22, 2013: Nuance Communications, Inc. today announced that Nuance’s Dragon Drive automotive-grade voice platform supporting the Mandarin Chinese language is powering TCL Cartel’s Smart System of Connected Drive and Information Service based on the Android platform, providing consumers with a safer, smarter connected driving experience.

According to data released by the National Bureau of Statistics of China, the national total of civil automobiles grew to over 120 million by the end of 2012. The data of national automobile ownership released by the Ministry of Public Security shows that the share of cars with pre-installed navigation systems among total passenger cars is no more than 10 percent, creating a significant opportunity for aftermarket navigation solutions in the region.

In order to satisfy the ever-growing consumer demand for connected infotainment services, TCL Cartel has launched a brand-new, intelligent connected in-car infotainment system that integrates Nuance‘s voice recognition and expressive text-to-speech supporting Chinese Mandarin – all optimized for the automotive environment. As a result, drivers are able to speak to the system to make calls, find and play music or change the radio station, get directions and hear the latest news articles read aloud.

Nuance’s voice capabilities, as part of TCL Cartel‘s system, also provide vehicle maintenance prompts, vehicle fault prompts, road conditions prompts and more. In the case of an emergency, the system can immediately warn the driver through text-to-speech readout of any upcoming risks or dangers on the road ahead to ensure safety. In addition, when drivers need more information about where they’re headed, they can use the voice navigation service to determine their destination. Users can get the information and content they need just by activating the voice assistant function and speaking out a command.

Dr. Edwin Chen of TCL Cartel Co., Ltd. said, "The Smart System of Connected Drive and Information Service launched by TCL Cartel will recreate the conventional vehicle infotainment device concept and the way people use in-car telematics products. The state-of-the-art voice technology from Nuance gives us distinct advantages for our products, offering our customers enhanced user experience through innovative and diversified speech applications. The cooperation with Nuance has also provided powerful support for us to make further strategic deployment in the aftermarket navigation and infotainment market.”

Jason Stirling, Senior Vice President of Nuance Asia Pacific region said, “Nuance has a diversified product portfolio that offers reliable solutions for OEMs in China, including aftermarket, mobile telematics products that provide the best assurance for TCL Cartel to launch innovative products for China’s automotive consumers. We’re excited to drive new growth and demand for aftermarket products powered by voice alongside TCL, giving Chinese consumers more humanized, intelligent connected car experiences.”

Dragon Drive is Nuance’s automotive-grade platform that fully harnesses Nuance’s deep expertise and research in natural language understanding voice technologies to deliver connected and embedded capabilities such as voice dialing, message dictation, navigation, local business search, news and music search. The result is a smarter, safer in-car experience that lets drivers keep their hands on the wheel and their eyes on the road. Dragon Drive lets motorists speak naturally with in-car systems and directly access mobile content through an intuitive conversational interface.

Nuance’s portfolio of voice, touch and natural language understanding innovations supporting Mandarin Chinese define a new generation of intelligent systems and personal assistant technologies. Nuance’s products include Dragon NaturallySpeaking, Dragon Dictate for Mac, Dragon Assistant for Intel-inspired Ultrabooks, Dragon Dictation, Dragon Go!, Dragon Drive, Dragon TV, Dragon ID, Dragon Voicemail to Text and Swype. With Nuance technology, people experience more humanized interactions with the world’s best phones, tablets, computers, cars, TVs, apps and services from leading manufacturers and operators. To learn more, visit Nuance.

Availability

TCL Cartel’s Smart System of Connected Drive and Information Service is currently available.