Audi, BMW and Daimler paid around three billion euros for the map service Here. Why? Digital maps are the key to the car of the future.
HERE Berlin
Wednesday, 13.04.2016
20:22 clock
The office in the Invalidenstraße in Berlin-Mitte is inconspicuous: Simple furniture, bright walls. Only a white cockpit in the corner indicates that this is about the future of the German carmaker.
Not known until recently, the map service Here became the shooting star of the industry overnight in December. Because they bought Audi. BMW and Daimler the company for whopping 2.8 billion euros from Nokia. Even for financially strong car companies that is a lot of money.
How is this huge sum? And why does a map service make arch rivals invest together?
Bernd Fastenrath, a young marketing manager with jeans, cardigan and laptop, is trying to find an answer: In the meeting room he presents Here’s latest product – the HD Live Map. In addition he throws colorful lines on the wall, between which a car drives, receives the green drop, blue sends it into the sky. The whole thing looks like a Pac-Man blend from the eighties, but Fastenrath thinks more of the future.
High-end cards are a prerequisite for autonomous driving
“The green objects are updates that the vehicle receives, with the blue elements, the car sends information itself,” explains the 31-year-old. In real time, of course. The information is stored, for example, the location of a hiking site, on an Internet data storage, the cloud. With the help of this information, the car knows long before it gets there, what happens right at the point. Without permanent information, the map of the future will not work, because it should be highly accurate.
High-end cards are an elementary building block for that autonomous driving – maybe even the key to it. The supplier Bosch has allied with TomTom, but thinks as well as its competitor Continental about a stake in Here. Other auto manufacturers and Internet companies are said to be interested. Although radar, camera and sensor systems are steadily improving. But so far they can only afford a certain degree of security. They see what happens in the immediate vicinity of the car – the motorcyclist racing into oncoming traffic or the child who suddenly runs into the street. But they can not look around corners. If the jam end is in a curve, the systems on board the wagon may not detect this until it is already too late.
Three manufacturers: TomTom, Google, Here
Exactly this weakness is to iron out high-tech maps with their detailed local knowledge. This requires a high level of competence in data collection and maintenance.
Three card manufacturers compete for this market: TomTom, Here and Google, “One is relatively small, the other very powerful and wants a return for his card: the data of motorists,” says BMW Development Board Klaus Fröhlich, who was significantly entrusted with the Takeover here. “This is a dependency we do not want.”
The auto companies therefore hit fast, as market leader Here was for sale last year. In North America and Europe, four out of five cars use Here material, and the company supplies 190 countries worldwide with digital maps. Hard to imagine for the auto companies, Here would have fallen into the hands of competing bidders, including the carpool Uber, Facebook or the Chinese Internet service Baidu.
Because precise map data play an increasingly important role: They are not only a prerequisite for the functioning of self-driving cars, but also for the future business models of car manufacturers. The production of vehicles will only be a pillar of the manufacturer, services a much more important source of income. In a few years, the actual business is no longer made with cars, but with data from the vehicle, predicted renowned consulting companies.
Bargain alarm in car sharing car
The first harbingers are already available today. Anyone traveling with a Mini or BMW from DriveNow, the car-sharing company from BMW and Sixt will be seduced by Rewe’s shopping discounts – through advertising, displayed on the on-board computer screen. As soon as one of the DriveNow cars breaks an imaginary circle of 150 meters around one of the 450 Rewe supermarkets in Germany, the slogan lures itself: “Get five percent instant discount now”.
In the future, these offers could not simply be the result of blanket cooperation, but precisely determined data. If a driver prefers Edeka instead of Rewe, he could get corresponding offers for this supermarket chain. The quality and accuracy of these services will make the rival car brands different in the future, says Fröhlich. The technology of autonomous driving, however, will soon be standard equipment – as the airbag.
A comparison that seems plausible. When Daimler first installed an airbag in the S-Class in 1981, this was still a reason to buy for customers. Today he is self-evident. Likewise, says Fröhlich, in the future all cars will recognize traffic signs with the help of radar systems.
Until then, however, data must be collected diligently. Today, Here’s maps are based on traditional sources such as satellite and aerial photography and information from cadastral offices. By driving down roads with their own cars, with a camera and a laser scanner mounted on their roofs, Here collects more information. But their precision is not enough.
“The jump from sometimes still manually updated maps to those that are automatically updated 10,000 times a day needs a completely different technology,” says Fröhlich. Only when a million fleet of vehicles sends their blue info drops into the cloud will the maps be reliable.
Here, at the beginning of the year, Hereby launched the first self-updating map with the HD Live Map. The precision increases the more cars use the technology. That’s why Audi, BMW and Daimler are interested in getting as many partners as possible into the company in the coming months. Currently, the maps in the car are accurate to the meter. In the future, every centimeter counts for all safety-relevant questions – but also if the Rewe is right next to the Edeka.