Nearly every recently developed car is now connected — with 97% of EVs equipped with embedded telematics — spearheading a new mobility ecosystem. Apps for EV charging, vehicle history reports, auto insurance, fleet management, and car sharing are just some of the industry verticals accelerating this shift in the transportation sector.
This month, we’re excited to share how Smartcar’s latest product updates will empower developers with on-hand, intuitive tools that streamline compatibility with new brands and endpoints.
Want to watch our New at Smartcar Summer 2023 event for yourself? View the recording here.
New compatible brands. One API.
Smartcar integrates with some of the most popular vehicle brands across North America and Europe. Since 2022, we’ve expanded access to include:
🦅 United States: Kia, Nissa, Mazda, Infiniti, Porsche
🍁 Canada: Kia, Hyundai
⭐ Europe: Mercedes-Benz
Today, Smartcar is compatible with 36 brands across the globe, the largest in the industry. As of this product release, this means that Smartcar is able to connect to 161M+ connected vehicles.
Visit our compatibility page for a complete list of compatible models and their supported endpoints!
Expanding telematics capabilities
We’re continuing to expand support for electric vehicles with new endpoints that increase accessibility for developers. While Smartcar currently offers battery level, start/stop charge, charging status, and battery capacity endpoints, demand is growing.
We introduced our EV charge limit and EV set charge limit APIs this year to help apps verify a vehicle owner’s preferred EV charge limit and set thresholds during the charging session to preserve battery health.
Did you know that Smartcar is compatible with a total of 29 EV brands across the North America and Europe? This endpoint will aid in optimizing and understanding EV battery health, improving grid load, and quantifying how much energy is used to charge EVs.
🔋 EV endpoints
🪫EV charge limit: Retrieve the charge limit configuration for a vehicle.
🔌 EV set charge limit: Control the limit at which the vehicle should stop charging and be considered fully charged.
⚡ Tesla brand-specific endpoints
As we wait for OEMs to catch up with each other’s telematic capabilities, we decided to give developers access to information that’s already available, starting with Tesla.
📊 Vehicle status: view the current state of the vehicle (asleep or online), and what gear the car is in.
🚗 Extended vehicle attributes: learn more about the selected vehicle, including the software version, color, optional packages, etc.
❄️ Climate settings & control: provide additional controls for the vehicle’s climate, including cabin temperature, defrosting, and steering wheel heating.
These endpoints allow developers to explore and improve their user experience, and further personalize their offerings for each vehicle’s specific configuration. This information can also be used to see if changes impact battery performance.
Customize your user experience
The developer and user experience are equally important at Smartcar. As such, we’re proud to announce advancements in the developer dashboard to boost conversions and ensure connectivity.
💻 Developer experience
📋 Brand management: customize brands shown in Smartcar Connect.
📈 Brand rankings: rank brands shown in Connect based on popularity by region on the Smartcar platform.
The introduction of these endpoints aims to improve conversion rates for a majority of the applications on the platform. For example, developers can deselect older brands in the dashboard in order to improve visibility for brands known for supporting BEVs, or omit brands their app doesn’t support regardless of EV status.
📱 Mobility app experience
🗣️ New languages: autodetect and localize 10 different languages to display on Connect, using cookies and device settings.
📍 Brand selection: automatically personalize the Connect flow based on device location to improve brand curation, if a country flag is not set.
📲 Remember Me return flow: allows apps to remember a vehicle owner’s credentials through device-bound methods to reduce friction for second-time sign-in via return user flow.
Content localization and country selection based on location has been shown to reduce friction by 15% to Smartcar Connect. For users across Europe, this feature proves especially helpful.
New month, new updates ✨
70M+ connected vehicles will be shipped worldwide by the end of 2023. How will your business act on this opportunity? To remain at the forefront of industry news and Smartcar happenings, subscribe to our monthly newsletter (it’s free!).
If you’re new to Smartcar, schedule a demo to learn how Smartcar can benefit your application, or sign up for a free developer account to take our car API for a spin!
