Data and AI Help Drivers Anticipate Future Car Repairs

At a time when vehicles are in short supply and selling for record-high prices, consumers are choosing to keep their existing vehicles longer and invest the money to keep them running.

“The people that we know in repair shops have corroborated this: People are keeping their cars longer,” Ben King, data scientist at CarBeast, told PYMNTS. “Whereas a lot of people would just get a new car whenever the lease is up or whenever they had it fully paid for, they’re seeing a lot more people retain it longer.”

CarBeast serves this market with a mobile app that helps consumers diagnose current problems on their car and anticipate future service needs.

Using Data from Vehicle Service Records

Launched June 16, the app is fueled by data that the company obtains from hundreds of millions of vehicle service records from dealerships, repair shops and service marketing groups.

Vehicle service records include such things as the repairs and maintenance that were performed, the number of miles that were on the vehicle at the time of the service and the price of the service. They also include the vehicle identification number (VIN), which shows the manufacturer, brand, engine size, model year and assembly plant.

With those details, artificial intelligence (AI) can identify patterns and make predictions that can be shared with consumers through an app.

Predicting the Total Cost of Ownerships

One way consumers can use this data is to see a forecast of services they might expect to see in their car’s future. The user can enter a number of miles or years and then see the services that are likely to be needed.

“For maintenance items, it will say something like, ‘You can expect that you’ll need to replace your air filter three times in the next five years,’” King said. “For repairs, it will tell you, based on cars similar to yours, ‘We expect that there is a 20% chance that you’ll need to get the serpentine belt replaced.’”

Another use case for this information is car shopping. Knowing the likely future service needs and costs of different vehicles, shoppers can compare not only the vehicles themselves but also their likely total cost of ownership.

For example, the app may show that one type of vehicle tends to have shock absorbers replaced earlier than the other vehicles in its class.

“The idea is that you could have these users be informed that they could make a better decision when they’re buying a car — and with how expensive used cars are right now, you don’t want to be wasting that money,” King said.

Empowering Consumers with Knowledge

Consumers can also use the app to learn the most likely causes of a problem their car is currently having. CarBeast can understand what the user types into the app, whether it’s in colloquial or formal language, and can suggest the likely cause.

Because this is based on the data it has from other, similar cars, it can also tell the user the likely cost and any other parts that are often replaced along with that one.

“The idea being that we would want to be able to empower car owners for when they need to go to the repair shops to better understand what they’re getting into,” King said.

Beyond that, the app can use data about the service history of the user’s own vehicle.

“If you’re saying that the car won’t start, but you just had the battery replaced, then it’s able to update its predictions and say, ‘Well, if it’s not the battery, then it’s probably X,’” King said.

Helping Determine When Repairs are Worth Doing

CarBeast is available for a subscription priced at 99 cents a year. Payments are handled by Stripe, and it accepts credit card numbers and digital wallets like Apple Pay and Google Pay.

“This application came around at just the right time — we started it back before there was a whole issue with the used car prices,” King said. “Today, people are willing to put in more money to keep their car running well because it’s that much more expensive to replace. So, it’s, ‘Can you teach us the math on what kinds of repairs are worth doing on an older car?’”