Miles Plug goes on sale for $99, promising teen-driver tracking without selling car data

The hardware costs $99, and membership runs $180 for a year, or $279 total, which works out to about $15 a month. A three-year plan costs $396 with the plug included, roughly $11 a month. All plans are paid upfront with no auto-renewal. Miles says the device works with most gasoline and hybrid cars from the 2008 model year onward and with some electric vehicles, and the company offers a compatibility checker on its website.

The plug uses cellular and GPS connections to feed an app that shows real-time location, alerts and trip summaries covering speeding, hard braking and route history. Each driver in a family gets a separate profile and separate alerts. The app also includes an AI chatbot called the Miles Mechanic that explains warning lights, indicates how urgent a repair is and estimates what it should cost. Co-founder Matt McGovren told The Verge that the bundle replaces services a family might otherwise buy separately: "You could piece together a roadside service, a family tracking service … and then you're looking at $30, $40 a month."

Miles was founded by McGovren and Kit Klein, who worked together at the smart-home company Wink in its early years and have since held roles at Amazon's Ring and Blink units and at Ubiquiti's smart-home business. In a press release, McGovren described the design as transparent by default: "We built Miles to support teens and parents together, and keep them on the same team. Parents and teens see the same trips and the same alerts with nothing hidden, building trust instead of suspicion."

Data handling is central to the pitch. Automakers have previously been found collecting and selling driving data, and General Motors was barred from selling such data to brokers for five years. McGovren said Miles will never sell vehicle, trip or location data and that the app carries no advertising: "You're the customer, you're not the product. Your data is not the product." He said vehicle and trip data is encrypted, with the most sensitive data end-to-end encrypted, and that location is tied to the car rather than a phone, so tracking stops once the driver walks away. Users can download their data, stop location collection and delete their account along with its data.

In a short hands-on test with a 2014 Toyota Highlander, The Verge reported that setup was simple, the app was uncluttered and the plug read the vehicle identification number correctly. The device logged trips by route, distance, time and driver initials, delivered arrived-home and left-home alerts promptly, and flagged hard acceleration plus three hard-braking events during one drive. A home screen showed engine status, fuel at 63 percent, a battery reading of 13.5 volts and the odometer, and the Mechanic chatbot said the cabin air filter was due at about 140,000 miles with an oil change and tire rotation at 142,500.

The Verge said it had not tested the device long enough to assess battery drain, a problem for earlier products in the category. McGovren said the plug goes to sleep when the car is off and uses only enough data to wake and sync, and he advised removing it if a car will sit unused for an extended period. The review also raised the question of how long Miles will operate, noting that the startup Automatic pursued a similar concept in 2016.