Auto Navigator: Disrupting Car Buying for the Sake of the Customer
 We’ll give SXSW Interactive Festival participants a peek behind the curtain at how we’re reimagining the car-buying process using cutting-edge, immersive technology. We’ll provide SXSW Interactive Festival participants a peek behind the curtain at how we’re reimagining the car-buying process using advanced, immersive technology. Technology, strong auto industry knowledge, and unique relationships…
The Problem
Do you remember how long you stayed there? Did you leave entirely satisfied with your purchase and in possession of your keys? In a recent poll commissioned by Capital One, 50% of respondents claimed that selecting a child’s name or settling on a college required more time than shopping for and researching a car. Furthermore, only 62% of auto buyers are sure that their most recent purchase was a terrific deal. In addition, 78% of Americans said they had given up on being able to find and buy the car of their dreams after making their most recent car purchase. Do you recall how much time you spent at the car dealership the last time you purchased a vehicle? Did you leave entirely satisfied with your purchase and in possession of your keys? In a recent poll commissioned by Capital One, 50% of respondents claimed that selecting a child’s name or settling on a college required more time than shopping for and researching a car. Furthermore, only 62% of auto buyers agree that their most recent purchase was a terrific deal. In addition, 78% of Americans said they had given up on being able to find and buy the car of their dreams after making their most recent car purchase.
We wondered why the excitement of buying a new car must be accompanied by such anxiety. We concluded that some customers become discouraged when they discover that their monthly payments will be (much) more significant than anticipated because the total cost of ownership will be higher than the purchase price after learning more about the car-buying process. They typically don’t realize this when they initially begin shopping and have their hearts set on a particular car. Then what? Has a new draft been started? Do they start over or go for a more expensive option?
The Solution
As a result, in 2015, Capital One released the first version of Auto Navigator, a cloud-based online tool powered by several technologies, including machine learning and built on microservices architecture. These consumer pain points proved to be an issue that we needed to address.
Thanks to this development, which simplified the car-buying process, customers can now locate, finance, and finish their next automobile purchase with ease, convenience, and confidence.
Our platform’s second edition, published barely a year later in 2016, allowed customers to browse more than three million cars from more than 12,000 participating dealers countrywide! We calculated what customers would pay for every vehicle in our database with the configurations of their choice using real-time data (e.g., cash down, terms, etc.). Most importantly, buyers can now pre-qualify for financing without having their credit score damaged before going to a dealership.
We iterated on Auto Navigator to continuously build, fail ahead, and enhance our user experience. We use empathetic listening, observational methods, and rapid prototyping with customers to achieve this.
What’s Next in this Disruptive Journey?
For the sake of the consumer, we are in business to compete with the market. We’re presenting the most recent version of Auto Navigator at SXSW in the form of a brand-new feature:
According to what we’ve learned, one aspect of augmented reality is that Customers continue to research cars even when they are not actively looking to purchase one. Using the Capital One Mobile app, we intend to provide our clients with an augmented reality experience in the upcoming months, enabling them to scan cars with their smartphones and discover specific information about each vehicle. Please provide information about their pre-approved finance, scheduled monthly payment, nearby dealerships where they may purchase the car, and much more. imagine clients
The Tech Behind It
When it debuts, Apple’s recently unveiled augmented reality framework (ARKit), its new mobile machine learning framework (CoreML), and Capital One’s models will be used to recognize and value cars. With the help of ARCore and Tensorflow mobile, the feature is also compatible with Android.
We can pull photos from the video stream and feed them into ARKit and CoreML to create a 3D scene that we can use to place our AR components—Previously scanned (even after watching several). The offer is then tailored using Capital One’s in-house models so the customer can view their projected monthly payment. The core of what we do is to provide people with the tools they need to feel secure in their relationship with money, and with Auto Navigator, we’ve discovered a method to do this while delivering an excellent digital experience that more thoroughly fits into people’s lives.h this while providing a top-notch digital experience that more thoroughly fits into people’s lives.
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