On October 15, the NDS community came together in Gothenburg, Sweden, for the NDS Public Conference 2026, hosted by new NDS member Volvo Cars at Näst Innovation Destination Torslanda and streamed online for participants around the world. The program offered a full day of NDS.Live use cases, new tooling, and a look at where the standard is heading next.
The day also reflected a shift for the association: with NDS.Live largely feature complete and in production use, the focus is moving from building the standard to growing its adoption.
Dr. Martin Pfeifle, Chairman of the NDS Association, opened the conference with a look at what NDS stands for today: the worldwide standard for map data in automotive eco-systems, used in millions of vehicles of more than 40 automotive brands. He also highlighted the association’s progress since the last conference, including the new NDS Member Portal, new tools such as the GeoJSON export and the Filling Spec Composer, improved AI support, and the switch to in-process certification.
Host Johan Löfhede of Volvo Cars then introduced Volvo Cars – founded in Gothenburg in 1927 with safety as its guiding principle – and the Näst innovation venue at the Torslanda site. With Volvo Cars and Qualcomm, the NDS Association welcomed two new members, extending the community further across the automotive and technology industries.
The morning belonged to the member presentations. Olena Slieptsova of Intellias showed how a standardized NDS.Live Map Feedback Service can turn driver reports and vehicle observations into new map versions – complemented by Map Scout, an agentic AI pipeline that detects map-relevant events on the web. Boris Gumhold and Dikshith Siddapura of HERE explained how purpose-built map views from one shared NDS.Live foundation serve navigation, ADAS, and automated driving, each with the right content, package, and update cycle.
After the break, the focus turned to automated driving. Özlem Bellikan, Ozan Sengül, and Jean-Christophe Duberga of TomTom presented six live layers – including hazards, traffic, and dynamic speed limits – delivered through a single NDS.Live Smart Layer Service, with a live demo of tiles updating in real time. Their colleague Nikita Mallyademonstrated how an operational design domain (ODD) can be defined centrally and delivered to vehicles via the NDS.Live Rules module, so that automated functions know in time where they may operate. To close the morning, Intakhab Khan of AAI shared practical insights from building the bidirectional NDS.Live–OpenDRIVE converter, which keeps production maps and simulation environments in sync.
In the afternoon, Fabian Klebert, NDS Technical Lead, took the stage for three sessions. His review of the technical achievements since Tokyo showed a steady release rhythm, a ten times faster MapViewer, and 43 percent more registered non-member developers. He then showed how AI agents work with NDS.Live: grounded in the specification via the new Spec MCP server, the NDS Expert agent at chat.nds.live gave very good answers to 78 percent of test questions, up from 2 percent with a RAG chatbot. His third session introduced in-process certification: map makers validate and sign their Smart Layers tile by tile in their own pipeline, so the proof of conformance travels with the data. The new approach is set to come into force with Steering Committee approval in November.
Otto Nyiro, NDS Product Manager, presented the work of the Product Definition Group (PDG), organized in 2026 into eight workstreams – from highly automated driving and connected navigation services to regulation and vehicle-sourced map intelligence. His conclusion: the roadmap now shifts from building the standard to growing its adoption, driven by openness, developer experience and AI, and close alliances with partner organizations. He invited members to contribute, in particular on L4 requirements and an upcoming SDV positioning paper.
To close the program, Martin Pfeifle gave an update on the opening and membership model for NDS.Live. The aim is to make it easier for new implementers to work with NDS.Live while keeping the value of NDS membership. The model is currently in its final review – the NDS Association will share details as soon as it has been approved.
Martin Pfeifle closed the formal program with his closing remarks, before participants continued their discussions over networking and follow-up conversations. On the day before, the NDS Public Technical Meeting had already brought members together on-site in Gothenburg.
If one message connected the day, it was this: NDS.Live is ready – and the next step is making it easier for everyone to use it. Thank you to Volvo Cars for hosting us in Gothenburg, and to all speakers and participants on-site and online.
To explore NDS.Live yourself, visit the NDS.Live Developer Portal.
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