Reliance wants to connect 90 percent of Indian cars using Jio Car Connect by 2020

"Using Jio Car Connect you can check information on fuel levels, oil levels, speed, and battery"

Reliance Jio is all the rage these days, and deservedly so, especially considering that you get great 4G plans and free calls in the same package. We have an entire post detailing the tariffs. However, a new report by Team-BHP has piqued our interest – Reliance is actually planning to connect 90 percent of Indian cars on the road by 2020 using Jio Car Connect, which is still under development. 


Jio Car Connect essentially works using a combination of on-board diagnostic (OBD) hardware and an ecosystem of Jio apps. The OBD device essentially connects to your car and it holds the Reliance Jio SIM as well. This device connects to a Car Connect app on your phone. Using this app you can learn vital information about your car like fuel levels, oil levels, distance, speed, and battery level. Moreover, it can also learn your driving patterns and provide you with tips to improve.


What could be more useful is that the app can also send you alerts for when a door is open, fuel is low, you go above a certain speed limit (which can be pre-determined by you), and if you hit the brakes too hard. Apart from this the Car Connect OBD hardware can also create a Wi-Fi hotspot on-the-go. It will give you access to an entire ecosystem of Jio apps like Jio Music, Jio Cinema, and the likes. 


Let it be known that OBD devices are not new. For example and Indian startup called CarIQ already exists and aims to make your cars smarter by providing important information like technical problems with your car, service alerts, a battery monitor, and many more by using an OBD inside your car. Another such contraption was shown by Samsung at MWC. The Samsung Connect Auto dongle is a little plastic box that is powered by its very own Tizen OS. The unique thing about the Samsung dongle is that it connects to a cloud server and will be secured by Samsung KNOX.


Having said that, if Reliance is working on such a device it could ideally mean more mass adoption, which is great for cars in India. We can't wait for it to come out of development phase and take it out for a test drive.