BMW purchased HERE for more than just maps

BMW, Audi and Daimler acquired Nokia’s digital mapping service last year for $3.1 billion. The service is called HERE, and automakers wanted to purchase it for a sophisticated maps service that fits well with autonomous technology. Of course, they want to get first dibs and keep the service away from competitors. Companies who want to purchase HERE is not only limited to automakers. Apple, Amazon and Facebook also want to put down their money for it.

As the new owners of HERE, BMW, Daimler and Audi have much bigger plans for the Berlin-based mapping company. In a Forbes article, they talk about taking a trip to Berlin and seeing HERE’s headquarters. According to the publication, there were lots of new technology and demonstrations and they go way beyond just digital mapping for cars.

Providing a highly accurate digital mapping system that will help autonomous cars in providing precise locations within 10-20 centimeters may be the main reason for HERE’s acquisition. However, HERE also has big plans to use its highly accurate and detailed maps to help change the industries of transport, logistic and utility.

With HERE’s efforts, they will take a knack at autonomous car-sharing and ride-hailing services, road safety for both cars and road workers for utility services and road repair, real-time damage view of powerlines and other utilities, indoor mapping and mapping for drones, and more. These technologies will allow for savings in time and money, while ensuring safety of workers.

To achieve this, HERE will be using their True Vehicles which is close to Google’s Street View Vehicles. The True Vehicles use HERE’s Reality Lens technology, a lidar-based system that scans the car’s surroundings, creating 70,000 data points a second, according to HERE. This allows for incredibly accurate, photorealistic mapping imagery that can be used for a variety of different applications.

HERE fits well to BMW’s efforts and investment to improve their own car-sharing services and new technologies. Seeing the bigger picture, this is more than just a simple acquisition for maps.