Every now and again I get a business idea and I'm like "shit, why hasn't anyone done this already? I wish I could..... I just don't have the time... SO enough of the jibberish. Here's the business idea. First of all the only stipulation that I have is that if you ever pursue any of these business ideas that you tell me about them and it would be nice to have a shoutout.... but I don't require that... I would just love to use the service :) oh and if you charge for accounts, it would be fantastic if I got a free account ;) ANYWAY onto the idea....

Business Name: N/A

Goal: The goal is to create a user friendly site in which users can pull up information on a specific vehicle for each year. It would also list the mpg and all this information can be grabbed easily by a simple search, and of course it would have to look nice and ajaxy.

How to achieve this: First of all, the site needs to be drop dead simple.... Have any of you guys looked at most the web 2.0 sites? the buttons are huge and 90 year old grandparents can easily figure them out... They also look nice. This site needs to look nice as well as do it's job well. It needs to neatly display all the information for that year of the car. E.g. what was changed that year from the previous year (assuming it had a previous year). It would also display it's mpg. Also as most web 2.0 sites it needs to have a community. The community members have to profile themselves... E.g. are they a heavy footed driver (do they push the pedal to the metal) or do they drive like a grandma and drive way below the speed limit. that way when people look at the site, they see the manufacturers estimated mpg (e.g. when the one where you are riding as a 90 pound person and you're going down hill with the wind blowing and you have all the factors aligned perfectly.) and then you can compare this to the profile'd user mpg. So basically the profiled user says, "I drive an 02 chevy silverado and get 16mpg, I have the following upgrades and drive like this "profile". the profile will be determined by a survey that each user answers when they add a vehicle. These surveys determine what profile they best fit into. That way you can get a broad spectrum of the mpg's you will get if you buy the car based on the way you drive. Basically this will be like a lastfm meets wikipedia. Seeing how it'll have user data listed for each car they drive e.g. their mpg and the general information on the vehicle.

What makes you think this business will succeed?

Well, seeing how I've been car shopping for the last month or so and been wanting this information I see how much is lacking. I mean there is not one site that I know of that's dedicated to mpg and is easy to find the information I want on it. Most of them are ugly and screwed up. Not only that, but they only give you what the manufacturer puts out which is as stated above with the best conditions. It doesn't show you what the actual users of the automobile are getting on an average day. Another frustrating thing that I found was that when shopping for a chevy silverado 1500 I couldn't see what was changed from year to year. I mean I could see the body changes in the pictures but I didn't actually know what was changed physically on the inside or mechanically. This bugged me. An example would be I knew I wanted to get something newer than 99, but I couldn't see what changed from 99 to the truck I bought which was an 03. this really drove me nuts.

Anyway, that's all for now and if you ever create a site like this, please do let me know. I would love to be a member and use it next time I'm vehicle shopping!

lates,

--Ian