Automile, which offers a device and platform that connects your car to the cloud so you can track various kinds of data, has closed a $5 million Series A round. The investment was led by Dawn Capital and Point Nine Capital — money that will be used by the Swedish startup to expand globally and continue developing new services for car owners.
Initially targeting the enterprise — namely fleet management — but with a consumer-facing service in private beta, the Automile platform consists of a tiny device that plugs into your car’s OBD-II (on-board diagnostic) port and an accompanying cloud service and apps.
The device itself features GPS for location tracking and GSM for data connectivity, which is included as part of the service’s subscription fee.
One way to think of the device is like a fitness tracker (and more) for your car, with its ability to track journeys, mileage and fuel consumption, as well as alert you to potential mechanical issues.
And while the data captured is currently being used primarily to power fleet management applications, via the company’s Automile PRO service, the startup says it has other potential applications.
These include capturing outside weather data to help power weather forecasting models, and providing road condition aggregate data to improve safety.
Or, for individual use, Automile can potentially “turn back the clock” to tell you when and where a vehicle was damaged or a part failed.
In the future, Automile plans to offer an API, making its service and data available to third-party developers who can use it to power new applications in the areas of fleet management, logistics, insurance or in entirely new markets. The latter is particularly interesting.
Dawn Capital’s Norman Fiore said in a statement: “What most impressed us about the Automile team was its burning ambition of owning the vast connected car market, tempered by its pragmatism and execution excellence in dominating fleet management as the first step.”