Collision repair vets on both coasts are working out how to have other body shops use artificial intelligence operations software each has developed in-house.
Better Collision Centers in South Carolina is forming a separate company dubbed BetterX in developing the product, partly for the purpose of licensing it to others. And Southern California’s The Crash Co. said it had been contacted by other owners.
“About two dozen shops have expressed interest in testing it,” said Ali Jakvani, a co-owner of Crash Co. with partners Amir Siddiqui and Ruben Jandres, and lead developer of the software, called CrashCodex. Ashraf “AJ” Jakvani, Ali’s father, is also involved.
“We’re keeping it in-house until it’s ready,” Ali Jakvani said, though a few shops in the region are testing limited elements of the new product.
Better Collision founder and CEO Jonathon Best said, “As we were building it we realized we had to share it. It makes us all stronger together; we created a product we need to bring to market.”
Blurring Lines, Building Trust
The moves create wrinkles in how collision center owners might use if not exactly embrace AI. Shop adoption as it comes, if it does, is in its early stages. One trade journal recently noted single-digit levels of use in a first-mover area: collision estimatics.
Better Collision's BetterX AI program.
Dumping the hype here is crucial. Broader business coverage of generative AI has recently remarked on massive investment costs in cash and energy, and circular customer-cum-investor dealing among chipmakers and AI hawkers, among other concerns.
In August, an MIT study reported by Fortune said companies considering AI should let others make the tools.
September social media chatter among body shop owners concerned ADAS repair: in-house, if so set up as a separate company — or outsourced entirely? An independent ADAS outsourcer debuted in the Philly market and Kinetic Automation opened another hub. A second location for db Orlando Collision opened considering adding an indie ADAS operation on a second parcel behind the main 34,000-square-foot shop.
Now guys who know how to run body shops are entering the AI operations fray essentially as vendors. If that pursuit succeeds, what does it mean?
Third-Party or In-House — Does It Matter?
Ali Jakvani calls on reasons similar to why owners work together at all — as MSOs, networks, in 20 Groups — to say why operators would look at a product organically developed in-house. Pooling resources is good. Acting together “gives the agility to innovate and an incentive to make tools like Codex work in real shops.”
Screenshot of a CrashCodex dashboard.
He’s seeking the “MVP” (minimum viable product) before releasing it for scalability, goaling it for year-end, and “the longer-term aim is licensing.” He said the partners would also consider more partnerships: financial backing, in-kind or shared labor, and help in design or coding.
There’s a second question for in-house AI. First, the pros and cons of owners and operators as vendors. Second the need for an outside overarching AI at all. CCC ONE already includes it.
Third-party providers emphasize distinctions touching both.
“Companies that focus on a single AI solution tend to do one thing extremely well,” Mitch Anderson, who has worked in AI estimating, emailed. It’s “a solution built to obsess over performance, experience and outcomes.”
Aren’t Current Products Enough?
Chris Van Der Put, who heads Ravin AI’s U.S. push, in an email cited quality and workflow. He wrote Ravin has scanned 150 million VINs, authenticated data, found fraud and guided uncertain users, on multiple workflows for single vehicles: repair, salvage, selling. “An estimate is only as good as the images used to write it.”
“I can tell you firsthand we do need tools beyond what CCC builds in,” Ali Jakvani told Autobody News. Large SaaS sellers push a proprietary product to make money, but he said “I’d love to see the Codex brain run directly inside larger products. [They] wouldn’t have to reinvent AI, they’d just need to integrate Codex.” Meanwhile, Crash Co. wants Codex to be “the glue that connects systems and makes them work together.”
“We know what we need, where the sticking points are,” Better Collision’s Best said. Third-party players “kept trying to boilerplate us. Most independents want tailored help.”
Best said, “We’ve got the go-to-market strategy,” envisioning BetterX at a couple tiers, the lowest at perhaps a couple hundred bucks a month, alongside enterprise-level pricing. Better Collision wants to tech-innovate overall, so the software simply extends that. “I just joined CIECA to bring it to the table there,” Best said.
Paul Hughes