Amazon on Target List to Join Here Digital Mapping Venture

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The Here digital mapping joint venture owned by Audi, BMW and Daimler is in talks with several companies about joining the consortium, Reuters reports.  

The three German luxury carmakers, which acquired Here from Finland’s Nokia Corp. last summer for about €2.5 billion euros ($2.8 billion), hope to spread development and operational costs with additional investors.

The list of potential partners includes other carmakers and traditional tier one suppliers—among those rumored to be interested are Ford, Renault and Continental—as well as tech companies such as Amazon.com and other cloud computing firms, unnamed sources tell the news agency.

Adding new partners also could improve the coverage and accuracy of the venture’s maps with more users feeding real-time traffic and infrastructure-related information into the system’s database. And cloud computing capability is needed to handle the volume and continual updating of information, the news agency notes. It also points out that access to Here’s real-time maps would help Amazon as it launches hourly delivery services in select European and U.S. markets.

Highly accurate digital maps are critical for self-driving-car systems, which need to know a vehicle’s precise whereabouts and lane position. The German carmaker consortium acquired Here to help maintain control over vehicle location technologies from tech giants such as Apple and Google as they add automotive capabilities.