Britain’s largest auto manufacturer, Jaguar Land Royer, announced Monday that it will be testing software which would allow Jaguar owners the chance to earn IOTA cryptocurrency as a reward for sharing data.
Jaguar Land Rover is currently developing a “smart wallet” technology and will be installing it in its automobiles. If Jaguar car drivers enable their vehicles to automatically report useful data, which includes traffic congestion and reporting potholes to navigation providers or local authorities, they will be rewarded with IOTA coins.
Jaguar owners can also earn rewards by participating in a ride-sharing program. According to Jaguar, tokens earned can be used towards paying for tolls, parking and charging for electric cars.
The company stated that its overall goal is to “achieve zero emissions, zero accidents, and zero congestion.”
Jaguar is testing the technology at the new Jaguar Land Rover software engineering base in Shannon, Ireland. CNBC reports engineers have already equipped several vehicles, including the Jaguar F-PACE and Range Rover Velar, with “smart wallet” features.
“The smart wallet technology … can be easily adapted into all new vehicles,” Dominik Schiener, IOTA co-founder and co-chairman of its board, told Reuters.
The IOTA token is based on a distributed ledger technology which transfers money and data without any transaction fees. IOTA trades on digital asset exchanges and was last at 27 U.S. cents per token.
“IOTA wants to enable interoperability with all these different players. So there is no Jaguar coin, no BMW coin, but one universal token for this machine economy,” Schiener added.