Delphi / Verizon's Vehicle Diagnostics hands-on (video)

We first caught wind of Delphi and Verizon’s new Vehicle Diagnostics service a couple of days back. Today we got to see the thing in action at the Pepcom event here at CES. The hardware is a small black plastic box that should plug into most cars sold in the US after 1996. Once inserted, it communicates wireless with your Android or iOS handset or tablet. The Delphi rep we spoke with started things off by pointing out that it does more than just the diagnostics implied by its name — and that’s certainly the case. There’s a long laundry list of functionality here. He certainly had a lot to talk about.

On a base-level, we’re talking geo-fences, performance alerts and map tracking — it can also mimic key functionality, so you can lock / unlock and remotely start up the engine if your vehicle supports such things. As we said, there’s a long list of functionality here — pretty impressive all in all. In fact, the Connected Car Service app takes a bit of getting used to, due to all the features. We’ll let the Delphi rep take you through it the app after the break.

Gallery: Delphi Connected Car service hands-on