New Features
We are super excited that the majority of our customers really appreciate how our basic technology delivers. It is really good at finding twisty roads in a way that other apps simply cannot and greatly facilitates the planning and execution of exciting driving experiences.
We also recognize that nothing is perfect, and that we need to make continuous improvements to our app to better serve your needs. Having reached out personally to many of you to ask what you like, what you don’t like, and what we can do to make our app exactly what you want, we have a number of upgrades in the immediate pipeline:
Paved Roads
Many of you mentioned that you prefer not to suddenly find yourself on an unpaved rural road, and for safety’s sake you would prefer to stay on asphalt. Over the past couple of months, we have made major changes to our search algorithms and have now filtered out unpaved rural roads from our backend searches. This has brought about a significant improvement to the search function in the app, and now you can be confident that you are unlikely to have any unpleasant surprises.
Apple vs Android
We’ve invested our financial resources to first build our technology into an Apple IOS app because in our view that was a more demanding technical and administrative challenge. The app front end was actually the easiest part, once we have a more well-rounded Apple product and are generating revenues that can support it, we will build an Android version as well.
Suggested Routings
Surprisingly, quite a number of our customers have expressed a preference for us to suggest routes without you having to choose individual roads to create custom routes. We will be building a feature that will automatically generate a suggested route for you that you can accept as is, or modify at will. This will include a couple of new options on the Home Screen and Preferences Menu that will let you decide which general compass direction you wish to go to initiate a round trip, or the total distance you want to drive on a one-way trip, so the app will find and now suggest a route based on the best roads along the way.
Offline Rerouting Capabilities
Our app uses your device's GPS to track your trip and re-route you when you go off course, but sometimes our customers find themselves in areas with poor cell phone service, and then rerouting does not always work. We understand how immensely frustrating that is, and so we are currently building in an offline capability that will download all the necessary map and routing data onto your device so you can navigate freely with or without cell service.
Saving and Sharing your Routes
Many of you want to be able to save your preferred routes so you can use them again and also so you can share them with others. So, we are building a fun social networking feature just for that, which will include the ability to add ratings, notes and pictures and eventually videos if you would like to.
Apple Car Play & Android Auto
We want to make it easier for you to use the app in your car, and so seeing the trend towards this with many apps that can make use of the larger displays being built into cars, we will release a version for Apple Car Play in the very near future. The Android Auto integration will be part of the full Android release.
Pricing
So far we have been entirely self-funded and had planned a launch for 30 March 2020. Then that happened,.....
On 28 March pretty much the entire world went into lengthy lockdowns, so we immediately put out a free version of the app so that those who wanted to could get out safely under incredibly stressful and unpredictable circumstances, but we can't do this forever. We have kept the app free for everyone who has signed up to date, but we cannot do this forever, and in 2023 we will begin to introduce new fees for all new customers as we improve the functionality of the app.
With the recent award of our technology patent, we are super confident that our backend technology delivers exactly as planned and outperforms all the other apps on the market. Now we need to add the bells and whistles you have requested to the front end, and we really have to ask you to pay for its use so we can keep going and keep a roof over our heads.
We are are of course reaching out to early investors who want to help accelerate the development of our new features, and support our market growth, and we ask that you to please be patient with us as we do this. We are very aware that our app does not deliver everything that you want – but unless we have a revenue stream we won’t be able to improve it.
We took huge financial and personal risks to get this far, and so please have faith that we are totally committed to making this the best navigation app on the market. It might take us a few months for us to get where you want us to be – but we are going to do just that or die trying!
Investors
And of course, if you want to become a partner or investor, and join in the fun of getting us moving faster, please give us a call on 571 331 7093.
We’d love to talk with you!