BMW CarData is the Bavarian car manufacturer’s way of allowing customers to tailor the kind of personal data that can be accessed by the company or third-party vendors. Launched initially in 2017 as a pilot in Europe, the system is now reaching US soil.
The CarData is a set of tools for customers to see and manage how their vehicle data is used. That means, you can choose the vehicle connectivity, privacy and services that are right for you, through a secure platform.
There’s a catch though. BMW CarData will only work with a BMW vehicle that has telematics enabled as well as a built-in SIM car, registered in the ConnectedDrive portal. If those two conditions are met, the customers get access to the most important telematics data from the vehicle which is sent to BMW servers securely.
A customer can request a BMW CarData report at any time which shows three types of vehicle data: Condition data (such as mileage); usage-based data (such as average fuel consumption); and event data (such as an automated service call).
For now, these might not seem like incredible improvements for the end user, even though knowing exactly what kind of data is gathered about you and who’s using it and how is extremely important. However, BMW plans to offer even more functionality in the future.
For example, telematics data such as mileage could be used for insurance policies. This means BMW CarData could be used by third-parties, if the customer allows it.
This data link will happen through the secure BMW CarData system, without any direct access by third-party services to BMW vehicles. Customers stay in full control over the data that is shared, with whom, and for how long. A CarData report of the data released to third parties is available for customers to download at any time via the ConnectedDrive portal.
The report contains a detailed list of the telematics data stored in connection with the vehicle and a glossary explaining key terms.
