Mitsubishi’s new smartphone app is the first of its kind. A driver can sign up and allow their driving habits to be tracked by their phone’s sensors, which monitor data points like acceleration, location, and rotation. Along the way, they’ll earn badges (reward points) based on good driving practices like staying under the speed limit. For now, the badges can be exchanged for discounted oil changes or car accessories, but the company plans to expand its incentives to other small perks like free cups of coffee by the end of the year.
It may seem like a win-win situation: You pay a little more attention to being a good driver and you get a little bonus for your efforts. But the first customer for all that data is State Auto Insurance Companies, which will be using it to create better risk models and adjust users’ premiums accordingly
It doesn’t appear that the data will be anonymized because the Journal reports that, after a trial period, insurers will be able to build a customer risk profile on users of the app that will then be used to determine rates
At least it's an opt-in type of thing, rather than a lot of companies that will just notify you of a privacy policy update and start collecting the data anyways. Pretty much every car since the...
At least it's an opt-in type of thing, rather than a lot of companies that will just notify you of a privacy policy update and start collecting the data anyways. Pretty much every car since the beginning of GPS inclusion has the capability to send off your driving and location data to the manufacturer. Tesla, in fact, automatically opts-in users to sending their driving data, and it's not clear if you can opt out last time I checked.
Having rented a Mitsubishi recently, I'm strongly tempted to suggest that people who buy Mitsubishi cars have bigger problems than an intrusive smartphone app. However, it might be unfair to...
Having rented a Mitsubishi recently, I'm strongly tempted to suggest that people who buy Mitsubishi cars have bigger problems than an intrusive smartphone app. However, it might be unfair to generalize from a single unpleasant experience.
At least it's an opt-in type of thing, rather than a lot of companies that will just notify you of a privacy policy update and start collecting the data anyways. Pretty much every car since the beginning of GPS inclusion has the capability to send off your driving and location data to the manufacturer. Tesla, in fact, automatically opts-in users to sending their driving data, and it's not clear if you can opt out last time I checked.
Having rented a Mitsubishi recently, I'm strongly tempted to suggest that people who buy Mitsubishi cars have bigger problems than an intrusive smartphone app. However, it might be unfair to generalize from a single unpleasant experience.