How Box Care uses Smartcar's API for their on-demand car wash app

We’re thrilled to announce that Box Care — an on-demand car care app — is leaving the shop and heading for the open road with Smartcar.

Introducing Box Care

Based in Berkeley, CA, Box Care offers on-demand car wash and fuel delivery to vehicle owners in San Francisco and the East Bay. The company lets customers book appointments via their mobile app. It then sends a staff member to clean and/or fuel the car on the spot.

Box Care’s app offers on-demand car wash and fuel delivery.

How Box Care uses Smartcar’s API

Since the company integrated Smartcar’s API into its app, it has been able to locate the vehicles it needs to service and unlock their doors for interior cleaning. This cuts time and costs for both the company and their customers.

Location endpoint

Before using Smartcar, Box Care’s customers had to manually enter their car’s location in the app each time they were requesting a service. With our API’s location endpoint, the company can now locate their customers’ vehicles and send their staff directly to the right spot.

Security endpoint

If Box Care’s customers wanted the inside of their car cleaned, they had to stay nearby and unlock their car for Box Care’s staff when they arrive. Smartcar’s security endpoint allows staff members to unlock and lock the customers’ cars via the app, without having to physically exchange keys.

“It’s convenient for our customers, but also for us,” said Box Care co-founder John Kim. “Without Smartcar, we’d have to ask customers to come outside and unlock their car. Integrating with the Smartcar API has made things a lot easier for both sides.”

How does it work?

To integrate Smartcar’s API into their app, Box Care added a “Connect my car” button that launches Smartcar’s authorization flow. This flow lets customers log in with their car brand’s app credentials (e.g. Tesla app, Volkswagen Car-Net app) and lets them grant the app access to a set of permissions (e.g. to locate, lock, and unlock their vehicle).

Since our first meeting with Box Care this year, the team has rapidly grown and improved their product. As a part of the Smartcar Garage Program, they worked with our team to help us test new features like API endpoints and SDKs. We can’t wait to see what the Box Care team does next, which features it will add to their app, and where they will expand their services.