Removing guesswork from used car valuation

  • By Kamal Aggarwal
  • July 25, 2019
  • 4 min read

The last few months have been fairly challenging for the Indian car industry with declining new car sales. Industry experts point to various factors for this declining trend, such as lack of car finance liquidity and increase in mandatory insurance costs. Another factor that is potentially overlooked could be the increase in used car market.

Indian pre-owned car market continues to grow indicating a shifting demand from new cars to used cars. Unlike developed economies with used car sales to new car sales are in the ratio of 3:1, Indian used car sales are just about equal to the new car sales, indicating more headroom for used car sales. See this recent news report on the changing nature of this market.

Two factors have been traditionally hampering the growth of used car market : (a) lack of transparency regarding value of the car and (b) lack of finance options for used car. With increasing penetration of organized used car buy-sell platforms and dis-intermediation, we can expect more trust in the process.

AutoWiz OBD Based Car Inspection Report

We at AutoWiz are helping build more transparency around the valuation of pre-owned cars by offering technology based car inspection. Conventionally, used car inspection involves physical internal and external checks carried out by a technician who scores the overall car based on a point based system. AutoWiz is taking that process a step further by offering a connected car solution that augments this Inspection report with an objective car performance and diagnostics report.

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This report is generated based on a short test drive of the pre-owned car with AutoWiz OBD device plugged into the car. AutoWiz Connected Vehicle Data Analytics Platform receives run time car engine data in real time, performs intelligent analytics across various car internal and ECU parameters and generates a data driven rating.

The rating factors include performance and maintenance factors such as Fuel Mileage, Power, Battery Condition, Coolant, Load Profile, Idle RPM, O2 Sensors and many more. Additionally, any Diagnostic Trouble Codes encountered during the test drive are classified as per specific subsystem and severity level to give a clear sense of what could be potentially at fault in the pre-owned car’s ECUs. AutoWiz Inspection solution uses proprietary rating algorithms and insights derived from millions of miles of highly granular run time ECU data of hundreds of car make/models collected over years on Indian roads.

AutoWiz is working with Used Car Buy-Sell Platforms to establish an objective valuation of car based on real car condition data. It also helps the Used Car Finance Player to value the asset they are loaning against.

Besides the Pre-owned car market, AutoWiz Inspection report is useful for Car Servicing Chains for increased customer satisfaction and driving maintenance revenues. For Fleet Owners, AutoWiz Inspection report can be used for maintenance prognostics, preventing breakdowns and servicing cost optimization.