Navigation and traffic information services provider TomTom has announced three new collaborations that will offer: in-vehicle commerce facilities; a three-word addressing system; and a new app that can be mirrored on Toyota vehicles’ in-dash screens.
TomTom and Xevo have collaborated to deliver the next generation of personalized in-vehicle commerce facilities by incorporating the merchant partners of the automotive industry’s first on-demand commerce platform, Xevo Market, into a car’s navigation system. Drivers’ preferred merchants and service providers are presented, through in-vehicle touchscreens and smartphone companion apps, as Points of Interest (POI) on the map, with the option to touch the POIs on the screen and navigate to them.
This personalized navigation experience takes Xevo’s innovative commerce-in-the-car scenario to the next level, using a driver’s location and route to offer relevant recommendations, retail locations, and discounts along the way.
“Combining our revolutionary Market platform with TomTom’s map and navigation expertise offers us the opportunity to extend in-vehicle personalization into the navigation experience for smarter, more productive journeys,” said Dan Gittleman, Xevo’s CEO. “This next generation of in-car commerce empowers automotive OEMs with the most advanced and seamlessly integrated turnkey in-car monetization platform available.”
TomTom is collaborating with the developer to bring What3words’ unique three-word location addressing system to its customers globally. What3words divides the world into a grid of 3 x 3m (9.8 x 9.8ft) squares, with each square assigned a unique three-word address. For example, the three-word address for TomTom’s head office in the Netherlands is ‘pancake.climbing.beaker’. The easy-to-use geocoding system works well in areas where traditional maps and addressing do not, such as off-road locations, and countries without standardized addressing systems, including those in India and many in the Middle East. What3words complements TomTom’s existing maps, allowing people to accurately find any location and share it more quickly and with less ambiguity than any other system.
Chris Sheldrick, CEO and co-founder of What3words, noted, “We are delighted to partner with TomTom, and bring the benefits of more accurate addressing to their customers. By using What3words, drivers are able to navigate to any precise location, as specific as a side door, gate or parking spot. Equally, destinations that previously have been unaddressed now have a simple, reliable and easy to remember three-word address.”
TomTom has also launched a new navigation app that can be mirrored on Toyota vehicles’ in-dash screens using SmartDeviceLink (SDL) technology; a first for both companies. The TomTom Navigation App is now available at no extra cost to Toyota drivers in Argentina, Brazil and Paraguay, on both Apple and Android devices. The app provides an online navigation experience by combining offline maps with online services, such as TomTom’s Traffic, SpeedCams, Online Search, and Online Routing, with a fall back to offline turn-by-turn navigation when connectivity is not available. It uses the industry standard Navigation Data Standard (NDS) map format, making TomTom the first to launch an NDS-based smartphone application. Users benefit from NDS as it lets drivers download only the map areas that they really need, with weekly incremental updates.
