GM’s OnStar, MapQuest Connect

GM’s OnStar, MapQuest Connect

General Motors’ OnStar communications system is linking with MapQuest , the Internet mapping service, to allow OnStar customers to send MapQuest directions directly from their computer to their car.

GM is launching OnStar Web Destination Entry initially as a pilot program this summer with 3,000 customers, representing a wide demographic and geographic swathe, to help the companies work out any kinks in the connection.

GM then will make the service available by the end of the year or early next year on at least 2 million GM vehicles. GM vehicles must be equipped with the latest Gen 7 version of OnStar with Turn-by-Turn Navigation capability to have the MapQuest capability. All Buicks and Cadillacs come standard with it now. Saturn recently launched it across its line.

Navigation, when offered as an option, costs $695, including the first year's subscription fee. After the first year, the subscription price is $16.95 a month or $199 annually. Adding in the navigation package, the total cost of renewing OnStar is $299 a year.

OnStar, which comes as just a basic package with add-ons like navigation, is standard on more than two-thirds of 2007 model-year GM vehicles and will be standard or optional on nearly all 2008 vehicles. GM now is contemplating which models will be offered with navigation/MapQuest for the 2008 model year, OnStar president Chet Huber said at a briefing Tuesday.

Customers will not pay extra for the MapQuest service; it comes with the navigation package, he added.

OnStar, celebrating its 10th anniversary, now has more than 4.5 million subscribers in the U.S. and Canada.

The link-up seems so obvious and logical.

In fact, Jim Greiner, senior vice president and general manager of MapQuest, said at Tuesday’s briefing that the new service came in response to customers requesting the ability to download directions to their cars.

And Tuesday's demonstration of the OnStar-MapQuest connection, held at OnStar’s command center in the bowels of GM’s Renaissance Center corporate headquarters, showed how simple the system is to use: log onto MapQuest with your computer; type in information -- starting point and destination -- as you normally would; and then, instead of printing directions, click  “Send to OnStar.” 

When you hop in your car, push the OnStar phone button on the rearview mirror. It wakes up OnStar’s Virtual Advisor. The voice comes on and immediately notes you’ve downloaded a new address. It asks if you want to proceed to that direction or one of the other four addresses you’ve stored.

A huge plus of the OnStar-MapQuest link is that OnStar’s Global Positioning System knows where you are so the MapQuest directions start then, not necessarily at the starting destination you put into MapQuest. If you divert from the route to pick up a friend or run an errand, it doesn’t nag you; rather it recalculates your course. The turn-by-turn navigation then gives you voice commands to deliver you to your destination.

Currently, advisors at OnStar’s command headquarters must download directions to your car. They still will be available if you need to set a new course not in your address book.

Michelle Krebs:  is Editor-in-Chief of AutoObserver.com. Follow @AutoObserver on Twitter.