Our History
One day, our founder’s wife asked a simple question, “Could you fix this check engine light which is always on in my car?” Naturally, his answer was, “Yes, dear.” However, what he quickly realized was there were very few options to actually FIX the problem. There were many places to go to find out what the check engine light meant, or why it turned on, however, he needed to find a way to get the car repaired.
From concept in early July 2011 the company was accepted into the Gazelle Lab, a Tampa affiliate of the Global Accelerator Network. Upon completion of the program the company had a working demo to share with a select group to trial.
Today
Today, we are breaking new ground in how car owners communicate with their repair centers and giving the car owners more knowledge about what is going on under the hood of their car. Our company sells a piece of hardware which connects to the car’s on board diagnostic system and uses the cellular network to communicate with our servers. From there our company is ‘listening’ to what the car is saying in terms of service requirements. With driver input and what the car’s system is telling us, we can help drivers better maintain their cars and ensure a good experience when a driver needs to visit a repair shop.
This platform Carvoyant built is being shared with application developers to create better applications to enable a more connected car for all – not just for those consumers buying a new car in 2016!
For the auto repair business this action of listening to cars allows us to connect a driver with a repair shop. The benefit for the drivers is they will get a simple way to schedule a repair appointment. Meanwhile, for the repair shops we bring a variety of potential customers to the doorsteps of a shop at the very moment a car needs a repair. Traditional marketing by repair shops involves coupon mailers and yellow page ads. We bring a method for shops to buy advertising at the moment a driver needs their service.
The Future
With the ‘health records’ we create for cars, we will be building the most robust dataset the auto industry has seen. This dataset will make all stakeholders smarter by providing insights to actual automotive performance as this data was lost in the past.
Drivers will be maintaining cars more intelligently than in the past while repair centers will be investing marketing dollars with a higher return than ever previously. Meanwhile, drivers who maintain better maintenance and have our service available as evidence of their diligence should be able to maintain higher resale value for their cars.
The Carvoyant system will enable anyone with a car to have a connected car today!
Moreover, other stakeholders will have more data available to make better decisions on matters such as what parts wear out faster under what conditions, is there a major manufacturing defect making its way into the marketplace, and are there vehicles which will hold their value better for lease buy backs, resale and insurance.
In the News