Mapping and in-car navigation has come a long way since its early days as a convenience feature to replace the well-thumbed paper road atlas. The commercial opportunities surrounding the connected car have made accurate mapping a requirement. Now, as the autonomous car slowly becomes a reality, OEMs, suppliers and other interested stakeholders are realising the crucial role that mapping will play if the self-driving car wants to go anywhere.
For an autonomous car to navigate reliably and safely, the in-car mapping system needs to constantly refresh itself with accurate information. Alongside image, infrared, radar and LiDAR, the car’s mapping system is viewed as an additional – and vital – sensor. These intelligent maps provide information on the car’s local driving environment and allow it to effectively ‘see’ over hills and round corners.
Increasing autonomy, increasing connectivity, increasing competition
In August 2015, the surprise acquisition of Nokia’s for-sale mapping division by a consortium of German OEMs highlighted this importance. BMW Group, Daimler and Audi combined to front a €2.8bn (US$3.07bn) bill for the HERE branded business. Daimler Chief Executive Dieter Zetsche remarked that the acquisition satisfied the need for a platform “which enables autonomous driving,” and added that highly precise digital maps “are a crucial component for future mobility.”
However exciting the move is for the casual observer, various industry analysts have voiced concern about how this deal could impact existing players in the market. The obvious company to investigate first is TomTom, a leader in navigation and mapping. The company is currently performing well – full year 2015 revenue was just over €1bn (US$1.09bn), a 6% increase over the previous year.
Automotive World caught up with Jan-Maarten de Vries, Vice President of Product Management at TomTom, to discuss how competitive the mapping market is becoming with increasing autonomy, connectivity and interest from new players.
“There are several contradictory movements going on lately,” he says. “Fundamentally, we consider that today there are only two companies positioned to deliver automotive grade highly automated driving mapping content – it’s basically TomTom and HERE.” However, things are heating up. At CES 2016 in Las Vegas, Mobileye took the opportunity to announce a new partnership with Volkswagen. VW Chief Executive Herbert Diess advised that this would involve the development of high definition maps using real time information coming from on-board camera technology.
“We’ve heard several different announcements from companies saying they want to move into the mapping business as well, so things could be about to change,” observes de Vries. “However, HERE and TomTom have been communicating for quite some time. We are already collaborating with a number of Tier 1s and OEMs in R&D partnerships, which contrasts with companies we believe are doing more of a PR stunt, saying: ‘It cannot be that difficult, so let’s do it as well.’”
It would appear that any immediate impact on the market is so far unclear; is this more of a long-term challenge, then? “It presents long-term repercussions,” advised de Vries. “Right now, the jury is still out. The entire industry is trying to understand this.”
Jacques Verdonck, Renault-Nissan’s Alliance Global Director in charge of Strategic Cooperation with Daimler, is reported to have said at the 2016 Geneva Auto Show that the OEM is considering whether to acquire a stake in HERE. “We are studying it carefully – whether to be a customer, supplier of data or shareholder,” he said, as Reuters reported.
TomTom up ahead
With such uncertainty around the future of the mapping market and the advent of new players, how is TomTom positioning itself against growing competition? It isn’t, says de Vries, as it is already ahead of them in the autonomous driving field. Key to this has been significant investment into the development of its new map-making platform, which leverages community input in the form of GPS traces and other car sensor data. Unable to provide a firm number, De Vries advises that, “It is a massive long-term investment that has occupied a significant part of our engineering workforce for several years”.
TomTom’s new transactional map-making platform minimises the time between detecting changes in the real world, processing these on the server, and updating the map in a car. “We think this will be a mandatory part of being able to produce real-time maps for the automotive industry”
The new transactional map-making platform minimises the time between detecting changes in the real world, processing these on the server, and updating the map in a car. Changes can pass through TomTom’s mapmaking process, be fully quality assured, and end up in a customer’s map with small and frequent increments. “As far as we can tell, this is something that no other company has right now. We think – and expect – this will be a mandatory part of being able to produce real-time maps for the automotive industry,” affirmed de Vries.
Autonomous driving
In the short term, TomTom believes that drivers will reap the immediate benefit of staying constantly up-to-date. However, this solution is ultimately geared toward enabling self-driving vehicles, which will need to navigate passengers from A to B autonomously.
“It is an absolutely mandatory requirement for autonomous driving,” says de Vries. “Some time ago – maybe a year and a half ago – we had to almost convince some people in the industry that mapping is required for self-driving cars. Many people thought that with progress that had been made in sensor-based information and vehicle-to-everything (V2X) communication, we would be able to do without the map. Now, those announcements were good for us in a way as they confirm what we have always been saying – that the map is one of the vital sensor inputs for a self-driving car.”
The first challenge is keeping the map as up-to-date as possible. The second challenge is in delivering that information to the customer in the right format and at the right moment
However, with the industry proclaiming mapping as a core technology for future mobility, new players are now looking to get their foot in the door. “Because everybody agrees that mapping is mandatory, many people are indeed thinking about moving into this space,” says de Vries. “But the learning curve to take automotive grade digital mapping to a global scale will require extremely high investments – both in terms of manpower and capital – and will require a significant amount of time to ramp up a map production platform.”
Staying connected
With TomTom feeling secure in its market position, eyes turn to another industry challenge – how to ensure map updates remain seamless in areas of poor – or no – connection. The supplier’s new transactional map system can work online, offline, fully embedded or off-board, “and in any situation in-between,” advises de Vries. “When there is no connectivity, we are ready to fall back on the on-board map, which is what we always do anyway. The question is, how can we prevent the on-board map from becoming out-dated?”
To this end, the transactional map-making platform rests on the principle of shortening the map update cycle time. For example, a driver could plan to drive from Paris to Amsterdam and pass through an area of low coverage in Belgium. When departing Paris, the car’s mapping system would update the route so that even if connection drops, the driver has already downloaded the latest batch of map updates. “The first challenge is keeping the map as up-to-date as possible. The second challenge is in delivering that information to the customer in the right format and at the right moment,” explains de Vries, who is confident that TomTom’s new map platform solves both issues.
Emerging markets a “growth reservoir”
While emerging markets such as India and China present significant growth opportunities for OEMs and Tier 1s alike, it is still early days for the advent of future mobility. While many of TomTom’s customers look to capitalise on a large and growing consumer base as an opportunity to kickstart new sales opportunities, what potential does TomTom see in emerging markets?
India, China and other emerging markets need navigation, so we see those countries as a formidable growth reservoir
“There is already a commercial interest in India, China and other emerging markets outside of autonomous driving discussions,” says de Vries. “These markets need navigation, so we see those countries as a formidable growth reservoir for current connected navigation components in the short term. We have the same questions as everyone else in terms of how fast the autonomous car will come to these markets. The challenge for TomTom is indeed to gain as much market share as possible in order to establish a brand image and create a relationship with car manufacturers.”
TomTom’s ambition, just like players in the rest of Europe, is to supply its software components to car manufacturers setting up shop in established markets and in pastures new.
From fully connected to fully autonomous
Intelligent mapping will ultimately join a wider realm of technologies within what has been dubbed ‘the fully connected car’. Such a vehicle will be connected not only to the Cloud, but also to other vehicles and to its surrounding infrastructure. What’s more, this will enable autonomous vehicles to analyse their local driving environment and make appropriate decisions. Under such a definition, the ‘fully’ connected car is some way off. However, just as autonomous driving is an end goal being targeted by most players, the fully connected car is an eventuality that the industry – including TomTom – knows will come in the foreseeable future.
This article is part of an exclusive Automotive World report on connected cars. Follow this link to download a copy of ‘Special report: Connected cars‘
