Among the amazing technologies available for vehicles these days – from connected navigation that can help find everything from the cheapest fuel to films playing nearby to e-horizon features that can anticipate hills ahead and adjust fuel consumption accordingly – mapping software is the enabler behind most of these innovations. It's also crucial to the future of self-driving cars.
This increasing dependence on digital mapping by the automotive industry was highlighted by the recent bidding war that broke out for a division of Nokia that most people have never heard of called Here. Nokia initially shopped Here around to Apple, Google and Uber, causing concern among automakers that the company's detailed digital maps could fall into the hands of these tech giants who are engaged in their own mapping-software arms race and possibly gearing up to compete with the auto industry by developing self-driving cars.
While Uber and the Chinese tech company Baidu were at one point putting a deal together to acquire Here, it was reported yesterday that Audi, BMW and Mercedes-Benz parent Daimler are close to buying the Nokia mapping division for $2.71 billion. And according to a source quoted by the Wall Street Journal, the German automakers also plan to invite Ford, Fiat Chrysler, General Motors, Toyota, Renault and Peugot Citroën to invest in Here and "run the service as an open platform for everyone.”
While this sharing of proprietary technology may seem counter-intuitive in the hyper-competitive auto industry, as more cars become connected and send info on their whereabouts to the cloud, more mapping data can be amassed. And the auto industry can better fend off threats from the likes of Apple and Google by embedding mapping software in millions of vehicles and collecting data from the technology.
“That’s why we need more car companies involved,” said Floris van de Klashorst, head of Here’s connected driving business. “The more cars providing information the better the map.”
Similarly, the large German automotive supplier Bosch and Here's longtime Dutch rival TomTom agreed to work together to develop high-definition digital maps needed for self-driving cars, the companies said last week. “We will only be able to have self-driving vehicles on the highway in 2020 with highly accurate maps,” Dirk Hoheisel, Bosch general manager, said in a statement announcing the Bosch-TomTom agreement.
In the same way that Google's self-driving vehicles are mapping roads around the company's Mountain View, California headquarters and now in Austin, Texas, Bosch and TomTom plan to chart Germany. "We want to have highly accurate maps for self-driving vehicles of all highways and similar roads in Germany by the end of 2015,” said Jan-Maarten de Vries, VP of TomTom automotive division.
Precise digital mapping will play a crucial role in not only autonomous driving, but also provide lucrative data that comes from drivers searching for services in an area. So in addition to concerns over Google's development of self-driving technology, the German auto industry as well as the German government have also warned Google to keep its hands off drivers’ data as the company has increasingly made incursions into cars.
Considering how important mapping has become to the auto industry and the strategic role it will play in the future, it's easy to understand why the three German automakers want to buy Here and also involve other car companies. "We are not just building a map,” said Here's van de Klashorst, during a recent interview. “We are creating a 3D high-definition digital representation of the world in real-time."
And whoever owns the mapping software will own that world.
