Our guest:
Connor Evans is the CEO of Motcheck — an online service that provides UK drivers access to detailed MOT reports. These reports include a history of checks, technical details, tax information, and other important data.
Evans has worked as a senior analyst at the Driver and Vehicle Standards Agency before launching Motcheck in 2024. Over just a year, the company has achieved leading positions in its niche.
We talked with Connor about the initial idea behind his project, the difficulties that he and his team had encountered, and the state of the automotive industry in the UK.
Connor, you left your senior position at DVSA to create a startup. What motivated you to make such a risky move?
I’ll preface this by saying that it wasn’t as risky as it might seem — my wife and I had planned this for quite some time beforehand and adjusted our family budget accordingly so that we would have enough savings to try it out and see if it works. However, even then, it is still sort of risky, I admit.
It’s just that I grew impatient seeing all the troubles that UK drivers have to deal with because they don’t have proper access to the information, which is absurd in our day and age. Yes, the government has done a pretty solid job, and the gov.uk services are decent, but, sadly, it’s not enough a lot of the time.
It is way too common for first-time drivers to fall victim to misinformation and unethical car sales practices. Sellers don’t provide full ownership information, they obscure some important technical details and damages, and they can sometimes even outright lie about mileage or anything else.
This isn’t just about legal compliance — it’s about road safety. If someone drives a vehicle that hasn’t been properly checked in a long time, or uses a car that has been damaged in an undisclosed way, it can easily turn into a disaster. What made me mad is that I knew there were ways to prevent this —just give people instant access to all the information about a certain vehicle, and make it convenient and easy, accessible through a single page. So that’s what we did, and it works out great so far.
How does Motcheck work exactly?
Motcheck is an online platform that offers users comprehensive vehicle reports created within seconds. As a user, the first thing you will see on our website is a field that offers you the option to enter a plate number to check a particular vehicle.
We rely on data from official and trusted third-party services and use algorithms and AI analytical tools to create reports that aren’t just a set of numbers for you to figure out — they use an LLM to highlight any potential problems.
For example, if car mileage data has suspicious discrepancies, the relevant section of the report will be highlighted, and the user will get a natural language explanation of why they should treat it as a red flag.
As far as I can tell, we seem to be the only MOT check platform that provides this level of service. We offer both free and paid versions of reports — the latter is a bit more detailed. However, the main reason we charge anything at all is the fact that extended versions of reports require some extra resources from us, so we need to cover our expenses.
Now that you’ve mentioned your competition, how do you find the current market? Do you wish you could improve anything?
I think that it’s great to have other companies that aim to increase awareness and improve the situation in the industry. It also motivates us to work harder and find new solutions that would help UK drivers and increase the accessibility of our service.
This is actually tied directly to my wish for improving stuff — online MOT tools could benefit from a higher user penetration rate. I believe that, overall, what our platform does might seem like a niche thing, but in reality, any British driver should use a tool like that at all times. When that becomes a reality, we will see way fewer car sale scams and also fewer road accidents.
What do you plan to improve?
We want to go mobile. This is our primary target as of today, and, of course, we aren’t alone in our pursuit. The mobile market is massive, and it makes sense for drivers to check their dashboards on the go instead of when they are home and can use a desktop computer. We provide mobile functionality now, sure, but there is no app or any other native solution at the moment, so we definitely have a lot of work laid out in front of us.
We also consider implementing more AI tools in the future, but it just takes some time to properly tune them and think of ways in which they can significantly improve user experience. We don’t want to over-rely on them or overuse them — this seems to be a rather common mistake in other industries, and we don’t want to follow this example.
What would you recommend to other startup teams in 2025?
Be patient and think everything through several times before committing to it. I cannot express just how often this mindset has saved us from making huge mistakes and miscalculations. This is doubly true for teams that work with complex infrastructures and networks — even an MOT check tool is highly complex and requires your attention at lots of levels.
If what you do is in fintech, SaaS, legal, online marketplace, or similar niches, then you really want a couple of in-house experts, both technical and industry-wise. This will save you a lot of trouble and allow you to focus on growing your business rather than dealing with various details and nuances all the time.
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