Turin, March 10th 2003

Loquendo speech technology has been selected by world-famous concept car creators, Bertone to power their very latest innovative concept sports car, unveiled last week at the Geneva International Motor Show.
Bertone's Birusa concept car is equipped with Loquendo's VoxDrive system, a prototype embedded system that enables drivers to control certain functions on the car using their voice. VoxDrive incorporates Loquendo's high-performance, multilingual Loquendo TTS synthetic speech and Loquendo ASR automatic speech recognition technologies. The prototype also features Loquendo Speaker Verification technology to ensure that commands are accepted exclusively from authorized users/drivers.

Loquendo has met the specific requirements of the car environment, with its complex acoustic background, including extremely strict accuracy and execution speed constraints. Voice-controlled technologies do not only make driving easier - they also enable drivers to communicate with the outside world. If they are connected to a mobile communications system, information and info-mobility services can be requested rapidly and easily. Information is provided vocally to make driving simpler, safer and more entertaining.

Please see the Bertone website for details.

About Loquendo
With over 30 years R&D expertise, Loquendo (www.loquendo.com) is at the forefront of the global speech technologies market, providing all the necessary elements to create the ultimate speech experience.
Loquendo's high-quality, high-performance technologies (Loquendo TTS text to speech engine,
Loquendo Embedded TTS text to speech engine, Loquendo ASR automatic speech recognition,
Loquendo Speaker Verifier) and platforms guarantee the best solutions in Italian, Castilian Spanish, French, German, Brazilian Portuguese, U.K. and U.S. English, Greek, Mexican, Chilean, Argentinean, Swedish, Catalan and Mandarin Chinese, with more coming soon.
From its headquarters in Turin, Italy, Loquendo deploys technologies that power over 2,000,000 calls every day in the telecommunications and enterprise markets throughout the world.
For more information, visit www.loquendo.com.