In less than four years, there will be a quarter-billion connected vehicles in the world, each generating a huge amount of data, according to Gartner Inc. And according to other reports Google Inc.’s self-driving car creates around a gigabyte of data per second. Add that up, and it’s clear that cars collectively will be generating mindboggling amounts of data very soon.

An Israeli-based company, Otonomo, will meet this new era of automobile data with a platform designed to make sense of it. Otonomo collects vehicle data from various car manufacturers so that the data can be used as a source of information for various apps and services. The company recently raised $12 million in a series A funding round led by Bessemer Venture Partners and Stageone Ventures, as well as Maniv Mobility and LocalGlobe.

Otonomo’s service might relate to commercial aspects, although it may also be intended to help improve driving through the analysis of driving behavior, how cars should be produced according to this data, how actions and reactions can be assessed and how this in time will improve overall road safety. Then there’s data on driver behavior, such as where we drive and when and how we entertain ourselves behind the wheel.

Otonomo intends to be at the forefront of what it calls the “digital revolution in the car.” Ben Volkow, Otonomo’s cofounder and chief executive said that car manufacturers “need a platform they trust to share and negotiate data between them and application providers while meeting different data and privacy regulations that respect and accommodate drivers’ privacy.”

Otonomo’s integrated cloud-based platform, that company says, is a “trusted gateway between the services and apps drivers want and the security the automotive industry needs.”

Photo credit: nuomi @1280×1024.net via Flickr