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Comment by stetrain | Hacker News Reader

Part of what has made modern EVs successful in the wider market is the connected navigation system that knows your battery level, current consumption, planned navigation route, and what charging stations are available along the way.

To have a decent travel experience in an EV you'd likely at least need this data ported out to your phone via an OBD adapter or CarPlay / Android Auto integration with an in-car infotainment display.

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Connecting via ODB? Come on. The car does not need any of that built into it. You can connect an app on your phone to handle all of that and just use the screen as a display. There is no need for a car to have a cellular connection just to give this functionality. That would also prevent the car from being able to communicate with the mother ship. If there's an update, have the app do that as well.

The point is that for your phone to provide accurate routing, it needs data from the car. Preferably live updating data.

Today this is done via an OBD Bluetooth adapter or via CarPlay/Android Auto APIs that allow the phone to get data from the car.

Funny, my phone can provide accurate routing data with out the car. What data from the car does the phone need to be able to accurately route? I'm at my desk no where near my car and it is working just fine

Current battery level and consumption, so that it can tell you whether you will make it to your destination with adequate charge left or insert charging stops where needed.

> ODB

Ol' Dirty Bastard? I jest, but I think the theory behind wanting an 'On-board Diagnostics' [1] connection would be to get data from the vehicle. You can get cheap bluetooth OBD-II adapters to transmit that info to your phone, it's not a given. I don't know much about electric cars, but if you want your phone to know the fuel level in an ICE vehicle then you'd need this kind of connection.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/On-board_diagnostics

I make typos like that lot. The one that is most common for me is CVS instead of CSV. No, this isn't a list of things to get from the drug store ::facepalm::

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