TODAY I met my namesake: RALPH.

Not a human, but a drone that photographs cars or vans and, with the help of AI (naturally), outputs ready-made film and vehicle shots that can be used to advertise the vehicle on the platform of your choice.

The key thing, though, is this can all be done in half an hour.

RALPH is the brainchild of Ebbon Intelligence, the AI and robotics arm of the Ebbon Group, which services the automotive industry also in the guise of Ebbon Automotive and Ebbon Fleet. 

The key thing is that you can market-ready about 15 vehicles a day with RALPH (which comes with a pack of three batteries in case you were wondering).

Or, as Ebbon says pithily, “Lift off to listed in minutes.” Clearly, it brings great efficiency gains: no more someone snapping the angles and then having to edit and upload the output.

I’d missed the original launch of RALPH as I was on holiday at the time, but Chief Commercial officer Simon West-Oliver (pictured left) suggested I come up and have a demonstration of the system.

It’s undoubtedly impressive. The drone operator holds a tablet which has pre-programed fields which the drone follows. What it can’t do at present is zap inside the vehicle to take interior photos; currently this is the remit of the drone operator with the tablet, but Simon tells me they’re working on a solution for this.

Michael Terry, UK Sales Lead, explained that Ebbon’s current target market for RALPH is the dealer retail market. I get that. It’s a great way to accurately retail both used and new vehicles.

Currently RALPH is in beta testing with six dealers to ensure RALPH is fully fit for market. But I think there’s great scope in the fleet and leasing industry.

For example, brokers – such as the Broker News Best Used Broker, Nationwide Vehicle Contracts – want to display their used cars and vans for lease with the best possible representation of their condition. It removes the friction when the car turns up and the customer starts to complain that it’s not as described on the website.

Another area might be pre-delivery of the car or van. Next up for the demonstration was Vince Pemberton, the Chair of the BVRLA Leasing Broker Committee and CEO of Rivervale Leasing.

We both thought that it would be a great way to generate pre-delivery excitement for a vehicle that has been ordered online with a video of the car post-PDI. How exciting would that be for the customer? And it provides the broker with another useful customer touch point.

So RALPH might be heading for the automotive retail sector first; but it has the opportunity to provide additional value in the fleet and leasing sector without question