THE rush towards autonomous cars is creating strange bedfellows and one of the most curious to date is the purchase by tyre-maker Bridgestone of the TomTom Telematics business based in Europe, the Middle East and Africa.

TomTom is renowned for its automotive satellite navigation mapping devices which accounted for 80 per cent of its revenue, and it is keeping that side of the business, but what has gone on the block is its European, Middle East and Africa telematics business which will give Bridgestone access to the 880,000 fleet vehicles using the TomTom Telematics logistics system.

The move gives Bridgestone, the globe’s largest tyre-maker, a big opportunity to become a major player in the coming world of autonomous vehicles, especially in trucks and shared logistics, as the TomTom system is a leader in connected vehicle technology.

 

The purchase price of $A1.3 billion was paid by Bridgestone’s European, Middle East and Asian subsidiary. Bridgestone’s success follows interest in TomTom Telematics from Microsoft, Daimler, Apple, Michelin and HERE maps which is backed by Audi, Daimler, BMW and Intel, among others, with links to Amazon.

Tyre industry journals speculated that Bridgestone would get access to real-time intelligence from client’s cars and trucks using sensors in tyres to monitor tyre wear and tyre maintenance and replacement strategies as well as gain vast knowledge on road conditions across its world markets.

The data flowing into the company and the analysis of that data is said to give Bridgestone a key advantage in the approaching shared mobility environment.

To understand the strategic importance of this acquisition, one has to understand the telematics market and TomTom’s position in it.

The telematics market is expected to achieve revenue of $A300 million by 2022 – a compound annual growth rate of 30 percent from 2017.

Fleet operators are finding telematics is a vital tool for monitoring the efficiency of their vehicle operations with real-time tracking of exact vehicle locations and behaviors of drivers on the road with intelligence feeding back into tyre wear, drivetrain wear and tear and fuel consumption.

TomTom is Europe’s biggest telematics services company. According to industry sources, in total, TomTom monitors over 800 million GPS positions, 3.3 million trips, and 200 million inbound messages from across the globe each day.

By John Mellor