Car Retailers Tap Into Virtual Reality

Forget the dealership: Vroom wants you to browse cars in virtual reality

 

Buying a car is supposed to be an exciting and fun experience, but once you’ve hit the fourth dealership it can get pretty tiring. What if you could eliminate a few of your choices without ever having to step inside a physical showroom? Vroom, the online car retailer, wants to help with 2016’s hottest trend — virtual reality.

That’s right, even car retailers are jumping on the virtual reality bandwagon. It seems like the right step forward, though — why waste time driving around to several dealerships, especially if you have a fairly large set of cars you’re interested in? With Vroom’s VR showroom, you’ll hopefully be able to narrow your search down a little.

There’s no headset to buy — Vroom’s VR showroom is purely an application that works with the HTC Vive. Even if you have the Vive, right now you’ll only be able to access the showroom, ironically, at set locations in Houston, Dallas, and at pop-up spots in the Phoenix area. More locations are planned for the future.

Related: These 10 Oculus Rift games are the best way to experience virtual reality

The demo you’ll be able to test at the aforementioned locations isn’t the final version, as there are features and categories that have yet to be added. For example, the final version will house seven categories such as Luxury SUVs, Luxury Sedans, and Pickup Trucks — that comes out to about 300 makes and 1,600 individual cars. The initial launch version only lets you browse through Vroom’s Affordable Performance category. Still, it’s packed with 15 different makes and models with a price range between $25,000 to $60,000.

We got to test it out, and the experience was merely acceptable. Again, the main need for visiting this VR showroom would be to try and eliminate a few cars in your list — you shouldn’t use it for your final picks.