Ford Motor Co. is stepping up its push into autonomous cars by investing seed money into a 3D maps startup called Civil Maps.

Motus Ventures led the seed round, and was joined by Ford, as well as Wicklow Capital, StartX Stanford, and AME Cloud Ventures, which is run by Yahoo! Inc. co-founder Jerry Yang.

The consensus among automobile makers is that having access to reliable mapping technology is fundamental to the idea of self-driving cars. That much was evidenced by the acquisition of Nokia’s HERE Maps by German automakers Audi AG, BMW AG and Mercedes-Benz late last year.

Civil Maps is much younger and less well-known than HERE maps, but the startup claims its mapping technology is ideal for self-driving cars. The outfit uses spatial data to create what it calls “extremely accurate localization”. This, it claims, makes its maps better for autonomous vehicles than any other mapping services available.

As such, Civil Maps has been targeting makers of fully autonomous vehicles (think Google’s self-driving cars) rather than semi-autonomous automobiles like those made by Tesla Motors Inc., which require a driver to be ready at all times in case the software makes a mistake.

To obtain its spatial data, Civil Maps uses sensors from cameras and high-resolution laser imaging (LiDAR). This data is then crunched and reorganized into machine-readable maps. Civil Maps also uses artificial intelligence software to minimize data storage and transmission requirements, which makes it better suited for mobile networks that can crowdsource map data on the go.

“Autonomous vehicles require a totally new kind of map,” Sravan Puttagunta, CEO of Civil Maps, said in a statement. “Civil Maps’ scalable map generation process enables fully autonomous vehicles to drive like humans do – identifying on-road and off-road features even when they might be missing, deteriorated or hidden from view and letting a car know what it can expect along its route. We are honored to work with Ford and the rest of our investor team to pave the way for fully autonomous vehicles at continental scale.”

Chinese automaker SAIC Motor Co. is already an investor in Civil Maps, which means Ford is the second car manufacturer to take a stake in the startup.

Ford has already made some confident steps in its quest to deliver true autonomous vehicles. Earlier this year, the company teamed up with Google, Uber Technologies Inc., Lyft Inc., and Volvo Group to launch the Self-Driving Coalition for Safer Streets initiative, which aims to advocate for self-driving cars and new legislation governing them. Also this year, Ford launched the Ford Smart Mobility group, which is focused on investing in and developing mobility services and technology.