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From 'Quantified Self' To 'Quantified Car'
waderoush writes "A San Francisco startup called Automatic Labs came out of stealth mode in March, offering a Bluetooth gadget that connects to your car's onboard data port and sends engine performance data to an app on your smartphone (iPhone only right now, Android coming this fall). Xconomy went on a test drive with Automatic's chief product officer and captured video of the system in action. The app chirps at you when it notices rough braking, aggressive acceleration, or speeding over 70 mph. It also keeps a record of your fuel economy and gives you a gamified 'driving score' to encourage more efficient driving habits and fuel savings. It's all a sign that that the ethic of ubiquitous mobile/cloud sensing and analytics that 'quantified selfers' are applying to their personal health and fitness is spilling over to neighboring areas of consumer technology, including transportation. The Automatic Link device costs $70 and will begin shipping in May." Along similar lines, the Kiwi Drive Green has been available for several years.
This is what you can get VC money for?
A $10 chinese ELM327 with bluetooth and some crappy software?
Where do I find he suckers? I meant investors, where do I find investors?
This sounds similar to something I am working on now. With an ODB2 to usb connector (these are like $5-$10 off of ebay) and Raspberry Pi. Toss in some software (there is open source OBD2 software) and a speaker and you basically have this system. As an added bonus you can attach other devices to the RPi and make it even more useful as an in car device. As for the price the whole setup I am working on comes in at less than the single connector they are selling. I do wonder what detailed data it is collecting as OBD2 can provide lots of realtime data on things like fuel air ratios, injector trims, engine speed, etc and it seems like this is only scratching the surface.
Time to offend someone
Hope that's programmable as the interstate speed limits in large portions of the country are 75 or 80.
umm... don't get one?
Self proclaimed typo king, and inventor of the bear destroying coffee table (patent not pending).
This nanny device could allow parents to spy on their kids driving habits. No more rally driving for them !
get one of these
Install this for free
Or get the pro version for $5.
does almost the same things for more than $50 less.
The rest is just common sense and marketing hype.
Then again, there are a lot of folks out there who need to spend money and have a "cool" app.....
Something else chirping at me.
Or, alternately, I already have a wife who notices rough braking, aggressive acceleration, or speeding over 70 mph, and she is more than willing to chirp at me about it.
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
Sounds like it does same thing.
http://kk.org/cooltools/archives/5845
The are a number of Android apps and ODB Bluetooth adapters already on the market. You can use them view trouble codes,capture car diagnostics, etc. This isn't new or news...
I have a Garmin EcoRoute with Bluetooth which grabs ODB data and presents it as gauges to the Garmin GPS on my Kenwood head unit. I can also use it record trip/mileage information and view/reset diagnostic codes. It will even show me an efficiency graph over the trip. This is enough for me.
My concern about the gameified "driving score" is that it could lead to some people being more concerned about beating their top score than focusing on driving safely. We don't need more distracted drivers...
Not to sound like a total douche but I try to drive as efficiently as possible. At first it was a personal finance issue since I noticed that driving efficiently saved me considerably over the course of a year. Now that I make decent money it's less about that and more that I don't have any particular reason to be wasteful. And since I'm not trying to impress anyone out there and not driving 500 miles a day, frankly I'd rather give as little money to oil companies and car makers as is humanly possible. If the app was on Android I would probably have already pre-ordered one...
How is this news? I got a ODB2 -> Bluetooth adapter last year, and that was after a year or two of thinking about it. I use Torque on my Android to track my mileage, chirp at me when I go over a speed I set, and track engine performance.
The only thing here that *might* be news is the gamification of ODB2 stats, but who really cares about that?
Oh, and my dad just picked up a ODB2 -> Bluetooth adapter for about $25 and it works great, so why would anyone want to spend $70 on one!?
...Had this been an actual emergency, we would have fled in terror, and you would not have been informed.
I use a $10 bluetooth ELM327 adapter and the free version of Torque for Android. It doesn't do any of that chirp stuff, but it easily could with the right software. On top of that, access to ALL sensors and codes.
Not only that, the GPS in our trucks at work do exactly what this thing does.
It's not new, it's not even a good price.
If we colonize Mars, it won't be the World Wide Web anymore. UWW?
Screw the nanny bit, but this integrated with decent navigation software could be cool.
After a while, you could gain some useful insights into your regular trip; places where you often have to brake hard etc.
Imagine one dark, rainy evening, after working late, your GPS says "hey, you're going too fast for the next bend..."
Now THAT would be useful...
Come to think of it, you could do that without this device, methinks...
So buy an electric car and be done with it.
Go get a cheap bluetooth OBD2 adaptor, if it costs more than $15 shipped, it it too much. Then buy Torque for Android for $5.
Not to sound like a total douche but I try to drive as efficiently as possible.
That's not being a douche; hell, it's commendable.
Being a douche would be more along the lines of "I try to drive as efficiently as possible, and there needs to be a law that forces everyone else to drive the way I do."
An enigma, wrapped in a riddle, shrouded in bacon and cheese
I think it'll be about 5yrs before every insurance company on the planet makes this mandatory. Which is this company true target market.
I'm not "trying to impress anyone out there", I'm just trying not to die of boredom on my daily commute. A full-throttle acceleration from a stop light (when the way is clear and it's safe to do so) every now and then can really put a smile on my face.
I hear people say things about people with sports cars - "he's got small penis" or "he's showing off", but I'm just having fun. I'm having fun *for myself*. I've got no one to show off for - I'm married 17 years now.
This app is not for me.
Bad driving isn't simply "speeding over 70mph" (aren't some highways over that speed limit anyway?), it's an amalgamation of not paying attention, not planning ahead, and not conforming to how everyone else is driving (to an extent). The problem you pose isn't solved in any way by this technology, and it gives more "bad driver" false positives than correct predictions.
I hear people say things about people with sports cars - "he's got small penis" or "he's showing off", but I'm just having fun.
Well, if you've got a small penis, you've got to get your jollies where you can.
I am not ignoring anything. Coal is cleaner than Gasoline. Coal power plants are far more efficient. They have the advantage of not having to be light. Also power in my area is Nuclear and Hydro.
Production costs are comparable. A Tesla costs as much as an S series.
You are highly misinformed.