HERE Rides on SEA’s Electronic Vehicle Trends
EITN was in Bangkok at the HERE Technologies media roundtable recently, where the location data and technology leader shared its latest development plans for the SEA market.
Rooted in the SEA region for over 16 years, HERE has 2 offices in Malaysia – being Kuala Lumpur and Kuching, for close to 12 years and with existing customers such as Proton, Alam Flora and more. Nonetheless, the company’s key focus market is Thailand where many of the world’s leading automotive manufacturers such as BMW, Ford, Toyota and Honda have set up their factories. (Note: On a revenue basis in SEA, Thailand and Indonesia are almost at par being the main contributors to HERE global, with Vietnam coming in next.)
At the global level, Silicon Valley-born HERE, has built a solid credibility and brand as a PaaS company with over 35 years in location expertise, being the #1 location platform brand in many independent reports.
HERE also boasts a huge developer community of over 2 million indirect developers, a quarter of which are direct developers from the AWS community.
Boom in EV
According to Abhijit Sengupta, Senior Director & Head of Business for Southeast Asia and India at HERE, the region is experiencing a boom in Electric Vehicles (EVs), driven by the fact that environmental sustainability is at the top of the mind of end users.
“Globally, there are some 450 new EV models to be launched in 2022 alone. HERE is providing more advanced EV routing systems that can manage the ‘range anxiety’ of EV drivers by letting them know, amongst others, exactly how far their vehicles can travel for planned routes, where to charge their cars, how to pay for parking spots that allow for charging, etc.”
The following are 2 interactive maps that give an idea how HERE’s EV Routing System work for EVs:-
https://app.developer.here.com/my-ev-charging-infrastructure/
Abhijit also shares that Thailand has become the manufacturing hub of automotive for Asia Pacific, and it is also the 1st country in region to offer incentives to EV manufacturers to reduce taxes to their car sales.
Generally, Thailand is also the most conducive place for car manufacturers to set up plant, with no need to have any joint venture with any local body, unlike Indonesia or Malaysia. “The Thai government has been very open and supportive in this aspect that is why so many international car brands have their factories here.”
Connected Driving is the other key trends that is thrusting HERE forward. Abhijit says that 48% of new cars shipped have in-built connectivity, and this is to double by 2030. “We sees opportunities to provide next level of turn-by-turn navigation experience to car users.”
Driver Assistance, a feature to ease driving tension and increase the fun in driving experiences, is the other factor. Most car have L1/L2 level of automation, ie cruise control, parking assist via sensors. “But HERE’s Advanced Driver Assistance System (ADAS) has evolved to allow more disengagement from the driving wheel; in this aspect we are working with Mercedes to build the HD Live Map,” he says.
The massive number of motorcycles and 2-wheelers in SEA (up to 80% of households here have at least one bike) makes it the largest motorcycle market for HERE, who is also promoting its navigational systems for 2-wheelers.
Some of the some smaller trends that are also significant being the following:-
- Transportation & Logistic: -Transportation makes up 40% of total cost compared to factors such as warehousing, exports and imports, packing.
- Supply chain visibility is where the first middle and last mile, requires full end-to-end journey overview, together with solutions that promote safety and efficient deliveries.
- E-Commerce Delivery requires solutions that emphasises the importance of the last mite, ETA info for fresh produces, precise pick up and drop off points for mobile operators.
- On-demand resources is on the rise with the gig economy, and as the workforce is becoming a part of this dynamic ecosystem. Location technology plays an increasingly important role in enabling this to happen.
Abhijit says that when it comes to challenges, the biggest lies for HERE to obtain and integrate localised data sets of roads, traffic and address into their map and location navigational systems.
“This challenge is the same in every SEA country, where the data is constantly changing and it is not easy to obtain it from local city planners, municipal councils.
Unlike Singapore where there is a free ‘Data Mall’ where software developers and technology providers can pull data from, in other countries we work intensively with content aggregators to address this issue.”
Jason Jameson, Senior VP and GM for APAC shared that during the pandemic period, HERE has kept busy in seven new areas of product development since 2019, which are are already now in general availability in Asia Pacific – being EV Routing API, HERE Navigation Map ‘ISA’, HERE ADAS Map, HERE Map Making, Supply Chain Solutions and lastly it’s 2-wheeler solutions
Vietnam’s VinFast Jumps onboard HERE
Jason also shares that Vietnam’s leading automobiles provider VinFast will be integrating HERE technology (ISA ‘Intelligent Speed Assistance’ Map) into their two of VinFast’s electric SUVs (VF 8 and VF 9) vehicles. (Note: VinFast is a member of the VinGroup conglomerate that has a total capitalization of USD35 billion.)
The main reason for this is for VinFast to better penetrate the European market, by complying with the European Union’s (EU) General Safety Regulations for driver safety; as starting in July 2022, ISA is mandatory for all new-model vehicles produced for the European markets; and two years later from July 2024, every new vehicle sold in the EU with ISA functionality.
The HERE ISA Map provides information on both explicit and implicit speed limits visible on road signs. This would provide drivers with this important safety guidance on local speed regulations – especially useful when drivers have difficulty recognizing situational speed limits, are distracted, have missed traffic signs and warnings, or have impaired visibility due to bad weather.
Meanwhile ISA is an in-vehicle driver assistance feature that seeks to reduce the number of road accidents and traffic casualties. It informs drivers about a road’s speed limit and warns them if they exceed the speed limit.
Other new partnerships in 2022 that HERE announced are with Yojee, a logistic software leader – in various capacities to unlock value in global supply chain.
In India, HERE has partnered with Zoomcar to reveal India’s best and worst driver list.