Ford and Bug Labs want you to hack your cars with OpenXC

When people talk about tuning up or playing around with their cars – it usually involves chop shops and modifications to the car’s body and stuff under the hood. Rarely you will hear about people hacking the car’s electronics to make it do what they want – but it looks like all that is going to change in the future. Ford and Bug Labs have announced today that they are creating a platform that will encourage users to modify computers in Ford’s upcoming cars.

The two companies are working on an open-source in-car research and development platform called OpenXC which is based on Bug Labs’ own open-source Bug System. With OpenXC, they hope to create a platform that users can hack to make their own personalized driving experience. Imagine being able to code your own UI for the car’s in-dash console, or load up homebrew apps that can improve your driving experience. Ford and Bug Labs plan to release the software development kit for OpenXC later this year, though it wasn’t mentioned when it will be implemented in cars.

George Wong
Categories: Transportation
Tags: car, ford, Hacking, open source, platform