"No participant study has been run yet, so we're not claiming superiority ahead of the evidence," he said.
Why not? Seems a simple thing to do before the development gets very far, certainly before the "press release" stage. Probably because they have actually done participant studies and found that trippy map visualizations aren't particularly good for info at a glance or safe for use while driving. The whole design should have been driven by participant studies from the beginning.
The whole article wreaks of a "solution" in search of investors and a problem. No one needs a near street level view for navigation, they've got that already. Adding a layer of Escher-like distortion seems unlikely to make getting information at a glance from a map any better.