By George Liu, Senior Director, Product Management
Weather is an important factor affecting any type of journey, especially on the road as driving safety and the overall travel experience are closely related to changes in weather. In fact, weather is one of the most frequently asked questions of the automotive assistant: according to Voicebot.AI’s In-Car Voice Assistant Consumer Adoption Report 2020, more than 60% of American adults who have used voice assistants while driving said that they rely on in-car assistants for weather, alongside navigation, news and other most-often-used services. People want access to weather information for their origin, destination, and even any waypoints in advance of their journey so they can prepare accordingly and ensure safety, especially in rain and fog when the risk of accidents is increased.
That’s why we’re excited to team up with WeatherChina, the official public meteorological service of the China Meteorological Administration. At present, WeatherChina’s smart weather service can provide meteorological data of 3,240 county-level cities in China (including precipitation, temperature, humidity, wind speed, air pressure, and ground temperature) with more than 30 daily weather indexes, such as car wash index, UV index, clothing index, allergy index, and more, as well as multiple air quality indexes. Almost all of China’s major internet companies – Alibaba, Baidu, Tencent, ByteDance, and more – leverage WeatherChina to power their weather forecast capabilities, and we’re proud to be the first global, AI-powered mobility company to do the same.
Intelligent weather information are closely related to users’ daily life and health, and detailed, more personalized forecasts will be the direction of weather service and traffic travel optimization and iteration moving forward. The weather forecast service provides accurately positioned weather conditions and forecasts and real-time monitoring of precipitation, which will help drivers understand the minute-by-minute dynamics of special weather events so that they can make the best decisions at critical moments and calmly respond to various weather conditions.
Together, Cerence and WeatherChina will work to create more value for weather services in connected cars and customize refined weather data services for car companies, delivering important weather-related data and information to drivers. WeatherChina’s smart weather service capabilities, combined with Cerence's technical expertise in artificial intelligence, natural language understanding, multi-modal interaction and augmented reality will enable automakers to create customized, brand-specific weather service products for connected cars. With Cerence technologies, car owners can inquire about the weather through the voice-powered in-car assistant and receive forecasts, special weather warnings, and travel advice, making travel more enjoyable and safer. The strategic cooperation between Cerence and WeatherChina will open a new milestone of connected weather services, empower the content ecosystem, and create an industry benchmark for vertical content.
Cerence has always been centered on the in-car user experience, and we look forward to continuing to provide support for the most popular use cases, skills and content services to create a diversified and personalized assistant experience.
WeatherChina and Cerence are partnering to bring intelligent weather information to Chinese drivers.