NEWS

The first half of 2022 has proved to be a busy and successful one for the Autorola Group. With the ongoing semiconductor shortage causing supply issues globally, the used car market has continued to be pressurised by high demand, and low supply.

Autorola’s full suite of services allowing car dealers and fleet vendors to maximise their returns at such a time which we have brought to life in our latest newsletter articles.

Autorola UK Group update:

This month we hear from Autorola UK which has doubled the size of its business as more buyers and vendors move to buying and selling used vehicles online. Neil Frost, Group Operations Director explains how Autorola has become the online used car destination supported by a sales team who collaborate closely with dealers to locate and secure the right stock for their business.

Marketwatch:
In this edition, we have the latest INDICATA Market Watch report, which goes into detail on how the used market is responding to its current challenges, and how the profile of vehicles is changing as a result. Diesel sales continue to fall year on year in-line with increasing restrictions on this fuel type in many territories, however used BEV sales have increased by 27% year on year, it is also now the fastest selling powertrain, closely followed by hybrid and petrol models.

Fleet Monitor:
Fleet Monitor is integral to the Autorola Group offering and has been a key growth area for the business in the last few years. In this newsletter we look in depth at the fleet monitor product, its features and the benefits that it brings to our customers, including VWFS, and smart Europe GmbH.

Best and Fastest Sellers:
In this issue we have an article that looks in depth at the fastest and best-selling vehicles across Europe, which will help vendors and buyers adopt the best remarketing strategies for their businesses.

As ever, I hope that this newsletter will prove interesting, fact-filled and give you a good picture of the latest news and findings from across our group.

Best regards
Peter Grøftehauge (LinkedIn)

The Fleet Monitor asset management platform is a unique offering from Autorola Solutions and is a core product in helping grow our group business across the globe. Fleet Monitor is  an effective software platform for anyone looking to manage vehicle assets effectively throughout the vehicle lifetime. 

A host of recent business wins with Fleet Monitor
at their centre means that it has been a key driver
for Autorola’s growth in the last two years.
These include the new five-year contract signed
with smart Europe GmbH, which has Fleet Monitor
as a key service provision integrated with Marketplace
for this Europewide brand, and a new business win
with VWFS in Brazil, both of which are detailed below.

Fleet Monitor works intelligently with data
The insight from Autorola Solutions tells us that the majority of fleet managers agree that the production of detailed reports on fleets is one of the most time-consuming aspects of the role. Additionally, in the current market, the high lifetime costs of holding assets and the long lead-times for replacement vehicles is the biggest cause of frustration for fleet managers.

In this situation, maximising the efficiency of fleet management is key and Fleet Monitor’s dual functions of fleet-process and communications management are designed to simplify every aspect of fleet and resource management.

This key benefit was a major draw for smart Europe GmbH, as Fleet Monitor will found the backbone of smart’s relationship with rental, car sharing and subscription companies. This will allow smart to consistently track each vehicle’s status including mileage, servicing history and current location across multiple European countries.

Autorola is able to integrate data from all of smart´s relevant partners for logistic, inspection and storage, ensuring that all processes will be managed in a holistic and efficient manner, while enabling a fast reintegration of smart remarketing vehicles into the retail process via Autorola’s pan European online MarketPlace.

Easy fleet management
As a system which is proven to help businesses streamline processes, improve efficiency and performance, Fleet Monitor is a powerful tool for today’s fleets. It reduces operational costs and mitigates operational and financial risks for fleets, while ensuring compliance.

Additionally the communications module included within the package creates a service-focused platform for their drivers and users.

Fleet Monitor allows users to view an entire fleet at once, with detailed descriptions available on individual vehicles when needed. With it’s user-friendly and intuitive look and feel, the system is built around dashboards and worklists that, ensure that all tasks are processed quickly and efficiently.

Last year, Autorola Solution launched a bespoke Fleet Monitor with
Volkswagen Financial Services Brazil that enabled the bank to track and
trace its fleet assets across the country in a way that no other system had
previously been able to. This proved invaluable to the lender, which has a
fleet of 5,000 vehicles, and a supplementary fleet of 13,000 vehicles,
run under the brand of FleetZil.

Keeping ahead of a changing marketplace
The whole world has digitized rapidly over the last three years, and with ever changing working environments, fleet managers have found themselves having to contend with multiple, disconnected internal management systems that have not allowed them to gain an easy overview of their assets, especially in remote-working situations.

Fleet Monitor is the ideal solution for this, providing a 100 % browser-based online tool which allows efficient working, even in remote settings. Managers can gain access to all details of all assets via the portal, and interact in real-time with co-workers, suppliers and their network, across branches and even whole countries, distance is no longer a problem.

Autorola UK’s online vehicle auction activity continues to go from strength to strength as more buyers and vendors than ever before are using its Autofind platform to buy and sell used cars.

The business has more than doubled in size during the pandemic as the UK remarketing industry has finally embraced online buying and selling after decades of focusing just on physical auctions.

2,000 active used buyers
Autorola now has more than 2,000 active buyers some of whom are buying several hundred used vehicles each year, and with a fully integrated transport service available the dealer receives vehicles on site within just a couple of days of their online purchase.

More importantly it continues to grow its used car sales team who collaborate closely with dealers to locate and secure the right stock for their business.

People power supporting online technology
“The combination of our online wholesale used vehicle portal with the support of an office-based team to help dealers locate and bid on their preferred stock has been a real winner. Buyers know they have the support of the office-based team if they have a query or a problem, which gives them additional confidence when buying,” explained Neil Frost, Autorola’s group operations director.

“In the current used car climate how many online wholesale portals have over 15,000 used cars and vans for sale? We have become the online used car destination at a time when dealers have struggled with shortages of stock.”

Real time pricing insights
Autorola UK has also gained traction with INDICATA during the pandemic where dealer groups and car supermarkets have signed up to gain the real time pricing insights to guide them through bidding and buying used cars during a very hot market.

Its used car pricing platform helps them determine the stock that is in demand and where they can afford to pay extra to secure cars they know will sell quickly. It also enables them to understand what their local rivals are doing with stock which helps them become competitive. Many dealers are dialling used prices up or down daily to ensure they are the most competitive provider in their region as well as ensuring they have the right models in stock.

Many of these INDICATA customers are now also selling their unwanted exchanges and buying new stock via Autorola’s Autofind portal. They like the convenience of buying and selling online as well as working with a single supplier to provide them with a wide range of used vehicle services.

Fine tuning retail pricing
Wales’s largest car supermarket Ron Skinner & Sons rolled out INDICATA’s used car pricing and sales insights platform to fine tune its retail pricing and to support the group’s car stocking strategy. It has up to 1,500 used cars in stock worth £16m and sells around 8,000 used cars each year

Ron Skinner’s general manager, Craig Walters said: “INDICATA takes the guesswork out of valuations and helps us guide customers through their part exchange values as well as explaining how new car prices are moving so quickly. The data keeps everybody in tune with the market from our MD to the shopfloor,” he added.

St Leonards Motor (SLM) Group operates nine franchised dealer and two used car sites with nearly 600 used cars in group stock at any time. It introduced INDICATA coincided with its digital online approach to selling used cars.

Helping decide what stock to buy
“It helps us decide what to buy and at what price. It shows where SLM should go stronger on stock when buying online and when pricing used cars. We use the insights to decide whether to take a smaller margin but sell a used car stock more quickly,” said SLM director Jason Barlow.

“Because all our cars sit on one portal, I can spend 30-45 minutes reviewing the dashboard and altering any of the KPIs as I see fit in the knowledge the 25 platform users are all on the same page.

The first INDICATA Lead Generator customer is also about to go live giving retail customers the power to value their trade vehicles live on a retailer’s website. Built on INDICATA’s used car valuation engine, it gives the retailer full control over making a competitive offer to the customer with the support of INDICATA scanning the prices of 9m used vehicles every day.

Online sales traffic is rising
INDICATA’s floating widget and “modal” screen sits on top of the dealer website, meaning implementation is fast and incurs minimal costs.

“Online sales traffic has risen dramatically through the pandemic and the number of physical showroom visitors has fallen,” explained Frost.

“Lead Generator enables retailers to engage with online customers more readily by providing them with a part exchange value to coincide with them looking at sourcing a new car,” he said.

Electric Vehicles (EVs) were Europe’s fastest selling used cars for the second month in a row according to the latest INDICATA Market Watch insights report.

Europe’s three fastest-selling used cars were all EVs in June in the shape of the Tesla Model Y, Tesla Model 3, and Polestar 2.

In a normal market this would be good news, however, dealers and traders are struggling to meet this demand due to low new EV sales in previous years and a shortage of de-fleeted EVs hitting the market as many lease contracts remain extended.


European used car sales fall in 2022
European used car sales were 10.1% lower in the first six months of 2022 when compared with the same period in 2021 blighted by constraints in new car supply. Only Denmark and France have bucked the trend on sales reporting a year-on-year increase of 6.5% and 7.4% rise respectively.

Prices continued to rise across Europe in all but the UK, where prices fell by -2.6%, the sixth successive monthly fall. Austrian prices rose the most in June by 11.6%, closely followed by Belgium of 10.4% and Portugal at 9.5%.

Sales impacted by lack of used stock
Whilst increased used car prices are supporting profit margins a lack of the right quality stock is heavily impacting sales volumes. Stock levels going into July fell a further 2.8% compared with the start of June making it four consecutive month-on-month declines. This puts stock levels 6.5% lower than at the start of July 2021. Excluding Turkey total stock levels for the rest of Europe were 8.3% lower year-on-year.

Andy Shields, INDICATA’s global business unit director said: “The demand for EVs continues to exceed supply which in turn is helping keep prices high. The Europe-wide acceptance of used EVs has reached a tipping point in the past two months and looks set to continue as more retail customers move away from ICE cars.

“There is no sign of new car supply challenges improving until 2024 so we believe the used car market will remain healthy for the next few years,” he added.

Our Top Seller and Fastest Seller tables capture the hottest used cars for 13 individual markets in Europe each month. It gives buyers and vendors a guide to the used cars that are selling by volume and by speed of sale. This helps vendors set the right reserves and guides buyers to the used cars to stock on their forecourts to maximise sales and profitability.

In INDICATA’s June European Top Seller and Fastest Seller tables EVs remained the most in demand used cars with the Tesla Y, Tesla 3 and Polestar the fastest-selling used cars under four years of age.

Meanwhile the top-selling used cars have remained constant for 2022 with the VW Golf, Renault Clio and VW Polo topping the June table. The top-selling ICE cars were the VW Golf, Renault Clio and VW Polo while the top-selling hybrids were the Toyota C-HR, Toyota Yaris and Audi A6. Europe’s top-selling used BEVs in June were the Renault Zoe, Tesla Model 3 and BMW i3.

Check out the full list of top-selling and fastest-selling used cars for 13 countries here: https://www.indicata.com/download/INDICATA_Market_Watch_29_EN.pdf

For a free copy of the latest INDICATA Market Watch report go to www.indicata.com