OnStar and MapQuest hook up on in-car navigation
A little while ago we reported on BMW using Google Maps to help motorists who might be directionally challenged. These BMW owners can conduct a trvael search on their home computer and beam the destination straight to their Bimmer. It makes entering the destination into the car's navi unnecessary and the whole process a little safer and error proof. Well, now we can officially declare this a trend between mappers and automakers. GM has teamed up with Mapquest to allow Turn-by-Turn Mapquest search results to be sent directly to an OnStar-equipped vehicle. According to the press release, "This new Turn-by-Turn service enhancement, OnStar Web Destination Entry, will allow subscribers to conveniently use MapQuest.com to research and plan their driving destinations with more than 15 million points-of-interest available through the number one mapping Web site." More than two million 2007 GM models will get the upgrade and another 3 million will be added in 2008. The service upgrade will start with a pilot program this summer and will be opened up to all OnStar subscribers with Turn-by-Turn navigation-capable vehicles by the end of the year. In the interest of full disclosure, AOL is the parent company of both Weblogs, Inc. and Mapquest.
[Source: GM]
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Lithous 12:58PM (4/25/2007)
Sorry guys, this is kinda funny. See how big companies can have communications problems? I mean, Weblogs, Inc is under the same umbrella as Mapquest... Yet the source cited at the bottom of the article envolving Mapquest is not Mapquest but GM. Next time any of you wonder how the left hand doesn't know what the right hand is doing, well, it is called reality. Sorry, I forgot only GM is bad when they are guilty of it.
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Ed Kapuscinski 1:15PM (4/25/2007)
Wow, how GM of them... pick the service provider that people are abandoning, and that was top of the line 5 years ago...
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beaker 1:11PM (4/25/2007)
WARNING!!!
Do not use this if you are driving through non-grid, hilly cities like San Francisco or Pittsburgh. You will end up driving down stairs or never even finding particular streets.
Mapquest (and the others that use the same engine, i.e. Yahoo & Google) don't work most of the time in "unusual" cities.
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Frank 1:24PM (4/25/2007)
MapQuest has never failed me. I live in the Denver area and use them exclusively for trips into the mountains, including their place find technology. So I have no idea what you are talking about with "unusual" cities. They continue to improve their technology and I'm betting on them to be there when all the others have moved on.
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Jeff Banks 1:30PM (4/25/2007)
I like Mapquest and I use it a lot, but sometimes it likes to send you through some "iffy" routes to get to a certain place. For example, it tried to send me through Decker Canyon (really dangerous windy road) instead of adding a couple of minutes to my drive and suggesting a freeway. Decker Canyon is a fun ride, but not when you're driving an old flipworthy Nissan Pathfinder full of people.
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Lithous 1:34PM (4/25/2007)
"Wow, how GM of them... pick the service provider that people are abandoning, and that was top of the line 5 years ago..."
The difference of why people are going to google is the GRAPHICAL USER INTERFACE (AJAX usage) and since the GUI will not be used with OnStar (just the underlying map data) I don't think it matters which is more popular as I am sure they are both accurate and have many points of interest.
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beaker 2:33PM (4/25/2007)
Frank,
I've had Mapquest do several really bizzare things:
- Direct me to drive down stairs (in some cities stairways are legal streets).
- Tell me to turn off an overpass onto a street below (never did figure out how to get to the other street).
Those are above and beyond the standard bugs
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Mike 7:12PM (4/25/2007)
What, you think Mapquest is the only driving direction and map service that gives you bad directions from time to time? I've used all of them, and I find that they are reliable enough to follow enough that I dont need to open a web blog site about em.
If they picked expedia, you'd be saying the same thing. However.... if Toyota began offering anything like OnStar, and they picked Mapquest... everyone would be talking about how good of a thing it is.
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