Renault-Nissan and Microsoft to partner on connected driving

French car maker 2453 Renault-838 Nissan Alliance and 2214 Microsoft have signed a global, multiyear agreement to partner on next-generation technologies to advance connected driving worldwide.

The companies will work together to develop next-generation connected services for cars powered by Microsoft Azure, one of the company's intelligent cloud offerings. These new services are aimed at improving customer experience via advanced navigation, predictive maintenance and vehicle centric services, remote monitoring of car features, external mobile experiences and over-the-air updates.

The alliance aims to develop connectivity technologies and features to support the launch of more than 10 vehicles with autonomous driving technology by 2020 with services to maximise better use of in-car free time.