The things people actually ask.
Including the awkward ones about availability, pricing and what we do with your plate. If yours is not here, ask us and we will add it.
Straight answers
When can I download it?
There is no date, and we would rather say that than invent one. Cogged is in development and not on the app stores.
The hold-up is not the software — it is the technical data behind the guided jobs, which has to be licensed from manufacturers or read out of their workshop manuals by hand. Email us and you go on the early access list.
Which cars will it work with?
Identification works for any UK registration, because that part runs on DVLA and MOT records. Guided procedures are a different question: each one has to be backed by real manufacturer data for your specific engine before it goes in.
So the library starts narrow and grows. We are building it in the order people ask for jobs, which is why the most useful thing you can send us is the car and the job sitting on your drive right now.
Where do the torque figures come from?
A manufacturer workshop manual or a licensed technical data feed, tied to your exact engine code, with the section it came from recorded alongside it and the name of the person who read it off the page.
Nothing else is permitted to supply one. The database rejects a figure whose source is not a manufacturer manual or a licensed feed, so an unsourced number cannot be stored, and therefore cannot be spoken.
What happens if it doesn't have a figure for my car?
It tells you so and stops. You will hear something close to: “I don’t have a verified figure for that on your car. Don’t guess it — check the manual before you tighten anything.”
There is no estimate, no figure borrowed from a similar engine, and no quietly lowered confidence. That is worse than an answer and it is the correct behaviour.
Why does it keep asking me to confirm things?
Because a confirmation is the only evidence it has that you actually looked. Before anything that puts you under a raised car, into a brake system, near fuel or across high-voltage cabling, Cogged reads the hazard aloud and will not continue until you have answered for it.
If you answer faster than the physical action could have taken, it treats that as a reflex rather than a check and asks something a “yes” cannot answer — how many stands, and what are they sitting on. If you have looked, that costs you three seconds.
Can I turn the safety gates off?
No. There is no expert mode, no professional setting, and no debug flag that skips them. Telling Cogged you have done the job a hundred times gets the same answer as telling it nothing.
The thing that decides is deliberately separate from the thing you are talking to, so there is no combination of words that moves it.
Are there jobs it refuses entirely?
Yes. Opening a hybrid or EV battery pack, anything involving live airbags or seatbelt pretensioners, coil spring compression without a rated bench tool, and structural work like welding or brake line fabrication.
It says so in one sentence without a lecture, and offers to help you get the car ready for someone with the right equipment.
Does it need a signal in the garage?
Yes — the voice layer and the technical data both live on our servers, which is what stops the assistant improvising a figure locally.
If the connection drops mid-job your phone says so out loud without needing the network, because the worst possible moment to be met with silence is the one where you are waiting for the next instruction. Any open safety gate closes on a lost connection and is asked again when you are back.
What happens to my registration number?
A registration identifies a registered keeper, so we treat it as personal data from the moment you say it. It is stored encrypted and indexed only by a one-way hash, and it never appears in a web address, a query string or a log file in readable form.
The privacy notice is specific about this rather than general, and it covers the app as well as the website.
Is it recording me?
Speech is streamed to be understood and then discarded, with one deliberate exception: the words you say when confirming a safety warning are kept, because they are the record that the warning was given and answered. That record is written once and never edited.
Everything else you say while working is not stored.
What will it cost?
Not decided, and we are not going to put a placeholder number on a website. Licensed technical data is the largest cost in the business and the pricing has to follow the terms of those agreements.
What we can tell you is how the parts side works, because it affects what you can trust: we earn a commission when you buy through a link in the app, we disclose it at the point you see the options, and it never changes the order of the list.
Can I use it in a professional workshop?
Nothing stops you, but it is not built for you. Cogged is designed for someone working on their own car occasionally, and it is deliberately slower and more cautious than a trade tool.
Professional workshops are better served by a full technical data subscription, which is the same data without a voice interface asking whether your stands are under the pinch welds.
Is it UK only?
The UK first, because registration lookup, MOT history and recall data are all country-specific and the UK ones are the ones we have built against.
The data model was designed with the US in mind as well — VIN decoding there gives a stronger vehicle match than a UK plate does — but that is later, not now.
Is Cogged a substitute for a mechanic?
No, and it will tell you so. It cannot see your car, your tools or your driveway. It does not know your jack is old, your ramps are on a slope, or that the bolt you are about to shear has been in there since 2009.
On anything that carries someone’s life on it, a professional inspection is worth more than any amount of confident narration. If you are ever unsure, stop — that is the correct decision, and Cogged is built to make it the easy one.