With 90% of new cars sold in the U.S. connected and able to send data to the automakers, there’s a lot of data out there that can be valuable to those who manage fleets or offer services to car owners.
If that data is to be made usable, though, it must be collected from different automakers, translated into a common format, analyzed and delivered to customers in a way that gives them insights into the problem they want to solve.
“Cars are generating a lot of data, but that data has to be put in context with customer pain points,” Motorq Co-Founder and CEO Arun Rajagopalan told PYMNTS. “Everybody who touches and manages vehicles, they have pain points throughout the life cycle of that vehicle.”
Developing New Markets for Connected Car Data
Motorq, a connected car API company, helps solve problems by learning about its customers’ pain points, understanding what data is required to solve them, working with car manufacturers to get that data and using that data as a critical input to deliver the needed insights to enterprise customers.
With connected car data, large enterprises that own and manage vehicles can get information about vehicles’ location, fuel usage, fuel transactions, maintenance, battery performance and driver behavior.
In February, Motorq raised $40 million in its Series B round of funding. With the new capital, the company will replicate what it’s doing in the U.S. in Europe and Japan and expand into new markets.
Handling Reimbursement for Electric Vehicle Charging
One key issue the company has solved with connected car data involved charging electric vehicles (EVs) that are company cars. Employees often charge these cars at home because they don’t want to sit at a charging station. When they’ve asked the fleet manager for reimbursement for that charging, the manager has been unable to measure it and determine the right amount.
Now, Motorq can generate a report that lists the charging events for each EV, the locations at which it was charged, the kilowatt hours used and the rate.
“The beauty is that the car is the source of truth in terms of data, so Motorq knows exactly when the vehicle was charged, where it was charged, and how much energy was used in that charging cycle, and so this problem was solved months ago,” Rajagopalan said.
Solving EV Range Anxiety
Another EV issue that can be solved with data is range. For example, a vehicle may have a range of 300 miles under normal conditions, but its range may not be known when it’s called upon to drive in freezing conditions while towing a load.
“We provide insights to the fleet manager to let them know whether that vehicle is capable of that or not,” Rajagopalan said. “We know how range varies based on speed, based on load, based on ambient temperature, so we give fleet managers a little more insight so that they can operationalize those assets properly and not run into issues.”
Enabling Usage-Based Insurance Without Adding Devices
With its new funding, Motorq plans to expand into new markets including insurance, automotive rental and dealer services.
For car dealers, connected car data can be used to track vehicles that are on the lot or used as loaners.
For insurance companies, the data enables the implementation of usage-based insurance without using external hardware or the driver’s smartphone.
To date, companies have been using two solutions. One was to give the customer a device to plug into the car — a solution that was clunky and expensive. Another was to use the driver’s smartphone, but that follows the driver, while the vehicle is what the company has insured.
“At the end of the day, the carriers are insuring the car, so they really want information from the car,” Rajagopalan said. “Only now, really in the last two years, has that data been available, so we’re helping some of the large carriers figure it out.”
Solving Common Rental Car Problems
For rental car companies, connected car data can be used to track vehicles and to geofence them so that if the vehicle is taken somewhere the company doesn’t allow — such as across an international border — the fleet manager will get an email. The data can also be used to detect minor collisions that may not be reported by the customer.
“Another one is fuel,” Rajagopalan said. “Sometimes it’s a hot button but now, based on the data, the rental car company knows exactly what the fuel tank capacity was when you checked it out and when you brought it back in, and they can look at the difference.”
Looking ahead, Rajagopalan said Motorq is just scratching the surface in terms of the number of use cases for connected car data.
“The interesting thing for us is, there are large enterprises that are solving some problems in a traditional way — how do we enable them to change their approach?” Rajagopalan said. “If they can get these insights, they might have a change in their approach to solve the problem.”
