AutoMate

🚗 AutoMate

💡 Inspiration

Buying a car can be overwhelming. You may struggle to find a model that fits your lifestyle, budget, and preferences. We wanted to provide a solution that combines AI guidance with an immersive experience to help users make confident, tailored decisions from start to finish on their car hunt.

🔍 What it does

AutoMate helps users find and finance their ideal car by combining AI features and interactive tools: -AI-Powered Car Recommendations: Suggests vehicles based on budget, preferences, and driving habits -Personalized Financing Plans: Find lease or finance options and monthly payment projections -Interactive Vehicle Explorer: View and experience each model -Overlay Assistance: AutoMate guides you through selection, comparison, and financing decisions

⚙️ How we built it

-Frontend: React + TypeScript -Backend: Node.js, OpenAI APIs -AI Layer: RAG for natural language recommendations and contextual reasoning -Integrations: WebSocket chat for AI interactions, vehicle viewer

🧩 Challenges we ran into

We initially struggled with determining how we wanted to allow users to experience vehicles in a way that was feasible on our end, given the time constraints, while also providing the user enough detail and interaction to reasonably understand the feel of a given vehicle. We also ran into issues with database construction and API access, and it gave us a good challenge to overcome those hurdles.

🏆 Accomplishments that we're proud of

We ended up finding a way to display the interior of vehicles for users to experience, and we managed to train AutoMate to satisfactorily answer user questions based on the database we managed to scrape together.

📖 What we learned

We learned how to manage our time for this project as well, and the delegation of responsibilities between the frontend, backend, and the AI layers.

🚀 What's next for AutoMate

-Expand AI to recommend not just cars, but accessories, warranties, and add-ons -Enhance the 3D experience with VR/AR capabilities -Add predictive tools for price trends, trade-in valuations, and financing eligibility