OTTAWA — Like it or not, our smartphones are increasingly trying to anticipate our actions: iPhones silence your messages when they sense you’re in the car; Google Drive moves documents to the top of the list around the time you usually open them.

BlackBerry will demonstrate its new Ivy connected-vehicle technology this week at one of the world’s biggest technology trade shows, presenting a vision of the future where cars have similar wherewithal, hinting at the practical implications for car owners as automakers increasingly tout software-as-a-selling point.

The Waterloo, Ont.-based company will reveal its progress on Ivy at CES in the Las Vegas Convention Centre a year after it announced its collaboration with Amazon Web Services. The demonstration will show how BlackBerry’s technology stacks up to its competitors—and will be watched closely by those tracking Amazon’s broadening auto business, and by investors eyeing whether BlackBerry can succeed in this new chapter.

At a preliminary demo for journalists in December at BlackBerry’s testing garage in the Ottawa suburb of Kanata, the Ivy system was the backbone of a car dashboard, pulling data into different apps and machine learning models to sense a driver’s style (“sporty” or more economical) and adjust the battery range expectations for their next EV charge. In another example, the car sensed that there were children in the backseat and adjusted child locks and onboard television screens accordingly. It automatically suggested similar adjustments in the cockpit’s music (‘90s hip-hop or ‘80s pop?) and air conditioning settings depending on the driver’s identity.

Over the course of an imagined “trip” to the beach, the Ivy car suggested adjusting the route to a nearer charging station as a traffic jam drained power. Sensors authenticated the vehicle to process payments or use the HOV lane, and facial recognition turned down the media volume, sensing the children had fallen asleep in the backseat. When the vehicle was close to returning home, BlackBerry envisioned a vehicle that alerts Amazon’s Alexa to adjust the house temperature and turn on the porch light. 

Like many trade show presentations, the Ivy CES demo is a mix of real technology and techno-optimism. The data from the trip to the beach was collected on a real drive in Italy, and fed into machine-learning models and apps that BlackBerry says are ready for automakers to adopt tomorrow. While the dashboard in the December demo was mocked up on automotive-grade hardware, it was a mock up, not an actual vehicle running the software. And BlackBerry engineers did not say whether any automakers plan to use the demonstrated features in upcoming models, although BlackBerry and Chinese technology company PATEO announced Wednesday that the companies will work together to pilot Ivy in an unnamed Chinese auto manufacturer’s vehicles.  

Ivy does offer to make it cheaper and faster for automakers to build new software, at a time when there is considerable hype around software-defined vehicles. One need look no further than analysts’ valuation of Tesla’s software business—which UBS estimated last March could generate nearly half of the company’s operating profit by 2025— to see why other automakers are chasing its “software company that built EVs” ethos. Chrysler and Jeep parent Stellantis, for one, said last month it wants to launch three software platforms in the next two years, and will use data collection to launch an insurance business.

Mark Boyadjis, global technology lead on IHS Markit’s automotive advisory team, told The Logic he thinks BlackBerry’s approach with Ivy is shrewd, because it employs technology many automakers are already using to capitalize on a major trend: improving the performance of vehicles already on the road and collecting data to improve policies like warranties. On the consumer side, Boyadjis said 62 per cent of consumers IHS Markit surveyed were broadly interested in getting over-the-air software updates in their vehicles, with features like autonomous driving, payments and EV-range improvements among the popular features. 

“At this point OTA has been about bug fixing, and it’s been about improving the infotainment experience. But the next generation of OTA is really more like what Tesla’s been doing,  improving the actual powertrain and autonomy of the vehicle,” said Boyadjis, commenting on the sector broadly rather than on BlackBerry’s demo, which was not yet public.

“As that becomes more mainstream, Volkswagen buyers and the Stellantis buyers and GM buyers start to become aware of what their cars can do….some of that’s in the market today with high-end cars, and it’s quickly coming down market.” 

Sue Ludwig, senior manager of software development at BlackBerry, said the version of Ivy demonstrated at CES could cut automakers’ cloud costs by doing more machine learning on in-vehicle chips. Developers can make different programs using the same cluster of sensors, she said, minimizing how much auto-industry knowledge they need to build apps across different makes and models of cars.

One key is partner Amazon, which is doubling down as an auto software-maker. At the end of November, it unveiled a companion project to Ivy called AWS IoT FleetWise that manages vehicle data collection for automakers. Like Ivy, Amazon touts cost-savings by filtering only essential data for transfers to the cloud. 

That’s important because Amazon is expecting a whole lot of data to come across its servers quickly, as advanced driver-assistance systems get closer to self-driving capabilities. At a separate December webinar hosted by the Ontario Vehicle Innovation Network and Rogers, AWS business development representative Reade Barber said the company is working on automotive safety with companies like LG and Harman to reduce the response time between vehicles and the cloud or 5G. To do so, Amazon is trying to build a developer base across North America, he said. 

Amazon’s automotive ambitions are still fledgling compared to its behemoth e-commerce and cloud operations—but for BlackBerry, the stakes are much higher. The company is in the midst of selling a portfolio of its old patents, and officially shed some vestigial smartphone services this week.  

BlackBerry’s transition is likely to be closely watched. Its stock is a popular discussion topic on investing forums like Reddit’s Wall Street Bets. In an earnings call in December, CEO John Chen told financial analysts the company’s current goal with Ivy is to secure a proof of concept as it works with leading auto supplier Bosch. 

While automakers seem bullish on monetizing cars by issuing new software, that doesn’t mean the practice will necessarily catch on. Toyota is already rethinking a widely panned idea to charge for remote-starting key fobs—or as automotive publication The Drive described it, “nickel and dime people to death by charging ongoing subscription fees for functions that used to be a one-and-done purchase.” Driving.ca put it even more bluntly in October, calling General Motors’ plan to boost revenue with software offerings to “screw you with subscriptions.” 

But Sarah Tatsis, BlackBerry’s senior vice president of Ivy platform development, said that today’s vehicles drive off the lot in a kind of technical debt, where its designers already know its technology will be obsolete before the rest of the vehicle. 

As more automakers fix that issue by beaming over new software updates—including payment systems—Tatsis says cybersecurity will be the biggest challenge. BlackBerry aims to preserve privacy by only sending necessary data to the cloud, she said.

“We’re not using the cloud for data storage. What we’re using cloud for is deployment of [machine-learning] models….and it doesn’t necessarily need to be AWS,” she said. “How to secure those types of systems is really where BlackBerry’s leadership comes in.”