NAVTEQ, the digital map data company, announced the development of a new Map and Positioning Engine that can let all vehicles include Advanced Driver Assistance Systems (ADAS)—even in cars without a navigation system. That means that cars equipped with this could still process road attributes such as curvature, slope, and altitude.

The company said in a statement that the new MPE design is small enough to be implemented on a credit card-sized circuit board, or distributed within the electronics architecture of a given vehicle. It's also always on and doesn't need a stored navigation route to begin working. The development is currently being marketed straight to manufacturers for now, but practical applications could include predictive safety systems as well as more typical location-based GPS services.