Hyperdrive
Renault Hands Control of the Dashboard to ‘Russia’s Google’
- French carmaker and partners are latest to opt for Yandex
- Russian company was first to build up local search engine
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Russia’s transition to connected vehicles is looking increasingly homegrown after the country’s biggest car-making alliance handed control of its dashboards to local search engine Yandex NV.
The Renault-Nissan-AvtoVAZ partnership, which has about a third of the Russian market, will use Yandex in locally-made cars for services like real-time navigation, voice assistance and music. The pact also opens options to gain direct access to valuable car customer data, more than what Apple Inc. or Google apps obtain indirectly through smartphones.