The company, which specializes in real-time traffic data, powers a wide variety of in-vehicle navigation systems, mobile apps, commercial fleet management systems and even Google Maps. The secret behind Inrix’s success that it collects lots of data from lots of drivers in order to help everyone get where they’re going faster. But saving commuters driving time is just the beginning of the company’s plans. It thinks traffic data can help change a wide variety of industries, maybe even the world.

100 million devices and 1.8 million miles of road

That a traffic-data company could contribute to such macro-level change might seem laughable until you get a sense of Inrix’s scale. According to founder and CEO Bryan Mistele, 6 of the 8 auto companies with built-in navigations systems (including Ford, BMW and Audi) use and share Inrix data, as do 8 of the 12 top navigation apps in Apple’s App Store (including MapQuest, Garmin, Microsoft and Telenav). Many of the commercial trucks we see on the streets are sharing data with Inrix too, and even “dumb” phones without GPS and internet connections are sharing location data with the company through cell towers.

All told, the company counts more than 100 million endpoints as its data sources and covers more than 1.8 million miles of road worldwide, Mistele said. Its total volume of traffic data, which the company crunches through constantly to generate real-time information, is more than 500TB. It runs its own homemade big data infrastructure, Mistele says, because “there are no off-the-shelf packages [not even Hadoop] that in real time can process that amount of data.”

From real-time to predicting the future

And generating real-time traffic conditions is only a portion of what Inrix provides to the customers that pay for its services. The company also brings in, among other sources, weather data, accident data and sensor data in order to provide insights into how traffic is likely to shape up. By factoring in the location, number of cars involved and whether there are injuries, for example, Mistele said Inrix can predict how long an accident will hold up traffic at a given location.

Because it has so much historical information from such a broad set of sources, Inrix is also able discern reality from situations that might confuse models that are only concerned with whether vehicles are moving or stopped. Mistele said the system is smart enough to know that a car sitting at a stoplight on an arterial road is not akin to a car stuck in a traffic jam on a highway, or that taxi cabs and UPS trucks stopping and going are not signs of stop-and-go traffic conditions.

Disrupting industries, and urban sprawl

Aside from consumer navigation apps and those helping commercial drivers manage their delivery schedules, a number of state, regional municipal and even national governments use Inrix’s analytic services to help gauge a number of issues relating to road management. Mistele said the company has actually disrupted the media industry, too, by helping spur the end of traffic helicoptors and “traffic on the nines” on local radio stations. For customers like Clear Channel, it’s just a lot cheaper, easier and more effective to feed their on-air talent with real-time data and information that someone else has put together.

“This is a space where there has been a complete transformation [thanks to big data and crowd sourcing],” Mistele said.

As great as it is helping people get from Point A to Point B, though, being able to get a handle on traffic data could have even further-ranging effects. Insurance companies can use the data to determine more-accurate rates, and some hedge funds are using Inrix’s data as a means for determining economic health — more drivers during rush hour means more people working, Mistele explained. During the London Olympics, data from mobile devices helped officials monitor the movement of people, not traffic, throughout the city.

A shot of Xerox’s City Manager for parking

As cities continue to grow and congestion becomes an even bigger problem in terms of decreasing productivity and increasing pollution, it’s that kind of data from companies such as Inrix (or competitors Nokia Navteq and TomTom) that could help mitigate the effects. Xerox, for example, already uses Inrix data as part of its efforts to help cities improve urban planning around roads, mass transit and parking spaces. The more that city planners know about how, where and when their citizens move, the better they can plan transit systems that address those realities, or that can more easily respond when problems arise.

“Give people better data, give governments better data,” said Mistele, “and you can have a huge impact on one of the biggest of the biggest problems in our society.”

Feature image courtesy of Shutterstock user TonyV3112.

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A TomTom representative told Reuters Friday, ”There is a difference between a map and an app. We don’t develop the app. We license the map data, which is like a foundation. The customer can build on top of that, but we license the same mapping data to all our customers.” The representative also defended the quality of the company’s data, saying, ”We don’t know what is causing the issues (on the Apple maps) but from our perspective the quality of our data is great and we stand behind it.”

TomTom’s comments come two days after Waze, another company licensing information for Apple’s maps, weighed in on the quality of the app before most people had even used it. Perhaps anticipating backlash, Waze CEO Noam Bardin told Business Insider that Apple’s maps weren’t very accurate because of its use of TomTom’s data. ”Apple went out and partnered with the weakest player … They’re now coming out with the lowest, weakest data set and they’re competing against Google, which has the highest data set.”

Apple, for its part, tacitly acknowledged the Maps app is a work-in-progress. The company said Thursday, “We launched this new map service knowing it is a major initiative and that we are just getting started with it. Maps is a cloud-based solution and the more people use it, the better it will get. We appreciate all of the customer feedback and are working hard to make the customer experience even better.”

Image courtesy of Flickr user Simone Lovati

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Users of the $49.95 app — it’s a one-time fee — can supplement their navigation and traffic map needs with these new social location apps that are typically used in a standalone version. Link the TomTom app to your Foursquare account and you can find, navigate and check-in to Foursquare locations in a single app:

Find millions of exciting places to visit by searching with Foursquare, even if you are not a Foursquare user. Log into Foursquare and you can also check in at your destination so you don’t miss any points on your way to becoming its new mayor.

The same holds true for the Facebook Places integration from the last software update, making it easier and faster to find locations that friends have recommended.

Given that GPS-enabled smartphones and navigation software have provided a lower-cost option than single-purpose navigation devices, this is a smart move by TomTom. Adding both search and check-in features for Foursquare and Facebook adds value to users of both social networking services, allowing companies such as TomTom to not be shut out of revenues by Google Maps and other mobile apps that replace standalone GPS navigation devices.

This So-Lo-Mo trend is a concept we’ll be talking about in more detail next month at our Mobilize 2012 event in San Francisco. In particular, we’ll be chatting with Zillow CEO Spencer Rascoff to better understand how the traditional location-based real estate market is moving towards a mobile-friendly environment with social networking opportunities.

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The Campbell, Calif.-based startup installs and networks charging stations for customers, such as businesses and government agencies, and it also makes money from providing charging services. Coulomb installs equipment from its own branded charging units or from other makers.

The Series D round included investors Braemar Energy Ventures, Kleiner Perkins, Toyota Tsusho and Rho Ventures. Kleiner has also invested in electric car makers Fisker Automotive, which makes an extended range plug-in sports car, and Proterra, an electric bus maker.

The electric car market is only emerging, but if it takes off, then charging station services will be among the substantial sources of revenues in the market. Though electric car sales are tiny, the battle over service stations already has intensified, particularly with the recently announced plan by NRG Energy to install and own hundreds of charging stations as part of its $100 million legal settlement with California. NRG released details of its settlement last month and is waiting approval from the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission.

Entering the market early gives companies a first-mover advantage to woo consumers and build loyalty. But it also sets up those same charging equipment and service companies to failure if the electric car market doesn’t grow as quickly as anticipated. Success will hinge on these charging station companies figuring where the growth is and avoiding installing too many charging stations in one region.

Coulomb’s previous fundraising efforts included raising $15 million and another $14 million, both in 2010, and $3.8 million in 2009. The company also obtained a $15 million grant from the federal government to install charging stations. Last year, it teamed up with navigation equipment company TomTom to provide charging locator, reservation and information services for plug-in car drivers.

Photo courtesy of Coulomb Technologies

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The idea behind the partnership is that the electric car owner can tap into the car’s navigation service to use GPS to show the driver the nearest charging station, enabling the driver to know how far the drive is until the car can charge up. The wireless network is thus used as a sort-of safety net, turning the car into a device on one edge of the network, connected to the nearest charger at another edge of the network.

Range anxiety is something the electric car industry is particularly worried about. Because electric vehicles rely on a battery that holds a certain amount of power, and charging the vehicle in standard outlets takes hours (anywhere from four to a dozen), there’s a dedicated range inherent in battery-powered vehicles. It’s the same kind of limit on the gas tank of a traditional car, but filling up a gas tank takes minutes, and gas stations are ubiquitous. For the series hybrid Volt, from GM, the electric range is 40 miles before a secondary engine kicks in after that to make its range “hundreds of miles,” and for the all-electric Nissan LEAF, the range is at most 100 miles (see our range comparison chart here).

A startup like Coulomb is smart to look to partner with navigation services companies. Electric car charging hardware will eventually be a commodity business, filled with large hardware players like GE, which will start selling its WattStation at 60 Lowe’s retailer locations later this year. Coulomb needs to grow its partnerships and network as large as possible in the early days of the EV market, before electric car charging becomes totally dominated by these types of large companies.

Having the ability to reserve charging stations on the fly, could be a useful service when/if a critical mass of electric cars ever hits the roads. Coulomb also offers this type of service via a mobile app for the iPhone and Android phones , which taps into the phone’s GPS to provide locator and reservation services.

Electric vehicle makers like Nissan and GM are using the GPS in the cell phone to offer similar range anxiety reducing tools. I tested the LEAF’s in-vehicle digital system, called EV-IT, that uses communication networks (via AT&T) and a dashboard to keep the driver constantly updated about the range of the vehicle and the closest charge point. The LEAF also has a dedicated iPhone application, and LEAF owners are able to remotely monitor the state of charge of the battery, and can pre-heat or pre-cool the car.

The Volt also has a smartphone app that will enable drivers to control certain vehicle functions through their smartphones, including scheduling battery charge times, viewing whether or not the vehicle is plugged in, checking voltage at a charger, and getting text notifications of interruption or completion of a battery charge. GM is relying on its connected OnStar system as the heart of the Volt’s digital services.

Images courtesy of Nissan, Coulomb Technologies and TomTom.

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That’s the upshot of a new study from Berg Insight, which found that the number of mobile users utilizing a turn-by-turn navigation service or application on their handset increased 57 percent from the first half of 2009 to the first half of 2010, hitting 44 million worldwide. Berg Insight is forecasting a compound annual growth rate of 33 percent, which will bring us to 195 million mobile navigation users by 2015.

Much of this growth stems from free solutions like Google Maps Navigation and Nokia’s Ovi Maps but it’s also coming from carriers like Sprint and others who are bundling in navigation services as part of data packages. The result is that navigation is following the lead of voice calls, which became extremely cheap or free with the advent of VoIP. Navigation, which like telephony is benefiting from lower costs, is becoming democratized, and if you don’t have a free or subsidized solution now, you will soon.

Already in the U.S., mobile navigation services have already reached 8 percent of all users, said Berg. Overall, 70 percent of U.S. handsets are now equipped with GPS.

This is all forcing traditional personal navigation device makers to adapt. Some like TomTom (s tom2) are pushing out branded mobile apps, while rival Garmin is settling its own Nuvifone, though with some disappointing results.

There is still room to play in the PND market at the high end and perhaps at the low end as well. PND sales won’t evaporate; it’s just not headed for big growth in the long run. The larger story is that turn-by-turn navigation is becoming a core service for mobile users that is hitting its stride with the help of free and cheap pricing.

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