BMW announced a free service available to its car owners in Germany called CarData, that allows them to have control over key vehicle data and share that data as they see fit with third parties. Basically select BMW cars that have the ConnectedDrive equipment can transmit certain telematics data to BMW depending on which services are available and are in use. This data is later saved on a BMW server. With BMW CarData, drivers can now request the data at any time in order to view their current status. They can also give authorization to third parties to retrieve the latest status of selected telematics data. Bottom Line: brilliant . BTW, this is the same BMW that has inked a deal with Israeli semiautonomous software supplier Mobileye, and the same BMW that has signed a letter of intent signaling a commercial partnership with Wrisk, an emerging mobile-first insurance startup from UK.
