Automatic (Car Adapter) Shutting Down

I sent an email to their support team asking if they had plans to open source their apps and they said, "there are no plans".

I'd imagine that domain name is worth some serious case. Automattic (WordPress) and many others would probably love to scoop that up. I wonder if that's their most valuable asset now?

This really sucks. I have two Automatics, and they are just awesome. I&#x27;ve already used them to diagnose car issues, and tracking is great.<p>Luckily I got a lot of use out of them, but definitely said to see them go.

Whew, not Automattic (WordPress).

I always really liked this approach: Instead of every car smart by replacing them, make dumb cars (a bit) smarter with a connected device. Even once pitched a competitor to this service. That said, I&#x27;m wondering what the impact of Covid was on this: A regular SAAS service shouldn&#x27;t see a huge impact, or would all customers cancel when not using their car for a month?

Wow. This is hard to believe. Big-time Automatic user - have been for about 6 years. The crash-alert feature provides peace of mind in a somewhat older vehicle. If anyone else knows an alternative, please share!

Perhaps next time someone on HN is complaining about &quot;yet another subscription&quot; business, send them to this and 10k other posts as a reminder how good businesses die without proper revenue.

It&#x27;s hard to believe they weren&#x27;t acquired. The amount of driving data they have must be huge.

&gt; With fewer consumers purchasing and leasing vehicles and drivers on the road, we unfortunately do not see a path forward for our business.<p>Said like nobody will ever drive cars again.<p>I&#x27;m perplexed at how quickly these businesses are deciding to fold.

The adapter may still function over Bluetooth to read SAE PID [1] data using OBD Fusion[1] or a similar app.<p>[1] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;OBD-II_PIDs" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;OBD-II_PIDs</a><p>[2] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;apps.apple.com&#x2F;us&#x2F;app&#x2F;obd-fusion&#x2F;id650684932" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;apps.apple.com&#x2F;us&#x2F;app&#x2F;obd-fusion&#x2F;id650684932</a>

They made my unit end of life, and then found themselves at end of life.<p>This is IoT.

Wow, the service stops on May 28th, less than a month away.<p>Just out of curiosity, have there been more (relatively successful) companies with a paid subscription plan that announced that they would, within a couple of weeks, shut their services down? As an outsider it seems quite drastic to me, given that the daily costs of keeping the servers running a bit longer is negligible.

Just buy the Torque Pro app for $5 and buy a cheap OBD2 Bluetooth adapter to go with it. No subscription needed.<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;play.google.com&#x2F;store&#x2F;apps&#x2F;details?id=org.prowl.torque" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;play.google.com&#x2F;store&#x2F;apps&#x2F;details?id=org.prowl.torq...</a>

I wonder how many companies are going to be claiming covid related issues to mask other deeper issues.

Anyone know a good alternative to this that isn&#x27;t meant to be fleet-scale? Getting OBD data over Bluetooth is widespread enough, but their service also made it super easy to generate mileage expenses. Also downloading a CSV of all my trips made for some fun data crunching. I&#x27;d love to keep those things going even if it means self-hosting something.

Would be great to get an export that preserves the image of the trip map showing the path, even as a zipped folder full of thumbnails. Now do I write a script to scrape a screen shot of the 1700 trips, or write some code to use the exported encoded polyline (lose brake&#x2F;mph&#x2F;accel data on map)?

I have an older unsupported device still connected to my car. Any open source ideas for it?

I haven&#x27;t read the article but I wonder how GeoTab worked into this (for the small fleet customers, large fleets would never consider this product)

This sucks. I use Automatic to track business miles. Is there a good alternative that&#x27;s not phone based?

I panicked thinking this was the company behind Wordpress. It&#x27;s not, it&#x27;s just a car assistant thing.

Anyone have an alternative that they use for GPS tracking? I have 3 of these, argh.

If anyone has a device they’d like to sell, please contact me (in bio).<p>[EDIT] Thank you to the wonderful hackers who reached out to me. I think that I am all set now.