BMW, Mercedes And Audi Cars To Share Real Time Driving Data

Think of Waze, the community traffic mapping service owned by Google , but without the smartphone.

Mapping firm Here, recently bought from Nokia by a group of German automakers, announced yesterday, at the Paris Motor Show, the launch of a project aimed at sourcing data generated by sensors deeply embedded within a car and sharing them with other vehicles to help drivers gain a better understanding of traffic conditions.

A forward-facing camera on the cars will detect traffic sign information (including speed limits), accidents, road closures and unexpected traffic events. Other sensors will record the speed, direction and location of a vehicle, the weather conditions and hard braking, as denoted by sharp deceleration.

Here will also utilizes probe and sensor data from connected cars in combination with parking data from additional sources to make it easier for drivers to answer that eternal, annoying question: "where can I find the next free parking space?"

Availability predictions and time-to-park estimations for each street and at the particular time of day will be provided, based on historical data. The system will also inform the driver of where parking is or is not permitted.

For the time being the new Open Location Platform, available from the first half of next year, will use only data coming from vehicles manufactured by Here's owners Audi , BMW and Mercedes-Benz , but the company says it plans to open the service also to other brands.

"Here believes that industry collaboration is essential to address the major challenges faced by road users everywhere. What we are seeing today is the technology and automotive industries coming together to create services that will elevate the driving experience for billions," the company's CEO, Edzard Overbeek. said in a statement.

Clearly, bringing other manufacturers and vehicles on board will allow Here to feed more data into the platform, making it more sophisticated and reliable. Whether other manufacturers (many of which are already closing deals with other technology companies) will be willing to join, however, remains to be seen.

While these services could be convenient for drivers, sharing data with other vehicles could obviously have an impact on their privacy. This a key concern, that the company seems to be taking very seriously.

"We have to be extremely diligent over privacy," product manager Matthias Mohlig confirmed in a blog post.