Interesting Ideas: "Automatic - Your Smart Driving Assistant"
This one has been making the rounds today and for good reason: there are so many awesome ideas at play here! Basically, "Automatic" is a hardware and iOS/Android software solution that connects to your smart phone to your car in a really ingenious way. Once connected, it gives you quite a bit of functionality! The complete list can be found here (just scroll down)."Your Car and Smartphone, Connected
Just plug the Automatic Link into your car's data port. Your car and smart phone will automatically connect whenever you drive, wirelessly."
The top ones for me though are easily:
- The way it connects to your car. It "...plugs into the same port your mechanic uses when you take your car in for service." and it's use of the low-energy Bluetooth 4.0 connection to conserve your phone's battery life is really well thought out.
- The geolocation of your car is always recorded in real-time. So no need to take a picture of the spot you parked in. The location can also be shared.
- Accident/crash support. Contacting 911 with your location all the while texting loved ones once help has responded and is on the way, is pretty great.
- Real-time reporting on engine lights (listing their cause) AND the ability to reset them. To me, this alone is totally worth the price of the service/hardware! $69.95 (!?!)
As you can probably tell, I am smitten with this. Just a very, very interesting idea for a service. And it’s the implementation of it, that makes it so intriguing to me.
I could be wrong, but I am pretty sure there isn’t anything like it out there!
Company: “Automatic” All video and pictures were taken from Automatic’s own press material.
