It’s finally official – General Motors has just announced that the OnStar mobile app for the Chevy Volt will get two new features on the Google Android smartphone platform. The features were debuted and are being demo’ed at the Google I/O conference in San Francisco, CA this week.
First is a new “navigation” tab on the home screen of the existing Android Chevy Volt mobile app. By going to this tab, users will be able to see the current location of their Chevy Volt on Google Maps – as well as their location relative to the Volt. From there, users have the option for voice-guided directions to the Volt from their current location using Google Maps Navigation on the Android.
Second is the OnStar app’s ability to use Google voice search to vocally search for a destination with the Android handset. Users will be able to see where that destination is relative to the current location of the Volt and then send the destination from the Android phone to their Volt (also known as OnStar eNav Destinations). From there, OnStar Turn-By-Turn will be waiting for them when they start the vehicle, providing directions to their destination.
The new functionalities won’t be available on the Volt mobile app at the app’s launch. Instead, OnStar is planning to include them as part of version 2.0 of the smartphone app.
The features aren’t quite what we expected last week, when the rumormill did its thing in bringing us juicy rumors about a deep Google-GM-OnStar collaboration. Perhaps such a partnership is still in the cards, but – as we like to say – only time will tell. We have GM’s presser after the jump.
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