Cars and smartwatches are a natural fit, so if you're trying to show off your coding and design chops, you could do a lot worse than combining the two hottest tech products of the moment – the Apple Watch and Tesla – to show how they could work together.
Smartwatches may be a bit gimmicky right now, but there's plenty of potential to get contextual information on the fly and perform some basic tasks without whipping out your phone. And that's really all they are at the moment – extensions of the thing in your pocket – which is basically what Eleks has done.
The Apple Watch won't be out for a few more months, but the SDK has been out for a while, allowing enterprising coders a chance to get their apps ready for when the watch finally arrives.
For Eleks, that meant taking the API for the Tesla app on the iPhone and porting a lot of those features to the Apple Watch. And it works just as you'd expect:
It's got all the basic functionality of the app, but in a scaled-down, finger-friendly interface to keep tabs on charging and interior temps, along with locking and unlocking the doors, turning on the lights, honking the horn, and showing the Model S' location – similar to what's already on offer for Android Wear.
It's more of an experiment rather than something that Eleks is going to offer as soon as the Watch comes out, but rejiggering the design is something devs have to consider when programming for the tiny screen, and this is a solid demo of how to maximize functionality and ease-of-use. And obviously, it's not just limited to Tesla. BMW, Audi, and Hyundai are all working on or already offering their own smartwatch apps for Android Wear devices.
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