INRIX today announced the new Ford SYNC with Traffic, Directions and Information (TDI), powered by INRIX Connected Services and other Ford technology partners, is live and available to consumers. New and current Ford car and truck owners with SYNC-enabled vehicles now have access to the latest generation Ford SYNC in-vehicle connectivity platform with personalized voice-enabled traffic reports, traffic-influenced turn-by-turn directions, and traffic alerts. Ford SYNC leverages the world’s first ‘third generation routing engine’ from INRIX featuring traffic information that provides the broadest road coverage – over 160,000 miles of real-time traffic data and nearly a million miles of historical and predictive data – and the highest accuracy available.

Current owners of any 2010 Ford Fusion, Ford Mustang, Mercury Milan and Lincoln MKZ can immediately upgrade their existing SYNC service with the enhanced features via the SyncMyRide Web site. Starting this month, new vehicle buyers of the 2010 Ford Taurus, Edge, and Super Duty trucks will find the SYNC functionality preloaded. The new SYNC features will be available across nearly all new Ford models as they debut throughout the year.

“With sales of Ford SYNC-equipped vehicles already surpassing one million, SYNC with Traffic, Directions and Information will further help shape Ford’s leading position as the vehicle provider of choice for drivers who want to say connected,” said Bryan Mistele, president and CEO of INRIX. “We are thrilled to partner with Ford in providing INRIX traffic and third generation routing ultimately helping drivers of Ford SYNC-enabled vehicles assert greater control over their in-car experience.”

INRIX’s 3rd generation routing engine is the first to use real-time and predictive traffic information to deliver true time-intelligent, traffic-influenced directions and time-of-arrival information, taking the driving experience to a new level through smart routing and traffic congestion avoidance. Routing calculations are powered by INRIX Total Fusion Traffic, which provides speed information on nearly one million miles of roadways, including busy city streets and arterials, in addition to freeways and highways across the U.S.

Announced in January 2009 at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES), the Ford Motor Company selected INRIX to enable Ford SYNC with Traffic, Directions and Information to feature personalized driving content and technology. Ford drivers can access the new Ford SYNC services by visiting http://www.syncmyride.com.

Why this announcement is important:

1. Ford SYNC with Traffic Directions & Information (TDI) is the first consumer deployment of INRIX's 3rd generation routing platform and is a showcase for the capabilities of INRIX Connected Services in the car and on the Web

2. TDI will be available on all 2010 Ford, Lincoln and Mercury vehicles equipped with SYNC, including the all-new Ford Taurus, which arrives in dealerships this summer. The upcoming full launch of SYNC TDI on nearly all 2010 model year Ford, Lincoln and Mercury vehicles will build on that momentum, with Ford studies showing that roughly 1 in 5 non-Ford owners saying they would be much more likely to consider a Ford, Lincoln or Mercury product because of the breadth of features offered with this latest SYNC application

3. Ford selected INRIX as the best-in-class tier one supplier for SYNC based upon the quality and superior market and road coverage of our traffic data, the scalability of the INRIX Connected Services platform; and our approach to design and development was highly collaborative, including playing a key role in building out Ford’s partner ecosystem for the SYNC solution

Read Ford's official announcement

Learn more about INRIX Connected Services

See Ford SYNC with TDI at www.syncmyride.com

Upcoming Webinar

The best of connected services are only valuable to consumers if they can actually receive them. The world of connectivity of data is evolving rapidly with ever-expanding options and costs. While this increases the flexibility of service providers, it also makes for a very complicated world of decisions and models.

As INRIX has created its world-class Connected Service platform featuring real-time and predictive traffic as well as the first 3rd Generation Routine Engine, we have worked to optimize the configurations and scenarios for a suite of device connectivity options. This webinar will provide insight into the options available for connecting to in-car content -- including broadcast, 2-way connected, and hybrid solutions -- and the trade-offs and scenarios that can help to optimize the customer experience.

Reserve your Webinar seat now

Recent Webinars - Available for Viewing

INRIX has deployed an array of real-time data services that can be leveraged across a variety of connected devices and applications. Traffic will always be a core INRIX Connected Service, however we have started to leverage our traffic information in a variety of other scenarios, including traffic-influenced routing.

With the imminent launch of Ford SYNC with Traffic, Directions and Information the public will begin to experience INRIX's revolutionary 3rd Generation Routing engine that leverages our high-quality real-time and predictive traffic information to ensure the fastest and most accurate routes are delivered to navigation devices. Learn about this 3rd Generation Off-board Routing platform and the scenarios and opportunities for leveraging connected navigation platforms both in and out of vehicles.

We had such significant attendance and interest in our recent webinar Benchmarking Traffic Data Quality: Best Practices for Analyzing the Quality of Traffic Information, that we decide to prepare a technical follow up on this important topic.

INRIX's Senior Scientist, Chris Scofield, will deliver an in-depth discussion of the nature of INRIX traffic and the vagaries and intricacies of creating high quality traffic information. He will then provide a detailed discussion of some of the techniques of evaluating the quality of traffic data and the usefulness of the specific techniques depending on the scenario and application of the traffic information.

In late February, INRIX released the second annual INRIX National Traffic Scorecard, revealing a startling 30 percent decline in traffic congestion in 2008 during the peak periods on major roads in urban America. Overall the report found that 99 of the top 100 most populated cities in the U.S. experienced decreases in traffic congestion levels in 2008 as compared to the prior year.

The Scorecard contains the most accurate and current information in the country regarding overall congestion and bottlenecks on nearly 50,000 miles of America’s major roadways, and is compiled using tens of billions of data points from INRIX’s network of nearly one million GPS-enabled cars and trucks traveling across over 800,000 miles of roads.

This webinar -- hosted by Rick Schuman, the report author and INRIX Vice President of Public Sector -- provides an executive summary of the report findings.

Benchmarking Traffic Data Quality (Click 'View Event Recording')

In a further industry effort to demystify the analysis of traffic information quality, INRIX recently published Benchmarking Traffic Data Quality: Best Practices for Analyzing the Quality of Traffic Information. This 60-page guide showcases best practices, key metrics and INRIX thought leadership on this important topic.

Hosted by INRIX CTO Craig Chapman and VP of Marketing Scott Sedlik, this webinar offers a technical primer on traffic data quality providing a benchmark from which to evaluate the many components that make up the quality of traffic information. The discussion will describe the processes and methods INRIX uses to validate, measure and verify the quality of traffic reporting data. In addition, it outlines best practices for the planning and execution of ground truth testing of traffic flow data, including results from the just published I-95 Corridor Coalition report and from recent ground truth tests conducted by INRIX and its partner, Clear Channel Total Traffic Network.

Using INRIX Traffic Tile Overlays to Create Traffic Maps (Click 'View Event Recording')

Easily create traffic maps using new INRIX Connected Services functionality for creating a traffic overlay on your map of choice. This hosted service offering allows for an application to make an API request to INRIX and receive back a semi-transparent overlay image of INRIX Traffic flow for display on top of a map.

This webinar, hosted by Technical Account Manager Jason Kheriaty and Sr. Director of Product Management Ken Kranseler, will demonstrate how INRIX Traffic Tiles allow for applications to easily add traffic as a layer on top of their existing maps. Tile sizes are configurable by customer to fit your application and map projection style. Multiple types of traffic are available via this overlay service including INRIX Real-time, Historical and Total Fusion Traffic.

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