GPS & Sat-Nav Blog

ProNav for Western Europe

Tom-Tom, Garmin and Navigon amongst others all have ranges of products with Western Europe maps and we are frequently asked about a Western European version for ProNav, our navigation system designed for HGV's and all larger vehicles.

However, the mainstream Western European navigators all assume that you are driving a car and are essentially unrestricted in where you can go.

To make a Sat-Nav suitable for HGV's a lot of additional information is needed on physical and legal restrictions, such as width, height and weight limits etc, we call this the "Truck Attributes", and quite simply this data is not complete yet.

There are two mapping companies who provide the map data for just about everyone making navigators, Tele Atlas and Navteq. Neither of these companies has completed mapping information for large vehicles. Navteq, used by us and Garmin amongst others, will not complete all countries in Western Europe until end of 2011. Tele Atlas, used by Tom-Tom, has similar coverage to Navteq right now, and as Tele Atlas and Navteq are usually close together in what they have available, I am sure they will not have completed all of Western Europe until around the same time.

So no-one will have a genuine full coverage Western Europe large vehicle navigator until 2012.

However, the data for the UK, Germany, Austria and Benelux is quite good, with France described as not too bad for major routes. So it is possible to come out with a reasonable solution this year.

The trick will be to let the driver know how good the restriction data is for the route taken -- Navevo have some ideas on how to do this -- but they need to do some testing to make sure drivers easily understand what they are being told.

Navevo plan to have a Western Europe version available towards the end of 2009 and this will also be available as an upgrade for all current ProNav owners.

We will let you know as soon as we get to take a look at one.