The Automated Tire SmartBay swaps two tires at once without detaching the wheels from the car. | Credit: Automated Tire Inc.
Looking to bring today’s service garage into the future, Automated Tire Inc. has officially stepped out of stealth mode to reveal SmartBay — an AI-driven robotic system that takes over the job of changing tires and inspecting vehicles.
By swapping out hands-on, injury-risk work with cutting-edge computer vision and robotics, the platform can slash service times by up to half, getting them down to around 30 minutes, according to the startup. This allows one technician to oversee three bays at once, helping tackle a growing nationwide shortage of skilled auto workers.
“While the automotive world has leapt forward with new technologies in recent decades, service bays have barely changed to keep up,” said Andy Chalofsky, CEO of Automated Tire. “Electric vehicles, in particular, burn through tires up to 30% quicker than traditional cars. The rise in EVs means far more tire service demand, but tire tech roles are messy, risky, and hard to staff.”
“Our SmartBay system gives modern repair shops a real answer — turning a hazardous, hands-on task into a streamlined, tech-driven process that fits the caliber of the vehicles they’re working on today,” he added.
Automated Tire adopts an industry-first mindset
Chalofsky, who comes from a family four generations deep in the tire business, said he’s tackling the issue by listening to what the industry actually needs, rather than “building a solution looking for a problem.” With that philosophy, the company’s first-generation system is semi-automated, purpose-built and fine-tuned for real-world use.
The standout feature of SmartBay is that tires are swapped while the wheels remain on the vehicle. This alone eliminates the most time-intensive and costly step — loosening and re-tightening wheel lug nuts.
The machine replaces two tires at once (either front or rear), rolling up to the vehicle from below. Its compact footprint also means it fits neatly into current service bay layouts.
A human worker is still needed to pull off the old tire and slot the fresh one into the position on the machine, explained the Woburn, Massachusetts-based firm.
In this initial SmartBay version, a worker still needs to hook up the air line to pump up the tire. | Credit: Automated Tire Inc.
After the new tire is mounted, the worker hooks the air hose back on to inflate the tire.
The tire is then balanced while still on the vehicle, and the worker applies the balancing weights at the correct spot.
Workers must still manually plug in the air hose to fill the tire with air. | Credit: Automated Tire Inc.
Chalofsky shared with The Robot Report that “a future SmartBay update might fully automate the entire sequence — mounting, inflating, and balancing — but this first-gen model is ready to hit the ground running.”
SmartBay delivers fast return on investment
Right now, a typical manual tire change takes one technician about an hour to swap and balance a set of four tires. SmartBay cuts that down to 30 minutes with just one operator — and that single operator can handle three bays in parallel.
At a busy tire shop, this means one person overseeing three bays could service 24 tires, or six cars, in the same window a single manual tech would spend on one bay alone.
Throughout the process, SmartBay continuously gathers and crunches data, producing live insights and reports for customers while fine-tuning every step for maximum efficiency. The bundled service goes by the name BrakeWise brake insights.
By merging hands-off inspection, tire handling, balancing, and smart data analysis into one seamless workflow, SmartBay cuts down on manual effort, boosts output, and delivers faster and more reliable service results, said Automated Tire.
According to the company, SmartBay tackles three core challenges in the auto repair space: a persistent and worsening labor gap; taking over the most injury-prone part of standard auto care — tire changes; and ramping up bay productivity by dramatically trimming the time tire swaps require.
Auto repair’s workforce gap keeps widening
Per a report from the National Automotive Dealers Association (NADA), the sector is short at least 37,000 new technicians each year, as experienced hands retire and fewer young workers choose the trade.
This gap keeps shop owners stuck in a loop of being understaffed and shelling out for repeated retraining, noted Automated Tire. The cycle intensifies as high turnover leads to uneven service quality and longer wait times that frustrate customers and squeeze profit margins.
It has been more than two years since a comparable venture, RoboTire, filed for bankruptcy. The company had secured $7.5 million in Series A funding in 2022 and earned a RBR50 Innovation Award in 2023.
Chalofsky was familiar with RoboTire’s downfall but expressed confidence that purpose-built SmartBay is engineered to solve the genuine labor challenges plaguing the auto repair world his family has worked in for four generations. Chalofsky said SmartBay offers a clear return on investment and provides a platform that can expand its capabilities over time.
