Almost 10 years ago, Brian Frist, Nick Alexander, and Daniel Hunter came up with the idea of bringing technology to the automotive industry. They launched the Yoshi Mobility app, which delivers gas on the day of your choice for $20 a month to consumers in the San Francisco area using the first gas entry point.
“The auto industry has never been an industry that has anything to do with innovation,” Frist told TechCrunch. “In the days of Amazon, when everything was delivered, we had this idea of never going to a gas station again.”
The trio brought Yoshi to Y Combinator in the summer of 2016 and began expanding, competing at the time with venture-backed firms such as Filld, Wrench, and Booster. By 2017, the company expanded to Atlanta and Nashville, Tennessee, offering additional services such as car washes, oil changes, and custom supplies like new wiper blades.
Yoshi also raised $2.1 million from investors including ZhenFund, Joe Montana's Liquid 2 Ventures, and Ali Rowghani, former CFO and COO of Twitter and founding managing director of YC's Continuity Fund.
Over the years, the company continued to raise an additional $36.7 million in Series A and B funding with support from strategic investors such as ExxonMobil, General Motors Ventures, DN Automotive and NBA All-Star Kevin Durant.
Business expansion and new business
Now, Nashville-based Yoshi Mobility has settled on three lines of business: preventive maintenance, virtual vehicle inspection, and electric vehicle charging. The company has locations in 15 states, but can provide vehicle services to customers in all 50 states. We have completed millions of vehicle services.
Frist said Yoshi Mobility has increased monthly revenue 10x since its Series B in late 2020. Although the company still provides consumer services, it is leaning more towards the commercial side of the business. The company currently offers a virtual vehicle inspection business for fleets and has corporate partnerships with Fortune 100 companies such as Uber and Turo.
The company's virtual vehicle inspections are popular in the gig economy, especially in states that require vehicle inspections for drivers and small business owners. Yoshi can perform an inspection in as little as 10 minutes.
Brian Frist, Co-Founder and CEO of Yoshi Mobility. Image credit: Yoshi Mobility
In March, the company completed its first acquisition, Mobile Auto Concepts Inc., a mobile auto services company that provides preventive maintenance, tire care and replacement, multi-point inspections and eco-friendly cleaning.
“Mobile Auto is like a lot of our competitors who just provide a service,” Frist said. “We believe that a comprehensive package is valuable. We work with fleets a lot now, and they always tell us that while we're putting gas in the car, asked if they could also change a tire or wash their car. Now they can do all that with a one-stop solution.”
Yoshi Mobility's third new business line, a mobile electric vehicle charging platform, follows in the footsteps of Tesla in some ways. This addresses known current challenges in his EV industry, including high repair costs, as well as future challenges related to charging EV vehicles. The platform provides on-the-go charging, maintenance, and support for EV owners and business customers.
Frist, who has been a Tesla driver for the past eight years, said the EV market is “just huge” and there's room for many players to join. For Yoshi, this means going after partners who don't want or don't have the space available to build EV charging stations on their premises.
“If implementation is going to go the way we and industry experts think, we need a solution,” Frist said.
Drive future growth
The move into all of these business areas is supported by $26 million in new Series C funding, valuing the company at more than $200 million, Frist said. General Motors Ventures will lead the round, with participation from new strategic investors and renowned tire brand Bridgestone Americas. Foreign investors include Universal Motors Agency and Shikura Limited. Yoshi Mobility's total investment now exceeds $60 million.
Bridgestone liked the mobility aspect of Yoshi's effort, Frist said. “They're investing in mobility companies,” he says. “They started Firestone Direct, which runs vans that can change tires. That's exactly what we're doing now, and that's how they got involved.”
Armed with the new funding, Yoshi Mobility plans to expand its preventive maintenance, virtual vehicle inspection, and electric vehicle charging business lines. It works with GM's OnStar and Toyota Connect, meaning the company's telematics connects to about 34% of cars on the road, Frist said.
“There are a million touchpoints, from physically touching the car to virtual telematics, and this is going to take us to the next level,” Frist said. “We think of ourselves as the 'Amazon of car care,' and just like we started delivering books, we're moving into cars with gas. We've always wanted to do more. We thought we were doing it, and in the next five to 10 years it’s going to look very different than it does now.”