Alibaba-endorsed company Immotors has announced the launch of the IM Zhiji app that allows users receive digital currency, called "rocks," for providing driving data that is being received by their electric cars. The company aims at a sales start in 2022 with the first cars delivered.
Stone digital currency will be halved every four years. A batch of new "rough" stones will be issued every 10 minutes. After the total supply of rough stones drains, 500 regular stones will appear and will be dropped in each batch, 144 times per day.
The company introduced "mileage mining." Users are going to contribute driving data for each kilometer driven, which will be counted as participation in the data pool. More users drive more total contributions. The concept of "mileage mining" can be simplified to "the more you drive, the more you get."
Stones can be used to receive various hardware or software upgrades for the company's services. For driving more than 5,000 kilometers per year, drivers will be able to exchange their obtained raw stones for the next-gen lidar fusion driving system or upgrade their vehicle's battery to a new 120 kWh next-gen supply.
Drivers and app users will be able to receive their engine and software updates for cars after an average of three years of normal driving.