Pininfarina Battista is smarter than your phone when roaming

Pininfarina had to overcome a lot of issues on the way to designing its Battista electric hypercar, but one problem that the legendary design house likely didn’t expect to have to sort out is the issue of cellular data connectivity.

See, if you live in the US, the odds are good that you’re probably not doing a lot of driving across international borders the same way that you would if you lived in Europe or Asia or even South America. That means you’re not being forced to continually switch between cellular providers the way that people in those locales might have to.

The Battista has an advanced over-the-air update system that will use cellular data, if necessary, to communicate with the mothership. To avoid switching SIM cards in the Battista every time its customers cross an international border, Pininfarina is working with a company called Deutsch Telekom.

The solution involves having an integrated SIM card in the vehicle that connects to Deutsch Telekom’s partner networks in over 50 countries. It automatically selects which partner network has the strongest connection in a given area and swaps to that network. This is done in such a way that it will be basically transparent to the driver.

In addition to OTA updates, the Battista connects to Pininfarina to offer advanced remote diagnosis of issues and a dedicated app on the owner’s phone to provide functionality like remote locking and unlocking, monitoring charge status and tracking of the vehicle’s location. Hence, a robust data connection is essential.

Now, if we can just get this whole roaming data thing sorted for phones before international travel starts up again, that would be super helpful.