Japanese carmakers aim for world domination with new ‘smart’ DoCoMo sat-nav

Toyota’s Lexus already features some high-end navigation technology but DoCoMo aims to make it even simpler to use by moving route planning into the cloud.

Telecoms giant NTT DoCoMo (Japanese) has teamed up with Toyota, Nissan and Honda and put together a car navigation system that makes finding what you want a breeze.

Starting November 20, select DoCoMo cell phone models and cars from one of the three auto makers that have been equipped with a GPS system, will be able to avoid all that fiddling around with the sat-nav that’s such a pain before any road trip.

Instead, they can just fire up a phone app called "Chizu Appli" (Map Application) and browse destinations listed by category, distance, cost and so on to find that ace new sushi restaurant or theme park.

After flicking through photos and the all-important crowd-sourced reviews on the handset, it’s then a simple matter of clickety-click and the directions fly to the car’s navigation system via the computing cloud that is DoCoMo’s telematics center.

It appears that the gang is using Japan as a test track before it launches its bid for world domination, (or release) as it were. Can anyone say “iPhone app up next?"

However, any drivers still keen on those stimulating exploratory drives ending up who-knows-where should probably hand in their keys right about now.