What problem are you trying to solve?
Due to progressive development of cars, these have become very complex systems. Normal car owners are often not able to assess the reason for an error or defect of their car. Therefore, they cannot estimate whether they can fix it themselves an d must rely on the diagnosis of mechanics. Unfortunately they have not necessarily the customer benefit in mind as they want to maximize their revenue. Customer's lack of education leads often mechanics to tricking them into purchasing parts for their car that they do not need. If you've ever had your oil changed at Jiffy Lube, you've likely had a similar experience. How would you solve it? OBD-II (On-board diagnostics) is a computer system built into every car in the United States since 19961 that provides extensive information about the vehicle such as diagnostics, logging, emissions testing, and more2. Each car has a standard OBD-II port, typically located underneath the steering wheel and easy to reach. Standard adapters with the ability to connect to phones via Bluetooth retail between $10-$30 for individual purchases3. We would provide an app which analyses the error codes given through the device and provide the user information about the diagnosed problems. The user should be able determine the cost of an repair by mechanics and shall get the information if he can repair it by his own. Do you think this is technologically feasible? This is technologically feasible. There are already several applications on the market that successfully use this technology. However, a potential problem a rises from the fact that some of the error messages go beyond the standard. To provide the same quality as a analyse by a mechanic the manufacturer-specific error messages have also to be integrated. Those are partly secured and the research of them requires a high effort. How large is the market demand for your solution? Even that the problem-described relates to nearly any car owner we only believe that the market demand is between 1-5 million customers as long customer habits have not change.That is the download number according to Google Play of the most popular app (Torque Lite) which requires and OBD2 adapter. This indicates that 1-5 million adapters are already sold. Is there competition that already solves this problem? Automatic4 is very recent a startup that provides customer functionality, but the entire package costs $100. In contrast to Automatic we would concentrate on the diagnostic functions and provide more extensive information in this field to the user. We could offer this solution very cheap or free as we could earn revenue through affiliate program with repair shops. Customer would be able to send the errors code through the app to auto mechanics and receive an offer. In contrast to Toque we would provide a more user friendly design. Who is the customer and how will your solution reach them? There mainly technophile car owner in possession of a smartphone. Our app can be found by typical keywords in the app store. We could also create attention cheaply through blogs. State why your team will succeed. We have a lot of of experience and passion with this topic. As well we have a engineer who could prototyping software and marketing skills combined in the team. Why is this a great problem to study for the feasibility study? To get car connected just started and so there are a wide-range of opportunities for products that connect to a vehicle through the OBD-II interface.
Link to the assignment document: https://ucsb.centraldesktop.com/engr185b/doc/5092979/ Here was my initial venture idea: Add comments or change it however you guys please. I. Product Name
Know My Car II. Problem
Due to progressive development of cars, these have become very complex systems. Normal car owners are often not able to assess the reason for an error or defect of their car. Therefore, they cannot estimate whether they can fix it themselves an d must rely on the diagnosis of mechanics. Unfortunately they have not necessarily the customer benefit in mind as they want to maximize their revenue. Customer's lack of education leads often mechanics to tricking them into purchasing parts for their car that they do not need. (If you've ever had your oil changed at Jiffy Lube, you've likely had a similar experience.)
III. Execution
OBD-II (On-board diagnostics) is a computer system built into every car in the United States since 19961 that provides extensive information about the vehicle such as diagnostics, logging, emissions testing, and more2. Each car has a standard OBD-II port, typically located underneath the steering wheel. Standard adapters (OBD-II to USB, or Bluetooth) retail between $10-$30 for individual purchases3. An existing adapter could be used or manufactured to connect to a laptop or mobile device and provide information to the customer prior to visiting a mechanic. IV. Market
Present popular diagnostics software costs upwards of $50-$100 (ScanTool, OBDAutoDoctor), not including the purchase of hardware. In addition, the primary market is auto mechanics, and not car owners. Automatic4 is very recent a startup that provides customer functionality, but the entire package costs $100 and is still in early development. Presently the car owner market is undefined for this type of product, and there is a large opportunity for all competitors in it to figure out what the specific need is. V. Personal Applicability & Feasibility
The feasibility of the product would require extensive market research to determine where the demand is. There are a wide-range of opportunities for products that connect to a vehicle through the OBD-II interface, and it is a mystery to me why there hasn’t been very much success in the field yet. While it is possible that there is not much demand for a product like this, the high margins for the software seem to indicate that there simply aren’t many competitors. I would personally be well suited for prototyping software in conjunction with
hardware that already exists, but I am lacking in experience for conducting market and sales (although both can come with practice).
Cited Sources
1 - http://www.epa.gov/obd/ 2 - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/On-board_diagnostics 3 - http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss_1?url=search-alias%3Daps&fieldkeywords=obd+ii+adapter&rh=i%3Aaps%2Ck%3Aobd+ii+adapter 4 - http://www.automatic.com/
What we need for the hw: 3. For your idea (or each of your top three ideas, if you are undecided) document in one page summary ● Title ● What problem are you trying to solve or what are you trying to improve? ● How would you solve it? ● Do you think this is technologically feasible? ● How large is the market demand for your solution? ● Is there competition that already solves this problem? ● Who is the customer and how will your solution reach them? ● State why your team will succeed. ● Why is this a great problem to study for the feasibility study?
Answer this question: What are the 5 things that you need to know/show about making your Idea Succeed? Your Top 5 should give an investor (VC) the confidence to invest in you and your idea. Some KPI ideas: -App/Software downloads compared to actual usage -This will tell us which people actually bought an adapter and whether or not they could get it working properly -Suggested mechanics viewed per issue -Mechanic visited per car issue -Downloads per week (Growth indicator) -Active users per week (Growth indicator)
-Revenue per user (Income indicator) -App Rating (User Satisfaction indicator) -Number of errors that can encoded by the app (Performance indicator)
