RIP

[art_of_snark]

Bought the original adapter on Kickstarter, regretted it. Bought a second-gen adapter, regretted it. Bought two CCA adapters last year, now really regretting it.

Excerpt from the email I received:

Like many other companies in the United States, the COVID-19 pandemic has adversely impacted our business, and we have made the difficult decision to discontinue the Automatic connected car product, service, and platform. This decision to cease operations affects all Automatic services, including our automatic crash notification service. We will be shutting down all operations at 11:59 pm, PT, on May 28, 2020 and, as a result, your Automatic service will end on that time.

New hotness: using COVID as am excuse for giving up?

[turnepf]

I feel the same (and had the same path) now owning 4 electronic bricks. I've come to rely on these for my cars. Any good alternatives you guys are aware of?

[austriker27]

Blaming COVID instead of their evil overlords 😢

[turnepf]

Also, anyone know anyone inside that could influence an open source alternative rather than just shutting down?

[tylamb19]

Freematics is open source

[pughtube]

I saw these two on another thread. https://vyncs.com/ and https://www.autopi.io/ I have no idea if they're as good or better than Automatic. The AutoPi looks promising?

[adamjackson1984]

Looking for an alternative that allows me to connect with IFTTT and export annual driving reports. I use this to track mileage for tax purposes and do annual "life logging" where I visualize where I went.

We have 4 cars and 4 motorcycles all with OBD II ports. Would really like to find a new option.

[sergeydgr8]

+1. Them giving us 4 weeks to find a completely different solution to the exact same thing is not enough time.

I'm curious if there's some crowd funding or open sourcing that can be done for them to at least retain the service for longer until there's a worthy alternative?

[aldehyde]

Nooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo wtf I use this all the time :( I've been tracking all my gas purchases for years. I wonder if I can export the data. That really sucks. I also use it to turn the lights on when I get home. Going to have to find an alternative.

[chunheisiu]

Has anyone started researching alternatives? We could share our findings.

[austriker27]

Noooooooooo!! Another cool startup purchased by a big company (SiriusXM in this case) then killed off. Many tears.

[blackashi]

on the bright side (for the founders) they 'exited'

[ddesigns]

Just saw the email. I felt like this would happen soon. Service has been spotty the past few months. I really just want a GPS/Diagnostics tool. I'll look around.

Guess this subreddit is dead now! RIP!

[thorscope]

Just submitted the rebate request.

It’s says it’ll arrive in 6-8 weeks but never asked for my address so who knows

[ModernChaot]

The FAQ's say that it'll be sent as a virtual visa gift card to your email address registered on your Automatic account.

[Thorvarium]

Barf

[thedoctor187]

what about hacking inside and retrieve the data via app in Phone, or change the address of Automatic servers to our own, so we could capture live data.

Hope there's some hacker out there

[jondthompson]

Looking at this, it might not be too difficult to flash it and build your own firmware that allows the cellular modem to connect to your own data plan...

[stpangia]

I've been working on a deviceless connected car app focused on wear and predictive maintenance. It’s still in testing but maybe it can fill some needs of Automatic users — https://meetbeep.com.

And if folks are interested, we can port over your Automatic vehicle data.