A few years ago my brother in-law was looking to purchase his first car. He was struggling to know what to look for when going to car dealerships and felt quite overwhelmed with the financial and practical decisions required. Not that I have any particular expertise with cars or the engineering involved, but through my own experiences purchasing cars and owning them I gave him some advice and "tips". As anyone would.
Things only morphed from there, I spent the next couple of years in my spare time learning to code, researching, and developing CarCheck. It's been a journey! Hindsight is 20/20 and some things I would have done differently, but that's part of the fun. I am proud to be sharing my (imperfect) first app with the world and excited to learn from you all for my next project :)
I would love to hear your feedback!
Sure, have a sign in feature if you want to save your checklist for later, but the vast majority of people will use this for just a few minutes/hours and the state can be stored in a cookie.
Definitely could be made into an offline PWA as well so it's not reliant on a data connection.
Hard pass on all apps of this type.
Seems to me this app would be more useful as a short webpage, or perhaps single pdf.
If you want an example of an 'odd' case for your app, one thing I would never expect, is that my car dealer apparently recently titled my car in VA while I live in MD, although I bought the car six years ago (I discovered this when I tried renewing my MD tags and was told my car had been titled out of state). In effect, they have just stolen my car through sheer incompetence even though it's paid off and all the documentation show I owe it. Maryland MVA say there's nothing I can do until I get the dealer to sort it out. Needless to say trying to get through to anyone in their tags and title office, or getting a response from their manager has been difficult because I'm not buying a new car. So I think the app needs to call out bad dealers and those whose back office is incompetent (I'm never buying a car in Virginia again after this, no matter how cheap it is).
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLvKbarVtwhUv6bjLhJSya...
And the pdf checklist:
https://www.chris-fix.com/upload/How%20to%20Inspect%20a%20Us...
The UI of the app reminds me a bit of CheckYourLists [0], and I could imagine being able to import lists in the app from a static web server could work nicely.
I haven't looked at the app too closely yet, but is it possible to add my own custom criteria, too?
I actually would love to hear more about the journey you briefly touched on the description. Like how you learned to code, what tech stack you choose, what was hard, what resources helped you, etc And what you would do the same and different if you had to do it again.
A few comments:
- maybe add somes weights to the questions? For example it's more important that the rear view mirrors are properly attached than having no stain on the upholstery.
- some questions deserve more details. "After revving the vehicle in neutral...", am I supposed to rev it for long?
Other than that... Thanks! Looks pretty good :) Nitpick on the price: I would be ready to pay to remove ads, but not for the current price.
EDIT: actually I just noticed it was cheaper through the "unlimited" option. Maybe a simpler/clearer pricing would do :)
How do you tackle the issue that it’s a high intensity, but low frequency problem?
Tangentially, does anyone have advice on a good medium capacity, medium price utility vehicle? I'm thinking F150, because it seems like the Levi's of trucks (common, reliable, not particularly fancy, old brand, big), but I don't know much.
If I were switching occupation to a plumber (or something) and looking for a work vehicle, I'd be strongly considering closed vans like Transit, Sprinter or Nissan NV. Or a plain old minivan as some have suggested. I hear many of them can fit a 4x8 with seats removed.
Buddy in the independent repair shop business cites Fords as his most profitable vehicle manufacture. He knows when a Ford rolls into his shop, it’s usually going to be a ton of work to keep his boys busy. Or the customer ends up declining all repairs.
Expect to replace Ford vehicles on a regular interval (4-5 years?) or pay up on costly repair items.
For alternatives, if you are entering a trade honestly consider a work van or “sprinter”. Much better at storing and transporting your equipment. If this is a vehicle that will just be hauling groceries around, honestly reconsider why you are buying a truck in the first place.
VW is rated way worse for reliability, but it can be tricky to find a mechanic that is savvy with them since there are just fewer units running around.
I just love trucks so much hahaha! :)
A lot of smaller vehicles have a tow capacity that is more than enough to handle your typical trailer of furniture, yard waste, lumber, etc.
For EVs, it seems the largest question is with the EV battery. Is there any way that anyone knows how to determine the health of the EV battery consistently across make/models?
There are tools for directly connecting via ODB that can give you the battery health at least for the Nissan Leaf, but I haven't looked into them for years and couldn't tell you for sure.
In general, lower miles is better and not from a super hot climate is better (purchased and driven in Washington State > Driven in Arizona).
Example1: windows on the doors don't have a full frame (looks nice, but not functionally different than a standard door frame). This requires engineering to lower the window when closing then push it back up. Also kids in the back closing doors is really noisy.
Example2: the full moonroof is really really hot. This causes the car (black interior is default) to heat up incredibly on warm days (also passengers in back complained their head was too warm) So Tesla created pet mode to keep the car from becoming inhabitable for the first few minutes - but that uses energy.
Example3: games can prevent the car from going into Drive mode. That's just silly - let the game expire, the car needing to move is far more important (for a vehicle!).
All of these examples aren't showstoppers but the decision framework that resulted in them really make me concerned so we've removed this from our buy list. We also evaluated the ID4, EV6, Leaf, Ariya and Ioniq5. So far the winner is the EV6 (ventilated seats!) and the Leaf (but the battery/charging situation is disqualifying).
There is a lot to think of with a car transaction that goes beyond mechnical function. The basic four boxes of finance or leasing/trade-in/price/"extras" are a lot to keep in your head all at once when you only rarely buy a car. I ended up going to about 6 or 7 dealerships to get what I wanted at a good enough price taking into consideration the trade value on my truck and what they had in stock.
From my experience, not knowing anything about cars and what basic things to look for, forums seemed not that great and the “top 10 things to look for” kind of articles either.
I ended up asking chatGPT, and turns out it seems to know exactly about the model I was looking at and I then crossed check if the commons problems were real online.
Some used cars can appear “fine” on the surface, but once a mechanic looks under the hood (ie, under carriage inspection, checking for recalls, oil check).
A used car I found online in Ohio looked perfect but paid a mechanic to check it out. Turns out the under carriage was rotted to hell. Which is honestly typical for cars in the rust belt (ie, due to salt from roads)
Why would that be a problem? A manufacturer is obligated to fix an open recall at no cost to you.
Either way, you can still have a mail sign up with a massage like “more features are on our way, sign up to keep up to date” (or similar).
By all means have a roadmap elsewhere, but the landing my page is for selling your project rather then telling people what your project currently cannot do.
It feels a little incomplete.
There are two or three competing use cases that are currently commingled - choosing between models, choosing between offers, or choosing whether a particular unit you've gone to see is up-to-snuff.
There's a certain set of data I need when want to decide whether I want a Highlander, a RAV4, a Prius, or a Crosstrek. All of this data is available to you as the app developer, but currently manually entered. I'm considering these options from my desk, and would prefer to do it on a web page, not on a phone.
There's a completely different set of parameters when weighing the 2020 RAV4 with 60k miles at Joe's Auto in Hudsonville versus the 2018 Crosstrek with 80k sold by private party in Grandville. For this decision, I'd love if you could scrape a posting that I copied the URL for from Craigslist, Facebook Marketplace, Auto trader, Carvana, or a dealer listing! For this decision, I particularly like a bubble chart: Price on the Y axis, mileage on the X axis, bubble diameter by year, and colors for different models or different vehicle types. You want the biggest one in the bottom left, and these can be all over, especially with older private party sales. And there's more opportunity for you to offer value with your much greater data set, comparing these bubbles to Edmunds/KBB/recent sales values.
This is also trying to be a third thing, an app I bring along with me when I've found a particular unit that I want to test drive.
There's definitely an opportunity to follow along and help at each of these three steps in the process, but it doesn't feel like a single workflow will work best for all three.
As a 5/7 “car guy” I think of car buying in two phases: winnow the range of all possible cars into a few models (possibly one) and a few year ranges per model (also possibly one), then shop for cars in that set.
This app is exclusively useful in the second of those steps, though creating a decision matrix and scoring could be done similarly for the first step.
In terms of utility in the second step, I have weights in mind for different questions (“no significant bodywork” has vastly higher rating than “no stains on floor mats”), and many are subjective (no used car is completely free of wear marks, but different used cars present very differently and I probably want to record a 1-5 or similar rating for some categories).
Scraping AutoTempest (or Edmunds) and other sites to show me the function of asking prices vs miles and years would be worth something. I started creating that for my own shopping to try to augment my gut feel.
Certified pre-owned is a high-value checkmark for individual cars, typically being worth a few thousand dollars.
Where the car is is another large factor in terms of being able to consider it, from a time and money standpoint. I was shopping nationwide for two models, each with one series (a range of years where models were similarly designed/optioned), and keeping track of which cars I’d already ruled out was a drag. (For this, what I really want is a browser plug-in to change the CSS to grey out cars that I’ve already blocked [previous crash damage, missing option that I want, etc.].)
With multiple cars and the scraped pricing curves, you could do some visualizations (price on Y, miles on X as an example) of the cars vs the curves. (Or cars only, vs curves as premium feature.)
Absent data to show otherwise, I’d open the free version to at least 4 cars (probably 5) and provide a soft-delete (“I’m not ever buying this car.”) where those cars don’t count against the 5, in order to get more data on how people use the app, how they sort/filter, and to get more users. (If I’m only comparing two cars, I can keep that in my head.)
Overall, as-is I couldn’t/wouldn’t use it, mostly because of the fixed questions and lack of weights as above.
Other ideas: incorporate OBD2 scanning (perhaps with a rev share or affiliate marketing angle for the device). People will pay $25 for a device and $4.99 for your app long before they’ll pay $4.99 for your app alone.
Or to find hidden bodywork, affiliate links to paint thickness meter could bring in revenue.
Provide an “import details” button in pro version where you type in a VIN and scrape the web or find other sources for options, color, links, etc.
Provide a barcode scanner to scan the VIN sticker on the door. This could be an easy pro upgrade upsell.
I just went through this and spent 10 months of half-effort buying our car and there were definitely parts that could have been improved. Sites like AutoTempest (my primary) and cargurus* were helpful but still incomplete.
When I got to the point of traveling to inspect a car, I was much more in the mindset of “buy or pass” at that moment (the 37% [1/e] dating approach to finding the optimal mate via serial dating) than I was of score a checklist and compare overall. This app could pivot towards that by helping people declare how many cars they’re willing to go see, then frame each car in relation to this optimal stopping math problem.
Good luck!
* Small disclaimer: I know the cargurus founder and several people working in tech there. I think I’m unbiased in saying I used it consistently (and second to AutoTempest), but it’s impossible to tell with perfect certainty.
As pointed out by user 'Sneak' below app phones home with a bunch of unique identifiers and the app privacy label says those are used to track you across other apps and services as well.
Hard pass from me thanks. (And a reminder that not everything needs to be a bloody phone app!)
Make it easy to know if my next service is a minor service or major service, or if i need to renew some thing that only needs changing every 3 services or that my tyres need checking or changing over to summer/winter tyres.
It just allows your phone to use a screen in your car as a second monitor, and output/input for audio. The only other input I think is whether or not headlights get turned on (to dim the display at night).
I think an app should be something that either helps you continuously (health tracking apps, home automation, etc.) but you don't access that much and apps that you access a lot (media, chat, calendar, a game or two). This is neither.
