Firstly I should point out that I am not an expert in machine learning, but I think I know enough to give you a simple explanation. Because at its core, Machine Learning is simple.

It is important however, to point out exactly what Machine Learning is and what it isn’t. Machine Learning isn’t Artificial Intelligence (AI). Intelligence infers learning and applying that to new and completely different and creative situations, Machine Learning only has limited capacity in different situations.

I have two young children and when they were very young (<2 years old) I found it fascinating how they would learn by pointing at objects and people, as parents we would respond “tree”, “dog”, “bird”. After time they would repeat back verbalising as they pointed at objects, slowly refining what they pointed at and making less mistakes. This is Machine Learning. In time, humans progress past this type of learning and become more intelligent.

Feeding examples of images, words or data and labelling those pieces of data into a neural network is what Machine Learning is today. If you give the model enough data and accurate labelling, it can provide predictions based on the patterns that the neural network detects with new data, even if it has never seen that exact data before.

Machine Learning has produced many breakthroughs that we take for granted today, for example Speech Recognition, Translation, Text Recognition (OCR) and more recently object detection and soon fully Autonomous cars.

The biggest downside of Machine Learning is the huge samples of data that are needed and the human input required to label that data accurately. As mentioned before, humans are the greatest Machine Learners on the planet, so who better to teach the machines.

This can take a lot of time and can be expensive. But innovative ways have been created to make labelling less laborious. The best systems for data labelling are the ones that get humans to label text or images without ever knowing it. Remember the reCaptcha (the squiggly letters)? The problem that was being solved was to stop automated bots from accessing websites, but the scaled solution was teaching a machine to learn letters that had previously been missed by its OCR models. Humans were inadvertently teaching a machine! And in the process digitising books and archives.

early machine learning input

More recent examples are spotting images of road signs, stop lights and pedestrian crossings. You are actually teaching self-driving cars objects that are found along the pathways of an Autonomous Car.

Raw computing power and the ever-increasing storage of data is the primary reason Machine Learning is starting to become widespread within many technology solutions today. Whereas in the past you would have to write a program to recognise many different nuances, scenarios and data relationships, not to mention the foresight to recognise those patterns in advance. Today you can simply feed in well labelled data and ‘teach’ your machine to do a task.

Amazing future solutions are imagined to be, spotting cancers in scans, better weather forecasting, more efficient case law and detecting fraud in banking.

At drivible our intentions are a little less ambitious, but just as revolutionary for car dealers. We have begun to use Machine Learning within our program to more efficiently process test drives and soon will use our expertise to organise dealer’s data and sales processes.

The future is very exciting.    

“Change is as good as a holiday”. It is an odd saying, especially at the moment. I think everybody is sick of the constant change that is happening in the world currently and comparing it to a holiday?! Nothing could be as a good as a holiday right now.

But today, that is exactly what we are going to do here at drivible – change.   

We have spent the past 12 months in the burgeoning business of car subscriptions and have found the whole experience exciting, followed by frustrating and ending with contemplation. There is no doubt that car subscriptions will become part of the mix of how consumers access a car, but we have become sceptical that it will become mainstream and becoming mainstream is what we have based our aspirations on.  

Sure, we could have been patient and slowly built up the business but the car subscription market is actually quite saturated already, remarkable considering consumers haven’t shown any appetite to embrace car subscriptions in any meaningful number.

When we jumped into car subscriptions, we did so with an underlying opinion that the car buying process was flawed - as it wasn’t a pleasurable and efficient experience for many customers AND dealerships. We thought car subscriptions could be the product that breaks down these barriers, but without mainstream adoption this is unlikely to be the case.

So today, we are changing our focus to provide products and services that help dealers efficiently serve their customers. If we do our job properly, you wont even know we exist. But our mission has not waivered, we are still resolute to make sure the dealership experience can be as pleasurable and seamless as possible.

Our first product is a test drive and loan car application that uses machine learning technology and SMS to seamlessly and without any contact allow a customer to test drive or receive a loan car at a dealership. Our aim is to facilitate this process in a mere 10 seconds, which will allow the salesperson to spend more time presenting the vehicle and the customer more time to evaluate their choices.   

In the coming months, we will further develop our capabilities to process a number of customer interactions within the dealership and ultimately our aim is for customers to be able to buy a car with all the information they need with none of the wasted time.

If you would like to join us on this new and exciting phase of the business, please contact us at hello@drivible.com.au

So many goods and services are bought on the internet these days that it almost seems arcane to buy something looking at someone and not a screen. So why is it still not possible to buy a car on the internet?

There are two big obstacles still preventing online purchases, but once they have been solved there is no reason why some people won’t.

The biggest obstacle is the sales process at the dealership. The ability to negotiate the price at a dealership and potentially ‘save’ thousands means that most people won’t want to buy a car online knowing that they could have saved money. Even if the dealer has an online only price, the perception of the consumer is that they could have always got an extra $100 or so dollars out of the salesperson.

Proof of this, is the sometimes sale of special supply-restricted models offered by manufacturers as an online only model, think Subaru BRZ or recently the Toyota Supra. These companies know they have a massive demand for these cars with little supply. So, they sell these cars online only as they recognize that they can sell these models at no discount and they recognize that the consumer won’t batter an eyelid.  

The only way to encourage online sales, is to have a fixed price across the dealer network so that the advertised price is the same as the transaction price and likewise the online price. i.e. there is no disadvantage to a consumer wanting to buy online. An example is Tesla and its control of the whole process including the retail of vehicles. They have proven what can be achieved online.

In New Zealand, both Honda and Toyota have transitioned to an ‘Agency’ Model, where the distributor holds all trading stock and hence controls the sale price. Consumers aren’t worse off because the advertised price came down to the transaction prices that were being offered by dealers anyway. But this model has ensured that both these brands are ready for online sales in the future.  

The next obstacle is that buying a car is a major purchase and subsequently most consumers prefer to test drive a car before they buy. If the car has a fixed price, why would a consumer test drive the car at the dealership and not buy if they are happy with the car?

For consumers to completely do their research online and progress to purchasing online, then the potential ‘buyers remorse’ issue will need to be resolved. Like how clothes and now shoes were encouraged to migrate online, these businesses offered free shipping and free returns to remove the risk of a consumer buying the wrong item. This then increased the volume of sales done online and made up for any increased shipping and return costs.

Sorry for the plug! – but at drivible our mission is to make the whole car experience seamless and to reduce the risk to such an extent that consumers and dealers feel comfortable selecting and transacting a car online. By transacting a car through a subscription, drivible can ensure that the official subscription price is the best price possible, whilst limiting the risk that you select the wrong car by only having a rolling monthly commitment.

Once consumers are comfortable with the subscription option, it is only natural that this model will migrate online.     

With the rise of automation, many in the industry believe we are only years away from getting fleets of robo-taxis that will ferry us away to our meetings, parties, workplaces, schools and dinners. The reality is, the technology, infrastructure and regulation all need to change first and this is unlikely to be a mere “few years away”.

But when all the factors line up and cars do have the ability to drive themselves, will everyone just book rides through ride-share apps? There is no doubt that some people who live in inner-city areas will be perfectly happy with ride-share as their only transport method, but large segments of society will still wish to own (or subscribe) to a specific car.

For many people cars aren’t just for getting from A to B, cars are used for storing sunglasses, nappy bags, prams, used coke cans, footballs, shoes, phone charges and mints. They can feel like our second home. If you have kids, are you really going to re-install child seats every time you get into a ride-share?

So the methods by which people have access to cars is going to become more fragmented, some people will 100% ride-share but large numbers of society will need 100% access to a car, 100% of the time.

Perhaps some families will own or subscribe to one car and then use a ride-share service for any other trips, but the complete death of car ownership is greatly exaggerated.