On another matter... how's the Otonomo C&D working out?
While the first three are true, you can't actually drive the car without an authorized key. Adding a new authorized key requires an existing authorized key. However, if you have a Model 3 and keep a valet key card in your car, then yeah anyone who can unlock your car can also drive it.
Why should anyone have credentials for my car, including the car manufacturer?
I get that in this case everything is handled inside of Facebook Messenger, and to some extent there is interaction that provides a value to the user such as the range calculation described in another comment by sahaskatta.
But I am curious about other situations where a chat bot provides an extra value, not only considering this application?
It had simple commands for showing the state of consumables or monitoring budget spent (calculated based on spent consumables). But the real value came from the chat bot requesting actions ("yellow toner at 12%, verify replacement is in storage", "A3 paper is running low, refill suggested", "heavy A4 paper empty, replace now", etc).
Of course all of this could have been it's own app with push notifications. But getting people to install that would have been much harder than having them use a chat bot in a messenger they already have. Using a chat bot also made it available everywhere, on Android, iOS, Windows, the Linux distribution of the week, if you desire even your watch or fridge, with synchronised notifications. And all that with a bit of code running on some server, none of the head aches of front-end development.
mostly through https://owner-api.teslamotors.com/
for example:
POST /api/1/vehicles/{id}/command/door_unlock
response:
{
"reason": "",
"result": true
}
Now, I personnaly wouldn't give credentials of my car out to folks, but you have to admit there is some interesting data that has come out of it.
for example, folks have discovered the details of how various tesla batteries charge:
https://forum.abetterrouteplanner.com/blogs/entry/29-faster-...
(1) https://yagudaev.com/posts/chatbots-are-just-command-line-in...
* thanks for correcting my error!
“Tesla” is a separate issue and different.
1) You can use it from your computer browser. (Anywhere that Facebook messenger works!)
2) It can find nearby ChargePoint stations.
3) You can ask it "Does my car have enough range to drive to San Francisco?" and it will check your car's range and the distance required to travel there!
I'm not involved with the development, but we know the folks at Passage AI building this and I hear a lot more exciting things are coming soon!
I would pay $5/month if I could just talk and if my phone or Airpods were on I could control my car or check on it. "Teslabot, what's my range?"
Typing “please lock my car” seems like so much more effort than tapping “lock” in the app.