[HN Gopher] Launch HN: Telematica (YC W22) - Plaid for Electric ...
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Launch HN: Telematica (YC W22) - Plaid for Electric Vehicles
Hi HN! We're Abhishek and Aditya, co-founders of Telematica
(https://www.telematica.so). Telematica is an API that helps
businesses to access battery and usage data for electric vehicles,
as well as manage charging across 25+ EV brands without using any
hardware devices. We also develop tools like smart charging,
dynamic load balancing, and charging scheduling for EV fleets. For
better or worse, all modern EVs include built-in internet
connectivity and send all vehicle data to the manufacturer's cloud
servers, effectively eliminating the need for external hardware
devices and OBD II dongles. The problem is that all of this
information is locked inside the car dashboard or the
manufacturer's mobile app--technologies that car companies are not
the greatest at building. There is no official Tesla or Volkswagen
API available for developers to use to create apps and services
based on vehicle data. Some car APIs exist, but don't focus on
EVs. The fundamental problems in EVs--range anxiety and charging
management--are absent in ICE vehicles. This means that developers
have to build a lot of tools on top of the car API before they can
solve their actual business problems. For example, (1) charging
point operators must be notified when the charging begins and
receive live SoC (State of Charge) every 1 minute; (2) fleet
operators need to poll data to manage their operations or perform
predictive maintenance; and (3) smart charging companies and
utilities must manage charging based on live charging data and
energy prices. We eliminate the need to build and maintain an
additional layer of infra on top of the car API for each of the
above use cases by providing webhooks, data logging, and a plug-
and-play smart charging module. Our product is divided into two
parts: an authorization flow to obtain user consent from the EV
owner to connect their car with a third-party app, and a developer
API that allows our customers to query live EV data, manage EV
charging, and log data for specific endpoints. We came up with the
idea for Telematica while working on a Tesla-like trip planner for
the Indian market to reduce range anxiety among EV drivers. Unlike
in the US, where Tesla controls both the car and the superchargers,
the Indian market is fragmented - car manufacturers lack a robust
charging network. Controlling both the car and the charger allowed
Tesla to answer a variety of questions, such as "Will I be able to
reach my destination with my current SoC?" How many charging stops
should I take? My ETA, including the charging time? and so forth.
We needed access to real-time battery and location data in order to
build a smart route planner. And, to our surprise, there was no
Tata API (India's largest EV OEM) that we could use directly. To
address this, we reverse engineered the Tata mobile app and
identified the API endpoints before developing a Plaid-like product
that relies on EV owners' consent to share their data with a third
party app. We had to figure out the API for each OEM separately,
which was time-consuming and difficult. This made us realise that
instead of building the end user app let's build a developer API
that anyone in the future can use to build powerful EV apps. Our
customers range across various industries. Companies that are
building the charging infrastructure or mobility apps use our API
to get access to real-time battery data (SoC, range, charging
status). We are used by utilities and companies that offer demand
response programs to manage EV charging during peak hours. Finally,
instead of purchasing expensive OBD dongles, fleet operators use us
to manage their fleets and optimize their charging schedules and
routing. We charge $0.25 per EV connected with up to 10,000 API
calls allowed per month. Connecting up to 10 EVs is free of charge.
We collect the account credentials to the OEM (manufacturer)
account as most of the EV brands don't have their own OAuth2. We
try to only store tokens in the encrypted format issued by the auth
servers wherever possible. For the OEMs where this is not possible,
the credentials are stored encrypted with the AES256 mechanism.
Privacy policy: https://www.telematica.so/privacy-policy. You can
try out our API here - https://hn-demo.telematica.so/ We would
love to hear your feedback and ideas! Thanks, Abhishek and Aditya
Author : abhishek9925
Score : 52 points
Date : 2022-09-29 14:25 UTC (8 hours ago)
| quadcore wrote:
| What tech do you use to make this website?
| adityaketkar wrote:
| Hi Aditya here, co-founder at Telematica. Our landing page is
| built on Webflow and the product demo is built on NextJS, using
| Chakra UI for react components and hosted on Vercel.
| quadcore wrote:
| Congrats on the launch for whats it's worth I think youre
| gonna make a great company.
| dotBen wrote:
| 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.
| sneak wrote:
| 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.
| caseydonahue wrote:
| Is this like smartcar.com but with a different geographical
| focus?
| [deleted]
| abhishek9925 wrote:
| Our car API is similar to what Smartcar does but we are 100%
| focussed on EVs. On top of the EV API we are also building
| tools for smart charging, dynamic load balancing and charging
| scheduling for fleets. We are compatible across the US and
| Europe.
| haydenchambers wrote:
| whistlecow wrote:
| This is an ooof. to straighten the timeline of events as i
| monitor the connected car space --
|
| - 2016 YC invests in Smartcar.
|
| - 2019 Otonomo lost lawsuit to Smartcar after stealing/copying
| them. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19719380
|
| - 2021 YC decides to invest in Enode which cloning Smartcar.
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26468448
|
| - 2022 YC decides to invest in Telematica which cloning Smartcar.
|
| I give this another 12 months for YC to invest in the next clone.
| sidcool wrote:
| Congrats on launching.
| abhishek9925 wrote:
| Thanks!
| orliesaurus wrote:
| Congrats on your launch!
|
| What was the process of reverse engineering the APIs like?
| adityaketkar wrote:
| It definitely had a learning curve to it, the first few being
| the hardest. But it's a pretty standard process using standard
| / OSS tools (charles proxy majorly).
| dboreham wrote:
| Doesn't this break the ToS of the vehicle vendors' user accounts?
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| I have multiple third party apps consuming my Tesla account
| (which contains multiple vehicles) and have had no issues.
| Nextgrid wrote:
| Should it matter? If you bought the car and have access to your
| charging data, you should be able to delegate that access to a
| third-party if you want.
| rootusrootus wrote:
| I hope none of the developers own Teslas. Elon might just turn
| their car off for good.
|
| I wish that were just a joke.
| jsight wrote:
| This sounds a lot like abetterrouteplanner, which already
| uses the Tesla API. They even get daily supercharger
| availability information to handle any temporary closures.
|
| A lot of people in the community use Teslamate and Teslafi.
| The Tesla unofficial API is actually pretty good too.
| leobg wrote:
| How is that? TeslaFi.com has been there for ages. Many others
| exist. And Tesla actually improved API access over the years
| (can now use tokens vs. having to share your account password
| with the app).
| jmartin2683 wrote:
| I can see how there might be a use case for large fleets, but as
| an electric car owner for personal use I have to say that your
| two "problems" (range anxiety and charging management) are
| actually the two things I found to not really be problems. You
| plug it in at night.
| [deleted]
| sungflower wrote:
| Zhenya wrote:
| This is for oems to embed in their infotainment/ tcu so that they
| can expose their vehicle data to end users?
| abhishek9925 wrote:
| 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.
| Zhenya wrote:
| 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?
| abhishek9925 wrote:
| 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.
| Zhenya wrote:
| What's your business model?
| abhishek9925 wrote:
| Currently, we charge $0.25 per EV connected per month
| with upto 10,000 API calls allowed per month.
| arik-so wrote:
| Isn't this a straight up rip-off of https://smartcar.com/?
| [deleted]
| abhishek9925 wrote:
| 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!
| moralestapia wrote:
| 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?
| abhishek9925 wrote:
| Sure, please email us at abhishek@telematica.so and we can get
| you started!
| jinzo wrote:
| 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.
| kposehn wrote:
| Very cool. Do you have plans to add other manufacturers like
| Lucid and Rivian anytime soon?
| abhishek9925 wrote:
| Yes, we are developing integrations for both of these brands.
| Could you please share your email address so that I can keep
| you updated once we've built them?
| addisonl wrote:
| Seems like your API is showing the incorrect distance unit
| (kilometers when it should be miles).
| abhishek9925 wrote:
| We appear to have made kilometres the default unit. For EVs in
| the United States, we'll modify it to miles. Thanks!
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(page generated 2022-09-29 23:02 UTC)