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LG and Here help self-driving cars share their knowledge

Your ride will glean traffic info from other cars.

Self-driving cars clearly stand to benefit from sharing data -- you want your car to know about traffic jams before you're stuck in gridlock. And LG knows it. The tech giant is partnering with Here on a next-gen communications hub for nearly or completely autonomous cars. Here's location info will help LG share a car's situational awareness with other vehicles, giving you customized driving info and (potentially) smarter decisions. If there's a road ahead with mercifully light traffic, for instance, your car might turn on to it to avoid delays.

This isn't LG's first driverless rodeo. It teamed with Mercedes on automatic braking back in 2014, and LG already supplies batteries and other components. However, this new alliance makes it clearer that LG wants a major stake in the autonomous driving world. It may not build the cars themselves, but it wants to form the backbone that these cars need to talk to each other.