Google’s HD map is coming to the Polestar 3 electric SUV
An animation that shows the Polestar 3's suite of sensors in action. An animation that shows the Polestar 3's suite of sensors in action. On Thursday at this year's Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, the electric vehicle maker Polestar announced that its forthcoming Polestar 3 SUV will be one of the first vehicles in the world to use Google's new high-definition map.
Unlike the Google Maps you might access on your phone, the new HD map is much more accurate, pinpointing your position on the road down to an inch or less instead of several feet. Although that accuracy is not particularly useful to someone on a smartphone, it's vitally important for partially or fully automated driving systems that need to know which lane they're in or exactly where a road obstacle might be.
Google has evidently been building its HD map for some time-in 2017, its Street View mapping cars started sporting lidar scanners. And I'm not entirely surprised that Google is debuting the new map in a Polestar-the young automaker was also the first to use Android Automotive OS, which debuted in the Polestar 2 but can now be found in an increasing number of new vehicles from many different automakers.