By now, you’ve probably heard of Bitcoin, the digital “crypto currency” that uses a technology known as blockchain to function. Blockchain itself has a lot of people excited. It has been used to facilitate payments in a fully decentralized, transparent, and efficient manner, without the need for a third party facilitator, like a bank.
Now, industry players are hoping to use this technology in ways that go far beyond digital payments. In fact, many think blockchain tech has potential in the automotive sector, and recently the first serious attempts to use it to change how auto repair business is done have begun to crop up.
Blockchain Could Mean Changes for Graduates of Automotive Training School
Numerous car dealers in North America now accept Bitcoin as payment, but blockchain’s potential goes way beyond that. In terms of how it works, this technology involves the use of a dispersed “ledger book” of transactions, independent of each other but identical, encrypted and constantly updated.
Every few minutes, a “block” of new transactions is added to the chain and this is replicated all around the network. It makes for a strong, secure, and highly transparent system.
Blockchain enthusiasts point to the robust nature of this approach, with the system being highly resistant to disruption, tampering, and error. Now imagine graduating from automotive training school to a working world where a system like this being used to verify a car’s history since it was built: every insurance policy, loan, repair, and change of ownership all stored in this totally reliable database.
The First Major Attempt at Creating a Vehicle Blockchain Token
As Blockchain tech matures, the companies and enterprises with experience in using it are making their case for new applications. This past month has seen one such company begin a crowdfunding drive for a new Blockchain unit (or coin) called VLB Tokens. This stands for Vehicle Lifecycle Blockchain, and this is the transactional unit that the promoting company is hoping to “lay on top” of their existing car repair ecosystem.
It marks one of the highest profile efforts yet to gather enough funds to put in place a fully robust blockchain system which will then account for every value-based transaction in the lifetime of a particular vehicle.
How Could Pros with Auto Repair Training Benefit?
If an automotive utility token such as the VLB concept takes off, and becomes accepted on a national level, then it opens up all sorts of easy verification options for both professionals with auto repair training and car owners. For example, it could theoretically simplify interactions between auto repair facilities and insurers, with the token being the one-stop shop for the vehicle’s history and insurance status.
Blockchain enthusiasts have also pointed out that skilled auto workers will be able to more easily detect counterfeit parts, with a record of all repair processes involving parts logged into the blockchain system.
In general, verifying the vehicle’s history will be faster, and involve fewer steps at every stage of the process, with supporters saying it could ultimately result in billions of dollars of efficiency savings in a combined industry worth 2.3 trillion. Eventually, if blockchain blows up big, pulling up a tablet and interacting with the token could become the primary way that all repairs get logged.
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