“Aftersales absorption is now around 60% and it has fallen nearly 20% in just two years,” he said.

“This will be due in part to longer service intervals, but more significant is the failure to adapt to increasing competition to franchised dealers.

“OnBoarde addresses this issue directly, protecting dealers’ aftersales revenue through actionable data on the condition of a vehicle with a robust, attractive offering at zero cost to the customer.”

Evans’ focus is to allow dealers to maximise the aftersales opportunity from a new car over the first three years that he put at £1,700, excluding accident repair.

In-Car Cleverness provides the black box unit, which is plugged into a car’s OBD by the dealer during the PDI, and offers opt-in services to the dealer and customer.

Customers are offered the use of an app that will provide options on who should be contacted in the event of an accident, tracking if the car is stolen, if they want alerts when a service is due, oil level prompts, driving style data, the cheapest fuel in their area and any fault identified with the vehicle.

A dealer dashboard provides similar, actionable information in three instances: an accident, a service requirement or a fault, even if a dashboard light hasn’t illuminated.

Mileage data can be used to calculate tyre wear and oil used and when filters need to be replaced.

Up to 200 messages can be captured by the in-car device via the OBD port.

Evans is also investigating linking residual value prediction data to In-Car Cleverness.

“A dealer will be able to track the use of a car, the mileage, service work done and the mpg figure to make a predicted RV at the end of a finance term,” he said.

“The dealer will be empowered to approach the customer with a new car offer, one that will meet their requirements based on the car’s use.”

If the dealer misses a contact opportunity, In-Car Cleverness can step in on their behalf.

It will also works with the dealer to provide a benchmark figure on the impact the device will have on aftersales performance – and offers price matching information on equivalent work provided by independent competitors.

The cost to the dealer per unit is £50 for three years.

Forecast return on investment is 500%.

Vehicle and vehicle use data is owned by the customer.

It is anonymised for analysis purposes by In-Car Cleverness.

Also inherent in the new business is a credit hire opportunity for Accident Exchange, but this is not conditional, Evans said.

He also gave assurances that manufacturers have “no objections” to OnBoard.

He said In-Car Cleverness is working with 1,800 franchised dealerships now and 17 leasing companies.

He wants to have 40,000 units in use by dealers (30,000) and fleets (10,000) this year and 150,000 in 2015.