In an unexpected spotting, India is confirmed to be receiving its first Gen 4 coverage! After 13 years of waiting, India is finally receiving high-quality imagery with the recently used smallcam cameras.
Google’s first attempt to cover India was in 2011, where they drove with Gen 3 cameras in Bengaluru but had to stop the project due to security concerns and a lack of clearances and did not release any of the coverage. Google attempted to cover India again in 2016 but was blocked and banned due to security concerns. Google did eventually release coverage, but this only consisted of Gen 2 and Gen 3 trekkers.
Google finally partnered with Genesys and TechMahindra to cover 10 cities in India from 2021 to 2022, and 50 cities by the end of 2022, with 3,000 cities being covered after that. Sadly, this was done by the poor quality Badcam coverage for cost reasons, which was a big disappointment, as neighboring Sri Lanka and Bangladesh had previously used Gen 4 cameras while partnering with local companies.
In May 2024, it was announced that Hyperspec AI was covering India with high-quality cameras, with 8 cities and highways releasing by January 2025, although this was not confirmed until recently.
On December 30, 2024, a Street View car was spotted in India and seems to be carrying a smallcam instead of the traditional unofficial camera Google usually uses. The smallcam car was spotted driving from Hyderabad to Waranagal, specifically in the town of Jangaon in the Southern Indian state of Telangana, which would mark it as the first Gen 4 and smallcam coverage in India. This comes as somewhat of a surprise, especially since Hyperspec AI had suggested a release date of January 2025, which was presumed to be incorrect or delayed.
At least we can finally confirm that India is receiving Gen 4 after years of waiting, and if the original source is correct, we’ll receive coverage by January 2025! It’s possible that we could see this spread to other countries, such as Nepal and Nigeria.
