With the continuing development of various levels of self-driving and fully autonomous vehicles, a key tool is necessary to support it — high-definition maps. While cars are equipped with all kinds of sensors such as cameras, GPS, radar and LiDARt o help them “see” what there are facing, HD maps are essential for any autonomous driving system to anticipate what will be ahead and commence the decision-making process instead of just reacting to the situation when it “sees” it. HD maps involve much higher level of complexity and precision than one would first imagine.
Earlier this month in CES, Baidu, the leading Chinese language Internet search provider, claimed that it is possible for the company’s HD mapping services to become a “much bigger business” than its search business in the future, with Baidu selling HD maps of China as a service to automakers.
HD mapping is not a new business area for Baidu as it has been developing HD maps within China since 2013. Yet, the latest partnership between Baidu and TomTom sees TomTom HD Maps and AutoStream pre-integrated into Apollo, Baidu’s open autonomous driving platform. TomTom’s HD maps cover USA, Western Europe and Japan, while AutoStream is a map delivery service that helps vehicles to build a horizon for the road ahead by streaming the latest map data from the cloud.
Baidu currently has 90 partner companies and one of them is Here, another leader in mapping and location services. Here supports Baidu for its desktop and mobile map services with data from over 150 countries outside China, including details inside venues such as shopping malls, hospitals, universities, stadiums, museums, airports and train stations. The current owners behind Here include Audi, BMW, Mercedes-Benz, Intel, Pioneer, Continental and Bosch, with the latter two acquiring a stake earlier this month. Bosch obviously sees that digital mapping does not just serve the automobile sector, but will benefit “Industry 4.0, smart homes, and smart cities”, areas of business that Bosch is growing rapidly, “in which establishing and expanding data-based services will result in synergies with Here.”
In short, with the level of detail required in developing HD maps and their constantly changing nature, it is safe to say that the mapping and location services will not turn into a monopoly situation, at least not soon. At the moment it seems that everyone is a partner and a competitor under a collaborative ecosystem, but who will become the biggest map data seller in the near future? It is still too early for any safe bets.
