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Low tech is the way to go. People want to equip electric cars with tracking devices to determine road taxes. It’s like they don’t realize each car has a yearl
by twobitshifter 6y ago
Low tech is the way to go. People want to equip electric cars with tracking devices to determine road taxes. It’s like they don’t realize each car has a yearly inspection and odometer reading. The added value of knowing exactly how many miles are driven in state or out of state will just be noise.
- peterburkimsher 6y agoI used to work for an IoT startup that is doing vehicle tracking. Along with the main market of rental cars, the client also wanted to track rural vehicles for off-road distances. Over a few months, I designed and implemented an algorithm for counting the distance travelled off-road. It took a TomTom road map of the whole country (not a cheap license fee), divided the trip into pairs of points, checked whether each segment intersected with or came within 10m of a road, and finally made a total of the distance. There were deviations (odometer compared to on road + off road straight line distance) but it was good enough to be usable, and we shipped it. It also generated reports for reclaiming road tax for off-road driving. In practice, the client realised that our $7 per vehicle per month fee for the service will only save them $2 or $3 in road taxes for their most off-road vehicle. Just because it's technically exciting doesn't make it financially logical.