When companies purchase map data from Hivemapper, that money is converted into tokens in the back end, which the system can then use to reward new or existing contributors with more tokens. As more roads are mapped and the map becomes more useful to end customers, their demand for tokens increases. Hivemapper rewards drivers and editors with its native token called HONEY. Where Waze users actively contribute to improve the product or simply for the love of maps, Hivemapper contributors are promised something that has, at least in theory, the potential to be financially valuable. Waze relies on volunteer user data to monitor and share real-time traffic information around the world. It’s a similar model to GPS app Waze, which was acquired by Google in 2013. Mapping with dashcams, the company says, means its data is continuously being refreshed, whereas much of Google’s Street View imagery, particularly outside of urban centers, is over a decade old. Its dashcams are equipped with a high-quality imager and precise GPS, and they go for $549.
Hivemapper relies on individual contributors around the world to collect its street-view data, rather than spending millions of dollars putting dedicated mapping vehicles on the road. Now the startup aims to map 10 million unique road kilometers by early next year. It took Google from 2007 to 2019 to collect 16.1 million kilometers of unique road data. However, Hivemapper collected this data over the last three months. Compared to Google’s 60 million kilometers, that’s small potatoes. Hivemapper said Thursday it collected more than 1 million kilometers (about 620,000 miles) of unique street-level imagery. But Gabe Nelson, Hivemapper’s head of operations, reckons the startup is reaching an inflection point that will lead to exponential scale. With only 2% of the world’s roads mapped, Hivemapper is still very much the underdog in this fight. Hivemapper, the startup that puts dashcams on ride-hail and delivery vehicles to map the world, is getting a little closer to its goal of toppling the B2B mapping empire that Google has built.
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