Sending map data from Google Maps to your car

Over the past year, one of the most linked and commented posts on this blog has been the one about the Ford Focus navigation system. I continue to take interest in the news in this field because I think that one of the big innovations in the next years in the car industry will be figuring out how to make the car a true media and Internet device while being subject to the reliability and safety requirements that exceed those of regular desktop computing.

One recent step ahead here comes from Google who now lets you send Google Maps data to your BMW, starting in Germany and working initially only with BMW Assist. They have produced a video that says it all (see below). Maybe the user interface is too complicated with all those knobs and buttons and selectors, not sure, I haven’t used BMW Assist myself yet. But it’s definitely a milestone in car navigation.

And of course the “new Europe” lags behind in implementation and I doubt you will be able to buy these things (or have map data for) anywhere eastwards of Germany any time soon. Just take a look at this screenshot towards the end of this same video and you see that while in practice the road network eastwards of Germany (Poland Baltics etc) is as dense as in Western Europe, in Google Maps you see a lot of empty space there.