Karma Automotive, California’s first and only ultra-luxury automaker, today launches Karma Connect, a proprietary Vehicle Data Management (VDM) and Over The Air (OTA) services platform which will redefine the experience of owning a Karma automobile both today and tomorrow, and as the company will be making these first-to-market services available to Tier 1’s and Original Equipment Manufacturers (OEM’s), signifies the arrival of Karma Automotive as a business-to-business technology partner whose initiatives will benefit the industry at large.
The arrival of Karma Connect follows through on the business strategy initiated by the February, 2024 acquisition by Karma Automotive of assets of the company formerly known as Airbiquity, an automotive commercial software company which has been deployed in more than 60 countries, servicing the largest OEM’s including both passenger cars and motorcycles. That acquisition included technology assets, intellectual property, the onboarding of key technical employees, and the continuation of services contracted with OEM’s.
For clients purchasing Karma automobiles, Karma Connect comes standard and will ensure a level of service, content, and features renewal through next-generation OTA data transmission, a central enabler of Software-Defined Vehicles. Further, Karma Connect is underpinned by the company’s deep commitment to lengthen product longevity – a mindset more often associated with heirlooms than vehicles with predetermined obsolescence – a commitment to be met with further developments pertaining to vehicle touchpoints including color, material, and personalization.
For other OEMs, with technologies like Karma Connect, Karma Automotive can provide the industry with rapid, statistically relevant insights from its highly affluent customer base that is pre-disposed to first-mover product adoption. As all technologies are deployed in Karma vehicles first, partners benefit from software that is hardened for production in automotive applications, instead of laboratory developments. This mitigates the risk of new technology adoption and quickens innovation and validation cycles.
“The automotive industry continues to undergo massive transformation, adopting new technology at a pace never seen before,” says Marques McCammon, President, Karma Automotive. “Each of these new innovations challenges manufacturers’ deeply-rooted systems, architectures, processes and supply chain. The goal is to pivot to the future while sustaining profitability today. Software-Defined Vehicles are the future, but it’s yet to be fully realized because the cost of change, at least in the near term, is erosive to profits. It is a classic innovator’s dilemma but playing at industry scale. Karma Connect demonstrates the role Karma Automotive will play as an ally, helping manufacturers meet the demands of tomorrow, right now.”
Two distinct services are offered beneath the Karma Connect umbrella:
- Karma Flash: Utilizing Karma Cloud Services (KCS), Karma Flash delivers OTA updates to any Karma Revero vehicle MY2020 and later, a one-way flash upgrade from cloud to client. While Karma Flash can be used to fix issues, it will also deliver new features and capability to vehicles long after the point of sale, similar to downloading a new app for a smartphone.
- Karma Recon: Also utilizing KCS, Karma Recon is a robust service which focuses on data analytics to deliver meaningful insights. Through reciprocal data transmission between the cloud and the client, and the client to the cloud, Karma Recon enables the retrieval of onboard data, diagnostics and analytics from the vehicle. Once a sufficient history of data has been compiled, Karma Recon can use its AI-based fault-filtration utility to predict potential onboard failures before they occur, prompting precautionary service of the vehicle while simultaneously generating real-time design cases to help engineers address issues at the source.
Karma vehicle customers will get their first experience with Karma Flash with the launch of “Tune”, a new cabin audio experience for the Karma Revero sport sedan. This upgrade, engineered by luxury audio designer Master & Dynamic, will be made available to existing Revero owners Model Year 2020 and later. Tune by Master & Dynamic will also be a retail option on the 3rd Generation Karma Revero, which begins delivering to clients in the 4th Quarter 2024.
SOURCE: Karma Automotive
