coindesk.com
Italian luxury car maker Alfa Romeo has revealed it will be using non-fungible tokens (NFTs) to track and store maintenance records on the blockchain for its new Tonal SUV.
Alfa Romeo, which is owned by Stellantis (formerly Fiat Chrysler), appears to be the first carmaker to utilize NFTs in this way, seemingly in a bid to bring transparency and efficiency to a car market that often relies on third parties to track car records.
“Digitalization is a key enabler of our metamorphosis,” Francesco Calcara, head of marketing at Alfa Romeo, said in a media briefing. “[The NFTs] will sustain the residual values of our models as we are the first in the market to adopt this next-generation technology.”
The company says the car’s NFT will be able to generate a certificate from records of its maintenance data, but only for service done by certified dealers.
The integration is the latest example of the growing “useful” NFT market, which includes use cases for the technology that emphasize function over form.
Other recent useful NFT examples include a real estate company minting a housing deed as an NFT, healthcare companies working on encrypting and transferring medical records as NFTs, and tokens serving as proof of ownership for physical collectibles.
In the same media briefing, Alfa Romeo announced it would be pivoting to sell only electric vehicles by 2027. The company has struggled with its sales in recent years, selling less than 19,000 units per year each of the last three years. By comparison, Mercedes-Benz recorded over 60,000 sales in the fourth quarter of 2021 alone.