Singtel Smart Car
I have been trying out the Singtel Smart Car for more than a month and no, this is not a sponsored post.
This service uses Modus to track your car location, trips, driving habits and monitor your vehicle’s health.
Modus uses the CalAmp LMU-30H3U3. It is a GPS tracking unit with cellular data that interfaces with your car’s On Board Diagnostic (OBD) port. The OBD port is available on most vehicles manufactured after 1996.
The device has to be plugged into your car’s OBD port so that it can read the telematics data from the engine and uploads the data into the Modus smart car cloud.
Because the device supports cellular data (to ensure that it is always connected to the Internet), that is where Singtel comes into the picture.
Price
Singtel Smart Car service is available for all Singtel postpaid mobile customers on Combo 1 plan and above.
There is an upfront payment of S$150 to purchase the device.
This S$150 payment entitles you to have the following benefits:
- FREE onsite installation (worth S$90)
- FREE 24 months Modus smart car cloud subscription (worth S$141.60) and thereafter S$5.90/mth
- FREE 24 months Singtel 1GB add-on (worth S$205.44) for your main Postpaid mobile plan
- FREE SIM and Registration fee (worth S$48.15)
Note that the Modus smart car cloud subscription is only free for 24 months, after that it cost S$5.90/month.
In addition to the upfront payment, there is a S$10.70 monthly Singtel MobileShare supplementary line subscription so that an additional SIM card can be placed in the device. A 24-month minimum subscription period applies on the Singtel MobileShare subscription.
If you are already on a Combo plan and have an existing MobileShare subscription, you can make use of your existing MobileShare subscription.
Registration/Setup
Once Singtel has confirmed your subscription, an email will be sent to you to complete your Modus account registration under Singtel.
Using the account, you can login to Modus via the iOS or Android app.
Once logged in, you will need to setup your vehicle. You need to have details such as the make/model/year of your vehicle, odometer, average fuel consumption and fuel tank size.
After plugging the device into your OBD, you need to make the first trip before it starts recording.
Using the App
Using the app, you can view the trips made by your vehicle and tag them with a name and with the pre-defined colors. For myself, I group them into Home, Work, Errands, Lunch, Dinner, etc.
Each trip made will have details such as distance covered, the time taken, fuel used, maximum speed, average speed and idling time.
In addition to that, they will also report driving events such as harsh braking, harsh turning and incoming calls from your mobile phone if you connected your phone to your vehicle’s Bluetooth.
You will be able to know exactly where your vehicle is located at any given time. Even if there is no GPS coverage, it will try it’s best to use the cell tower to determine where your vehicle is. If there are no GPS and reception, it will show the last known location of your vehicle before the GPS and reception dropped off.
Limits can be set as well. And when the limit is hit, you will get a notification. You can set a distance limit, speed limit, time of day limit, boundary limit and arrival/departure location limit. The limit feature is not useful for personal use.
The app also reports your vehicle health like fuel left, battery and engine conditions.
Conclusion
Personally, I find this service pretty useful for me, especially the individual trip stats.
So far the only problem I encountered is reliability. Sometimes it will not record certain trips, and that worries me. After using it for more than a month, I notice about five trips not being recorded out of about 80 trips made.
I am not sure of the reason, but I guess it is a reception issue. Maybe when the device is uploading the data, your vehicle move to a location where there is no reception, and the data is dropped or lost.
Besides that, I wish Singtel allows SIM Only customers like myself to sign up as well.
