Currently available for pre-order at $69.95 and now shipping in August is Automatic, a combination of a smartphone app and OBD sensor for your car that tracks your driving economy, helps you diagnose problems with your vehicle, and helps you find where you parked. An iPhone app is launching first, with an Android app coming this fall. While it’s only available in the United States, Automatic makes for an attractive alternative against Verizon’s expensive Vehicle Diagnostics by Delphi, which includes a subscription and a whopping $249.99 up front,  or Torque, which works with some Bluetooth OBD sensors but requires drivers to have more intimate knowledge of their vehicles to get the most out of the Android app and web interface.

Xconomy has a short write up and under 15-minute video on the sensor and iPhone app, featuring a test drive with Automatic Chief Product Officer Ljuba Miljkovic.

If these screen shots remind you of the jogging maps and calorie counts you get with a fitness app like RunKeeper or Runmeter, it’s not a total coincidence. You might think of Automatic as one harbinger of a “quantified car” movement paralleling the quantified self craze. Now that our phones have become so powerful—able to communicate with many different kinds of sensors, and full of sensors of their own—it makes sense that they’re becoming the information hubs for all of our daily activities, from exercising to eating to driving.

Automatic is interesting — at a least from a glance, the company isn’t just throwing a slew of information at consumers on a screen, but rather presenting relevant information in an interface that’s understandable and useful. Automatic knows that not everyone is a mechanic, putting the power of diagnostic information at our fingertips. Automatic’s goal is to improve upon driving efficiency, and Xconomy’s look gives a little bit of insight as to what you can expect if you have or will pre-order the much talked about smart assistant for your car.