Wednesday, July 17, 2019
Gina Callari Of RelayCars: Using VR And AR In Automotive Sales
For today's interview, we talked with Gina Callari, the COO of RelayCars (www.relaycars.com), a unit of a larger company called EVOX Images, which has developed virtual reality (VR) and augmented reality (AR) software that lets consumers view and experience automobiles using headsets like Magic Leap and even just smartphone. Gina gave us a sense of what role VR and AR are playing in the automotive buying process today.
What is RelayCars?
Gina Callari:We are actually part of a company called EVOX Images. EVOX has been around for over 20 years. What is so fantastic about EVOX, is we provide automotive imagery for 20,000 dealership websites. If you've looked for a car, you've come across one of our images. We also work closely with manufacturers like Kia and Subaru, and work with research sites like Kelly Blue Book and Edmunds, who both utilize our imagery as well. We are across many platforms, and have a whole array of enterprise customers. Since the inception of the company, we've been doing everything in 360 degrees with our imagery. Fast forward to around 2015, and we decided to shoot all of our vehicles stereoscopically for virtual reality. Instead of shooting a vehicle with one camera, we added a second camera, so you could get a 3D look and feel when placed into a headset. We have a studio here in Los Angeles with over 40,00 square feet of space, and we bring in several hundred vehicle every model year, shooting them the same way with the same consistent lighting and angles. That allows consumers to really understand and compare the look and feel of different vehicles. When we started doing that, we created an app called RelayCars. It was a way for us to go to our enterprise customers, put a headset on them, and show them the imagery in 3D. Once we put it on the app store, we got over 1.2 million downloads. It's a free app, works in all of the app stores, and is platform agnostic. We were not expecting that kind of a reception at all, and we were really excited about it. Users can just download and check out thousands of vehicles in a headset or on their smartphone.
Do you do this for the auto manufacturers or dealer, or both?
Gina Callari: We have relationships with dealerships where we provide images for the dealerships, when OEMs don't. Although OEMs might do this for one particular new vehicle which has been released at an auto show, they don't do this for all of their vehicles. What we're doing is across all brands. What is important to know, is the car shopping experience has changed, and it's much different than even five years ago. 2019 is the last year the baby boomers will be the majority of new vehicle purchasers. Starting in 2020, that becomes millennials, whose shopping habits are much different. Baby boomers like to touch and feel a vehicle, and will go to multiple dealerships to look at a car. That's not the case anymore. Five years ago, somebody in the market for a car might go to three or four dealerships before deciding which vehicle to purchase. Now, buyers don't even want to go into a dealership and they do all of their research online. There are some stats out there that say that 80 percent of the market is doing online research, and out of those 80 percent, 60 percent are looking at sites like Youtube and Google to help with their purchasing decisions. What RelayCars does, is add a visual element to that research in an immersive way, so you can eel like you're sitting in the driver's seat of a vehicle. They can check it out on the inside, on the outside, and really get a good idea of what it looks like. The way this helps dealers, is it allows them to use RelayCars to get people to make a decision on a car, while they are home, and to then come into their dealership and buy.
So this is more augmented reality technology that VR?
Gina Callari: I'm a little biased. I really do feel that AR is taking off a lot quicker than VR. As you know, it's been slow adoption for VR headsets, aside from the gaming industry. This puts us in a position for VR where we will have the content when the consumer is ready for it. Augmented Reality is different, because you just need a smartphone to view that content, and because you're not constrained by those headsets. That said, we do have VR apps. We actually are the only automotive app developed for Magic Leap, and we're definitely developing for headsets. We heard that Apple Glasses are going to be coming out in the next year, and we're trying to position ourselves to have content whenever that happens. The other thing that is great about AR, is it's not just about gaming. It's being used in the enterprise, and we're seeing lots of companies really utilizing AR when it comes to working with consumers.
Do you see your content being used by dealers using AR or VR, or are you expecting this to be used more at home by consumers directly?
Gina Callari: Yes, that's where we've been struggling on how to implement this. For example, there's the issue if dealers don't have inventory on the lot. A consumer may be at the lot, look through a headset, and see different options and colors that are available to them but which may not be physically available to them at the dealer. So, we've decided to stay away from that. We do have some use cases where we do have dealers using them, but what we really feel is best is to help consumers with the research and shopping experience. We look as it being in a higher funnel in the process. When someone is looking for a vehicle, and thinking of ways to research that vehicle, we hope they'll go to sites like Edmunds.com for data and editorial, to YouTube for videos, and to RelayCars for the visual aspects.
Isn't it very expensive to capture all this imagery?
Gina Callari: That's our competitive advantage. Because we already have access to these vehicles, and because we bring in probably 16 to 18 vehicles a week, we are able to shoot them all in the same way, and already have the staff for it. We have had staff members who have been working with us for quite some time, so our quality is better, and we never had to retrain them to do this, as they've been leading in this space. It would be extremely expensive for a startup to get into this business. Although we have worked with and collaborated with some other companies out there who have been creating CG and VR assets for OEMs, we don't find that as competitive, because they're only working on a launch of a vehicle and creating that high visual experience for that one particular vehicle. People look at us as the Getty Images of automotive photography, and we're now able to do that within the VR and AR space.
Is there anything about virtual reality or augmented reality that has surprised you so far?
Gina Callari: It's interesting to see the headsets are taking a little longer for people to adopt. I think that everyone in the virtual reality space was hoping we would be farther along than where we are today. The main goal at RelayCars, is to be the main source of immersive and virtual car viewing experiences. We want to be the main supplier of automotive, visual content for consumers, for companies, and for influential technical clients like Google and Amazon. If you want to have virtual shopping, you really need to have an immersive, complete, and high-quality automotive library on the market. We are starting to talk with some of those larger companies, and we are looking forward to providing imagery to them.
Thanks!