Allison interviews Sowmya Gopal from HERE about their unified navigation solutions for electric vehicles, including automated driving, EV routing/charging, and a digital cockpit for driver interface.
Sowmya demonstrates the HERE’s Maps and Navigation system on a hyper-SUV, the Lotus Eletre Carbon, and explains how it integrates the navigation experience with range management.
The HERE system reads the car’s available range and automatically determines a navigation path that includes stops for charging if required. The system also determines if each charging station is compatible with the car and, if so, tells the driver how many minutes are needed for each stop to optimally complete the route. The number of available charging ports at each station is also presented to the driver. The driver can edit the route and/or the charging stops to tailor the drive to their changing needs.
HERE navigation also provides predictive search and routing – it learns the driver’s daily habits and presents suggested destinations and routes based on those that are more commonly used by the driver.
HERE Maps and Navigation support the only two Level-3 autonomous driving solutions currently available on certain Mercedes-Benz and BMW models. Lotus is working on adding some of HERE’s autonomous driving features but is focusing on driver control.
Learn more at https://here.com/
Using a Screen Reader? click here
Transcript of Interview:
Allison: I’m sitting in the Lotus Electra Carbon with Sowmya Gopal from HERE Technologies who is going to talk to us about the integration of their platform with Lotus and some other vehicles I think. Welcome to the show here.
Sowmya: Thank you Allison. So Lotus wanted to have the sports electric car launched in the US, and it’s already been launched in Europe, and I think here the driver needs the pleasure of driving a sports car without having to worry about the range anxiety that usually comes with an electric car.
Allison: That’s what you want a Lotus for is the fun right?
Sowmya: Yes and this means that you just floor the car and go wherever you want to go without having to worry about where should I stop for charging, how long should I charge, because the system takes care of everything and this is what we did for the Lotus in integrating the navigation experience fully with range management.
Sowmya: So basically what happens is we read the data, the battery data that is displayed here. So, for example, it says the charge level is 82% and this means it can exactly tell you how far you can get with such a charge level, and this here shows the range map of where you can get with this charge level.
Allison: I’m gonna tell some of the audience it won’t be able to see this but we’ve got yellow on the map showing where the car can go and you can see where you can’t go yet.
Sowmya: And this also means that if I try to go to a long distance location, so I’m going to put in Chicago now, just for the fun of it , and going from Vegas to Chicago in a Lotus is going to be a lot of fun, but it also means you have to add automatically charging stops when you get from Vegas to Chicago without the driver having to worry about where should I stop. So the system takes care of everything because HERE has a comprehensive navigation solution that takes into account.
Allison: So now she’s gonna I think she’s gonna end the trip. Are you showing us how many steps?
Sowmya: It’s adding charging stops because basically it says you’re going to cross time zones because you’re going to cross state boundaries, and it is also added all of these charging stops, which tells you how many minutes you have to charge on your way to Chicago. And in every case you can actually edit the stops to see if you want to have a coffee break or a lunch, so that the driver really only has to worry about where he or she wants to take a break, and how they want to enjoy the drive, without thinking about whether my charging is compatible with the charging station whether my car is going to be charged enough–all of that is taken care of by the solution that HERE and Lotus is implemented together.
Allison: So with HERE then that means that you not only have mapping data, you also have data about where all the charging spots are for the different levels of chargers from all of the plethora of different companies we unfortunately have to deal with right now. Now, does it give you any kind of data on when you’re arriving or when you’re getting close to needing to charge to tell you whether there are enough ports open for you?
Sowmya: Yes, we also have the availability information, so it will give you a list of it will only choose available points, and if there are no available points, it will also tell you how many ports are available. If it is not available, you have to get there and wait because that’s the infrastructure, but this availability information is also available and will be displayed as red or green in the map which shows what is available and what isn’t.
Allison: Okay that’s really cool. Range anxiety is a such a funny thing because it’s real it does happen, but once you get the hang of it, it’s really not all that hard because you start to find out you don’t stop as long. You take a couple of stops, but you make them shorter, much more efficient. It’s good to stretch your legs anyway.
Sowmya: Indeed, I have an electric vehicle myself and I think the biggest problem for me is exactly what you said. If I get to a charging station and it’s not available, that’s when the anxiety starts. As long as I’m able to charge my car, then I do like a break. You know, coffee, restroom, lunch, shopping, and this is why the availability information is critical, and this is why also being able to adapt the route is critical. For example, if I’m driving faster because I can on the highway, or if I’m stuck in traffic, which means I’m consuming more charge in stop and go, then the route has to adapt itself and add a charging point earlier. All of this is done dynamically by the system.
Allison: That’s really cool. I’ve also seen that your mapping system does some interesting things while while you’re driving in terms of the display and some predictive technologies.
Sowmya: Indeed. So we have what we call predictive search and predictive routing. So for example, if you drive every morning at 8 a.m. to the office, when you get in the car at 8 a.m., it will automatically propose, “Hey, do you want to go to the office?” because this is learning from the consumer behavior. Additionally, we also have an AI-powered stack so that in the future you can have completely voice-based interactions with the car. You can simply ask the car Hey, I want to go there without having to even touch the screen, because this will avoid driver distraction. If you’re constantly touching the screen while driving, especially when you’re speeding down the highway, that’s not always a safe thing to do.
Allison: Right, right now is any of the HERE technology working towards automated driving?
Sowmya: Yes, we already have two L3 solutions out there. In fact the only two L3 solutions out there are powered by HERE Maps. You will see an example of BMW there also in the booth, and we also have Daimler or Mercedes that is doing an L3 solution based on HERE Maps. Lotus is working on adding some of the ADAS functionality in the future, but as a Lotus driver, my pleasure comes from driving the car myself rather than the car driving itself.
Allison: So that’s really important to know your audience, right. So you’re sitting in a big fat BMW 7 Series, you want to relax, right? But here you’re playing with the car.
Sowmya: Yes, so it’s that’s why for us it’s critical that the OEM makes this decision, so we have the technology stack to support navigation and automated driving and we leave the choice to the OEM as to what stack they would like to implement in the car.
Allison: That’s really really interesting, if people wanted to learn more about HERE, where would they go?
Sowmya: We have HERE We Go apps on the App Store, or they can go to HERE.com website.
Allison: Very good, thank you very much, this was fascinating, I didn’t know any of this before you started.
Sowmya: Thank you Allison.
[…] CES 2025: HERE Automotive Navigation Solutions […]