When selling an 'Electric Vehicle' on the second hand market, the remaining lifetime of the battery should be one of the most important questions. However, this question could be quite difficult to answer. If the battery condition is unknown, this could affect the resale value by giving the owner a lower price regardless of the actual condition. If, on the other hand the owner can prove, somehow, that the battery was treated with care and the expected amount of remaining lifetime is significant, the resale value of the vehicle should naturally be higher.
On the Tesla screen inside the vehicle and also on Tesla’s phone app, it is possible to view and inspect some battery parameters. However, these parameters are lost over time. There is a plot in the car which shows the efficiency (Wh/mi or Wh/km), but this plot is limited to the last few miles or kilometers. After a certain distance those values are lost for the owner.
Tesla has an (unofficial) API which allows 3rd party services to log data from owner’s cars. However, by using these services you have to either expose your Tesla login credentials or give an API token to these services. Many owners do not feel comfortable doing this, because it means the 3rd party service could potentially take control over your car, not just read data. Also, there is no guarantee that a 3rd party web service will continue to exist over the lifetime of your car. The average lifetime of an app or a web service is usually considerably shorter than a vehicle. If the operator of the service decides to discontinue – for whatever reason – your vehicle data may be lost. Even if you have a backup of the data, this may not be very useful if the user interface to display and analyze the data is no longer available. Another factor is the cost: most of the 3rd party services require you to pay a monthly fee to use their service to display and analyze your own historic data.
This is where blockchain technology enters the picture.
A public blockchain can be a good solution when the following conditions are met:
- More than one participant needs to be able to submit and update data.
- The participants do not need to know and trust each other.
- The data does not need to be private.
- The database needs to be resistant to attacks or censorship.
Ready Solution
For the above-mentioned reasons a solution for battery condition monitoring of Tesla EVs has been implemented by using the open source Bismuth public blockchain. Specifically, a Tesla plug-in (also called “crystal” in Bismuth terminology) has been developed for use together with the open source TornadoWallet.
Links:
Read more about this Bismuth dApp
Bismuth Explorer
Bismuth Exchange