Just Auto Excellence Awards 2023: TomTom

TomTom, a leading innovator in navigation and mapping technology, has won two awards in the 2024 Just Auto Excellence Awards, in the Business Expansion and Innovation categories, for transforming traffic management and enhancing driving experiences through its advanced digital platforms and pioneering autonomous technology.

The Just Auto Excellence Awards celebrate the greatest achievements and innovations in the automotive industry. Powered by GlobalData’s business intelligence, the Awards recognize the people and companies that are driving change in the industry.

TomTom won the Business Expansion award for its TomTom Traffic service, which has revolutionized real-time traffic management through strategic partnerships and extensive data networks. The Innovation award recognizes TomTom Orbis Maps for setting new benchmarks in digital mapping with its comprehensive, AI-powered mapping capabilities that is crucial for the advancement of autonomous driving technologies.

Andy Marchant: It's a great achievement and we're proud to be recognized as a leader in innovation within the automotive industry. These accolades reflect our commitment to staying at the forefront of location technology, which we've been doing for over three decades now. They validate our ongoing efforts to develop high-quality, reliable solutions, like TomTom Orbis Maps, that not only meet current demands but are also future proof. Looking ahead, we continue to build solutions that enable even the most complex use cases in both public and private sectors. We're committed to driving the future of mobility with our location technology, and with TomTom Orbis Maps, we deliver high-definition maps to enable vehicle automation, increase driver safety, improve last-mile delivery and a plethora of other use cases. We're excited to showcase it to the world at CES 2025!

Andy Marchant: It takes time to build up such a high level of market penetration. We have been working with OEMs for close to two decades and traffic has played an important part in enhancing the navigation experience. By working with our partners and demonstrating the value we can deliver to their customers, many OEMs see TomTom Traffic as one of the most critical connected services. Trust also plays an important part. We have consistently shown that we are respectful of shared data. We have earned the trust of users that data shared delivers back value in terms of the traffic information and is not abused for advertising revenues.

Andy Marchant: Privacy is a top priority for us at TomTom, especially as move towards a world where connected cars are the norm. We have built a very comprehensive process that ensures device IDs are completely decoupled from the trace data before it is shared back to TomTom. This way we cannot identify an individual or vehicle type from the probe data received. While many companies strive to anonymize data, they often overlook how easily it can be traced back to individuals when linked with other sources, like surveillance cameras. That's why our approach is so critical. Even before GDPR, we were committed to privacy, making sure that location data is used responsibly. We never sell raw data that could potentially be traced back to someone. Instead, we aggregate and de-identify it, which enables us to provide valuable insights for applications like smart city planning, all while protecting individual privacy. For us, it's all about protecting user rights while harnessing the power of location data.

Andy Marchant: ​​​​​​​I think the word partnerships gives the clearest indication. They are partners, not customers. The way we work is to create true partnerships rather than just customer transactions. This approach allows us to bring our partners into the planning process early on, actively seeking their input to shape and inform our decisions. By fostering collaboration, we ensure that our partners are successful, which in turn drives our mutual growth. 

With initiatives like TomTom Orbis Maps and Overture, we’re able to leverage data from diverse sources, add our own proprietary data on top of that, validate it and get it enterprise ready. By doing this, we empower our partners to compete effectively in the market. As our CRO Mike Schoofs put it, we do the heavy lifting of mapping, so our partners can focus on their core business and what makes them unique. Through these strategic partnerships, we not only enrich our maps but we're also creating a connected ecosystem that benefits the whole industry.

Andy Marchant: A city as big as Paris is busy and congested without the impact of a global event like the Olympics. So, adding at least ten million more visitors, athletes, officials, VIPs and moving people and things suddenly becomes even more of a challenge. One of the biggest hurdles is ensuring real-time accuracy in the face of fluctuating crowds and road closures. To address this, we partnered with the French Ministry of Transport and local traffic authorities, giving us direct access to traffic management decisions. Having this insight allowed us to provide more accurate routing and travel times to all visitors and not forgetting locals, who still need to go about their daily routines. 

Apart from our work with city authorities, we also collaborate with system integrators to enable solutions that help cities move better. In the case of Paris, the Direction des Routes d'Île-de-France (DiRIF), the highway authority for the Paris metropolitan area, uses a sophisticated traffic data platform from PTV Group powered by TomTom Traffic. By utilizing the solution from PTV and TomTom, DiRIF ensures that road users across metropolitan Paris receive up-to-the-minute information on traffic conditions, journey times, and road closures, ultimately helping the city stay in motion even in high-profile events like the Olympics.

Andy Marchant: Each sector faces both common and unique challenges, but they all begin with traffic data. For car drivers, the key questions are about how traffic will impact their journey today, whether there are delays, and how to minimize their route's effectiveness. While yesterday's or last month's traffic might seem irrelevant, it plays a crucial role in informing our routing engine about journey times. Our AI and machine learning algorithms are constantly learning from real-time journeys, adapting route parameters to provide more predictable travel times and accurate estimated times of arrival. This means every trip can be smarter and more efficient, helping drivers navigate their day with confidence.

A city can also use real time traffic data to inform their services, providing public information services or adapting traffic light sequencing to manage congestion. They also use our analytical traffic data to understand trends and patterns of movement. This allows them to make smarter and more informed decisions on changes and improvements to road layouts of services. Equally delivery companies, ride hailing providers, or public transport operators can use these insights to better plan and schedule deliveries, pick up or adjust timetables. Because who wants a cold pizza because of traffic, or to miss their bus because of congestion. 

Traffic data is fundamental to urban planning and policy, improving road safety and developing solutions that make our lives better, but its true value emerges when placed in the context of a map. Maps transform diverse data into actionable intelligence, giving a clearer picture of how to plan cities and understand travel patterns. This is what makes TomTom unique in this space. Combining our expertise in mapping with our industry-leading traffic solutions, we ensure our digital maps are accurate, fresh, and as close to reality as possible, enhancing the reliability and effectiveness of smart urban planning efforts.

Andy Marchant: TomTom Orbis Maps combines of open and proprietary data to deliver the freshest, most accurate map available in the market. A key differentiator that makes us unique in the market is our approach to mapping, the very way in which our map is structured. Traditionally, maps have lacked an open standard. They’re all good and high quality, but they’re proprietary which makes them challenging and hard to work with. Apart from that, using only proprietary data limits the map's freshness and accuracy to that which a single company can maintain. TomTom Orbis Maps is built using an open standard. We take all our proprietary data, now compatible with the open standard, and add it to masses of open data, validate it and make it enterprise ready. With thousands of open map data editors contributing changes through edits in the open standard base map, we can facilitate a much shorter time between change in the real world and how this is reflected on the map. With TomTom Orbis Maps, we can offer our partners all the benefits and flexibility of an open data platform with none of the commercial drawbacks.

Andy Marchant: Speed of change is important, critical in fact, for automation use cases. If the self-driving system in a car cannot determine where it is, what actions to take, such as changing lanes, then at best it’s going to be a poor user experience, but at worst it could be fatal. We use AI to process the information being generated by sensor derived observations (SDO) in a short space of time and maintain the highest quality standards. Whilst AI seems to have arrived overnight, we have been using AI and machine learning for more than a decade to teach our systems how to handle complex information. Without AI, it would not be possible to process the information in the shortest time possible.

Andy Marchant: ​​​​​​​At TomTom, we believe it takes the world to map the world. The Overture Maps Foundation represents a groundbreaking step toward collaborative mapmaking, and it’s set to transform the way we think about location data. The world is constantly changing, and we need maps that reflect reality as close as possible. By bringing together multiple organizations, we can pool resources and knowledge to overcome the limitations that come with individual companies working in silos. Having a unified approach to building the base capabilities and understanding of the map means we can bring uniformity and consistency to location data in a way that makes it scalable. This means we can focus more energy on what makes our offerings unique, respond more swiftly to events and drive innovation in different industries.

Overture is playing an important role in helping establish new standards for location data, enabling better communication and understanding across different platforms. Ultimately, this collaboration will pave the way for a more connected and informed world, making maps not just a tool, but a vital resource for navigating our rapidly evolving environment.

Andy Marchant: The optimum blend of open data with our own proprietary map layers and third party data from partners enabled through our TomTom Orbis Maps sets us apart in the realm of automated driving. Our AI-driven approach ensures freshness, accuracy and reliability, and allows us to scale quickly, utilizing the best of all possible data sources from onboard sensor observations to aerial imagery, survey vehicles and community feedback. Having spent decades building technology, technology that has become industry standard, we optimize the human element in map creation and quality assurance while deeply understanding the unique challenges of our automotive customers, providing support to them throughout their development processes and through vehicle launch. TomTom offers a complete portfolio of products to support our partners’ needs, including fresh map content, live data and software. Our latest Orbis Map offers a global lane-level map with rich immersive data and a 3D lane border geometry on all road classes.

Andy Marchant: As we anticipate a future with more autonomous vehicles on the roads, TomTom will play a pivotal role in facilitating this transition by safely enabling automated driving on all road, worldwide. We provide dependable map data, including live traffic and hazards, to support real-time onboard decision making and Operational Design Domain (ODD) management features. Our focus is on growing the coverage of our Orbis HD map data to all road classes globally. As the number of connected autonomous vehicles on the road increases, TomTom will benefit from a growing pool of source data enabling us to continually enhance our products and develop more effective solutions for our partners.

Andy Marchant: Many organisations are using spatial data in their decision making process now than ever before and the range of use cases is growing. Many cities around the world are having to rethink their layouts and how the city needs to meet the needs of the communities for the future. Some are able to re-design road layouts, like thinking about more pedestrian areas and cycle lanes, while others are more constrained, due to the architecture, so need to look at changing traffic flow and adding smart signalling. 

TomTom has the data that can help these cities and businesses take the smartest decisions given their needs and situation. Think about the city of Los Angeles, who are planning for the next Olympic Games. By knowing where vehicles start and end their journeys, and how many travelling through certain areas at different times throughout the day, city planners can start to measure and model the impact of road closures, where to place signage, what cadence the traffic light sequencing needs to be at different times through the day, and other measures to keep the city moving effectively through the Games. All of this is made possible with the deep data insights that TomTom has.

In the coming years we aim to have even more drivers using our traffic services in their daily lives, which in turn provides more intelligence to city designers, who in turn can make the roads more congestion free, which brings a better travel experience to the communities in which those drivers live.

TomTom is the mapmaker bringing it all together to build the world’s smartest map. The company provides location data and technology to drivers, carmakers, businesses, and developers. TomTom’s application-ready maps, routing, real-time traffic, APIs and SDKs enable the dreamers and doers to shape the future of mobility.

Headquartered in Amsterdam with 3,700 employees around the globe, TomTom has been helping people find their way in the world for over 30 years.