Many startups are racing to make inspections of vehicles faster, easier and cheaper. San Diego-based startup Self Inspection believes it's beating it all with its AI-powered services.
Self-Inspection, founded in 2021, is set to announce on Thursday it raised $3 million in a seed round co-led by Costano Aventure and DVX Ventures, a company run by former Tesla President John McNeill. . The round was Westlake Financial, which handles more than 1 million vehicle transactions per year.
Karim Bousta, partner at DVX Ventures, believes that traditional vehicle inspection processes are ripe for innovation. Self-Inspection Technology “not only streamlines the operations of car lenders, dealers and rental companies, but also sets new benchmarks for quality, reliability and seamless digital experiences in the $30 billion vehicle inspection market.” Bousta said in a statement.
The seed round is a testament to the technology the company has been working on in recent years, CEO Constantine Yaremtuso told TechCrunch. In self-examination, Avis and Caroffer (a digital wholesaler owned by Cargurus) has already counted Westlake Financial as its customers.
“Essentially, we're starting to expand, grow and scale,” Yaremtso said of the funding.
Self-testing is on a much different path than UVeye, and recently raised $191 million with AI-powered drive-through testing technology.
Self-inspection requires only a smartphone camera, but the software can also utilize data drawn from the car's OBD2 port.
The company trained AI models on what is described as “one of the largest datasets of damaged vehicles.” These models can quickly detect damage and assess severity before generating cost estimates and “one of the most thorough vehicle inspection reports available in the industry.”
“What we provide is actually a fully detailed PDF report, usually something you get only from the Body Shop,” Yaremtso said.
According to Yaremtso, Self Inspection's services are designed to be simple but configurable, set them apart from competitors like Ravin.
In other words, Self Inspection software doesn't fit all sizes.
What this means for customers is access to a smooth back-end configurator. For example, if the fleet or vehicle market wants to prioritize a specific highweer area of the car, or if you want to add a step to ensure that the EV charging cable is in the trunk, then you can use the self-inspection software. You can drag and drop it.
Self-testing is designed to be easy to use.
This software takes photos and videos like other services, so users do not need to leave a certain distance from the car. And for now, it's not even a standalone app. Self-inspection integrates the software into the customer's own workflow, and all vehicle inspections are done through the smartphone's web browser.
“Everyone has a good camera. Everyone has a good phone. Everyone knows how to capture photos. As soon as they receive a text message or email, it's easy I'll go,” Yaremtso said. “We're trying to provide this tool to the market and banks, so anyone can easily inspect and accelerate the sales cycle process.”