VehicleDiagnostics
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Verizon's Vehicle Diagnostics by Delphi now monitoring your car for $250
Who'd have thought we'd be happy to see an unassuming black box? Delphi and Verizon managed to whet our interest with their Vehicle Diagnostics kit and service at CES, and our curiosity is renewed now that the monitoring combo is available for drivers. The finished product costs a fairly steep $250 for the Delphi adapter, although it does deliver two years of free service and costs a contract-free $5 per month afterwards. Shelling out brings the promised remote troubleshooting and notifications, including alerts for any performance problems and warnings for any geofencing violations. If you're willing to pair an Android or iOS phone with the kit over Bluetooth, you can also use the smart device in place of your keys -- temporarily, we hope. Vehicle Diagnostics should work with most cars made from 1996 onward, but do some homework before any outlay: at least a few cars miss out on the full diagnostic suite, which might dampen dreams of a connected car utopia.
Delphi / Verizon's Vehicle Diagnostics hands-on (video)
We first caught wind of Delphi and Verizon's new Vehicle Diagnostics service a couple of days back. Today we got to see the thing in action at the Pepcom event here at CES. The hardware is a small black plastic box that should plug into most cars sold in the US after 1996. Once inserted, it communicates wireless with your Android or iOS handset or tablet. The Delphi rep we spoke with started things off by pointing out that it does more than just the diagnostics implied by its name -- and that's certainly the case. There's a long laundry list of functionality here. He certainly had a lot to talk about. On a base-level, we're talking geo-fences, performance alerts and map tracking -- it can also mimic key functionality, so you can lock / unlock and remotely start up the engine if your vehicle supports such things. As we said, there's a long list of functionality here -- pretty impressive all in all. In fact, the Connected Car Service app takes a bit of getting used to, due to all the features. We'll let the Delphi rep take you through it the app after the break.
Delphi and Verizon launch new connectivity system: track and monitor your vehicle through your smartphone
Delphi has allied itself with Verizon to launch a new Vehicle Diagnostics service. It works through a cloud system that connects your four-wheeler to your smartphone (or internet browser), showing precisely where your car is, as well as options to secure it and check its vitals. Delphi promises the new system will work in most vehicles sold in the US since 1996 and users can pick up alerts for driving and vehicle performance issues, as well as setup geo-fences to monitor if your car goes outside specified zones. Connecting your phone to the car is done through Bluetooth and adds access to key fob commands including remote door control. The compatible smartphone app will arrive on devices running Android 2.2 or later and iOS 5.0 onwards, while the Delphi Web portal works on Internet Explorer 7, with Firefox, Chrome and Safari versions still in the works. Follow all the latest CES 2013 news at our event hub.
