I was turned on to the API program out of Groupe PSA, the French multinational manufacturer of automobiles and motorcycles sold under the Peugeot, Citroën and DS Automobiles brands from a friend online the other day. Rarely do I just generally showcase an API provider, but I think their approach is simple, clean, and a nice start for a major automobile brand, and worthwhile to take note of.
Companies of all shapes are doing APIs, but very few have the awareness to make their API program public, and accessible to the general public. I think the PSA Peugeot Citroën’s APIs are a pretty interesting set of resources for making available to car owners, and worth talking about:
- Telemetry - Request data from the car: average speed, location, instantaneous consumption, engine speed, etc.
- Maintenance Alerting - Request data from the various events or notifications that can be detected by the car: time before maintenance, fired alerts, etc.
- Correlation - These APIs lets your application evaluate your driving style with others.
Making vehicle data, events and notifications makes sense to me when it comes to vehicles and APIs, and is something that seems like it should just be default mode for all automobile manufacturers. The correlation API seems in a different category, and elevated to more of an innovate class, beyond just the usual car activity. I'm not a huge car guy, but I know people who are, and being able to size up against the competition or a specific community, could become a little addictive.
I've added the PSA Peugeot Citroën’s APIs to my monitoring of the space, and will keep an eye on what they are up to. I'm already following other user manufacturers like Ford and GM who have API efforts, as well as Japanese manufactuers like Honda. I may have to stop, and take roll call in the world of automobiles and see who have official public API develop efforts, and put some pressure on those who do not have their program together yet (like they'll listen).
If you know of any auto related API efforts I do not already have in my auto API stack, please let me know--I depend on my readers to keep me tuned into which companies are the cool kids doing API.
