Securing Car Data and Analytics using Blockchain

Automakers in collaboration with technology industries are swiftly innovating and transforming the automobile industry. The current trend of connected cars relies on retrieving various kinds of vehicular data since there is a huge demand from associated entities included insurance companies, vehicle buyers/sellers and government authorities. Currently, the data collection is done either manual or unsupervised that poses trust, legitimacy and accuracy issues such as duplicated or falsified vehicular data records, tampered safety checks and meddled driving history, etc. Hence, a strong tool that can protect the vehicular data; log the changes for audit purposes and eventually build the trust in the system is necessary. We propose the use of blockchain technology for these needs. The proposed solution involves connecting an IoT module to a car data port to collect rich telemetric data; analyze the driving behaviors on various fronts and storing the outcomes to a blockchain. For various good reasons we use the Ethereum blockchain in this study. However, other blockchain deployments can also be utilized. If adopted by the stakeholders, the proposed solution can provide a trusted, transparent and easily accessible platform to auto buyers/sellers, insurance agencies, vehicle dealers, law enforcements and vehicle history providers.