A year of growth: Smartcar's 2022 product highlights

Our end-of-year New at Smartcar event showcases all our new product releases and milestones achieved in 2022. We’re excited to show you Smartcar’s growth over the past 12 months and how it empowers more developers to build mobility apps on our platform. You can watch a replay of the event here 📺

Why we protect driver privacy

Outside of housing, transportation makes up the biggest chunk of household spending.

The Bureau of Labor Statistics found that over a third of consumers in America were financing new vehicles in the first half of 2022.

“Often, cars are the only way people can get to work, school, grocery stores, or hospitals,” said Smartcar CEO, Sahas Katta, during our New at Smartcar: Winter 2022 showcase. “Mobility presents paths to opportunities and a better life.”

Although 9 out of 10 vehicles on the road are shipped with internet connectivity, there remains a big disconnect between vehicle owners and their ability to choose automotive services that excite and benefit them the most.

At Smartcar, we’re motivated by a desire to give connected car owners more autonomy over their vehicle experience. That may mean:

🍃  Choosing the most suitable EV charging management solution

💰  Opting for more accurate usage-based auto insurance premiums

🚘  Having the convenience of locating and using a shared vehicle when needed

To build and uphold this innovative ecosystem of automotive apps, there has to be a firm understanding of a vehicle owner’s choice to share mobility data.

Take a look at this snippet from Sahas about our stance on vehicle owner choice 👇

You can also read about our consent-based OAuth2.0 flow, Smartcar Connect, or view a list of our platform’s security features.

50% more compatible brands

The Smartcar platform is now compatible with 33 vehicle brands and over 153 million connected cars.

Check out our brand compatibility page for a list of all our compatible brands, makes, and models.

100% of customers are now using V2.0 of our API

A few months ago, we announced that we would officially retire version 1.0 of our API. Version 2.0 of the Smartcar API is our biggest effort to incorporate customer feedback around error handling, data polling, and data granularity.

You can read more details about V2.0 of the Smartcar API on our blog, but we wanted to highlight two significant features our new API introduces:

Brand-specific endpoints

We launched brand-specific endpoints earlier this year to keep to our new requirement of building endpoints: If the vehicle data is available, developers should be able to access it if vehicle owners find it useful.

In addition to the endpoints available in our Standard API, V2.0 comes with a set of unique endpoints for Tesla, Cadillac, and Chevrolet vehicles. Apps can access this additional data while maintaining the standardized error codes, permissions, and simple compatibility checks offered by our Standard API.

We’d like to call out a few of our most requested brand-specific endpoints:

1. Tesla EV charging amperage: Use amperage data in your smart charging app to prevent sudden spikes after a demand response event.
   
2. Cadillac EV charging voltage: Use charge voltage data to improve your understanding of battery health and prevent battery degradation from fast charging.
   
3. Chevrolet charging completion time: Get visibility into the average charge rate of Chevrolet vehicles during a session and predict their battery life and performance.

Smartcar webhooks

Version 2.0 of our API gives users a better experience when receiving app notifications regarding vehicle events and updates. Here are two ways you can use Smartcar webhooks:

1. Event-based webhooks: Send notifications to vehicle owners based on specific actions, like when a vehicle starts charging, stops charging, or completes a charging session.
   
2. Scheduled webhooks: Send recurring notifications to vehicle owners based on a set schedule.

Why apps use our EV battery capacity endpoint

EV battery capacity our most popular endpoint — and we’re excited to make it available for our customers in Europe this year!

This means smart charging apps can now connect to vehicles across 29 countries in Europe in addition to Canada and the United States.

EV battery capacity data is a crucial component of demand response and smart charging initiatives. It allows apps to better determine the best times for starting and stopping a charge while giving vehicle owners more visibility and control over their EV charging schedules.

FlexCharging is a managed charging platform that helps EV owners reduce charging costs and carbon emissions by optimizing their charging schedules according to grid demand.

FlexCharging uses the EV battery capacity endpoint to determine how much energy an EV needs and how long it will take to reach a driver’s preferred charging level. They also use the charging status and battery capacity endpoint to deliver the best charging experience.

Doubling down on the developer experience

The Smartcar dashboard was another major area of focus this past year. We’re thrilled to see so many developers using Dashboard Insights to get a holistic view of all their Smartcar integration data.

You can now use the dashboard to view all your successful API requests, active vehicles, and status codes. On our new navigation bar, you’ll also be able to access our all-new vehicle test simulator.

What does our vehicle test simulator do? Here’s how car sharing app, Tapcar, uses this feature to accelerate production 👇
 

"Vehicle simulator has been very helpful in giving us a more realistic expectation for how our application will work in production and understand edge cases around specific models and years for a car brand.

Understanding how much latency is expected in production per OEM and endpoint is incredibly helpful for us to build a better user experience for our customers."

— Dennis Brandenberger, CEO and founder at Tapcar

 
You can also watch our webinar replay to catch a full demo of the Smartcar dashboard and vehicle test simulator.

We’re ready to keep building a better future for mobility 🍃

We’ve seen many big mobility ideas come to life and grow on our platform.

Today, developers use our car API to integrate with over 100 EV models. We’ve supported nationwide launches of contactless car sharing features, and we’ve worked with innovators who are introducing user-owned networks of vehicle data and reimagining EV fleet financing.

We’re excited to continue redefining our ecosystem of mobility apps in 2023 – stay tuned for more brands, platform improvements, and trailblazing mobility use cases from our community of connected car developers!

Don't forget to watch a replay of New at Smartcar: Winter 2022 if you want more information on all our 2022 updates 📺
 

Vehicle brands, logos, and model names belong to their respective trademark holders and do not indicate endorsement or affiliation with Smartcar.