Alps Alpine Co., Ltd. Announces Comprehensive Partnership with FreeBit

Alps Alpine Co., Ltd. (TOKYO: 6770; President and Representative Director: Toshihiro Kuriyama; Headquarters: Tokyo; hereinafter “Alps Alpine”) and FreeBit Co., Ltd. (Headquarters: Shibuya-ku, Tokyo; President and Representative Director: Nobuaki Tanaka; hereinafter “FreeBit”) have announced that they will enter into a comprehensive collaboration to achieve a “seamless car life” in the era of CASE (Connected, Autonomous, Shared & Services, EV) and MaaS (Mobility as a service), the areas of focus for the in-vehicle information equipment business, in order to survive the once-in-a-century transformation of the automotive industry.

The two companies will collaborate on the CaaS (Car as a service) concept for systemized in-vehicle information equipment based on Alps Alpine's HMI (Human Machine Interface) technology and service digital transformation technology realized by FreeBit's expertise in Internet infrastructure. In January this year, Alps Alpine and FreeBit announced the "Car Key Platform" jointly developed using the "Digital Key" basic technology and will jointly exhibit it at various exhibitions. The "Car Key Platform" is a key management system that manages car owner information and permissions using blockchain to easily and cheaply implement key issuance and rights transfer. Alps Alpine will promote development work that can contribute to the automotive industry and utilize IT infrastructure through a package partnership with FreeBit, which has technical advantages and service development capabilities in terminals, lines, clouds, and blockchains.

Jointly developed with FreeBit Co., Ltd. the basic technology for storing log data as a "tamper-proof risk countermeasure" using blockchain technology

The two companies have already begun using "The Log" to store their own internal system and service log information, external cloud log information, etc., with the goal of providing safer and more reliable services. "The Log" can store all log information (system log information, system access trace log information, log information including personal information, etc.) that is difficult to store on a public blockchain due to the time and cost of writing, as well as information confidentiality issues, in a decentralized file system, and only cooperate with the blockchain for key information required to refer to the data, thereby ensuring high security at minimal cost and becoming an off-chain log storage platform. The key management required for data encryption and writing to the blockchain will be strictly managed using an HSM (Hardware Security Module) that complies with the FIPS 140-2 Level 3 standard. Alps Alpine has already begun using "The Log", a system jointly developed by the two companies, for its own service system log storage work, and expects it to be widely used in the automotive industry as a high-security data storage method. Alps Alpine will explore using this system to manage driving records and accident records, and will use the blockchain technology's immutable nature to achieve more transparent second-hand car reviews, and to store various vehicle information that increases with the expansion of connected cars in a secure and tamper-proof manner, as well as to flexibly use this technology as an IT infrastructure technology to support the automotive industry. Alps Alpine will also work with FreeBit to integrate the wisdom of developing and manufacturing in-vehicle information equipment with IT software and infrastructure technologies, strengthen service development and operation capabilities, and contribute to the future development of the automotive industry.