Openbay is trying to drive down the cost of auto repairs by introducing an eBay-style site allowing repair shops to bid on repairs needed by vehicle owners.

Finding a reliable, affordable and convenient place to get your car repaired can be one of the biggest challenges when it comes to owning and operating a vehicle – but a new online service aims to make the process simpler by having mechanics compete for your business – and even come to your home or office to do the work.

Dubbed Openbay, it borrows a bit from the familiar online auction site eBay, but puts the motorist, rather than service shop owner, in the driver’s seat.

“The genesis for Openbay was to take the fear out of finding a mechanic,” explains founder and CEO Rob Infantino. The goal, he adds, is to help motorists “find a mechanic who will do the repairs for a reasonable price and whom they can trust.”

Launched last October, Openbay allows users to post a request for service that is then sent to all participating mechanics and service facilities in the local area. They then can respond back with a bid. On average, customers will receive four offers. Intriguingly, Infantino says customers are not necessarily opting for the cheapest bid.

“They’re looking for convenience,” he explains from Openbay’s headquarters in Boston. The winning bids are often those submitted by “shops that do the repairs in your (own) garage or bring the car to their shop for you. Those are the most popular.”

Convenience, in fact, is proving to be the biggest factor for customers choosing a mechanic, with good ratings the second most important factor. Openbay has added a process for users to comment on their service – and it has taken pains to ensure that only real customers can add a comment so the system isn’t “gamed” by unscrupulous vendors, a problem that has plagued efforts to rate businesses online.

The Openbay project has been several years in the making, and though its customers are currently measures in the thousands, Infantino says he is upbeat about the prospects. And for good reason. There are about 270 million vehicles on U.S. roads, according to government and industry data, and only about 20% are covered by new vehicle warranties.

On average, Infantino says, American consumers make at least two trips to the repair shop each year – or about 500 million such transactions annually, generating an estimated $160 billion in business. And, if anything, the need for repairs appears to be growing fast as the age of the typical vehicle on U.S. roads – now 11.4 years – continues to increase.

Openbay already covers “almost every state,” according to Infantino, though it has its biggest presence in the home Boston market and major metropolitan areas including Washington, DC, Chicago, San Francisco, Houston, Dallas and Atlanta.

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The average “ticket,” or repair it has so far handled comes in at $350, with the most frequent jobs covering such work as brake repairs, timing belt replacement and “anything that wears out,” the Openbay founder notes.

The work is, no surprise, seasonal, and Infantino is expecting “a big surge” of air conditioning repairs in the coming weeks as summer finally descends upon the country.

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Openbay launched as a conventional online service but it recently launched a smartphone app that is already accounting for more than a third of its service requests.

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The company is hoping to have several thousand service requests a month by the end of this year. It takes a 13% cut of the final bill, including 3% to cover credit card transaction costs.

The potential for becoming the eBay of automotive repairs has drawn significant interest to Openbay – and some high-profile funding. That includes a cash infusion from Google Ventures.