According to a study by the NZ Motor Transport Association, around 400,000 cars in New Zealand are driving without a WOF. Among those who find this statistic deeply concerning is tech entrepreneur Steph Kennard who decided to do something about it with the new app, Bonnet.

“The number of unregistered and unwarranted cars on the road, not to mention the road toll is horrifying,” Kennard says.

To help lower this statistic Kennard created a free app called Bonnet which notifies Kiwi’s when their WOF and rego needs to be renewed.

Bonnet puts together servicing dates, mileage, registration and WOF reminders in one, replacing manual systems that simply are easy to forget, leading to hefty fines.

Kennard has been in the vehicle industry for over 10 years and wanted to target those with extremely busy lives who might find it hard to keep up with the tedious vehicle admin jobs. 

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“Less than half of New Zealand road users fail to get their WOF in time and one third either forget or can’t afford to keep up-to-date with their registration,” says Kennard.

The app simply looks at license plate number and from there collects important data from Waka Kotahi NZ Transport Agency and converts them into reminders.

“It’s seamless and we hope that its simplicity means we see the number of unsafe cars on the road decrease,” she adds.

Three weeks in, the app debuted at number one on the New Zealand app store, amassing over 12,000 users and 26,000 vehicles.

“We’ve had amazing feedback about Bonnet so far. One user found his paid mileage with NZTA was 40,000 kilometres under his actual odometer reading, and an alarming number of users have found their Warrant of Fitness is months overdue,” says Kennard. 

Bonnet’s mission to make those Kiwi roads safer doesn’t stop there, Kennard is working on more features to add such as helping monitor tyre tread and digestible educational videos for users.