Following its rollout in Canada and the US, Mojio announced this week that their Mojio Connected Car solution is now available on Amazon.com and moj.io. As auto-makers, service providers and third party connected car platform providers such as MirrorLink, CarPlay and AndroidAuto come together to deliver connectivity to the new vehicles in the market, Mojio's unique solution uses a simple OBD plug-and-play device to connect existing cars to the internet.
The OBD device can be used in cars that come with onboard diagnostic port (OBD II), a feature available in most cars since 1996, said Mojio. The device provides connectivity via the 3G network. At present, Mojio is partnering with Telus in Canada and AT&T in US. Any customer, regardless of their existing cellular connectivity, can purchase the device and sign-up with these operators to start enjoying the in-vehicle connectivity. Customers pay $169 in Canada and USD149 in US for the device and after free connectivity on 3G for the first year, will be paying monthly subscriptions of $6.99 and USD4.99 respectively.
With 3G connectivity, the Mojio device will connect the vehicle to Mojio's cloud platform from which users can access a wide range of data transmitted from their vehicles. The Mojio device captures vehicle diagnostics, journey details such as mileage and expenses and provides a wide range of services such as real-time location tracking and timely notifications that correspond to the vehicle diagnostics such as alerting the driver when fuel levels drop while providing the direction to the closest gas station. The device also incorporates social features that allow the driver to share information from his/her end (such as the location of the vehicle) with other people. All the information is available via online apps from Mojio.
Being an open platform, Mojio expects third party developers to leverage on the solution to develop newer applications and said in its statement that some of these app development projects are already underway including apps for parking payments, automated trip expensing, simplified car rental and home automation.
Jay Giraud, CEO, Mojio
We believe that people want their car to be more like their smartphone, to personalize their connected driving experience with apps that actually talk to all the intelligence behind their dashboard. Mojio offers that to anyone with a car made since 1996 with an open platform that over 100 companies are building their connected car apps on today and because Mojio works with most cars, drivers can seamlessly use their Mojio-enabled apps with the different makes and models of cars that modern families share. ................Mojio provides relevant information drivers need, right when they need it. We’re pretty excited to be joining the connected car marketplace and hopefully, meeting our goal of making driving more like the car commercials promised.
Thilo Koslowski, vice president and automotive practice leader, Gartner
Connected vehicle innovations will not only define the automotive industry's next century, but also offer new business opportunities for automakers and other industries. As the vehicle becomes the ultimate mobile device, new value propositions will emerge and business models will be disrupted.
