Dash Is Like FuelBand for Your Car

Dash is a new app that aims to turn your car, already a rolling data platform, into a safer, more cost efficient, and socially connected way to get around.

Fifteen months into the life of its development, Dash founders Jamyn Edis and Brian Langel are working with their 7–10 person team to get the smartphone-hosted app and its under-dashboard hardware into a beta version.

As they do so, they're about halfway to a $1 million fundraising round and the company recently won the grand prize in the U.S. Department of Energy's Apps for Vehicles Challenge

Here's how it works. Dash starts with a "dongle" — a kind of hardware key — that plugs into a port with which modern cars are equipped, typically down near the base of the steering wheel. Your mechanic uses this port and their own type of hardware to diagnose what's wrong when something breaks. Dash uses the port to wirelessly pipe all kinds of vehicle performance details from the car's computer systems into your smartphone. Read more...