There’s a new Automatic in town and I guess you could call this one 3.0 or Gen-3?
The skinny is that this adapter has built in 3G wireless data and a dedicated GPS antenna. The version 1 only worked when your phone was present. Version 2 worked w/o the phone being present but only logged hard stops / go motions and didn’t do a great job of logging where the car was actually taken. Version 2 most notable was way more reliable from a connectivity standpoint. i know V1 early-adopters received a v2 for free as long as we paid shipping and I gladly did. I loved the V2 and the V1 had me on edge in a while. For a brief catch-up, here are a few of my past posts about Automatic:
- https://adamchandler.me/blog/2013/09/06/technology-automatic-smart-driving-assistant/
- https://adamchandler.me/blog/2015/04/27/tech-the-automatic-link-car-adapter/
- https://adamchandler.me/blog/2015/05/19/tech-automatic-car-dongle-version-2-released/
- https://adamchandler.me/blog/2015/09/29/technology-automatic-continues-to-innovate/
- https://adamchandler.me/blog/2015/12/02/my-car-automatic-driving-data/
- https://adamchandler.me/blog/2016/05/06/my-car-driving-data-from-wookies-in-the-woods-2016/
I received my first Automatic on September 3rd of 2013. That’s 3 years of driving-data they have on me and at no time have I ever felt an invasion of privacy or weirdness from the company. I’m their customer. I pay $99 and they delivery me a product, support, a 1-year warranty and they continue to find innovative ways to make my driving habits work for me with apps, IFTTT support, trends, Automatic Labs tools and my driving history dashboard. It’s a brand and company I have a huge respect for.
Enter Automatic Pro (aka v3?)
The advantage is simple, 3G always on connectivity so you don’t need your phone present and built-in GPS so if your buddy or valet takes your car for a spin, the data still gets saved. While the data is only free for 5 years, Automatic has clarified, for legal reasons they can only promise the free data for 5-years for legal reasons. They had to give it a cap and since they’ve released 3 versions in 3 years, I imagine they’re on a yearly upgrade cycle anyway so 5 years is plenty of free data. They’ve said sort of off-the-record that the data on the Automatic Pro will be free forever. 5 years legally but forever, between friends.
Before we proceed, it’s important to note that the Automatic Pro isn’t a new class of adapter, it’s the ONLY adapter you can buy directly from Automatic. As 3rd party resellers run out of Automatic V2 adapters, the Pro is the only flavor you’ll be able to buy. It is the Automatic adapter, there is no cheaper entry-level model.
Unfortunately, this puts Automatic in a bit of a pickle. Automatic Pro uses a separate iOS app, a separate set of features (that are less than what the previous automatic has, although more are promised to be added over time) and a new set of issues. It is the future but is BRAND NEW and should be used by the most hardcore early adopters.
If you’re at all in the market for one of these, you should read the Automatic Pro FAQs posted on their Community (KBase) – https://community.automatic.com/automatic/topics/automatic-pro-faqs
Another thing I thought I’d close with is that Automatic Pro includes logging gasoline fuel-ups. Holy crap. That’s huge. I will still log my fuel-ups in Automatic & Fuelly but that’s going to make logging gas more mainstream and possibly kill of a few third parties that require the user switch to a separate app.
My only concern that’s not settled is will my automatic dashboard include trips from my V1/V2 adapter alongside the new trips with my v3 adapter? I’ve ordered one and will post some thoughts.