Bringing Wholesale Auto Online Across Europe: Our Investment in CarOnSale

Each year, over $200B of used cars change hands between Europe’s auto dealers. When buying a used car, consumers trade in their current vehicle and the dealer often isn’t specialized in selling the trade in vehicle. This creates a large market of dealer-to-dealer transactions.

Today, dealers typically offload their inventory by picking up the phone and calling other dealers. It’s a manual process which hurts prices because they can only reach other local dealers. To top it off, salespeople all too often get a kickback by selling the vehicle at a lower price, a practice that hurts owners.

Dealers buying the wholesale inventory have limited ways of verifying vehicle quality, and transportation and payment are a hassle to coordinate. Auctions, the only alternative, require dealers to transport cars to auction houses which charge steep fees.

Selling and acquiring wholesale car inventory is an extremely time-consuming, inefficient, and manual process. Dealers are facing margin pressure causing them to closely examine wholesale transactions and look for new alternatives.

CarOnSale’s Solution

CarOnSale’s modern low-fee platform offers a buying and selling experience that’s better for everyone involved. It’s an end-to-end solution from vehicle inspection and listing to online bidding, financing, and transportation.

CarOnSale streamlines the entire process for sellers. Vehicle inspectors visit the lot and create inspection reports, which are automatically converted into platform listings.

Buyers can browse a much larger pool of inventory with vehicle pictures and detailed damage reports. Before, to get this level of information, buyers would have to travel to vehicle lots or auction houses. CarOnSale’s recommendation engine also identifies cars that are a great fit for buyers.

With a culture that takes pride in well-maintained vehicles, there’s demand across Europe for German used cars and the country has one of the highest export rates across the continent. Starting in Germany, CarOnSale is perfectly positioned to facilitate cross-border transactions, opening up new trade lanes, and becoming the go to pan-European platform.