The small device - and the big idea - that lets almost any car on the road finally say what it's been thinking.
THE VOYO DEVICE - matchbox-sized, it plugs into the port under your dash and quietly translates a car's private language into something your phone can read.
Somewhere right now a fifteen-year-old sedan is idling in a driveway, and it knows things. It knows its battery is three cold mornings from failing. It knows a tire is quietly losing air. It knows the exact fault code its check-engine light is too shy to explain. The car has been keeping this diary for years, in a language spoken only through a port hidden beneath the dashboard. Voyomotive's entire reason for existing is to open that diary and read it out loud.
Plug in a VOYO - a device roughly the size of a matchbox - and the car stops mumbling. Suddenly the owner's phone knows what the mechanic used to charge to find out. Where the car is. How it's driving. Whether the battery will survive the week. Voyomotive calls this a connected car. The clever part is that no dealership, no factory option, and no new-car purchase was involved. The car was connected all along. It just needed a listener.
The company was founded in 2013 by Peter Yorke and Harald Ekman, who brought in diagnostic-equipment veteran Robert Vogt as CTO. Their bet ran against the grain. While the industry poured money into wiring up tomorrow's vehicles, Voyomotive looked at the roughly one billion cars already on the road - most of them built after 1996, most of them with no connectivity to speak of - and decided the future was hiding in plain sight, in the fleet that already exists.
Most OBD-II gadgets read the engine and stop there. VOYO reaches further - into the body and transmission controllers - so it can report tire pressure, oil life and battery health, not just a cryptic trouble code. That depth is what lets Voyomotive sell the same core hardware to a nervous parent, a fleet manager, and a corner repair shop, and give each of them something different.
Real-time GPS, advanced diagnostics, vehicle-health monitoring and driver-safety alerts to your phone. $99.95, no contract.
The always-on, cellular version of the device built for fleets that need to stay connected without a phone nearby.
The first platform to connect a vehicle to a repair shop in one click - sharing live data for faster diagnostics and automated maintenance alerts.
Lets repair shops resell connected-car services, manage customers, and turn one-time visits into recurring revenue.
Multi-vehicle tracking and health monitoring across an entire fleet from a single dashboard.
A professional-grade diagnostic trouble-code reader for the people who do this for a living.
Voyomotive never chased a mega-round. It exceeded its Kickstarter goal in under three days in October 2015, took branding and design muscle from frogVentures, and has grown to an estimated ~$6.5M in annual revenue with a team of about 15. The chart below is illustrative of reported figures, not audited financials.
Launches its Kickstarter campaign for VOYO and beats the goal in under three days, with design help from frog.
Mitchell 1 integrates VOYOLink with its Manager SE shop-management software - shops can now see a car's data before it arrives.
VOYOLink adds automated maintenance notifications for service providers and vehicle owners.
VOYOLink listed on the Geotab Marketplace, extending reach into commercial telematics.
Launches VOYOHub, letting repair shops resell connected-car services and build recurring revenue.
For a fifteen-person shop, Voyomotive's contact list punches above its weight: an integration with Mitchell 1, one of the biggest names in independent-shop software; a listing on the Geotab Marketplace, the commercial-telematics heavyweight; a slot in the Fleetio integrations directory; and branding by frog, the design firm that helped shape early Apple hardware. The strategy is consistent - be the connective tissue, not the walled garden.
Back in that driveway, the fifteen-year-old sedan is still idling. But now there's a VOYO under the dash, and the diary is no longer private. The owner's phone lights up on a cold morning: the battery is fading, replace it this week. The tire that was quietly leaking gets flagged before it strands anyone. And when the check-engine light finally blinks on, the trouble code has already traveled to a repair shop that has seen it before you finish your coffee.
Nothing about the car changed. It's the same steel, the same engine, the same stubborn port under the dash. What changed is that somebody finally built a listener. That is the whole of Voyomotive's idea, and its quiet ambition - not to build the car of the future, but to let the cars we already own join it.