BURLINGTON, MA--April 23, 2013: Nuance Communications, Inc. and BYD together announced that Nuance's automotive voice technologies will power new line of BYD sedan vehicles, branded Si-Rui. BYD is one of China's leading domestic automotive manufacturers. BYD demonstrated the model and its advanced in-car navigation at the 2013 Shanghai Auto Show on April 19th, 2013.
“Our collaboration with BYD further demonstrates our commitment to bringing humanized and compelling mobile experiences powered by voice to consumers across China.”
According to data from IHS Global Insight, Chinese consumers are increasingly demanding sophisticated in-car infotainment features. Today, over 95 percent of new vehicles are equipped with audio systems and the adoption of navigation systems is expected to grow up to 25 percent or over seven million cars in 2017. To meet this consumer demand, BYD's new infotainment system integrates Nuance's voice recognition technology supporting Mandarin Chinese for a smarter, safer in-car experience.
The voice-enabled in-car applications of BYD's Si-Rui sedan will include command and control for the radio, TV and DVD player, media player and navigation system. For example, people can say:
- "Play radio," "play news channel," or "full screen," when choosing to change from DVD mode;
- "Play next song," when you want to skip to the next song; or,
- "Search gas station" and the system will take you to the nearest gas station.
"BYD sits at the forefront of advancements in innovative automotive IT and infotainment within the domestic Chinese automotive market. By leveraging Nuance's advanced voice technology for our next-generation infotainment systems, we will be able to bring the broad consumer market in China intuitive conversational experiences powered by voice," said Ruzhong Luo, chief engineer of the 15th Business Division of BYD Auto Industry Company Limited.
"The breadth, flexibility and the performance behind Nuance's voice technology is an organic extension of BYD's mission for continuous automotive innovation in the Chinese market," said Arnd Weil, vice president and general manager, automotive, Nuance Mobile. "Our collaboration with BYD further demonstrates our commitment to bringing humanized and compelling mobile experiences powered by voice to consumers across China."
Nuance's automotive voice technology integrated as part of the Si-Rui in-car system is part of Nuance's broad portfolio of embedded and connected voice recognition and text-to-speech supporting Mandarin Chinese and Taiwan Mandarin. Globally, Nuance's technology are humanizing the way people engage their phones, tablets, TVs, cars and computers -- just by using their voice.
