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Germany's luxury carmakers including Daimler's Mercedes,
Volkswagen's Audi division and BMW bought HERE for 2.5 billion
euros ($2.8 billion) from Nokia last year to create an
alternative digital mapping business to Google.
"We are talking to Amazon, Microsoft and many auto makers,"
Thomas Weber, a Daimler board member in charge of research and
development, told the Wall Street Journal in an interview. A
Daimler spokesman on Wednesday confirmed the remarks.
Earlier this month sources told Reuters that Amazon and
Microsoft were in talks with the carmakers.
The consortium needs cloud computing providers to manage the
mass of data collected from sensors on board thousands of
Mercedes, BMW and Audi cars. The data about traffic and road
conditions is then fed into digital maps.
"We need a cloud provider to handle the huge amounts of data
created by HERE and its users. We haven’t taken any decisions
yet," Weber told the Wall Street Journal.
Intelligent mapping systems supply information to control
self-driving cars, which are equipped with street-scanning
sensors to measure traffic and road conditions. This location
data can in turn be shared with other map users.
(Reporting by Ilona Wissenbach; Writing by Edward Taylor;
Editing by Keith Weir)
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