What the focus on L2+ autonomy means for positioning

BMW and Mercedes have stepped back (at least for now) from Level 3 automated driving. This strategic shift toward Level 2+ (and in Mercedes’s case, what they’re calling Level 2++) opens up the opportunity for automation to work across a broader range of environments, without some of the regulatory and liability issues that L3 comes with.

This year two of the OEMs who were the first to move to automated driving have decided to pause it. While some may see this is a setback to the promise of autonomous driving, we see it differently. The pause on L3 is not a retreat from automation. It is a reallocation of ambition — away from a narrow, conditions-dependent system, and toward something that has to work on every road, every day. That is a bigger opportunity.

Level 3 vs Level 2 (or L2+) systems

Level 3 systems like Mercedes Drive Pilot allow drivers to fully disengage from the driving task, but only within a tightly defined Operational Design Domain: specific motorway segments, specific speed limits, specific weather conditions. When those conditions are not met, the system hands control back to the driver.

That handback mechanism was, in many ways, L3’s commercial Achilles heel. Consumers wanted automation that would simplify their drive. What they got was automation that required them to remain ready to take control at any moment — negating much of the convenience that made the proposition attractive in the first place.

Level 2+ systems that keep the driver nominally in control but provide increasingly sophisticated assistance — sidestep this problem entirely. There is no handback, because the driver never fully hands over. The system is always assisting, and the value proposition is consistent: every journey is easier, not just the ones that meet a predefined set of conditions.

What this means for GNSS

Here is where the implications become concrete. L3 systems, by design, operate in specific environments — for example, structured motorways with clear lane markings and unobstructed sky views for satellite signals.

But the competitive pressure on L2+ is pushing its operational design domain well beyond the motorway. Mobileye, who coined the L2+ term, explicitly defined it to cover urban environments: ramps, junctions, roundabouts, and roads where camera-only lane-keeping fails. Mercedes has gone further still, coining the term L2++ for its replacement system, MB.Drive Assist Pro, navigation-integrated system designed for partially automated door-to-door driving across both motorways and city streets.  And players like XPeng are already deploying in complex urban environments — setting market expectations that the feature should work in cities.

That means that positioning must be consistently reliable on suburban streets, in dense urban centres, through underpasses, under tree canopies, and in the dozens of other environments that drivers encounter as part of an ordinary commute. These are precisely the environments where conventional GNSS positioning degrades. Where multipath interference, signal blockage, and urban canyon effects erode the accuracy that safe, reliable lane-keeping and positioning depend on.

The urban canyon tax

For automotive OEMs, cities come with an “urban canyon tax” — the added cost and complexity of compensating for poor GNSS performance in built-up environments. When positioning cannot be trusted, the rest of the sensor stack must work harder. More importantly, the operational domain of the feature shrinks. The result is a system that works well on open roads and degrades exactly where drivers need it most.

The cost of poor urban positioning is already visible across the broader mobility economy. For gig economy operators like food delivery platforms, ride-hailing services, last-mile couriers, GNSS degradation in dense urban areas translates directly into cancelled orders, delayed arrivals, and customer churn. For automotive OEMs building L2+ systems, the stakes are different but the underlying problem is the same: positioning that cannot be trusted in cities is positioning that limits where your product works.

Where we come in

This is precisely the problem FocalPoint has been working to solve. Our technology makes GNSS reliable in the environments that matter most for L2+ autonomy. Dense urban areas, forested roads, highways with sound walls.

We have been building for a world in which reliable positioning is a prerequisite for every journey, not a feature available only on preferred routes. The industry’s pivot to L2+ has brought the market to where we have long been.