In the tech world, we hear a ton of pitches like “it’s x but for y.” “It’s Seamless but for scented candles.” “It’s Uber but for assassinations.” Okay that last one might just be Uber. So when automotive repair directory Mechanic Advisor pitched us their first foray into consumer tech as “It’s Fitbit but for your car” it seemed a little too on the nose.
However, when you consider how much people care about cars, enough to bankroll seven Fast and Furious movies, a device that tracks a vehicle’s fitness as if it were a living person starts to sound a lot more appealing.
So to learn more about this device, the Mechanic Advisor Connection Key, we spoke with Mechanic Advisor CEO Parker Swift.
Paste: Could you give us some background on Mechanic Advisor?
Parker Swift: In college my co-founder and I had similar bad experiences trying to get our cars repaired. We had moved to Boston and couldn’t find a good mechanic. We were asking locals and some people had some recommendations. Unfortunately, they didn’t work out. So we set out to change the auto repair experience.
We decided that as a consumer having reviews and feedback from people that have been to local shops has a huge value. What if there was this place that you could go and find a mechanic in your area and read the information about that mechanic and also get feedback from the previous visitors? So we created a business, similar to what Yelp has done, and today we’ve been really successful. Currently we have over 100,000 shops within our website and get hundreds of reviews on a daily basis.
Paste: Before, all you were doing was providing a service, but with the Connection Key, you’re creating your first physical product. What inspired that?
P.S.: Mechanics want consumers to come see them more often. It’s like how dentists prefer that you come in every six months and get your teeth cleaned instead of coming in every three years to get a root canal. It’s similar with a car. Mechanics feel if you come to them every couple of years with a major, costly repair you’re going to be an unhappy customer.
Currently our service can help you find a mechanic, but most of the people that are using the website have failed to do general maintenance. They don’t read the manual. They ignore maintenance reminders. So we actually wanted to get one step ahead of that process and give people a device that will help prevent a lot of things that they are coming to our website for today and that will help them ask questions about repairs and costs.
Paste: How does the Connection Key work exactly? You plug it underneath the dashboard and pair it with a mobile app?
P.S.: Every car since 1996 has a standard computer built in it and most people don’t realize that because manufacturers up until 2012 were actually controlling the information within these computers. If you wanted to know or work on a BMW you would have to purchase BMW software to understand the computer of a BMW. So, if I was a mechanic and I wanted to work on a BMW, I had to pay BMW $300,000 to get the software to do that.
But a bill recently passed forcing manufacturers to make that information open source. It opened the market for people like us to come in and build devices that could use this information. With the Connection Key, we’re actually the first company to really take the information that cars have and use it in a way that you could understand it. We hired mechanics to sit in a room and say “Here’s the code. Here’s the error with the car. How can we make it so that you and I can understand it?”
Paste: How are you handling the transition from selling a service to selling a product?
P.S.: It’s been a natural transition for us. Over the last 8 years, we’ve heard a lot of feedback from consumers and mechanics. I think the number one thing we hear is that they want more transparency in the process. Consumers still don’t have a lot of knowledge about their vehicles after they get them repaired. They don’t trust the check engine light or know what it means. We’re building a hardware device that’s taking all that data and bringing it to the next level, connecting the consumer and actually identifying issues before the consumer could even know. It fits into our business.
Paste: What other kinds of devices do you think could take advantage of this data?
P.S.: One of the first devices that’s using this data was actually created to help you save gas. It’s really interesting. You put the device in and it looks at your driving habits and tells you “Hey! You’re speeding too often and because of it it’s costing you $3 a day of gas” or “Hey! You accelerate your brake too hard at stop signs and it’s a couple of dollars extra in gas.” I think there’s going to be a lot more products like these.
Paste: If the Connection Key is a success, would you like Mechanic Advisor to branch out into some of these other products?
P.S.: Our mission from day one has always been to make auto repair experiences better. So in doing that we constantly look at ways in which we can improve. The codes the car computer has are useful but we could go further. We can have devices that recognize when the tires are not tight or when the brakes aren’t fully performing. We can do a lot more with technology to predict and actually prevent a lot of serious car issues.
The Mechanic Advisor Connection Key launches later this Spring. You can pre-order it now for a special 40% off early adopter price of $49.95. The companion app arrives first on iOS with an Android version coming shortly after.