From San Francisco Business Times
Unlock the mysteries of your car with a phone
By Stacy Lawrence
Sure, you know how to drive. But how should you drive to be most gas efficient? What does the “check engine” light really mean? Where did you park it in a huge parking lot? Figuring all this out can be daunting, particularly for drivers of older models that lack modern electronic bells and whistles.
A gadget released last fall can answer all those questions. The Automatic Link is a small plug-in device for the port under the steering wheel that mechanics use to download information about a vehicle. It works with an app on both Apple and Android phones....
One of the most popular services is Crash Alert. Automatic Labs Product Manager Ljuba Miljkovic said it detects a severe crash with its built-in accelerometer and plays a loud tone and recorded message to alert the driver to what’s happening. It gives you 30 seconds to cancel the alert and then calls the Automatic emergency call center....
Launched in October, Automatic has already seen its drivers in aggregate improving their driving habits. “Over the last four or five months we’ve seen users in the field improve; on a scale of 100 they have gone up from an average of 70 to about 93. They are changing their style of driving,” noted Automatic Labs CEO Thejo Kote....
Automatic Labs co-founders Ljuba Miljkovic (MIMS ’10) and Thejo Kote (MIMS ’11) are both School of Information alumni.