The automotive market is one of the largest and fastest-growing industrial sectors globally. According to the latest available numbers, the market is to grow from 5,315 billion dollars in 2017 to 8,931 billion dollars in 2030. A large chunk of this market comprises consumers willing to buy a new vehicle. Nearly 38% of the market is new car sales. A lot of these buyers would choose the route of auto financing. One of the latest market research reports estimates that the global automotive finance market, valued at US $232.09 billion in 2020, will grow at a compound annual growth rate of 7% up until 2028.
There are several reasons why the automotive finance market is expanding. One of the main factors behind this growth is the advancement in technology, including growing digitization, convenience arising from the increased usage of online services, and the arrival of blockchain technology. The intersection between the blockchain technology paradigm with the automotive finance market is where companies like CarrChain and CARFAX come into the scene.
Although these companies belong to the same operational domain, they have their distinctions. Before delving deeper into their differences, let’s look at the brief histories of these two companies.
Carrchain by Carnomaly
Carnomaly’s vision is to bring practical blockchain solutions that facilitate buying, selling and owning a car. It aims at making blockchain technology and crypto assets usable for every consumer who wants to own a car. Carnomaly has three flagship solutions: CarrChain, CarrDefi, and Carnomaly. While Carnomaly facilitates better car buying with crypto assets and CarrDefi arranges for decentralized financing of vehicles, CarrChain stands as a unique proposition with its digital car management service in exchange for rewards. Native tokens fuel any blockchain protocol. It is the Carr Tokens in the case of Carnomaly. Carr Tokens are available for live trade on several exchanges in exchange for USDT, BTC, ETH, etc.
CARFAX
CARFAX, on the other hand, primarily facilitates the sale of used cars. Other than helping people explore used cars by an automaker or a specific variant, CARFAX vehicle history reports help ascertain how much a car is worth with its vehicle history reports. You can also use CARFAX to sell your car and more. Its research service helps you know more about the car from photos, expert reviews, specifications and safety data. At the providers’ end, the dealers and service shops can leverage CARFAX’s listing services to expand their services.
What is CarrChain?
The vision of CarrChain is to infuse the convenience of digital profiles into a vehicle, utilizing the security and reliability of blockchain technology. It keeps track of almost every aspect of your car digitally. With its web-based application, it becomes easier to manage and update them periodically.
The history report that comes with CarrChain includes a host of detailed information on the car, including the summarised maintenance details of a vehicle. Other information metrics include the car’s registration status, claim information and information on the available dealers, insurance companies, DMVs and collision centers.
From a user’s perspective, it is easy to log maintenance activities. All one needs to do is manually enter information whenever there is an oil change or tire replacement. Having a receipt against the maintenance job done makes it even simpler. Uploading an image of the receipt does the job for you.
The intuitive user interface makes it seamless to view recall information regarding the vehicle when needed. The application also sends you real-time updates on your vehicle’s market value and sends recommendations for engine oil, local repair shops and more.
The Integration of Blockchain
Since CarrChain deals with a plethora of user data, maintaining the safety and integrity of this information without compromising on transparency is vital. CarrChain leverages blockchain for this purpose. Whenever a user inputs his/her unique Vehicle Identification Number (VIN), Carrchain creates a Digital Vehicle Identification Number (DVIN). Information corresponding to each DVIN goes into the blockchain database. The immutability property of blockchain ensures that no one can alter or change it.
The trust and reliability that blockchain offers ensures that a CarrChain report is the most accurate and detailed history report available in the market. This credibility helps you fetch the best possible price for your vehicle.
While the guarantee of fair price incentivizes you to keep a record of your dealings, CarrChain has a distinct and well-structured incentivizing mechanism as well. It offers points with each update you do on your vehicle’s profile. The more points you earn, the better the reputation score of your vehicle. You have a competitive edge when you are selling it off.
What is CARFAX?
CARFAX serves a large customer base who are willing to buy a used car. Anyone keen on purchasing a pre-owned vehicle can enter the VIN or license plate number on CARFAX. CARFAX takes care of the rest. It populates information on the car across four broad categories: accident data, service history, type of use and ownership history.
In accident data, it goes as deep as recording the point of impact, damage severity, damage location, and even the details on airbag deployment. In service history details: the granularity involves information on oil changes, tire rotations, brake rotor replacement, transmission replacement and more. From the type of usage information segment, you get to know whether the vehicle was used as a personal one, a rental one, or as a leased or commercial one. Even its history of being driven as a taxi or police vehicle stays on the report.
The ownership history of a car, according to CARFAX, delves deeper to find out how many previous owners the car had, the states or provinces it was owned in, and the length of ownership for each.
All this data, starting from structural damage to the safety inspections to last reported mileage, brings trust, credibility, and reliability in the pre-owned car market. It is why CARFAX has partnerships with almost every leading name in the industry, including Infiniti, Jeep, KIA, Lexus, Lincoln, Mercedes Benz, Nissan, RAM and more.
The Difference
While CarrChain and CARFAX serve the pre-owned market by introducing transparency and knowledge into the system, helping users make an informed choice, the difference lies in leveraging blockchain.
CarrChain brings blockchain technology to store its information and makes it completely tamperproof. Having a token of its own and getting pairs for it with USDT, ETH, BTC further enhances the value proposition. The entire crypto-economy is practically put to use in serving the automotive finance market through Carnomaly and CarrChain.
Providers like CARFAX, serving millions of users in the industry should also start leveraging blockchain, as research suggests that the “situation of data fraud and tampering is still very serious.”