In a press release, TomTom noted that the deal is critical to its growth, as the company now relies much more heavily on licensing its mapping and traffic services to automakers than sales of its traditional GPS navigation devices. The company is eventually planning to expand the deal outside of Europe and perhaps seek more of these types of deals. TomTom believes its mapping and navigational services will be crucial to self-driving cars as they become more popular; the vehicles will need to be provided with accurate and up-to-date traffic and navigational information to properly navigate the roads.
The move comes only a few days after rival mapping service HERE, owned by Mercedes, Audi, and BMW, announced a similar service that will be integrated into the aforementioned companies’ vehicles next year. With automakers, tech companies, and ride-hailing companies all in the race to create a self-driving taxi service, these navigational features will play an integral role in ensuring the vehicles are able to properly navigate themselves.
Players in the race to develop self-driving cars are building out different mapping services. Mapping services such as these are critical pieces of technology for self-driving cars, but companies are developing these mapping services slightly differently. Google is using Waze as a basis for its self-driving car navigation, while Elon Musk outlined a plan for Tesla’s Autopilot based on radar and information sharing between vehicles for mapping. While there are different approaches for autonomous vehicle mapping, they all are critical to self-driving cars hitting the road by 2019, as BI Intelligence expects.
John Greenough, senior research analyst for BI Intelligence, Business Insider's premium research service, has compiled a detailed report on the transformation of the automobile that examines the transformation of the automobile. It also analyzes all areas of the changing automotive market, including the market size for connected cars, automakers benefits and connection strategies, market leaders, consumer demand, and more.
Here are some of the key takeaways from the report:
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Over 380 million connected cars will be on the road by 2021. The market has seen a significant increase in automakers plans to connect the majority of the vehicles they sell and as a result, we've increased our 2015 forecast.
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Automakers are connecting the vehicles they sell because the connection offers clear business opportunities.
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Consumers are adopting the connected car faster than expected. We identify the 3 factors that causing the increase in demand.
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Tech companies will play a major role in the future of the automotive market. The big question is whether tech companies will eventually manufacture cars?
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Fully autonomous cars are only a few years away. Technological, regulatory, and consumer adoption hurdles still remain, but there have been many strides towards a car that can drive itself from point A to point B with little to no human interaction.
- BI Intelligence