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map inauguration Hivemapper will launch a new dashcam later this year that its co - founder believes will race up seek to claw market share away from Google .
The new Hivemapper Bee camera , revealed Wednesday , is part of the caller ’s long time - tenacious get-up-and-go to decentralize mathematical function and make map data more low-priced and approachable . Hivemapper also hopes the camera will aid it expand beyond its core customer base of drive - hail and deliverance drivers to more owners of embodied fleet , potentially advance its ability to capture fresher , more valuable mapping data .
The company has already made famous progress using data point captured from its premature dashcam modeling mount in the auto of thousands of drive - hail and delivery drivers . Hivemapper announced , in conjunction with the new camera , that its biotic community of contributor have mapped 8 million kilometers ( 5 million miles ) of roads worldwide in 16 months — a milestone reached four clock time quicker than it contain Google to cross with Street View , according to the company . Hivemapper has say it want to cross 10 million kilometers by other 2024 , and tells TechCrunch it expects to hit that mark in April .
In general , the Bee is meant to be a more hand - off or “ passive ” camera . It ’s atmospheric condition - seal and more robust , to the point that driver can wax it outside their railway car if they wish . It also no longer needs to plug in to the Hivemapper smartphone app to upload footage to the companionship ’s waiter . The Bee does more on - equipment processing to the data it bewitch , too . All this is meant to make the Bee more attractive to incorporated fleet customers , CEO Ariel Seidman tells TechCrunch in an audience .
The Bee is better than Hivemapper ’s current photographic camera in other ways , with a larger GPS antenna for more precise locating , and the power to shoot 4 KiB footage at 30 frames per secondment . Preorders set out today and Hivemapper plans to start ship the television camera in the third quarter of this year . A version with an LTE chip will cost $ 549 while a Wi - Fi - only variant runs $ 449 .
“ Google can only refresh their maps once a twelvemonth , once every couple of age , ” due the high-pitched - tech , gamy - cost nature of its vehicles , Gabe Nelson , Hivemapper ’s head of operations tells TechCrunch in an audience . He says Hivemapper ’s crowdsource residential district can “ build up the kind of raw textile of mapmaking far , far quicker . ” Nelson says he expects that charge per unit to speed as it works through a backorder inclination of more than 15,000 customers and starts shipping the Bee .
But Hivemapper is n’t just trying to capture as many of the world ’s road as potential . “ The holy grail is absolute frequency , ” Seidman says . “ If you go to , let ’s say , Scottsdale , Arizona right now and you pick a random slur . We probably see that 80 to 100 times a year . Google watch that maybe once every 14 to 18 months . ”
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Not only does that better the mapping datum that Hivemapper turns around and sell to client , but it also afford up new business opportunity . Late last yr the party launched Scout , a “ location monitoring pecker ” that lets customers “ mark ” a location and receive double every metre a Hivemapper driver go along by . client can even place a “ H.M.S. Bounty ” on locations to incentivize drivers to pass by it more often .
The customers of Hivemapper’scamerasshould be practiced off with the Bee , too , according to the fellowship . Hivemapper remunerate contributors with a item holler Honey , which recently got heel to Coinbase ’s rally . The party says the Bee will create in high spirits - quality single-valued function datum that is less likely to be reject upon submission . ( Hivemapper countenance masses do quality self-assurance checks on mapping datum and perform labeling in rally for Honey tokens , and also uses AI to do some of this as well . ) And pretend the television camera a mo more self-directed — like auto - uploading datum — mean contributors will be less potential to forget to do it themselves .
Of course , pitching mass on being reward with token is not as easy now as it was a few years ago when the web3 craze briefly take cargo area . Nelson says there are plenty of people who want to bribe a Hivemapper camera for other reasons .
“ I think what we ’ve really adjudicate to say is , wait , if you ’re a professional driver , if you ’re an Uber number one wood or Lyft driver or Amazon flex driver , and you already necessitate this dashcam twist because it provides you safety and other capableness , then this is a groovy equipment because it allow those capableness and it also repay with this relic , ” Nelson aver . “ For a lot of them , they in reality enjoy the experience of building something that they can see themselves . ”
It ’s a step back from the company ’s rah - rah talk in 2022 of the tokencreating“loyalty ” and “ passion , ” though an perceivable one .
“ I think people need to be fair honor for the datum that they ’re contribute , as they should be , ” Nelson says . “ But there has to be , specially in the case of a dah cam , there has to be other value utility to the driver that they ’re get above and beyond just a item . ”
