The Lamborghini Huracán will soon launch a new navigation system that can take you to any point in the world with incredible speciality. It’s based on a geocoding system called What3Words, which, as the name implies, uses a combination of just three words – instead of building numbers and street names – to describe locations.
Here is how it works. The creators of What3Words divided the entire planet into 10 x 10 foot squares and randomly assigned three words to each word. There are a total of 57 trillion squares, each with three words taken from a total of 40,000 squares in English. For example, the Washington Monument has a rather confusing street address: 2 15 St NW, Washington, DC 20024. What3Words identifies it as “congratulations, nails, desk”.
The idea is that those three words are much less likely to be misinterpreted, especially by computers or speech recognition systems. Its level of detail also has an advantage if you’re trying to tell a friend where you’re waiting at the big concert venue. It can also get very accurate in areas where there are no roads or buildings at all. In fact, the application helped rescuers locate A group of hikers are missing in the UK
To be fair, this system is not exclusive to Lamborghini; Huracán is just the first to deploy this technology in conjunction with Alexa voice-activated navigation, according to New York Times. The Huracán will get this functionality this year. As for the record, 2018 Mercedes A-Class is the first car to use What3Words for navigation.
Of course, the system is not perfect. Unless someone gives you a What3 AdWords address, you still have to translate a regular street address into a What3 AdWords address to use the system. Also, its random nature doesn’t really provide an intuitive relationship between one location or another. With a street address, you understand that 100 Main Street and 102 Main Street are close together, while 900 Main Street may be far away. And you can tell if you’re getting closer or farther by looking at the numbers. The square just north of “congratulations, nails, desk” is “dome, next, sense”.
So it may still be some time before What3Words is accepted for widespread use. We found this very useful in an all-terrain vehicle used for wilderness adventures. However, the more options the better, and if What3Words becomes popular, the Lamborghini Huracán will be available.
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