LG and HERE announce partnership to create a telematics product aimed at autonomous vehicles
LG is looking at the rise of autonomous vehicle technologies as an opportunity to expand its electronics business, and it's now working with mapping provider HERE to put together a telematics product aimed …
Context & Ripple Effects
HERE has spent two years assembling the data layer for self-driving cars: it struck a mapping partnership with Mobileye to source high-definition map data, and earlier explored using anonymized sensor data from Audi, BMW, and Daimler vehicles to build next-generation maps. The missing piece was the in-car hardware side.
LG arrives with exactly that credential — it already builds a connected car platform with Volkswagen that bridges the vehicle and smart-home devices. Pairing LG's telematics electronics with HERE's maps turns two component suppliers into a bundled autonomy-stack offering.
First-order effects
- LG extends its automotive electronics business beyond the Volkswagen connected-car project into autonomous-vehicle telematics, while HERE gains a hardware partner able to embed its mapping data in production vehicles.
Second-order effects
- Other Tier-1 electronics suppliers and map providers face pressure to form comparable pairings, since automakers shopping for autonomy systems increasingly favor integrated map-plus-hardware packages over separate procurement.
Third-order effects
- If the pattern holds, the autonomous-vehicle supply chain consolidates around alliances that fuse sensor-fed map data (HERE's model with Mobileye and the German OEMs) with in-car computing — leaving standalone component vendors to compete on price inside someone else's stack.
The trend: Autonomy is shifting from point products to bundled stacks, as mapmakers and electronics suppliers ally to sell automakers integrated hardware-plus-maps systems.