NDS Association 2025 Year in Review: Advancing navigation standards through collaboration
18. December 2025
As 2025 draws to a close, we look back on a productive and inspiring year marked by strong collaboration, technical progress, and meaningful industry engagement. Together with our members and partners, we continued to advance navigation and mapping data standards that support the evolving needs of modern mobility.
Welcoming new members
In 2025, the NDS Association welcomed several new members who bring valuable expertise and innovation to the ecosystem:
NVIDIA (joined at the end of 2024, publicly announced in 2025) contributing advanced technologies across the autonomous vehicle development lifecycle, including AI models, large-scale simulation environments, and high-performance platforms.
MQNIC, a specialized ICT company developing next-generation transportation systems and intelligent mobility platforms by combining smart city solutions, autonomous driving, AI, and digital twin technologies.
We value their contribution and look forward to continued collaboration on standards that enable safe, scalable, and future-ready mapping technologies.
Global events and industry dialogue
This year featured a strong presence at global industry events, fostering dialogue and knowledge exchange across the navigation, automotive, and software communities.
In June, NDS members gathered in Tokyo, Japan, at ZENRIN Headquarters for annual NDS Public Conference, which focused on open discussion around the question “Where will the future of the navigation industry lead?” The event fostered in-depth dialogue on the evolving role of map data standards in automotive navigation, alongside broader exchanges on their future direction.
At the 16th AUTOSAR Open Conference (AOC), Fabian Klebert highlighted the role of open-source tooling in standards development, with a focus on zserio and its integration within NDS.
At the Automotive Open Source Summit 2025, Fabian delivered a presentation titled “Functional Safety and Open Source in NDS”, exploring how open-source software is increasingly becoming viable for safety-critical automotive applications.
At the 23rd International VDI Congress ELIV Europe, Fabian also presented topic “Accelerating SDV Development: Leveraging AI, Open Source, and Agile Standardization”, highlighting how modern software-defined vehicle development benefits from combining these approaches.
Ottó Nyíró represented NDS at the Open Auto Drive Forum (OADF) 2025, showcasing the broader OADF ecosystem and its use cases alongside ADASIS, SENSORIS, TISA, TN-ITS, and Japan’s Dynamic Map Platform.
NDS was also represented at two ASAM events in 2025: At the ASAM Regional Meeting China 2025, Ottó Nyíró delivered a presentation titled “Data Exchange between ASAM OpenDRIVE and NDS”, demonstrating how NDS enables efficient data exchange between simulation environments and in-vehicle systems. At the ASAM Regional Meeting South Korea 2025, NDS was presented by Martin Pfeifle.
Recognizing members achievements
In 2025, we proudly celebrated Mercedes-Benz for winning the Auto Motor und Sport Tech Award 2025 with their innovative navigation system and MBUX infotainment platform.
As a long-standing NDS partner, Mercedes-Benz has played a key role in the development and deployment of the NDS standard, ensuring accurate, up-to-date map data that supports safe and intuitive driving experiences. We congratulate the Mercedes-Benz team on this well-deserved recognition.
Advancing NDS tools and technologies
This year also marked significant progress in making NDS technologies more accessible and developer-friendly:
The launch of the NDS.Live Evaluation Service on the NDS.Live Developer Portal enables developers to explore the NDS.Live specification using real-world map data. The platform supports experimentation across use cases ranging from infotainment to ADAS, encouraging collaboration and early innovation.
Continued development of the NDS Map Statistics Framework, a modular, service-oriented solution designed to collect and process mapping data across multiple formats, including NDS Classic, NDS.Live, OpenStreetMap, and Overture Maps.
The release of the first production version of the bidirectional ASAM OpenDRIVE ↔ NDS.Live Converter, enabling reliable, specification-aware data exchange between simulation and in-vehicle environments.
Together, these initiatives reflect the NDS Association’s focus on AI-enabled development, open-source collaboration, cloud-based approaches, and robust standards for software-defined vehicles.
Looking ahead
As we move toward the coming year, the NDS Association remains committed to close collaboration with its members and partners, welcoming new organizations to join the NDS ecosystem. We thank everyone who contributed in 2025 not only to the progress of the NDS community, but also to the advancement of open standards, safer mobility, and automotive innovation across the industry, and wish the entire community a warm and restful winter holiday season.
