News Release：Pioneer and ZENRIN Expand Partnership to Address Industrial Mobility Issues

Pioneer Corporation and ZENRIN Co., Ltd. today announced that they have agreed to expand the scope of partnership to address industrial and commercial mobility issues and jointly develop and offer new DX solutions and services to business operators.

Under the partnership agreement signed in August 2022, the two companies have brought their technology assets and expertise together to achieve carbon neutrality in the mobility and energy industries. More specifically, we have jointly developed and offered solutions and services for EVs, including EV range prediction, EV route optimization, and EV fleet consulting and productivity simulation.

The expanded partnership between Pioneer and ZENRIN will enable the two companies to develop and offer an even broader range of DX solutions and services. Those solutions and services are designed to better address driver shortages, deteriorating working environments, road accidents, and environmental concerns among other issues that trucking and taxi companies, field maintenance service providers, private security agencies, and home nursing care service providers are facing today.

Joint projects agreed upon under the expanded partnership

Pioneer has brought to the partnership web APIs (application programming interfaces) based on its proprietary route-optimization technology, as well as its carbon-neutrality solutions such as fuel- and energy-efficiency prediction and carbon-emission visualization. Pioneer has also offered navigation SDKs (software development kits) that integrate the above-mentioned web APIs to make it easier to develop solutions and services tailored to ICE (internal combustion engine) vehicles, HVs (hybrid vehicles), BEVs (battery electric vehicles), and two-wheelers. ZENRIN has brought to the partnership the industry’s most comprehensive and detailed road map data, as well as its proprietary residential map data that includes properties’ names and addresses, residents’ names, and locations of entrances to properties. The two companies leverage these industry-leading assets to build a unique technology infrastructure on which to jointly develop and offer DX solutions and services designed to help trucking and delivery service providers and operators of commercial vehicles achieve more efficient, low-carbon operations in last—mile deliveries of goods and in day-to-day fleet management.

(1) Develop mobile SDKs for integrated use of residential map data, as well as new UIs and UXs

We will develop mobile SDK solutions and services for seamlessly integrating supplementary data into digital maps, which enable delivery service providers to upload customer-specific information and other supplementary information into digital residential map data for pop-up viewing. We will also develop new UIs and UXs tailored to the use cases and mobility needs specific to each industry sector.

(2) Develop and offer solutions for sustainable mobility

We will leverage our carbon-neutrality solutions to develop sustainable mobility solutions and will offer them as a navigation SDK that enables the development of integrated services for a variety of ICE vehicles, HVs, BEVs, and two-wheelers in commercial use.

(3) Market solutions and services through mutually complementary sales channels

We will offer these jointly developed DX solutions and services through our respective sales channels, which are mutually complementary in reaching a wider range of corporate customers facing mobility issues in diverse industries.

The two companies’ competitive advantages brought to the partnership

Pioneer

Pioneer leverages Piomatix, its proprietary mobility AI platform, to pursue the mobility solution and service business that encompasses the telematics service supported by in-car systems and mobility data, services developed for smartphones, and support for SDKs and web APIs. Its cloud-based Piomatix for Green platform, which combines the company’s sophisticated vehicle routing technology with its patented technology for fuel- and energy-efficiency prediction, provides a basis for developing solutions for reducing vehicle carbon emissions.

For details about Piomatix, visit
Piomatix

ZENRIN

ZENRIN’s field-research vehicles and staff travel around the country to gather real-world geographic information as a basis for building and updating the company’s time and space database. The geographic information the company collects is used not only to develop digital and physical maps but to integrate high-precision location data and solution services and provide content in a manner that best meets customers’ diverse needs. The company partners with other businesses to build an industrial infrastructure that addresses a variety of community and business issues.