A year ago, Curbee was talking to two or three OEMs about mobile service. Today, that number is 15 to 16. That's not incremental growth. That's the exact moment a trend stops being a bet and starts being table stakes.
Curbee CEO Amit Chandarana joined the show to unpack what's actually driving that jump, and why the harder problem now isn't convincing dealers mobile service works, it's helping them execute it well.
The Numbers Behind the Shift
2-3 → 15-16 — OEM conversations Curbee is having now, up from a year ago
4-6 weeks — typical time to get a mobile service program running
1/10th — the cost compared to adding new physical service bays
2027 — the year OEMs are already planning next-generation mobile service programs around
We know that OEM conversations today are primarily about 2027 and their initiatives for 2027. How do we increase our throughput in fixed ops with CSI without asking dealerships to spend $20 million on facilities right now?
Why Some Dealers Aren't Choosing This. They're Being Forced Into It.
Chandarana's most interesting example wasn't a proactive early adopter. It was a dealer facing eight months of construction, worried about losing every customer who drives by and sees a torn-up, half-open building.
We're going to go do mobile service right away for the next six to eight months to make sure that each one of those customers still has a connective tissue back to their dealership.
That's a genuinely different category of adoption than "we wanted to try something new." It's a survival move, and it's happening right now, not in some hypothetical future.
The Real Obstacle Isn't the Idea. It's Letting Go.
Chandarana's read on dealer hesitation cuts past technology entirely.
Change management. OEMs and dealerships have not had courses in their global systems.
Most dealers are past the "does this work" question. The harder question is operational: how do you trust a job is being done right when you can't see the technician, how do you keep quality consistent outside your own four walls, how do you measure an experience that's no longer happening on your own lot. That's not a mobile service problem specifically. It's the same discomfort every dealership faces the first time it lets go of direct control over part of the customer experience.
What Getting In Early Actually Buys You
Ed Roberts at Bozard Ford, 47 mobile units and counting, gets referenced as the model here, and Chandarana's framing of the opportunity is sharper than "don't miss out."
The stores already running mobile service for a year or more aren't just ahead. They're capturing customers whose cars are currently sitting on a competitor's lot, the exact framing Roberts himself used two years ago when he started treating every Ford he passed on the road as a future customer, not someone else's.
🎙️ Listen to today's Automotive State of the Union episode for the complete discussion.
The dealers waiting to see if mobile service works are past the point where that's still the question.
The adoption curve already bent. OEMs are building co-op programs, op codes, and customer surveys specifically around the mobile experience for 2027, which means the infrastructure to support this at scale is already being built whether or not any individual dealer has started yet. The stores treating this as optional right now aren't avoiding risk. They're accumulating it, one competitor's mobile van at a time.
