Toyota Leveraging Driver Data To Tweak Behaviors

The Toyota Research Institute has announced that it has been working on an app that leverages driver data to determine when you should be charging your electrified vehicle. While the best time to charge is probably whenever the owner determines it’s necessary, Toyota wants to utilize the data to modify behaviors that encourage drivers to charge automobiles whenever it’s deemed most environmentally friendly.

“Technology is not the only way to reduce emissions — people’s choices matter too,” stated Dr. Gill Pratt, former DARPA official and current Chief Scientist for Toyota Motor Corporation, as well as CEO of the Toyota Research Institute. “This research and development shows how science-based behavioral interventions can both help us reduce carbon emissions as much as possible, as soon as possible, and increase customer satisfaction.”

For those unfamiliar, the Toyota Research Institute is a research and scientific development subsidiary of Toyota Motor Corporation. It has historically been focused on robotics and materials science. But has more recently incorporated vehicular automation, artificial intelligence, and even behavioral science.

The new app is going by the name ChargeMinder and is presently being tested in both the United States and Japan. Testing is being handled by the Institute's “Human-Centered Artificial Intelligence” (HCAI) division, which it said incorporates insights from behavioral science to improve EV charging behavior.

Among those insights were assertions that “behavioral interventions increased charging by 10 percent for plug-in hybrid electric vehicle (PHEV) drivers” in the United States. In Japan, PHEV and battery electric vehicle drivers shifted charging to peak renewable energy hours by a whopping 59 percent — allegedly adding nearly 30 minutes of daytime charging per vehicle per day.

The Toyota Research Institute also claimed that using the ChargeMinder app increased overall satisfaction of PHEV owners situated in the U.S. Based upon the limited information Toyota has issued about the app, ChargeMinder issues reminders to encourage drivers to charge their vehicles when the grid is drawing from renewable sources.

It also offers some limited gamification by implementing positive reinforcement via “streaks, summaries, and encouraging messages.” This is in addition to “surfacing engaging educational quizzes that leverage memory science to enhance learning” which are effectively used for conditioning drivers into a desired behavior. Of course, on the backend there is a lot of data harvesting taking place so that the above can be tailored to individual drivers while likewise sending a wealth of information back to the automaker.

From the Toyota Research Institute:

ChargeMinder integrates more than a dozen interventions based on well-replicated findings from behavioral science research that have been tailored for specific charging behavior change goals. These interventions are surfaced through in-app features and mobile push notifications. The ChargeMinder platform can also securely and anonymously ingest and surface user data from multiple sources, including vehicle telematics and charging locations. With this data, we can provide a personalized intervention experience and conduct advanced data analytics while preserving user privacy.

For what it’s worth, the Toyota Research Institute has claimed that all data pertaining to the app would be anonymized. However, we all know by now that said “anonymized data” can certainly be reversed with minimal effort. Here’s an Ars Technica piece from way back in 2009 explaining why the entire concept of anonymizing data is basically a false premise.

We likewise know that loads of automakers are sharing your private data with insurance companies and other third-party entities for profit, which is then being used as an excuse to collectively raise global insurance rates. Then there are the apps that give insurers a direct line into the telemetry of individual drivers. That’s often accompanied by promises that safer driving will be used to lower your rates, when the inverse is likewise true. Drive a little too fast or brake a little too hard and the company sees it as an “event” worth referencing when it decides to increase your premiums.

More recently, we’ve also started to see modern automobiles attempt to condition drivers into certain kinds of behavior. Most new vehicles now issue a warning message about safe driving practices upon startup. The car may also come with things like rear-seat reminders, lane-keeping alerts, driver monitoring suites, and a slew of other beeps and warning messages about what it thinks you should (or should not) be doing.

Whether the intent is truly to improve safety or just serve as another excuse to continue normalizing customer data harvesting is debatable. The same applies to the efficacy of these systems. Roadway safety has arguably declined since these systems were implemented and there’s mounting evidence some serve as in-cabin distractions as ADAS (advanced driver assistance systems) are actually diminishing people’s ability to drive.

We’ve also seen a lot of data suggesting people are just ignoring them. Anecdotally, our newest vehicle was purchased specifically because it lacked some of the latest tech inclusions. But it still goes into a mild state of panic whenever you put a bag of groceries behind the front seats, not to mention a whole host of other alerts that activate whenever you start it up. My better half swiftly asked me to shut down as many of the on-board notifications as possible, noting that she found the constant notices wildly distracting and was already “tuning them out.”

The above undermines some of what Toyota is trying to accomplish with the ChargeMinder app. That’s not to suggest Toyota is an intentionally malicious actor here. But the entire infrastructure of the app is built upon a framework that has already led to bad behavior from the relevant industries. The notion of our automobiles conditioning us into specific types of behavior, which is something the industry seems more interested in doing each year, is likewise not going to be universally appreciated by divers. And that's going to remain to be true, even under the context of promoting environmentalism.

According to the Toyota Research Institute, the next step will be finding ways to “account for how people think, feel, and behave” suggesting that it will “play a crucial role in the future of lower-carbon mobility.”

“This work emphasizes the importance of incorporating behavior change as a key part of a decarbonization strategy. We need to build technologies that bridge the gap between human behavior and carbon reduction,” suggested Manabu Handa, the Assistant Manager of Toyota Motor Corp’s Carbon Neutral System Planning Department.

[Images: Toyota]

Become a TTAC insider. Get the latest news, features, TTAC takes, and everything else that gets to the truth about cars first by  subscribing to our newsletter.