How Loopie Works
Simple tech. No tracking. No nonsense.
Loopie’s device is optional, but it makes RUC fully automated, no manual entry, no typing, no hassle.
Your car already has what you need
Almost every car built after the early 2000s has an On-Board Diagnostics (OBD) port. Many vehicles made in the late 1990s have one too. In New Zealand, that covers the overwhelming majority of the 3.5 million vehicles on the road. The OBD port is usually under the dashboard or near the driver’s seat. It is like a USB port for your car - it lets mechanics and devices read certain information from the vehicle’s computer.
Key stat: Less than 5 percent of vehicles have built-in RUC reporting from the manufacturer. Those systems rely on overseas development teams integrating with NZ technology, which may be slow or incomplete. Loopie works with those vehicles too, ensuring every driver can stay compliant without complications.
Your location is none of our business
Big fleet management companies use GPS to track every trip, stop, and turn. They store your location history and often sell it. Our core Loopie device will never do that. It has no GPS chip, no route logging, and no ability to record where you go. Privacy is built into the hardware, not an optional setting. This is the model we are developing now, and it will always be privacy-first.
In the future, if there is genuine demand for a GPS-enabled device - for example, to handle specific toll systems like those in the Auckland region - we may develop a separate model with those features. It would be entirely optional and separate from our privacy-first device.
- • No GPS hardware in this model
- • No location history
- • No location-based billing or reporting
- • Privacy-first design from the ground up
How The Device Works
When your car’s OBD port provides odometer readings, Loopie uses that data to keep your RUC accurate and up to date. The reading is stored securely on the device and syncs with your phone through the Loopie app when you choose to connect. Nothing is sent without your consent, and your information never leaves your control.
- • Reads odometer data directly from your vehicle
- • Stores securely on the device until you choose to sync
- • Syncs via encrypted Bluetooth to the app
- • No internet connection required for the device
When the odometer isn’t available, we’ve still got you covered
Some vehicles don’t send odometer data through the OBD port. For those, Loopie uses a local calculation based on speed and time to estimate distance. This doesn’t track your location, and it doesn’t record how fast you drive, that’s your business, not ours
All calculations happen inside the device. It never stores your speed history or sends any speed readings to the app or the cloud. The only data that ever leaves the device is the updated odometer total.
- • Speed and time calculations are processed locally on the device
- • Speed data is never stored in memory
- • Speed data is never transmitted to the app or cloud
- • Only the calculated odometer total is stored and synced