- Investment expands cooperation with the start-up
- New models from the compact class are first to use the address system
- Navigation destination easy to input with three words
Stuttgart – Daimler AG is expanding cooperation with the start-up what3words. As part of the move, the company took part in a round of financing by what3words and acquired a share of around ten percent. In addition, Mercedes-Benz will be the first automobile manufacturer to integrate the new three-word address system and make it available to its customers.
With the A-Class as the first representative of the next generation of compact cars, a completely new infotainment system – Mercedes-Benz User Experience – will go into series production from as early as spring 2018. Navigation destinations can be entered and searched for with the help of three-word addresses. Using text and voice input, the driver enters his desired destination using just three words, such as remark.healers.heat, and arrives exactly at a specific nine square metres.
what3words has divided the entire world into 57 trillion squares of three metres by three metres and has allocated each of these squares a unique three-word address – including places where there are no regular street addresses. This means that every one of these locations is unambiguously identified and easy to memorise. An algorithm applies the vocabulary list of approximately 25,000 words per language in such a way that potentially confusing combinations are very far away from one another and that both man and machine can easily notice input mistakes. In the meantime, the system is now available in 14 languages.
“With Mercedes-Benz User Experience, we have moved one big step closer to our goal of making the vehicle into a mobile assistant”, emphasises Sajjad Khan, Vice President of Digital Vehicle & Mobility at Daimler. “Our collaboration with what3words is heading in exactly this direction: Inputting locations in a simple way makes life easier for our customers and ensures a special experience. For this reason, we will further expand out cooperation with what3words in future and develop new fields of application.”