In this episode, Yev Khessin, CTO and founder of DIMO (Digital Infrastructure for Moving Objects) – with a goal to ‘build something disruptive’, shares his thoughts and experiences related to
- Starting to code at a very young age and getting interested in cars
- Doing computer science in college and working in the automotive space
- Moving to Michigan and working across various departments – internal toolonigm product planning, handling recalls etc
- Moving to OnStar – in the connected vehicle space
- Starting a consulting company on autonomous cars
- Ford, VW, Mitsubishi – as clients
- From dumb cars to smart cars
- What it takes to programming an ecosystem and the thinking needed for thinking at that scale
- Moving at a high speed, being and staying connected and complying with local regulations
- Difference between earlier approaches of building vertically integrated systems to a flatter peer-connected model
- Ford, connected fleet: parking, user requesting and unlocking a car – in Miami; everything worked till we went to a different city
- Every city, parking lot having different APIs
- Role of open source products and specifications helping with security and making it a more level playing field
- Understanding the difference between centralized and decentralized systems, being born in Ukraine
- Where the human fits in, when we think of autonomous vehicles..
- DIMO is very generic; we started with a vehicle: second biggest purchase that most people make
- DIMO lets you own your vehicle and the data that comes from it
- Ability to record and maintain historical data that is personal and can help with safety
- The black box v2 as a neutral body on a car
- Battery health in the context of EVs
- Trust and experience depends on developers writing software for the platform; making DIMO an open platform
- Ability to retain the personal preferences and custom experiences across OEMs to make the experience much better for an individual
- Will continue the conversation on how Yev got into the startup mode and how the founding team at DIMO came together — in the second part of our conversation – in the next episode.
Yev is the CTO and founder of DIMO (Digital Infrastructure for Moving Objects) – with a goal to ‘build something disruptive’.
Yev has spent 10 years working in lead engineering and technical product with automotive manufacturers and suppliers on IoT connectivity, embedded software, self driving and electric vehicles. As a car lover through and through, he believes that we are at a crossroads similar to the moment when we went from horses to cars. Creating a better connected device protocol, governed by the people who use it, is the only sane way to advance how we get around.
