Support CleanTechnica’s work through a Substack subscription or on Stripe.
I received an interesting email the other day. The website American Trucks apparently conducted a survey exploring how many drivers were turning to AI for DIY repair and maintenance help. I have to be honest — I would not have thought to explore this topic. I’m also not the biggest fan of LLM AI, which basically gathers up bundles upon bundles of content from around the internet, puts it together in a big bowl of linguistic spaghetti, and spits out answers to queries — sounding authoritative while having no real authority and just stealing content from countless actual human researchers and writers. I barely look at AI answers, but I have personally seen several examples of it providing completely bogus facts that look like they are legit and precise.
Anyway, back to the survey results. Two or three interesting things jumped out at me. American Trucks found that 52% of EV owners who attempted DIY repairs and maintenance decided to get help from an AI chatbot, but only 64% of those people found that the AI responses led to a successful fix! That doesn’t seem like a great conversion rate to me, but I guess it’s still better than 0%. Though, how many of those people would have successfully completed the job if they had relied on good old-fashioned Google searches or YouTube videos? (I know — calling Google and YouTube old fashioned is super weird….)
On the most positive side — again, not really knowing what the DIY alternative would have accomplished — the survey found that 8% of people using AI for a DIY auto project claim to have saved more than $1,000 compared to going to a mechanic.
But here’s the second quite interesting finding for me: Tesla owners were the most likely of all auto brand owners to turn to AI for help here. Far more than the 52% average, 69% of Tesla owners used an AI chatbot for this, 64% of Audi owners did, and 63% of BMW owners did. But the extra interesting thing here is that the Tesla owners had considerably less success than the Audi and BMW owners.
“On average, Audi owners saved the most by using AI for repairs ($200), followed by BMW ($162), Mercedes-Benz ($161), and Dodge ($153) owners,” a PR rep told us. Tesla owners saved only $79 on average.
Here’s what these owners, across the board, were using AI chatbots to help with:
Any thoughts on this?
Oh, I have an idea. Why not just have your perfect personal robot do all the necessary maintenance and repairs for you? Of course, between any necessary surgeries and solving global poverty.
Sign up for CleanTechnica’s Weekly Substack for Zach and Scott’s in-depth analyses and high level summaries, sign up for our daily newsletter, and follow us on Google News!
Advertisement
Have a tip for CleanTechnica? Want to advertise? Want to suggest a guest for our CleanTech Talk podcast? Contact us here.
Sign up for our daily newsletter for 15 new cleantech stories a day. Or sign up for our weekly one on top stories of the week if daily is too frequent.
[embedded content]
CleanTechnica uses affiliate links. See our policy here.
CleanTechnica’s Comment Policy
Share this story!