Employees at FCA US have pitched and developed a new app which gives customers an “immersive experience” for learning more about their new car or truck. The first people to benefit from it will be buyers of the supercharged 2021 Ram 1500 TRX.

Know & Go screens

The app was suggested by a team of employees during FCA’s first ever “Pitch Night;” they developed it as well, likely creating a far better experience than something farmed out to a marketing company. The creators of the afpp were Carolina Harris, Feature Innovation Manager, and Mimi Nguyen, Propulsion Systems Program Manager.  Harris said, “We created the Know & Go app as a way for customers to interact with and learn about their vehicles throughout their ownership lifecycle and personal experiences.”

The app (developed in just three months) will be available for IOS and Android, through official stores, and can be downloaded after buying the vehicle. It uses augmented reality and the smartphone camera to highlight vehicle features; the owner can point the camera at parts of the vehicle, and the names and descriptions of components  will be overlaid on the image. This helps with owners discovery of features.

Know & Go app Ram TRX 1500

The app also provides push notifications for undiscovered features, how-to videos, and feature-specific owner's manual pages.

What is this “pitch night” we mentioned earlier? Created by FCA innovation teams, it's a sort of “ dragon’s den / shark tank ” but with friendlier dragons (or sharks). Employees came up with over 500 ideas; online voting dropped the number to a top 50 for the next round, and “topic-focused leadership then picked the top 14 ideas.”

FCA assigned coaches and executive sponsors to the finalists to help guide prototype development and fine-tune their presentations to the final judging panel, which included CEO Mike Manley, COO  Mark Stewart, and other members of the executive leadership team.

Know & Go was selected as the top winner for its originality, feasibility, viability, and desirability. Since that time, Harris and Nguyen have worked with the cross-fuctional teams to bring their idea from concept to reality.

What happened to the other finalists? Unconfirmed word is that the creators are continuing to refine them.