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New Toyota cars in Japan will have up-to-date roadmap and traffic information for electronically mapping the quickest routes in an upgrade of network-linking technology now offered mostly in luxury models.
The service, scheduled for rollout next month only for Japan, includes “map on demand,” which constantly updates data about the nation’s roads in navigation equipment through a mobile download, Toyota said on Tuesday.
The service, an upgrade of the G-Book services that Toyota started five years ago, will be offered in all new models.
The basic service, G-Book mX, which uses a mobile phone connection, is free. The driver needs to buy navigation equipment and pay the phone bill.
Besides constantly updating map data, the movements of cars on the roads, monitored by GPS tracking, also gets transmitted to a computer system so traffic congestion information can in turn be relayed to Toyota cars, officials said.
The new service is more accurate than the electronic route-mapping systems now available, they said, because it has access to information collected from thousands of Toyota cars on the road and roadmap information is updated regularly.
Toyota Executive Vice President Akio Toyoda said a similar service will be offered in China but did not say when. Other overseas plans are still undecided.
Source:
SMH
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