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Launch HN: Telematica (YC W22) – Plaid for Electric Vehicles

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21–30 of 49 posts

Re: Launch HN: Telematica (YC W22) – Plaid for Electric Vehicles

#21
Platforms not providing OAuth and the ability to delegate access to an appropriate sub-set of data and utility permission is nothing new.

Almost every major platform I can think of was slow to provide what it's innovation community wanted - I remember giving countless apps my Twitter or LinkedIn passwords in order to access 3rd party functionality and value. Blackberry/RIM held a frightening number of email address and passwords in order for the service to work.

But there's something very uncomfortable about surrendering my EV's credentials to the point that I just won't do it.

I bristle not only at giving away access to my current location but also where I'm going. I don't especially like the idea of Tesla having all this data but I'm certainly not comfortable with small startups having it.

In the event that security is compromised there's also too much opportunity for mass-griefing and inconveniencing - locking me out of my car, heating my car at the highest temperature (I won't go on, but you get the point).

My take is that the engineers at Tesla know how to build OAuth - they intentionally are not doing this because the company is not ready for this world or prepared to accept it - yet. By requiring you to give away the farm with your username and password it maintains a high stakes 'all or nothing' which I'm sure they hope will put off most of their customers.

Give it time, but once these companies do have petitioned permissioning I'm not sure what the value add will be for these startups like Telematica.

Re: Launch HN: Telematica (YC W22) – Plaid for Electric Vehicles

#22
post #21

Platforms not providing OAuth and the ability to delegate access to an appropriate sub-set of data and utility permission is nothing new. Almost every major platform I can think of was slow to provide what it's innovation community wanted - I remember giving countless apps my Twitter or LinkedIn passwords in order to access 3rd party functionality and value. Blackberry/RIM held a frightening number of email address a…

Tesla probably has to give it to the government without a warrant or probable cause, like Google and Apple et al do.

The government can toss you in jail if they don’t like the cut of your jib, and this data lets them find a way to do so quasi-legally. Small data-hungry startups can’t really damage you with this data by comparison.

The privacy ship has sailed. If you want location privacy, rip out the GSM transceiver in your car and turn location services off on your phones.

Even then the GSM towers are following you and selling your location tracks, but at least it’s slightly harder to tie to your other data then.

Re: Launch HN: Telematica (YC W22) – Plaid for Electric Vehicles

#25

Honestly, this is something Hotz (comma.ai) should've done a while ago. They already have it somehow. (Don't mean this in a bad way, I like Hotz and his work). Anyway, congrats on shipping and I will def. try it out since I have a product on a similar vertical. Actually, how may I get in touch?

This is 'just' aggregating the APIs the car manufacturers already expose (for their own apps or 3rd party) - without any additional hardware/direct car integration. So I don't think it's directly comparable.

I tested out the Renault reverse engineered API and BMW Cardata -> each one of them has it's (major) downsides. Especially unfortune for BMW Cardata, which is an official product that had a lot of downtime and really irregular data updates (at least for older cars).

So hats off to the Telematica guys for trying to bridge all this together.

Re: Launch HN: Telematica (YC W22) – Plaid for Electric Vehicles

#27
post #12

This is for oems to embed in their infotainment/ tcu so that they can expose their vehicle data to end users?

Actually, we help EV owners share their vehicle data (that is locked inside the car dashboard or the OEM mobile app) with third party service providers like e-mobility apps, auto insurance companies or utilities.

So you are creating a translation layer between OEM APIs and thirdparty service and giving the owner of the car to connect those pipes using your service?

Re: Launch HN: Telematica (YC W22) – Plaid for Electric Vehicles

#28
post #24

Isn't this a straight up rip-off of https://smartcar.com/ ?

I don't think so. We have a very different take on connected cars. We are 100% EV focussed and are building tools on top of the car API to solve actual EV challenges like range anxiety and charging management that were absent in ICE vehicles!

Re: Launch HN: Telematica (YC W22) – Plaid for Electric Vehicles

#29
post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Actually, we help EV owners share their vehicle data (that is locked inside the car dashboard or the OEM mobile app) with third party service providers like e-mobility apps, auto insurance companies or utilities.

So you are creating a translation layer between OEM APIs and thirdparty service and giving the owner of the car to connect those pipes using your service?

Exactly, we act as a bridge between the EV owner and the third party apps. We rely on the EV owner's consent to share their data with a service of their choice.
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