Does Your Electric Car REALLY Need Telematics?
If you’re in the market for a new car and you’re looking to buy something made within the last 10 years for the very first time you might be surprised to know that an inordinate number of new vehicles including internal combustion engine models now come with some form of
Telematics system depending on the make and the model of car you’re looking at and the price of said vehicle they might be capable of doing everything from keeping track of where your car is in real time a useful function no doubt if you have teenagers who Reg L borrow your
Car through to remote locking unlocking and preconditioning if you’re looking to buy a new EV or again one made within the last decade there’s almost a 100% chance that the vehicle you’re looking at left of the factory with some form of onboard modem designed to facilitate telematics some like Tesla’s made after
2012 will even have the ability to offer you a mobile Wi-Fi hotspot so that you can offer passengers complimentary Wi-Fi while you drive along and these features along with the ability to remotely interrogate your car’s state of charge and predicted range start and stop charging sessions get over theair
Software updates and keep track of your car’s battery pack Health are often used by EV enthusiasts as one of the key killer features of buying an EV with telematics enabled I’ve personally espoused the benefits of telematics multiple times on this channel and I’m someone who uses telematics to the
Fullest to allow me to integrate the remote telematics capabilities of both our Chevrolet bolt EV and Ford F150 Lightning into our own home automation system but in a world where data breaches happen with shocking regularity where having anything connected to the internet puts it at risk of becoming
Attacked and where data overload is a real thing we have to ask do you really need telematics for your EV let’s find Out okay so this video might at first seem to be a pretty easy video and the answer to the question do you really need telematics in your EV is one that I’m guessing most of you already have a yes or no answer firmly set on in your
Head but the goal of this video isn’t necessarily to try and change your mindset from whatever position you already have the obvious answer of course being that nobody really needs telematics in order to have a functional vehicle no instead I’m hoping that we can discuss some of the pros and cons of
Telematics of which there are many in preparing this video I sat down and examined my own relationship with onboard telematics and while I have used remote telematics in the majority of EVS made after 2010 that I’ve owned I’ve been driving EV since 2006 and many of my EV these are built before telematics
Even existed my city L my Volkswagen Golf City strama my Reaver or gwiz as well as my DIY homemade plug-in Prius offered nothing in the way of telematrix my vectrex vx1 doesn’t have it nor did my two Renault twizzies although I will be honest I did add it to those Vehicles
Later thanks to the ovms project my Toyota Rav 4 EV also didn’t have telematics although did have an onboard timer function for climate control that allowed me to carry out the same preconditioning behavior with it that I’ve enjoyed for the majority of my telematics enabled EVS because of all of
That I think I’ve probably got a little more experience with telematics than most so if you’re looking at a used older EV that either doesn’t have telematics because it never came with it from the factory or perhaps has lost its telematics capabilities due to changes in the cellular mode mod M Network since
It rolled off the production line don’t frat although I’ll come to some ways around that later in the video that said if you are looking at a new EV and you’re new to EVS you really should consider trying out telematics to begin with especially as many automakers offer
It as a free service of the first few months or years of ownership which brings me to the positives the benefits of having telematics and at the top of the list is knowing what the car is doing when it comes to charging and its state of charge if you live somewhere
With your own dedicated parking and charging space and that charging is Rock Solid reliable then this is probably less of a worry than if you are relying on public charging for the majority of your vehicle’s Motive Power but either way knowing how full your car’s battery pack is at any given time using
Telematics is a major bonus not only does it mean that you can build confidence that your car has the range you expect when you finally get behind the wheel but it also is a great way of telling if someone has either maliciously or accidentally unplugged your vehicle while it’s charging back in
The early days of my Nissan Leaf ownership in the UK I remember receiving multiple messages from car Wings when road tripping somewhere telling me that some insert a derogatory word of your choice had decided to hit the emergency stop button for a laugh on a rapid
Charger or had decided to unplug my car from a level two charging station it not only meant that I was able to rectify the problem and get back on the road very quickly but it also meant that I was able to pinpoint reasonably accurately when someone decided to
Maliciously screw with my car in a similar vein telematics also meant that I was able to identify at what point I needed to return to my car and resume my trip meaning that I could go and sit in a nice coffee shop at a rest stop rather
Than stay in my car and wait expanding that forward more modern vehicles with remote locking and unlocking have also allowed me to let friends or teenage children go back to the car and retrieve things they left behind without handing over physical keys and while that last functionality is certainly not a
Requirement it’s something I very much enjoyed being able to do telematics packages from different automakers offer different things and exactly what’s included usually battery state of charge monitoring and preconditioning at the bare minimum although some automakers even charge for that varies from automaker to automaker but outside of the day-to-day charge monitoring and
Preconditioning one of the features I really value is the ability to keep an eye on battery pack and Vehicle Health most automakers if you let them offer the chance to send you messages if there’s something arai with your car such as a flat tire or a battery pack
That requires urgent service given how many times in the last few years we’ve heard of battery failures and recalls knowing ahead of time that there’s something wrong is a very useful feature Tesla and some other automakers have actually used remote telematics to identify problems with customers cars long before they become critical
Problems I’ve met people who have received phone calls or emails from their car’s respective automakers going yeah could you bring your car in for service now long before the driver themselves was even aware that there was an issue and what’s more when there is an issue with a vehicle that requires
The owner to call a dealership or service center telematics can be used to allow technicians the chance to remotely diagnose problems without the car being present or at least pull off error codes to allow them to prepare for an eventual service visit f more effectively then there’s the ability to
Track your car if you so wish and know where it is and I’m not going to lie here I’ve actually used telematics in the past to make sure my significant other is safe and well when they’re away from home or maybe struggling to make it to the next charging station and I’ve
Also used it to help locate my Chevrolet bolt that was quote unquote Borrowed by one of my children who didn’t have a driving license at the time without my permission or knowledge otaa over the a updates well they are the icing on the cake allowing you to receive software
Updates that improve the functionality of your vehicle fix bugs and add new features without you ever having to take time off work to head to the dealership or the service center OTA updates delivered via the same modem that provides telematics has expanded the capabilities of my Ford F-150 Lightning
A lot since the very first models started rolling off the production line to years ago but before you think this is a love letter from yours truly to telematics think again because while telematics can offer a bunch of features that can enhance the ownership experience there are definitely some
Downsides mostly they relate to your data and expose your vehicle to the internet the first and hopefully obvious one is that your vehicle’s telematics is only as secure as the weakest Link in the telematics chain every time your vehicle data crosses over the inner tubes there’s a potential point of
Attack and because telematic systems usually send data from a vehicle to an automaker’s data center then pass that back in data to a different data center focused on the smartphone app you use to interact with your vehicle before then sending that to your phone there are many potential points of attack and look
Nobody wants a flat in a tube I know the word is internet but while writing this script late in a very busy week my inner Alter Ego who happens to be a time traveling Immortal steam punk border colly who doesn’t understand the modern world very clearly sat on my shoulder and insisted
That I used the phrase inner tubes and this one time time I let her have her way it’s been a sucky week so just let me have that little bit of escapism a of course all of these attack vectors are carefully monitored and checked by respective automakers and
Data Partners involved in providing your cars telematics and vulnerabilities do get exposed and exploited and ultimately patched databases can get attacked and intrusion does happen but the sad reality of any interconnected system like this is that it’s only as secure as you choose to make it and if you happen
To have a super secure system that’s very difficult to gain entry to but you the end user is using your regular email address and password as the password then in the dramatized words of Jim LEL Houston we have a problem before you get the pitchforks out I know Lovel actually
Said said okay Houston we’ve had a problem but the version scripted and attributed to level in the film Apollo 13 was a little more appropriate in this context I regularly meet people who are concerned about the safety element of a telematic system often because of potential security breaches and yes
There have been some pretty heinous oopsies from car telematics back in the early days of the Nissan Leaf I seem to recall it was possible to query the server for a vehicle’s location using its VIN number even if you weren’t the actual owner of said vehicle that was
Quickly patched and there are plenty of similar stories of a similar ilk over the last decade or so but if you pick a secure unique password that you regularly change and like anything else you do online be it’s social media managing your retirement account or watching the latest Blockbuster Video on
Your streaming platform of choice you should be far more secure than you would be if you were using the same password for everything and as we’ve said time and time again if you haven’t considered getting a password manager it’s high time you do that and of course enabling two Factor authentication methods were
Offered and using a different email address for super sensitive and very critical things that you do not want to suffer cross-contamination from in the event of a security breach is also a smart move if you use the same email address for your bank account as you do
For your cars telematics it takes a lot less energy for a nefarious neller to connect that account to your bank account if they know that account a belongs to the same person that account B belongs to and it might have the same password you’re in trouble following well trodden security advice and keeping
Everything updated will help minimize the risk that your personal data will be leaked or compromised or that your telematic system will be breached but if this still concerns you then I’m going to be honest it’s probably best that you don’t use telematics most modern EVs do have climate controllers that allow you
To set in vehicle timers for when you’d like the car to be ready and a similar onboard timer usually exists for charging and as I said earlier on in this video there’s no requirement that you use telematics in order to use your EV it’s your car and your choice you may
Also though lose some access to things like plug and charge so be aware that you might lose key features you want to use the other reason often discussed though for people not using telematics is one that we’ve been hearing a lot of in the news lately your car telling
Tales on you sending data back to your automaker detailing how it’s been driven how fast it’s been driven when and where it’s been driven and that data sometimes Finds Its way back to insurance companies just a few weeks ago we heard of stories from both Ford EV and
Chevrolet EV drivers worried that their insurance policies had increased off of the back of how their vehicles had been driven and telematics was the blamed party but what’s super important here is the fact that in most parts of the world automakers need your explicit permission to share your driving data with your
Insurance company it’s an optin rather than an opt out process and look it’s all too easy to get suckered into just clicking through agreements or signing blank pages when you buy a new vehicle or you get a new insurance policy all without reading that small print and
It’s all too easy to turn on new features in your brand new shiny car without truly understanding what they do sadly and I’m not a lawyer it’s always worth actually reading what you’re signing before signing it whether you are signing it in the real world or virtually signing it yes I know I’m
Boring but half of the time I hear of horror stories where someone has discovered that a company or a product is doing something they are unhappy about had they made a quick cursory look at the small print they would have revealed that yes they were actually signing to agree for something that they
Now know nothing about and as a side to my side the e that’s the Electronic Frontier Foundation and several awesome illegal nonprofits are all campaigning to make online agreements less incomprehensible and more easily understood by the average non-legally trained individual so support them if you can finally to finish this all off let’s
Talk about what happens if you don’t use telema matics have no telematics capability because of an out-of-date modem or in the case of some owners rip out the telematics unit entirely if your vehicle has no telematics because you’ve opted to not subscribe to it or you’ve decided not to connect to it you
Shouldn’t have any massive issues although I should note that you may not get over theair updates you may not be able to do plug and charge and unless your car has Wi-Fi and you connect to a known good Wi-Fi access point once in a while to do a software update you may
Have to go to the dealership to get urgent fixers applied while you might not be bothered with software functionality turning off telematics and incar modems also means you’ll lose out on the ability to keep an eye on your car and have your automaker notify you if it figures out a issue is pending
With your ride While most of the time that’s not a big problem when it comes to EV battery pack health there’s certainly a peace of mind to be had from having your car’s automaker reach out and ask you to drop by for a service appointment long before your car stops working or
Worse ripping out the telematics I’m going to be honest that’s a little extreme a little Next Level and it could not only mean that you potentially cause unexpected problems with other computer circuits in the vehicle that are expecting the module but it could also make your vehicle less
Valuable when you come to sell it on not using the system is usually enough and if you are truly worried about having some online connection you didn’t authorize pulling the SIM card instead is usually enough the last bit telematics if your car doesn’t have them or no longer has access to them because
The network that it used when you is no longer working some automakers Chevrolet and Nissan are among the culprits here are slowly rolling back support for older vehicles telematic systems around the world and that’s frankly frustrating and disappointing I know for a while however Nissan Tesla and other automakers offered 3G upgrades for
Customers for a fee allowing them the ability to upgrade their incar telematics modem to a system compatible with latest cell phone technology as older Towers were turned off I know this happened because I actually paid for a 3G upgrade for one of our Nissan Leafs
Back when we owned them but if you are someone who would rather benefit from telematics you have control over why not consider joining and supporting the open vehicle monitoring system project it is an opsource project that brings telematics capabilities to older EVs and in some cases brings an alternative to
OEM telematics to the table as I noted previously I’ve had them in a couple of my vehicles over the last decade we’d love to install the ovms system in our Chevrolet bolt EV but as yet we’ve not spent the money on the hardware but let us know if that’s something you’d really
Like to see us do in short though telematics and the need for it really does depend on your personal choice and there’s no right or wrong answer but for what it offers most of the time I’m personally in the fan of the telematics group although I’d love to convert my
Personal Fleet to an open source alternative so I know exactly where my data is at all times what say you thanks for joining me today and if you’ve got thoughts make sure you leave them Below in our Discord chat room or you can reach out to us on
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Pretty much every modern EV today comes with some form of Telematics as standard – and we’re often asked if it’s something that people should activate, make use of, or instead ignore it in order to insure maximum security.
But in a world where telematics and OTA updates are intrinsically linked, it might not be the easiest question to answer. Nevertheless, we’re going to try and give it a go.
—
00:00 – Introduction
02:07 – This video might appear pretty easy to answer but…
02:58 – We’ve survived without telematics for years
04:34 – If charging is predictable, you might not need telematics…
05:08 – Knowing when someone is screwing with your car is a big telematics plus
07:13 – Automakers can help your EV stay healthy via remote diagnostics
08:01 – Tracking your car…
08:31 – OTAs are a big bonus to telematics, too.
09:07 – Concerns of hacking, cybersecurity breaches
11:41 – …But you’re the weakest link, goodbye!
13:34 – There’s no shame in NOT having Telematics
14:23 – Insruance tatle-tales? (Here’s the real facts)
15:38 – READ before SIGNING!
16:23 – What happens if you don’t use telematics?
18:12 – Telematics for no-longer supported EVs
19:03 – OVMS – an alternative to examine…
20:05 – Thanks, and Goodbye!
—
Presenter, Script, Audio: Nikki Gordon-Bloomfield.
Camera, Editor, Colorist: M. Horton
Art and Animation: Erin Carlie
Producer: Nikki Gordon-Bloomfield
© Transport Evolved LLC, 2024
—-
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