Introduction to the EV-Display Project

The EV-Display project is, first and foremost, a hands-on learning experience, born out of a desire to immerse myself in fascinating technologies and tools that I’ve long wanted to explore. This initiative aims to serve as a stepping stone, enabling me to develop skills, refine my engineering acumen, and, within a year, establish a clear career path for the years ahead.

To anchor this journey, I’ve chosen an ambitious yet purposeful goal: the development and launch of an IoT device designed to connect with Battery Electric Vehicles (BEVs) and home battery systems. This device will display their state of charge (SoC) and incorporate a rotary button for intuitive configuration and basic functionalities, such as remotely triggering climate control or adjusting the target SoC.

As the project evolves, I envision expanding its scope with a supporting app and website to monitor EV statistics and historical data—features that go beyond the limitations of current EV APIs.

The project begins with two primary objectives:

  1. Responsibly accessing EV data – Federated access is a must to ensure secure and ethical data handling.
  2. Creating a production-ready MVP – Developing functional hardware that meets real-world usability and manufacturability standards.

Given the sensitive nature of the data involved, a thorough understanding of GDPR compliance will be critical. Additionally, taking the product to market will require in-depth research into global logistics, warehousing, fulfillment, returns, and country-specific laws and regulations.

The EV-Display project is not just about creating a product but also about understanding the end-to-end journey—from ideation to commercialization—while building a foundation for a meaningful and sustainable career in technology.

Responsibly accessing EV data

Given the maturiy of customer facing API’s there really was only one candidate. I did not want to use any third party data-broker to obtain the data. This would have extended the list of supported vehicles dramatically, but in some cases these brokers require plain login credentials to be stored in order for them to access the EV data through the end-user’s account. The Telsa Fleet API is well documented and matches with all requirements.

Native integrations with other manufacturer platforms would be a next step to investigate. Given the number of Tesla vehicles sold in Europe and North America the business case was calculated to target Tesla Vehicles only and expand to other brands and products later. The hardware design needs to be clean and not feature any company specific shapes, and the software backend needs to be prepared to handle different car platforms as well as multiple cars/batteries per device.

Creating a production-ready MVP

The aim for this project is to be at least a dry-run for launching a real product. Since this potentially goes into production, all phases of prototyping need to consider this requirement. The hardware needs to be designed with production in mind, so durability, material costs and assembly time need to be considered. When it comes to electronics, it needs to be certified and secure.