Studies [1,2] clearly show that mobility in future will be a result of coming political decisions, market introduction of innovations and social attitude towards mobility. Sophisticated navigation and traffic information systems are regarded as integral parts of almost all future automobiles.
To create a win-win situation, the customers’ needs should be taken into account. The challenge is to develop now next-generation devices with innovations for today's customers which have the capabilities to contribute to traffic solutions in 5 to 10 years. Hybrid navigation is a key technology that meets these requirements. As hybrid navigation offers not only one service but a variety of services, some examples will be given in the presentation. The necessary technical developments, such as transmission protocols and geo-coding, are on the way. Adaptive digital maps will permit customization of the navigation as well as incremental updates of the map contents. But a prerequisite for the success of hybrid navigation is that the methods need to be standardized to cut down the costs.