Almost 10 years ago, Bryan Frist, Nick Alexander and Daniel Hunter had an idea to bring some technology into the automotive industry. Using the original entry point of the gas, they started it Yoshi Mobility app to deliver gas to San Francisco area consumers on a day of their choosing for $20 per month.
“The automotive industry has been kind of untouched by innovation,” Frist told TechCrunch. “We had this idea, in the age of Amazon where everything was delivered, that you would never go to the gas station again.”
The trio put Yoshi through Y Combinator in the summer of 2016 and began expanding, competing at the time with venture-backed companies like Filld, Wrench, and Booster. By 2017, the company was also located in Atlanta and Nashville, Tennessee, and offered additional services such as car washes, oil changes, and commissioned supplies such as new windshield wiper blades.
Yoshi also raised $2.1 million from investors including ZhenFund, Joe Montana’s Liquid 2 Ventures and Ali Rowghani, former CFO and COO of Twitter, and the founding CEO of YC’s Continuity Fund.
Over the years, it has gone on to raise an additional $36.7 million in Series A and B capital backed by strategic investors including ExxonMobil and General Motors Ventures as well as DN Automotive and NBA All-Star Kevin Durant.
Expansion and new business
Today, Nashville-based Yoshi Mobility is established in three business areas: preventive maintenance, virtual vehicle inspections and electric vehicle charging. It has boots on the ground in 15 states, but can offer vehicle services to customers in all 50 states. It has completed millions of vehicle services to date.
Yoshi Mobility has raised revenue 10 times monthly since its Series B in late 2020, Frist said. The company still provides services to consumers, but has leaned more towards the commercial side of its business. It now offers virtual vehicle inspection businesses for fleets, forming corporate partnerships with Fortune 100 companies such as Uber and Turo.
Its virtual vehicle inspections are also popular in the gig economy, especially in states where inspections are required by drivers and small business owners. Yoshi provides inspection in up to 10 minutes.
Bryan Frist, co-founder and CEO of Yoshi Mobility; Image Credits: Yoshi Mobility
In March, the company completed its first acquisition of Mobile Auto Concepts Inc., a mobile automotive services company that offers preventive maintenance, tire care and replacement, multi-point inspections and eco-friendly washes.
“Mobile Auto is similar to a lot of our competitors that just do services,” Frist said. “We believe that the complete package is what is valuable. We work a lot with fleets now, and they always ask us that while we fill up the car, we can also change the tires or wash the car. Now we can do all of this with a single solution.”
Yoshi Mobility’s third new business line, a portable electric vehicle charging platform, follows Tesla in some ways. It addresses the known current challenges of the EV industry, including costly repairs, and the future challenges associated with charging EV fleets. The platform will offer EV owners and corporate customers charging, maintenance and on-the-go support.
Frist, a Tesla driver for the past eight years, said the EV market “is just huge,” so there’s room for a lot of players. For Yoshi, that means looking for partners who don’t want to build an EV charging station on their properties — or don’t have the space available.
“If adoption goes the way we and industry experts believe, solutions must be found,” Frist said.
Fueling future growth
The entry of all these business lines is boosted by $26 million in new Series C funding, valuing the company at more than $200 million, Frist said. General Motors Ventures is leading this round, along with new strategic investor and established tire brand Bridgestone Americas. International investors include Universal Motors Agencies and Shikra Limited. Yoshi Mobility’s total investment is now over $60 million.
Bridgestone liked the mobility aspect of what Yoshi was doing, Frist said. “They invest in mobility companies,” he said. “They’ve launched Firestone Direct, where they have trucks that come out and can change tires. We’re doing just that now and that’s how they got involved.”
Equipped with the new capital, Yoshi Mobility will scale up its business lines of preventive maintenance, virtual vehicle inspections and electric vehicle charging. It works with OnStar and GM’s Toyota Connect, meaning its telematics is connected to about 34 percent of the cars on the road, Frist said.
“There are a million touch points that we can have from the physical touch of the car to virtual telematics, which will propel us to this next stage,” Frist said. “We see ourselves as the ‘Amazon of car care’, getting into the petrol car industry the same way they got into delivery with books. We’ve always seen ourselves doing a lot more, so in the next five to 10 years, we’re going to look completely different than we do even today.”
