SAN RAMON, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--May 13, 2026--
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The Pinnacle Awards honor organizations and technologies shaping the future of the automotive and transportation industries through innovation, operational excellence, and transformative impact. AiDEN Auto was recognized for pioneering a privacy-first approach to connected vehicle services that enables automakers to deliver scalable, real-time in-vehicle experiences while giving drivers transparency and control over how their data is shared and used. Through its no-code application framework, AiDEN serves as the vehicle enablement layer helping OEMs deliver intelligent services as part of the connected vehicle experience. This is transformative and finally allows the industry to unlock the capability of delivering personalized mobility experiences at scale.
“We are honored to receive the 2026 Pinnacle Award for Connected and Autonomous Mobility,” said Niclas Gyllenram, CEO and Co-Founder of AiDEN Auto. “The automotive industry is entering a new era where connected vehicles must deliver meaningful, proactive services while also respecting consumer privacy and choice. At AiDEN, we are building the infrastructure that enables OEMs to scale in-vehicle services in a way that is transparent, consent-driven, and centered on creating real value for drivers. This recognition validates our vision for a more intelligent and trusted connected vehicle ecosystem.”
Built by former Volvo connected services engineers, AiDEN Auto’s platform enables automakers and service providers to rapidly deploy connected vehicle applications and contextual mobility services without the complexity of traditional development models. The company’s consent-first architecture supports dynamic, application-level data sharing preferences, helping OEMs build stronger consumer trust while unlocking new opportunities for personalized, value-added in-vehicle services. Strategic collaborations with companies including Volvo Trucks CampX, HERE Technologies, IF Insurance, MAVI, Treads, HAAS and many more partners further reinforce AiDEN’s role in shaping the future of connected mobility.
The award reflects the automotive industry’s accelerating shift toward Software Defined Vehicles (SDV), AI-powered connected services, and mobility ecosystems where personalization, transparency, and consumer trust are becoming foundational to the next generation of transportation experiences.
About AiDEN Auto
AiDEN Auto is a connected vehicle software company delivering essential mobility services — including tolling, parking, fueling, compliance and fleet applications — directly to vehicle infotainment screens. Built for Android Automotive OS, AiDEN helps OEMs, fleets and service providers activate in-vehicle services through a software-only, OEM-branded and consent-based platform. AiDEN enables automakers and fleets to connect drivers with the services they need while keeping vehicle owners in control of their data. Learn more at www.aidenauto.com.
AiDEN Auto, a privacy-first connected vehicle software company, today announced that it has been named a recipient of the 2026 Pinnacle Automotive & Transportation Award Diamond level in the category of Connected and Autonomous Mobility, recognizing the company’s innovation and leadership in advancing intelligent mobility technologies.
ROME (AP) — With Pope Leo XIV's first big crisis looming, the Vatican on Wednesday issued a final warning to a breakaway group of traditionalist Catholics that their planned consecration of bishops without papal consent constitutes a schismatic act that incurs automatic excommunication.
Leo is praying for enlightenment so that the leaders of the Society of St. Pius X “may reconsider the extremely grave decision they have made,” said a statement from the Vatican’s doctrine czar, Cardinal Víctor Manuel Fernández.
The statement appeared to be a last-ditch effort to head off the group’s planned July 1 consecrations of four new bishops. If they go ahead, they will amount to the gravest challenge to Leo’s authority to date, as he seeks to heal divisions with traditionalist Catholics that worsened during the Pope Francis pontificate.
The SSPX, as the group is known, was founded in Écône, Switzerland in 1970 in opposition to the modernizing reforms of the 1960s Second Vatican Council, which among other things allowed Mass to be celebrated in the vernacular rather than Latin.
The group, which celebrates the pre-Vatican II Latin Mass, first broke with Rome in 1988, after its founder, Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre, consecrated four bishops without papal consent. The Vatican promptly excommunicated Lefebvre and the four other bishops, and the group today still has no legal status in the Catholic Church.
Yet the group has continued to grow in the decades since that original schismatic act, with schools, seminaries and parishes around the world and branches of priests, nuns and lay Catholics who are attached to the traditional Latin Mass.
The growth poses a real threat to Rome since it amounts to a parallel Catholic church. Today it counts two bishops, 733 priests, 264 seminarians, 145 religious brothers, 88 oblates and 250 religious sisters representing 50 nationalities, according to SSPX statistics.
The current SSPX superior, Rev. Davide Pagliarani, announced earlier this year that new bishops would be consecrated July 1 to tend to the faithful, arguing that the SSPX's two remaining aging bishops can no longer minister to such a global reality.
The Vatican invited Pagliarini for talks, but the same theological and practical problems that have prevented rapprochement for 50 years seemingly left the two sides at an impasse.
In recent comments on the SSPX website, Pagliarani reiterated the need for the new bishops. He expressed satisfaction that his announcement had triggered debate about what the SSPX considers to be a crisis afflicting the church, including religious pluralism and confusion about the faith.
“Now, what is at stake today is not an opinion, nor a sensibility, nor a preferential option, nor a particular nuance in the interpretation of a text, but the faith and morals that a Catholic must know, profess, and practice in order to save his soul and reach paradise,” he said.
The looming consecrations, which would incur automatic excommunications, have created the first tangible crisis for Leo, who has sought to pacify relations with Catholic traditionalists that worsened under Francis after the Argentine pope cracked down on the spread of the old Latin Mass.
Francis in 2021 reimposed restrictions on celebrating the old Latin Mass that Pope Benedict XVI had relaxed in 2007. Francis said he was reversing his predecessor because Benedict’s reform had become a source of division in the church and been exploited by conservative Catholics opposed to Vatican II.
But the move riled Francis’ conservative critics and it became one of the most divisive acts of his 12-year papacy, such that Leo began his pontificate promising to heal divisions.
While the SSPX is out of communion with the Holy See, plenty of Catholic traditionalists who are loyal to Rome and opposed Francis' crackdown are sympathetic to the SSPX plight and are watching how Leo handles the challenge.
Rorate Caeli, a traditionalist blog that has closely followed the issue, said Francis' crackdown, known by the Latin name of the document, Traditionis Custodes, actually created the “crisis” that the SSPX today laments.
“Traditionalists fully understand the need for respect for authority; but we cannot have both at the same time: a stated will to destroy the traditional Roman Liturgy forever (Traditionis custodes) and a complete prohibition of means to salvage that,” Rorate Caeli wrote Wednesday about the threatened SSPX excommunications.
“If the Holy and Apostolic See really wants to show the world its peaceful and loving purpose, it cannot just punish: it has to make clear that Traditional Catholics are once again welcomed and loved in the church,” by going back to the status quo before Francis' crackdown.
Associated Press religion coverage receives support through the AP’s collaboration with The Conversation US, with funding from Lilly Endowment Inc. The AP is solely responsible for this content.
A Swiss Guard stands as dark clouds hang over, during Pope Leo XIV's weekly general audience in St. Peter's Square, at the Vatican, Wednesday, May 13, 2026. (AP Photo/Alessandra Tarantino)
Pope Leo XIV, flanked by his secretary Edgard Ivan Rimaycuna Inga, delivers his blessing at the end of his weekly general audience in St. Peter's Square, at the Vatican, Wednesday, May 13, 2026. (AP Photo/Alessandra Tarantino)
Pope Leo XIV arrives for his weekly general audience in St. Peter's Square, at the Vatican, Wednesday, May 13, 2026. (AP Photo/Alessandra Tarantino)
Pope Leo XIV arrives for his weekly general audience in St. Peter's Square, at the Vatican, Wednesday, May 13, 2026. (AP Photo/Alessandra Tarantino)
Pope Leo XIV blesses a little girl as he arrives for his weekly general audience in St. Peter's Square, at the Vatican, Wednesday, May 13, 2026. (AP Photo/Alessandra Tarantino)
