The Car Tech blog

(Credit: Garmin)

Navteq--provider of digital map data for the likes of Garmin and others--has just released the results of a study that shows that GPS navigation systems may be good for more than just getting drivers from point A to B. According to Navteq, the inclusion of navigation can actually save you up to $200 in fuel costs annually.

Essentially, Navteq studied the driving habits of three groups (drivers without navigation systems, drivers with navigation, and drivers with navigation systems with traffic data) in the German metropolitan areas of Dusseldorf and Munich and came to two major conclusions: "Drivers using navigation devices (1) drove shorter distances, and (2) spent less time driving."

No duh, right? But then Navteq looked further and found this little tidbit:

...drivers with navigation devices had a 12 percent increase in fuel efficiency, as measured by liters of fuel consumed per 100 kms. Fuel consumption among those drivers using navigation fell from 8.3 to 7.3 l/100kms. When the study results are annualized, they equate to a nearly 2500 kilometer drop in distance driven per year per driver, and an average of euro 416 in savings on fuel annually per driver.

Navteq found that the largest gains in fuel efficiency could be found during nonroutine trips (less hunting around) and among drivers using navigation with traffic data during morning and evening commuting rushes (drivers can get around the jams).

It's easy to see that the addition of GPS navigation can make most trips shorter and easier, but if Navteq's study is to be believed, it's possible that they could pay for themselves in fuel savings.

NEW YORK--GPS map maker Navteq is teaming with its parent company Nokia to help drivers get more accurate information about traffic conditions.

Before Nokia bought Navteq last year, the two began working on a project in conjunction with the University of California at Berkeley called Mobile Millennium that uses GPS-enabled cell phones as traffic monitors or "probes" to collect real-time traffic data.

A Nokia GPS-enabled phone acts as a traffic "probe" to provide real-time traffic information to drivers.

(Credit: Marguerite Reardon/CNET News)

A pilot program using more than 10,000 handsets has already launched in the San Francisco Bay Area. And on Tuesday the companies were showing off the technology at the Intelligent Transport Systems World Congress here in New York.

As part of the pilot program, researchers are collecting data via GPS and tracking usage patterns to provide real-time traffic reports for individual drivers. All the information is collected anonymously and aggregated statistically to provide the most up-to-date and accurate information.

"The beauty of this approach is that the users also become contributors and the more data that is collected the better the accuracy and range of the service," said Quinn Jacobson, a research leader at the Nokia Research Center in Palo Alto, Calif.

Navteq is a leader in the mapping and navigation market. Its maps have been used by Google and others to fuel their navigation services. And its technology is already being used for cell phone services, such as Verizon Wireless' VZ Navigator. In addition to turn-by-turn navigation, VZ Navigator also provides up-to-date traffic information.

But the problem is that most of the traffic information available through Navteq's technology is collected using government deployed sensors. While these sensors, which sit on the roads and monitor car speeds and traffic volume, do a good job, they are too expensive to be deployed everywhere. This means that traffic information is usually only available for busy highways in large metropolitan areas, but it's missing on arterial roads feeding into these highways or on rural secondary roads.

The application being developed in the Mobile Millennium project will solve this problem, Jacobson said.

Currently, the Mobile Millennium application is only being used in the pilot testing program, but Jacobson said he expects a commercial offering to be available within the next two years. It's not clear yet if Nokia will make the application available to phones other than ones made by Nokia. It's likely that the application could be made available as part of a service offered through a wireless operator. This would likely mean that it would be available on a wide range of handsets from other manufacturers.

Jacobson said those business details haven't been worked out, but it's technically possible to offer the application on any GPS device. Jacobson also emphasized that the application performs better with more users, which means it might be in Nokia's best interest to open it up to other devices.

"The application works really well with 2 percent of the drivers on the road using it," he said. "But 4 percent is even better and so on."

Jacobson said the application will become really useful when it allows users to input specific routes and is integrated with other applications. For example, a daily commuter could program into the phone several routes he drives to work. The traffic application would be able to choose the best route depending on the current traffic conditions. If something changes en route, the application would be smart enough to alter the route.

And for people who never leave themselves enough time to get to the airport or an important meeting, the traffic application could help. Once the application is integrated into the calendar, it could calculate how long it will take, based on current traffic conditions, to get to that appointment. And it could alert the user when he or she should leave in order to get there on time.

(Credit: Automotive News)

If your car knew what was around the next curve and could choose the best speed for safety and efficiency, would you let it?

That's the promise of map-based advanced driver assistance systems. Such systems are being developed for North America and Europe with data from navigation mapping leaders Navteq and Tele Atlas. The mapping companies say drivers will welcome an extra eye on the road ahead, especially as more content arrives in the connected vehicle of the future.

The systems will link data from the growing array of in-car sensors--including radar and video from advanced adaptive cruise control and lane departure warning systems--with global positioning data. The systems then will check to make sure the vehicle is tracking correctly with the road.

The goal of the systems is a vehicle that can "think for itself when the driver is not thinking," as one panelist said at the Telematics Detroit conference held in May in suburban Detroit.

Early versions

In 2005, BMW launched an early version of such a system on its 3, 5 and 6 series. Map-based data can prevent acceleration by the adaptive cruise control when the vehicle is in a freeway exit lane or other limited driving situation. And in Japan, some systems already use known road geometry with real-time traffic to set up ideal traffic routing and cruising speeds.

Most drivers say they don't want a car that intervenes in their driving. But surveys show that many would like their car to be more helpful when it comes to economical driving, warning about unsafe conditions or spotting traffic signals and stop signs.

Kevin Moran, business development director for Navteq, told the conference that a survey of more than 1,000 respondents in Europe and North America found that map-enhanced driver assistance has high appeal, even at a cost of $500 to $1,000 per vehicle. Such systems might display a "virtual red line" speed for an upcoming curve or give an audio warning that a stop sign was just over the next hill, Moran said.

North American and European drivers concurred on three features:

1. Advice for speed on curves.

2. Advice about safe road speeds on particular stretches of highway.

3. Fuel economy enhancement for their particular drive.

Drivers of high-end vehicles told surveyors they would welcome, in this order, advice and warnings on fuel economy, stop signs and traffic lights; speed advice; and curve assistance. Drivers of midmarket vehicles ranked their priorities as economy, speed, traffic devices, and blind spots.

Virtual rumble strips

Moran said properly executed driver assistance systems would follow the example of rumble strips, which have reduced run-off-the-road accidents dramatically when installed along high-risk routes. "They make no demand on the driver; they're not there until they're needed," Moran said.

Map-based driver assistance systems could serve as a "virtual" rumble strip, focusing a driver's attention when concentration is needed for an upcoming curve or if the vehicle's wandering path indicated driver distraction or drowsiness.

Jonathon Husby, vice president of automotive, telematics and transportation for Tele Atlas, said the digital-mapping company already has several attributes of a driver assistance system out in the field, including curve and speed information.

Under prototype development right now is slope information, which could be coupled with a vehicle's powertrain to recognize a particular hill and help a driver choose the most efficient acceleration for fuel economy.

On the horizon are systems that may recognize that a driver is in a hot spot for accidents and help that vehicle avoid driving patterns that have led to prior accidents, Husby said.

"I see a great opportunity for that, but you have to have the right infrastructure in place for that," he said. "The industry hasn't come together on that yet."

Husby said he didn't think such map-reliant systems are far in the future.

"I don't think we're measuring it in five or 10 years," he said. "I think we're looking at having new offerings in two or three years."

Robert Denaro, vice president for driver assistance systems at Navteq, said in-car systems such as lane departure warnings and adaptive cruise control, when combined with powerful map data, probably will encourage rapid market penetration by driver assistance systems.

70% fewer crashes?

"People say, 'Well, I'm not sure safety sells.' But I guarantee you, as soon as there's a model of car out there where there's data that says this particular car seems to have 70 percent less crashes than other cars of its type, buyers will want it, they will seek it out," Denaro said.

That percentage may sound unreasonable. But consider the rumble strip example Navteq cites. When the New York State Thruway installed the bumpy roadside warning strips in 2003, run-off-the-road accidents decreased 80 percent, Denaro said.

"There are two classes of things happening here," he said. "One is where we're enhancing the performance of an existing system that uses sensors in the car, and the other is where we're enabling an entirely new system. You have more integrated functionality."

A map-based system can take signal inputs from something local, such as a lane departure camera, and combine that with another system, such as a headlight-aiming function, to produce a car that anticipates circumstances.

"I would predict that in 2009 we'll see the first systems that are doing this" in trucking fleets, Denaro said.

He sees two kinds of systems taking the lead.

The first would be predictive cruise control. "You set a band around a speed, and the algorithm, based on the predictive nature of the map, makes decisions on accelerating or decelerating within that band," Denaro explained.

The second would be so-called eco-driving, where the system cues the driver how best to drive economically.

Steps to self-driving cars

Tele Atlas' Husby said the ultimate vision for driver assistance systems and the map systems they use is the pure autonomous vehicle -- the self-driving car of the far future.

"We've got to keep our eyes on that, but there's going to be several iterations of product coming out with subtle introduction of things before we get to the pure autonomous vehicle," he said.

While some drivers decry anything that might diminish their pure driving experience, many others are utilitarian drivers who don't love their commute and want the car to help them be more productive.

Said Husby: "Everyone wants to have a safer experience."

(Source: Automotive News)

As the labor-intensive work of these companies isn't duplicated easily, the purchase by Nokia is probably a good move. Nokia's move also dovetails with product plans from automotive equipment maker Siemens. At the Frankfurt auto show last month, the company demonstrated an in-car navigation system that used a GPS-enabled cell phone as its brains, transmitting map data through Bluetooth to a dashboard-mounted LCD. Cell phones--is there anything they can't do?