HERE spent $767 million in 2016 on hi-res mapping for driverless cars

HERE, the road-mapping company owned by BMW, Audi and Mercedes, spent $767 million on R&D in 2016, reports Reuters.

HERE was bought by the Germans for €2.55 billion in 2015. A 15% stake was sold to Intel earlier this year. Another, smaller, stake was sold to Pioneer and a 10% stake was sold to to NavInfo, Tencent and GIC.

HERE may need to sell more stakes to pay for its R&D efforts.

“Everything we do is in testing phase,” says HERE CEO Edzard Overbeek, “this is not a simple problem to solve, otherwise it would have been solved.”

Although some driverless car developers feel that maps down to 10cm resolution are needed, others, like the UK’s FiveAI, think they are not needed and that sensors and cameras can guide cars without the need for high resolution maps.

Others compiling high resolution maps for driverless cars are Google and Tom Tom.