Custom apps for the automotive sector: from a customer portal for a dealer or garage to a driver app for leasing and a connected-car layer for a manufacturer. Telematics integration, eCall awareness and GDPR-grade handling of driving behaviour, without being tied to a standard OEM app.
An automotive app touches three worlds at once: the vehicle (telematics, OBD-II, OEM APIs), the driver (driving behaviour, location, identity) and your operations (scheduling, invoicing, maintenance, DMS). As a result, building one is rarely a matter of a mobile shell on top of existing software. It requires deep integration, and privacy and compliance questions are on the table from day one.
The car app market is also mature enough to give you choices. For commodity fleet tracking, Webfleet, Geotab and Verizon Connect are excellent. For brand-specific connected-car features, Volvo Connect, Mercedes me, Audi MMI and BMW iDrive provide the manufacturers' own OEM apps. We do not build to replace those for what they already do well. We only come into the picture when you want your own brand experience, a niche target group, a multi-vendor reality, or an AI-augmented use case that no standard package can handle.
We have been building mobile apps for automotive users since 2015: a dealer chain with a service portal for customers, a lease driver app with fuel receipt scanning and odometer reading integration, and a connected car layer for a brand that did not want to outsource its telematics data to a third party. The broader framework for our mobile app projects keeps the same approach: cross-platform where possible, native where performance or OEM integration requires it, and always an honest assessment of whether your own app is the right answer at all.
The difference lies in who the end user is and how much data comes from the vehicle itself. In the first conversation we advise which type suits your situation; it is often a combination.
A brand-owned app where your customers can keep an eye on their vehicle: maintenance reminders based on mileage or date, automatic MOT notifications linked to the RDW vehicle registration, an online appointment flow with calendar integration, photo updates of a repair in progress, invoice history and a request for vehicle registration rights. It connects to the DMS (ICAR, Autoplus, AutoTaxXL) so your service reception avoids duplicate work and customers can book an appointment themselves in the evening.
Your drivers and lease customers get a single app for scanning fuel receipts with OCR, reporting damage with photo upload and GPS location, submitting periodic mileage readings, requesting vehicle registration documents and booking maintenance appointments at a connected dealer network. For managers, there is a dashboard offering insight into costs, damage claims, compliance and TCO trends, often in combination with our fleet management app. For leasing companies that don't want to force their drivers onto Athlon Driver or ALD Mobile, this is the white-label alternative.
Real-time vehicle status: location, fuel or battery level, pre-setting the climate, unlocking doors, starting a charging session and viewing trip history. White-label brand app for a manufacturer or importer, or a car-sharing flow with keyless access via a digital car key. It connects to OEM APIs (Volvo Connect, Mercedes me, Audi MMI, BMW iDrive), to generic telematics (OBD-II, Webfleet, Geotab, Trimble) or to your own in-vehicle gateway for brands that keep their data layer in-house. eCall awareness is built into our setup as standard, as it is a legal requirement for new vehicles in the EU.
A production-ready iOS and Android app, everything needed to run it, and clear agreements on who manages what after go-live. We deliberately hand over ownership so your IT team or another agency can maintain the app later without you being tied to us.
For commodity fleets, Webfleet, Geotab or the standard OEM app are often perfectly adequate. We build when you recognise one of these patterns.
You have your own brand and customer base, and you don't want your drivers stuck in a generic OEM app or in your leasing provider's app. The app carries your name, your colours and your service stack.
Car-sharing start-up, classic car club, camper van rental, B2B parts platform or MOT station with appointment flow: your target group is too specific for a commodity app.
You combine Webfleet, Geotab and Volvo Connect in one fleet, or you want your drivers to see both your own vehicles and rental cars in the same app. That calls for an abstraction layer that a standard app does not provide.
Driver behaviour coaching, predictive maintenance based on OBD signals, or pay-as-you-drive pricing for an insurer. This is where the EU AI Act comes into play: predictive scoring for insurance is high-risk and requires careful design.
Which DMS do you use, which telematics vendor is currently in place, and which OEM APIs are available? In the first conversation we map this out and determine which integrations are technically feasible within the scope.
A workshop with your team, interviews with a handful of end users (service technician, lease driver, customer) and a DPIA for the vehicle and location data. At the end, the scope, planning and first screen flows are in place.
A working build you can test every two weeks, first on TestFlight and the Play Console internal track. We tackle the riskiest integration first, usually the telematics or DMS integration, so that risk is covered early.
Privacy labels, App Store review, a phased rollout to your first user group and monitoring. After that we move on to a maintenance rhythm or hand over to your own team.
With OneDayBuild, we turn your idea into something tangible in one day for €1,150, so you can see whether further development is worth the investment. Decide to go ahead with the full build? Then we credit the full cost.
Explore OneDayBuild →The automotive sector is broad. The target groups below regularly ask us for an app of their own. For each type we outline which core features typically fall within scope.
A customer portal with maintenance history per registration plate, MOT reminders, an online appointment flow and push notifications as soon as a repair is ready. For dealer chains with multiple branches, there is a routing layer so the customer chooses their own location.
For leasing companies that want to carry their own brand instead of Athlon Driver or ALD Mobile: fuel receipts, damage reporting, mileage readings, maintenance appointments, vehicle documents and, optionally, driver behaviour coaching with clear GDPR consent.
For manufacturers and importers who want to offer their connected car layer under their own brand. Real-time vehicle status, climate, doors and charging, plus a service layer towards the dealer network.
For parties who want to combine vehicle data from multiple sources (OBD dongle, OEM API, their own gateway) into a single app for the end user. We build the abstraction layer that hides the differences between sources.
For car-sharing start-ups and mobility platforms: digital car key, booking, damage check-in and check-out, and integration with MaaS providers. Requires careful offline modes for when coverage drops out.
Telemetry data for differentiating premiums or prevention programmes. The EU AI Act and GDPR are leading here: predictive scoring for insurance is high-risk and requires explicit explainability, opt-in and human review.
For independent garages and MOT stations: appointment flow, photo updates during repairs, invoices in the app and a reminder for the next MOT. Works without its own DMS via a lightweight planning layer.
Two connected apps: a reporter app for the driver with location sharing and status, and a mechanic app for the roadside assistant with job flow, navigation and reporting. Often linked to a central dispatch system.
For most customer and driver apps we start with React Native or Flutter. One codebase, two app stores, faster time to market and lower total cost of ownership. For 80 per cent of the features you need — forms, photo upload, push notifications, OCR — that is more than sufficient.
We build native where the feature genuinely requires it: heavy background services for continuous trip logging, complex Bluetooth LE pairing with an OBD dongle, or native CarPlay and Android Auto extensions that are not available through cross-platform frameworks.
For connected car features tied to a single brand, we integrate with the OEM API. This gives the deepest data (charging status, climate, doors), but binds you to one brand and to the manufacturer's API policy. We check in advance which endpoints are stable and which still fall under a development API.
For multi-brand fleets we use OBD-II dongles or established telematics vendors such as Webfleet, Geotab, Verizon Connect or Trimble. This gives less depth than an OEM API but works across every brand in your fleet.
The backend typically runs on GCP, AWS or Azure. For connected car use cases where latency matters — opening doors remotely, real-time climate control — we look at edge compute or an in-vehicle gateway. Not necessary for every journey, but the difference between 200ms and 2s sometimes matters.
For dealer and garage apps, the DMS integration is often the riskiest step. We have a proven track record with ICAR, Autoplus and AutoTaxXL, and we tackle that integration in sprint one so surprises surface early.
Car apps collect sensitive data. Not only location and driving behaviour, but also employer-driver relationships and, in some cases, biometrics. Four compliance themes come up in almost every project.
Vehicle location linked to a person is personal data. For employees, rules on electronic monitoring apply on top of the GDPR. We start with a DPIA, build in data minimisation and purpose limitation, and provide granular opt-in so the driver can review what has been shared.
Pay-as-you-drive and driving behaviour scoring for insurance premiums fall under the AI Act, often as high-risk. That means requirements around explainability, human oversight, monitoring and logging. We carry out the AI Act assessment upfront and build those requirements in, rather than bolting them on afterwards.
Since 2018, eCall has been mandatory in new passenger cars in the EU. For your own connected car app, that means knowing when a vehicle already has an eCall system, not interfering with it, and respecting the privacy buffer around crash data.
For MOT reminders, ownership checks or vehicle registration requests, we work through official channels — RDW open data, vehicle check APIs or MOT data — rather than scraping. That is more robust and stays within the rules.
What clients typically want to know before we start.
A thirty-minute introductory call, no obligation. We listen to your target audience, your existing telematics choices and your DMS, and give you direction you can act on straight away. If charging is a key part of the project, you may want to look at our EV charge point app page first, or the transport software page if the vehicles are part of a logistics flow.
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