App to manage all car running costs

Jaguar joins £3m funding round for drivers’ pay app
Matthew Field, The Telegraph

JAGUAR Land Rover’s venture capital fund has backed a start-up behind an app that lets users pay car tax, MOTs and congestion charges all from their infotainment systems.

InMotion Ventures, the car-maker’s early stage investment fund, has joined a £3m funding round for London-based Caura, a start-up founded last year by former Apple employee Sai Lakshmi.

Caura’s app, which is currently available on iPhones and will launch on Android phones later this month, aims to digitise all aspects of car ownership, ripping up the need for paper forms.

Once users download the app and enter their registration, car insurance, car taxes and ultra-low emission zone (Ulez) charges can all be managed from their phone with Apple Pay. It is currently being used by tens of thousands of car owners.

It also plans to introduce parking payments and electric vehicle charging.

JLR joins investors TwinFocus Capital as well as Antony Sheriff, the former chief executive of McLaren Automotive.

Many car infotainment systems only support maps, music and phone calls, but few have payments systems built in. JLR said it plans to integrate Caura’s payments system into future in-car infotainment systems for its models, making it possible for drivers to easily manage payments on the go.

Sebastian Peck, managing director at JLR’s InMotion Ventures, said: “We are excited about the prospect of seamlessly integrating the Caura platform offering in-car payment for parking, tolls, tax and congestion which would be a huge benefit for our customers.”

Mr Lakshmi also helped set up Echo, an app for managing and buying repeat NHS prescriptions. It was sold to Lloyds Pharmacy owner McKesson in 2019.

Mr Lakshmi said: “Our goal was to create a single app from which Britain’s 30m drivers could manage every aspect of their vehicle’s management. This funding will enable us to realise our vision and expand to all drivers with native in-car systems.”

A good start to moving towards a fairer ‘pay-per-use’ system?

With more and more “Apps” appearing to cover just about every aspect of life I wonder just how long it will be before people like me, who don’t have a mobile phone let alone a smart phone and have never used an “App”, fall outside the system and literally “cease to exist”. The mind boggles!

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All we need now is properly secure phones.

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Not for me thanks. I prefer to see exactly what I am paying for and deal with each one individually. You cannot properly manage a complex product like car insurance through a simple app with loads of hidden T&C. OK for car tax etc but these “let’s make your life simple” apps tend to come unstuck. Especially when it comes to a problem/claim and you need someone to sort it out.

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My thoughts exactly!

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