Vehicle data system for rules based determination and real-time distribution of enhanced vehicle data in an online networked environment

• US 10,366,435 B2
• Filed: 03/28/2017
• Issued: 07/30/2019
• Est. Priority Date: 03/29/2016
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: TrueCar, Inc.
• Original Assignee: TrueCar, Inc.
• Inventors: Swinson, Michael D.
• Primary Examiner(s): Palavecino, Kathleen
• Application Number:
  US15/471,805
• Publication Number:
  US 20170287043A1
• Time in Patent Office: 854 Days
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/904 Browsing; Visualisation therefor for navigating the web G06F16/954; browsing optimisation for the web G06F16/957
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/951 Indexing; Web crawling techniques
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/9577 Optimising the visualization of content, e.g. distillation of HTML documents
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 30/0627 using item specifications

Abstract

Vehicle data systems for the rule based collection of vehicle data from across a distributed heterogeneous computer network; rule based filtering and enhancing of that data; determination of rule sets pertaining to determination of pricing likelihood; and the real time presentation of accurate pricing likelihoods for specified vehicle configurations over a computer network using those rule sets are disclosed.

Claims

1. A vehicle data system comprising:

a processor;

a non-transitory computer readable medium comprising computer code for processing distributed vehicle data, the computer code comprising code for;

in a back-end process;

obtaining a set of historical transaction records from a first set of distributed sources, each transaction record associated with a corresponding vehicle identification number (VIN) and a dealer;

enhancing the historical transaction records with additional vehicle data collected from a second set of distributed sources by VIN;

binning the historical transaction records based on at least one vehicle attribute and geography;

generating a set of likelihood rules based on multivariable regression analysis of a set of vehicle attributes in the enhanced historical transaction records, the likelihood rules defining cumulative price distribution as a function of one or more vehicle attributes in the set of vehicle attributes;

in a front-end process;

providing a web page to a client computer, the web page having one or more input fields for a user to provide a user-specified vehicle configuration comprising a set of user-specified vehicle attributes;

receiving over a network via the web page the set of user-specified vehicle attributes;

generating a responsive web page in response to the user submitting the user-specified vehicle attributes comprising;

applying dealer selection rules to select a set of dealers;

determining values for the one or more vehicle attributes from the set of enhanced historical transaction records associated with the selected set of dealers;

applying the likelihood model to the values for the one or more vehicle attributes determined from the set of enhanced historical transaction records associated with the selected set of dealers to generate a cumulative distribution of prices associated with the set of enhanced historical transaction records associated with the selected set of dealers;

fitting a curve to the cumulative distribution generated from the set of enhanced historical transaction records corresponding to the selected set of dealers;

generating HTML to cause a browser at the client computer to display the curve about an average price for the user-selected configuration and relative price ranges;

sending the HTML to the client computer.

2. The vehicle data system of claim 1, wherein a user locale is received over a network via the web page in association with the set of user-specified vehicle attributes and the selection of the set of dealers using the dealer selection rules is based on the user'"'"'s locale.

3. The vehicle data system of claim 2, wherein the set of dealers is the set of dealers closest to the user'"'"'s locale.

4. The vehicle data system of claim 3, wherein selecting the set of dealers comprises scoring the dealers based on a set of dealer scoring rules.

5. The vehicle data system of claim 1, wherein the set of vehicle attributes include vehicle supply, vehicle demand, and the number of days that the vehicle has been on a selected dealer'"'"'s lot.

6. The vehicle data system of claim 5, wherein vehicle supply is associated with a number of vehicles currently in an inventory of the selected set of dealers.

7. The vehicle data system of claim 1, comprising code for applying a set of cleansing rules to the set of historical transaction data to replace vehicle data of one or more historical transaction records.

8. The vehicle data system of claim 4, comprising code for generating an average price paid for the user-specified vehicle configuration.

9. The vehicle data system of claim 8, wherein the HTML is generated to cause a browser at the client computer to display the curve with the average price paid visually represented relative to the curve.

10. The vehicle data system of claim 9, comprising code for generating one or more relative price ranges for the user-specified vehicle configuration.

11. The vehicle data system of claim 10, wherein the HTML is generated to cause a browser at the client computer to display the curve with the one or more relative price ranges visually represented relative to the curve.

12. A vehicle data system comprising:

a processor;

a non-transitory computer readable medium comprising computer code for processing distributed vehicle data, the computer code comprising code for;

obtaining a set of historical transaction records from a first set of distributed sources;

binning the historical transaction records based on at least one vehicle attribute and geography;

generating a set of likelihood rules based on multivariable regression analysis of a set of vehicle attributes in the enhanced historical transaction records, the likelihood rule defining cumulative price distribution as a function of one or more vehicle attributes in the set of vehicle attributes;

providing a web page to a client computer, the web page having one or more input fields for a user to provide a user-specified vehicle configuration comprising a set of user-specified vehicle attributes and a user locale;

receiving over a network via the web page the set of user-specified vehicle attributes and the user locale;

generating a responsive web page in response to the user submitting the user-specified vehicle attributes and the user locale, generating the responsive web page comprising;

generating HTML to cause a browser at the client computer to display a curve about an average price for the user-selected configuration and relative price ranges, the curve based on applying dealer selection rules to select a set of dealers using the user locale, determining values for the one or more vehicle attributes from the set of enhanced historical transaction records associated with the selected set of dealers, applying the likelihood model to the values for the one or more vehicle attributes determined from the set of enhanced historical transaction records associated with the selected set of dealers to generate a cumulative distribution of prices associated with the set of enhanced historical transaction records associated with the selected set of dealers, and fitting the curve to the cumulative distribution.

13. The vehicle data system of claim 12, wherein the set of dealers is the set of dealers closest to the user'"'"'s locale.

14. The vehicle data system of claim 13, wherein selecting the set of dealers comprises scoring the dealers based on a set of dealer scoring rules.

15. The vehicle data system of claim 12, wherein the set of vehicle attributes include vehicle supply, vehicle demand, and the number of days that the vehicle has been on a selected dealer'"'"'s lot.

16. The vehicle data system of claim 15, wherein vehicle supply is associated with a number of vehicles currently in an inventory of the selected set of dealers.

17. The vehicle data system of claim 12, comprising code for applying a set of cleansing rules to the set of historical transaction data to replace vehicle data of one or more historical transaction records.

18. The vehicle data system of claim 14, comprising code for generating an average price paid and one or more relative price ranges for the user-specified vehicle configuration.

19. The vehicle data system of claim 18, wherein the HTML is generated to cause a browser at the client computer to display the curve with the average price paid and the one or more relative price ranges visually represented relative to the curve.