Minneapolis St Paul Business Journal: Ex-Ford engineer grows AI startup offering telemedicine for cars
Ex-Ford engineer grows AI startup offering telemedicine for cars
Raise a Hood co-founders Michael Petersen, left, and Patrick Nunally Raise a Hood
By J.D. Duggan - Staff Reporter
Minneapolis St Paul Business Journal
July 11, 2023
Michael Petersen received a "dreaded" call from his son. He was stranded on the side of a desert road on the way to California. The car overheated and Petersen, a former engineer at Ford Motor Co., had to help.
His son nursed the car to the coast, where Petersen talked to a mechanic about fixing the overheating issue. He was charged $600 to change what Petersen later learned was a $40 part that would’ve taken less than an hour to replace.
“If I can be taken advantage of, imagine the person that didn't spend half their life in automotive,” Petersen said.
He thinks he has the solution to nerve-wracking mechanic visits. Petersen is co-founder of Raise a Hood, which offers “telemechanics,” a service much like telemedicine. A person can plug in their vehicle information and reach a seasoned mechanic through a virtual visit to understand the severity of the problem, how much it should cost, and whether it’s a fix simple enough that any old Joe could do it. That feeds the other side of Raise a Hood: Those meetings teach an artificial intelligence engine called GUS (Generative Uniform Syntactics), which is learning similarly to a junior mechanic and can answer those same questions.
Petersen said the average person who calls in to Raise a Hood saves $1,000 for any meaningfully sized repair. The Deephaven-based company officially launched the platform into public beta last month, and investors have noticed — Raise a Hood has already received $450,000 in pre-seed funding. The startup won second place in the High Tech division of last year’s Minnesota Cup and has entered this year’s cup, where winners will be announced at the final awards ceremony Sept. 18.
Petersen said the goal is to make car ownership simpler and less expensive. The browser-based application will also disrupt an industry that’s hardly changed for generations and is facing a workforce crisis. A 2022 report from TechForce Foundation estimates that demand for new auto/diesel/collision repair technicians will exceed 900,000 through 2026.
As some mechanics age out of the profession, Petersen said Raise a Hood gives them the opportunity to share their expertise without the need to bend over an engine bay for a whole workday. “They love the idea because it gives them a second career that allows them to retire earlier and allows them to monetize what they know."
Petersen connected with Patrick Nunally, who has worked with AI for about 40 years, establishing his career at the Department of Defense in the 1980s. Nunally has 126 patents to his name and is going for his 127th with Raise a Hood.
The team includes a board of six people, two full-time employees and 28 people who are primarily part time. Ten of those are telemechanics who have been trained to help teach the AI. The team is targeting a seed round toward the end of this year or early next year as they work to grow the business.
The team surveyed 1,000 people whose cars are no longer under warranty, and about two-thirds expressed that they leave auto shops with negative feelings, like anxiety or frustration.
"Our real objective was: Can we disrupt this thing in a way that actually cuts out some of the layers and the fat and the middlemen and makes car ownership more affordable?" Petersen said.
See the original story here: https://bizj.us/1qizmt
KEYWORDS:
AI
ArtificalIntelligence
Mechanic
Gus