The era of phone-based navigation is ending. Your dashboard is next

We once fumbled with CD-ROMs to update our car's navigation system. We then mounted smartphones on our dashboards, trusting instantly updated maps to guide us.

But a quiet revolution is brewing under the hood, and it’s driven by data your phone can’t even see.

HERE is preparing to flip the script. While your phone apps rely on inferring traffic patterns from moving devices, HERE is tapping into the vehicle itself. This goes far beyond GPS coordinates. It draws on terabytes of live sensor data, from windshield wipers detecting rain to traction control sensing ice and cameras identifying lane closures in real time.

This marks the dawn of HERE UniMap, a unified, living mapping system that enables changes in the physical reality to be visible on the map within 24 hours. It stores all data in a single, semantically-aligned environment and enables customers to combine and connect data sets. An electric vehicle can anticipate the exact hill grade and temperature ahead, calculating range with a level of precision no phone app can match. An autonomous system can operate through snow because it is not relying on a camera alone, but on a high-definition, lane-specific map that updates continuously.

The battle for the dashboard is heating up. The days of relying on a generic phone app for complex driving tasks are numbered. The future of navigation is native, intelligent and deeply integrated into the machine you are driving.

Ready to see how your car is about to outsmart your smartphone?

Check out the full story on MotorTrend.