Toyota iQ helps Google Street View

Google’s street-mapping cars have been crawling all over the globe, but they come to a halt at some of the narrow streets in Europe.

These centuries-old cobblestoned slots between the picture postcard buildings were originally designed to take foot and horse traffic – or the occasional slim carriage.

Yes, they take car traffic – but it’s generally, small, careful and involves a bit of negotiating over who gets right of way. So the Google vehicles loaded with camera equipment had to give those streets a miss when doing their rounds.

Toyota has come to the rescue to literally put them back on the Street View map – with the help of the public. Armed with the miniature Toyota iQ and a 360 degree camera, Toyota aims to fill in the cyber-gaps of Street View. This little car is small enough to fit down most of the world’s narrow streets that Google’s wide boy vehicles were not able to.

With the project well underway – aptly named iQ Street View – a Google Street View-like website has been created. Users can see the areas mapped so far and help out by tagging streets and alleyways that have not yet been captured.

While the aim is to provide the world with a more complete virtual map, snapping public areas (and the general public) can have unexpected results. Google’s cars have already collected a sizeable library of hilarious, puzzling and bizarre moments on the open roads. Just imagine what Toyota may unearth within the more secretive sections of our cities and suburbs.

It’s great that Toyota has such concern for making sure Google’s map options are fully populated. Of course, cynics might say it’s just a not-so-subtle marketing promotion for their tiny city car. 

But while they’re at it, could we get them to map the Bondi Junction Westfield maze and Melbourne’s behemoth Chadstone shopping centre. My sister’s been phoning from the latter for the past three years and would really like to find her way home.