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Google Will Enter Smart Car Arena, But How?

One automotive executive speculates that the company has little interest in manufacturing its own automobile, but would like to take advantage of adding greater Internet connectivity inside cars.

(TNS) -- Internet giant Google, with its recent drive to become a player in the automotive sector, is not out to become a carmaker, says Elmar Degenhart, head of the German tire and car components company Continental.

In an interview while visiting dpa in Berlin, Degenhart said, "I don't believe that Google is seriously intending ever to build cars." Instead he sees another motive in the thinking of the US concern.

"Google is trying to expand into new business fields, because it must continue to show a potential for growth. Google is interested in making the automobile per se an additional source of information and data," he said. "The largest untapped area with regard to using the internet is the automobile." Google wants to move in.

The Continental chief executive says that today there are about 3 billion internet users worldwide. On average, each user spends three hours online.

"This means about 9 billion internet hours per day. For the internet industry, each user-hour in terms of advertising and the like has a value. For all parties who use the internet, this is a multi-billion dollar market," Degenhart said.

Then there are the some 1 billion private cars and commercial vehicles that, on average, are under way one hour per day, he continued.

"This makes for a theoretical additional potential of internet usage of 1 billion user-hours per day - provided that the driving is done automatically and in that time motorists are using the internet. But even just a fraction of that would be of interest to the internet industry," Degenhart said.

To this backdrop, it only makes sense that Google is working on robotic cars, with a keen interest in networking and mobility.

"This is also one of the major reasons for Google to push the car industry finally to achieve more automatic driving functions. It is doing this very cleverly, while at the same time building an image and reputation as a technology company," he said.

Hanover-based Continental is already delivering components for robot cars that Google has been testing for some time now in the United States. They are driven not only on autopilot but also completely without a driver. However, Degenhart believes that robotic cars are still a long way off.

"In the next 10 to 15 years we won't be seeing any robot taxis, without steering wheels or pedals, on the streets of New York," he said. "That's science fiction, that's dreaming. The traffic conditions there are much too complex and unpredictable."

Besides Google, it is said that the computer giant Apple has some ambitions in the car sector. There are stubborn rumours that Apple and Continental are secretly cooperating. Degenhart is tight-lipped about such talk.

"If companies like Apple decided to build cars, we at Continental as a systems supplier would be interested in doing business with them," he said. But there would be one condition. The customer-supplier relationship would only succeed if "we are not competing against each other."

©2015 Deutsche Presse-Agentur GmbH (Hamburg, Germany) Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.