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Free App Calculates How Much You Save on Gas by Driving a Tesla

A new application called Optiwatt can keep an eye on how much you spend on electricity by charging your Tesla at home, while also calculating your overall gas savings.
The service will soon make its way to mobile too 21 photos
Photo: Optiwatt
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Currently available online but supposed to make its way to Android and iPhone shortly, Optiwatt requires you to connect to your Tesla app and then add your home to find the electric utility costs per each address.

Once all the information is provided, the application can determine electricity costs and offer an estimate on how much you would have spent on gas based on prices in your area.

Optiwatt works with all charger types and is available both in the United States and Europe. The service only shows charges at home (no supercharger for the time being), and the developer says multi-location support is also on its way to the app.

One thing that’s worth knowing is that you need to upload a bill, which is then discarded after the necessary information for calculating the electricity costs are saved. No information is collected, the dev says, adding that in the future, the app will be updated to display that a human review in addition to OCR is needed to make sure the data is correct.

The reason we have a human look at it right now is because we have to make sure our OCR programs are working correctly. Unfortunately utility companies don't provide public examples of their bills, so we have to learn by doing here,” the dev explains.

As for whether it wakes the car or not, the data transfer happens during the charging, which is when the vehicle is awake anyway.

It will not wake up your car, or keep your car awake. I put a lot of time into this algorithm, basically we always let the car fall asleep when it would naturally, and never wake the car up. The only time we request data is when the car is already awake through other activities. Luckily for us, the car is awake during charging, so we never miss charge data,” the Optiwatt creator says.

The application will continue to be offered completely free, they promise, as the long-term plan is to work with utility companies for smarter charging solutions.
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About the author: Bogdan Popa
Bogdan Popa profile photo

Bogdan keeps an eye on how technology is taking over the car world. His long-term goals are buying an 18-wheeler because he needs more space for his kid’s toys, and convincing Google and Apple that Android Auto and CarPlay deserve at least as much attention as their phones.
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