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Will Dealerships Offer a Virtual Reality Experience? | DrivingSales News

Will Dealerships Offer a Virtual Reality Experience?

January 20, 2015 0 Comments

Audi is piloting a new method to help their customers appreciate everything that their vehicles have to offer. Their method to deliver this unique experience appears to be virtual reality. Audi wants to begin offering part of the dealership experience via virtual reality. The vehicle by which Audi hopes to achieve this is by using the Oculus Rift, a virtual reality headset for the automaker that is still in its developmental stages.

The goal of the virtual reality headset integration is for Audi to allow their clients to dive into the experience that their fleet of vehicles provides without having to have that vehicle right in front of them. This technology could potentially be available both at the dealership and online. This would give customers a choice to experience the product when they see fit to do so. An example as to why this experience would be available at a dealership would be to match desired custom specs. If a customer wants a white vehicle with black trim but there aren’t any available on the lot or immediate area, the virtual reality headset would give them the chance to interact with that specific vehicle, thereby helping them move closer to a purchase instead of having them imagine how their ideal vehicle would look.

The virtual reality product, Oculus Rift, comes from a start-up by the same name. The company was founded by 20-year-old Palmer Luckey. The young company has changed a great deal during the past few years. Initially, they have relied on orders from a Kickstarter campaign. They raised money by selling DIY virtual reality kits. However, the company truly took off when it was acquired by Facebook in March of 2014 for $2 billion dollars.

For dealers, could this virtual reality innovation on the part of Audi be the start of something significant? Will dealers in the future offer their dealership experience online via virtual reality? Do you buy the hype or will this virtual reality system come and go as did the short-lived units of the 1990s?

About the Author:

The DrivingSales News team is dedicated to breaking the relevant and the tough stories affecting car dealers. Have questions for DrivingSales News? Reach the team at news@drivingsales.com.

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