Michael Petersen, whose father was an auto mechanic and grew up “with gasoline in my veins,” won first place in the 2024 Capital One Accelerator Pitch Competition and $15,000 for Minneapolis-based Raise a Hood, a solution to make car repairs easier, more transparent, and less expensive.

“Raise a Hood blends automotive expertise, artificial intelligence advancements, and the gig economy to help real Americans solve real problems in real time,” he said.

Although Petersen worked for a decade as an engineer with the Fort Motor Co. and another 20 years in high tech, he still found himself frustrated by car repairs.

In an interview last year with the Minneapolis/St. Paul Business Journal, Petersen said that the idea for Raise a Hood (RaH) came after his son called him and was stranded with an overheating vehicle on the side of a desert road en route to California.

With dad’s input, his son was able to nurse the car to his destination where he was charged $600 to fix the issue with what Petersen later discovered was a $40 part.

That experience led him to seek a better process for repairing cars.

“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 told the Business Journal.

His research shows that two-thirds of the cars on the road in the United States are no longer under warranty, which means a costly repair could be on the horizon.

In his Capital One pitch, Petersen identified the problem of car owners’ anxiety over car repairs and, for many of them, a distrust of the automotive service industry.

Many of those car owners are knowledge seekers who research a $30 toaster, Petersen said, but when it comes to a $3,000 car repair, they don’t have good sources of information.

Raise a Hood aims to help the distrusters and knowledge seekers, along with dedicated “car guys,” by giving them power and transparency in the process of fixing their vehicles.

Here’s how it works: Using the RaH patent-pending AI engine GUS or a team of video-based telemechanics, Raise a Hood can diagnose a vehicle’s problem before it goes to the shop.

Once GUS or a telemechanic diagnoses a problem, the user learns the severity of the issue, what the repair should cost, and whether it’s a simple fix most anyone could do.

Raise a Hood also provides listings of participating automotive service shops that offer competitive pricing that could save the user money on most repairs. Or frugal folks and “gear heads” may decide to fix the issue on their own.

The program is currently in pilot mode in the Phoenix area, with more than 50 participating repair shops that supply their repair data (minus customer identifying information) to help train GUS to identify common issues.

Telemechanics receive $50 for each session they help a car owner.  The result is a win for everyone involved, Petersen said.

He imagines a time when Raise a Hood will be “as easy as that ‘Buy it Now’ button” on Amazon and can help restore trust in car repair shops, as it was in his father’s day.

“But ultimately,” he said, “we’re trying to help people answer complex questions and getting into the palm of their hands the benefits of AI.

“We’re putting power back into the hands of the consumer where it rightfully belongs.”

For more details on the 2024 Capital One Accelerator Program Pitch and its five finalists, read the full story here.

Capital One is a Dallas Innovates Platinum partner. “Reimagining Repairs: How Raise a Hood Uses AI and ‘Telemechanics’ to Take the Pain Out of Car Trouble” was written and edited by Dallas Innovates’ brand studio.

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