Toyota's "Map on Demand" a world's first

It's not an absurd idea in the slightest. In fact, we're surprised to hear nobody has done this yet, but Toyota is claiming its new Map on Demand service is a world first, and who are we to argue? Due to the large volume of data and detail in a traditional map pack, updates are usually done about twice a year, meaning high-construction areas can become terribly inaccurate before your maps company gives you a fresh edition. Toyota's solution is to only provide updates to areas relevant to the user: where they live, where they're going and commonly used expressways. The solution involves a pretty major change to the GPS map industry, including how map changes are made and published, but Toyota seems to have its hand in enough of the process to make it happen. Updates are delivered over your home internet connection, cell phone internet or both, routed to Toyota's G-BOOK telematics system, and should be fresh enough to warn you of a closed road or newly opened lane. Toyota will be delivering this "differential map data" to your car -- in Japan only, of course -- this spring.

[Via Far East Gizmos]

[Ray-- @ Feb 9th 2007 12:20PM]

wow thats sweet.... but Japan only!! boooooo

[Jakob Hussfelt @ Feb 9th 2007 12:32PM]

www.wayfinder.se anyone? ... The Toyota cup of coffee is cold since years.

[Nick @ Feb 9th 2007 12:33PM]

Surely though you don't need maps in areas that you go to frequently...?

[Cronick @ Feb 9th 2007 12:51PM]

These are the guys who wanted $500 to replace the DVD in my car's nav system -- not because the disk was made of gold but because the disk was buried behind the dash requiring 4 hours to take my whole car apart.

And they don't even have live traffic. Sheesh!

Listen to me gripe.

[Johnny @ Feb 9th 2007 1:01PM]

The italian brand "Fiat" some years ago already provided here in Italy a navigation system called "Connect+" on some cars, that was DVD-less, but it hadn't much success. Maybe it was too early. Navigation systems wasn't so widespread as now.

The system worked (actually works) downloading updated maps over a Gsm/Gprs/edge internal modem, caching of course the most frequently used data.

Greetings

[Mischa Lockton @ Feb 9th 2007 1:06PM]

I am not interested in kludgy 3rd party solutions on my cell phone or whatever. Apaarently you have never tried to actually drive around with GPS Mr. Wayfinder. Cold cup of coffee? Toyota would be the first with such an integrated solution.

At least I can easily switch the map DVD discs in my new Hybrid Camry.
If a road has actually changed, I can figure it out- but I do like this idea.

Toyota RULES!

[Holly @ Feb 27th 2007 5:03PM]

Can you play A DVD Movie in your Toyota?

[Mischa Lockton @ Feb 9th 2007 1:08PM]

"Surely though you don't need maps in areas that you go to frequently...?"

That is exactly the point- unknown areas. Don't forget you can make it find bagels and smoothies too.

[patsy @ Feb 9th 2007 1:13PM]

For this to truly work across the board (or at least a country), all the departments of transportations would have to coordinate and standardize a process that updates road information in real time. Something along the lines of a mobile device that would require road workers to enter the data each time they open or close a lane, reroute traffic, etc. Maybe such a processes is already in place and I'm just ignorant of it, but at least in the US I highly doubt it.

[somedude @ Feb 11th 2007 1:58PM]

FYI, the blackberry Maps application has this functionality. The maps are wirelessly streamed to the device, and the device only keeps a 1-2mb buffer. The actualy maps on the server are updated daily.

Since the maps application has first showed up on the Pearl, it appears it has been around for about a year now.

[Eddie B @ Feb 12th 2007 6:33PM]

The main reason this hasn't been done for DVD-based navigation systems is the added cost of non-volatile memory and communications hardware and service. Why add a serial port/modem and the memory to hold updates to a device that only needs to be updated 1-2 times a year. Updating by DVD is more efficient (except for buried devices).

This is the norm for portable/personal navigation systems, since they use non-volative memory instead of read-only media to hold map data. The same tools used for filling the device with map data can be used for updating the device.

What I think is interesting with this announcement is the possibility of more frequent map data updates and incremental updates without reloading unchanged map data.