NEWS

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

Welcome to the summer edition of the Autorola Group newsletter.

It has been a welcome return to a semblance of normality across the business world in 2022. As countries have opened and travel restrictions have lifted, companies are finally returning to doing business face-to-face again.

Although the new digital world has allowed business to continue virtually over the last three years, the return to in-person meetings has been welcomed across our industry, and it has been great to conclude new business deals with a handshake once more.

We have continued to grow as a company too, not only within many individual territories such as France and Brazil, as covered in this newsletter, but also as a group.

We detail some of the new projects below, including the very exciting new relationship with smart Europe, where we have secured a five-year contract to become its remarketing partner, and the development of new business deals with VWFS in Brazil.

Electric vehicles remain a key talking point among our remarketing partners globally, and we have further insights into how EVs are performing in the used market. In many countries that means used EVs are now selling faster than petrol and diesel cars.

I hope you find this newsletter useful, and it gives you a flavour of what is happening around our group.

Best regards
Peter Grøftehauge (LinkedIn)

smart Europe GmbH has announced a new five-year contract with the Autorola Group. Autorola will set up and run the European fleet remarketing infrastructure for smart´s brand new range of 100% electric cars.

Autorola’s Fleet Monitor, a web-based asset management IT platform, will be rolled out to enable an efficient end-to-end vehicle remarketing management process across Europe.

The Fleet Monitor system will be the backbone of smart’s relationship with rental, car sharing and subscription companies. It will enable smart to consistently track each car’s status including mileage, servicing history and current location.

Furthermore, Autorola ensures integration of data from all of smart´s relevant partners for logistics, inspection and storage. All respective processes will be managed in a holistic and efficient context. The main target is a fast reintegration of smart remarketing vehicles into the retail process via Autorola’s pan-European online Marketplace, towards the future smart agency network.

The platform roll-out includes Germany, France, UK, Italy, Spain, Belgium, Netherlands, Portugal, Austria, Switzerland and Sweden.

André Janssen-Timmen, COO, smart Europe GmbH, said: “We are setting up our own, strong remarketing capability right from the start. Our focus is not only on the first cycle, but also on 2nd and 3rd. We believe that Autorola for us is exactly the right partner for this endeavor.”

“We are very excited about working with smart to set up and manage their remarketing strategy for the next five years, “explained Morten Holmsten, Global Director, Autorola Marketplace.

“Our Fleet Monitor asset management system and Marketplace online used car platform has been developed to integrate with one another and offer clients, like smart, a seamless and very effective “cradle to grave” remarketing solution,” he added.

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Press contact

smart Europe GmbH: Julia Brehm, Mobile +49 160-94857614, julia.brehm@smart.com
Autorola Group: Mikkel Strandgaard, msn@autorola.com

Autorola Group’s Fleet Monitor has proved itself to be a huge benefit to Volkswagen Financial Services Brazil in allowing the bank to track and trace its fleet assets across the country in a way that no other product 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.

As a result of this solid foundation of success, Autorola is able to assist FleetZil during a merger with another Brazil-based leasing company, LM. A formerly family-owned leasing company, 60% of LM has been purchased by VWFS which will continue to expand its shares in the company over the next three years. Following this merger, additional vehicles will be added to the FleetZil parc, in line its expansion goals in the coming five years.

Importantly, because LM has been a family run leasing company until the merger, Autorola is currently constructing a process that will bring solutions and modernization to LM’s old manual systems and will make a difference in the way they conduct their business in order to bring itself into line with the wider reporting and management structure of VWFS.

Toyota and Kinto sign a new contract for Brazil

Toyota and leasing giant Kinto have signed a substantial deal for Brazil with the aim of maximising growth for both parties. With its new agreement with Toyota, the international leasing company is entering a period of concerted expansion of its activities within the country, and Autorola will be key to Kinto achieving its commercial goals in this area. With the signing of this contract, it is expected to increase its market share to around 100,000 vehicles within five years.

Internal investment in the Autorola sales team

As a result of the success of the last 12 months, Autorola Brazil is now enjoying higher online auction transaction volumes than ever before. Autorola is also investing in its sales team and upgrading its internal processes to allow for the coming rise in vehicle volumes.

A streamlining of processes, an expanded team and an investment in IT infrastructure will see Autorola Brazil well-placed to service the growing needs of its expanding client base for the years to come.

Matching buyers to vendors has always been a key strength of our platform, and this is proving a crucial benefit for customers in a rapidly fluctuating marketplace. Demand is changing fast as new car prices drop after 12 months of record prices. Buyers are now flocking to new vehicles supported by attractive finance rates instead of buying high price used cars which has changed the dynamic of the market very quickly., Brazil is therefore experiencing a market correction, which will make the availability of detailed and up-to-date used car prices from INDICATA key for successful transactions.

INDICATA launching in Brazil

Until now, only Marketplace and Solutions have been offered in Brazil, however in response to our customers’ changing needs, INDICATA is soon to be launched as an additional offering enabling the powerful combination of all three services to be utilised together for the benefit of the companies we work with.

The launch is well underway internally, with several key data providers already earmarked for involvement in the project. With strong interest already in place from our customers, we expect to launch Indicata Brazil later this year.

It looks set to be a year of strong growth.

smart Europe GmbH has announced a new five-year contract with the Autorola Group. Autorola will set up and run the European fleet remarketing infrastructure for smart´s brand new range of 100% electric cars.

Autorola’s Fleet Monitor web-based asset management IT platform will be rolled out to enable an efficient, end-to-end remarketing vehicle management process across Europe.

Fleet Monitor will found the backbone of smart’s relationship with rental, car sharing and subscription companies. It will enable smart to consistently track each car’s status including mileage, servicing history and current location.

Further Autorola ensures integration of data from all of smart´s relevant partners for logistic, inspection and storage. All respective processes will be managed in a holistic and efficient context. Main target is a fast reintegration of smart remarketing vehicles into the retail process via Autorola’s pan European online MarketPlace towards the future smart agency network.

The platform roll-out includes Germany, France, UK, Italy, Spain, Belgium, Netherlands, Portugal, Austria, Switzerland and Sweden.

André Janssen-Timmen, COO, smart Europe GmbH, said: “We are setting up our own, strong remarketing capability right from the start. Our focus is not only on the first cycle, but also on 2nd and 3rd. We believe that Autorola for us is exactly the right partner for this endeavor.”

The collaboration with smart underlines the strength of Fleet Monitor as a powerful tool to connect diverse areas of the business to create a strong platform to manage the entire fleet activities with effective end-to-end solutions.

See more here: https://vimeo.com/manage/videos/666726856

To know more: https://autorolasolutions.com/contact/

Autorola France is officially the country’s fifth largest car auction company and the largest online only auction business.

According to the annual Harris Interactive car auction poll Autorola France moved from seventh to fifth place, the highest position achieved since the business was set up in 2007.

Seventy percent increase in turnover

Turnover has grown by 70% from 48m Euros in 2020 to 82m in 2021 as the entire automotive industry moved to online remarketing as the pandemic closed large parts of the used car market.

Autorola France is unique in that it also sells high value used cars online, not just unwanted low-cost dealer part exchanges. Its average transaction value is 12,500 Euros selling used cars for vendors such as Ford France, BMW, PSA, Athlon and BPCE, LeasePlan and VWFS.

Selling used cars online since 2007

“Our 22-strong team was proud to hear the news that we have become the largest online car auction business in France. We have stood by our principles of only selling used cars online for 15 years and the pandemic has accelerated its popularity,” said Pierre-Emmanuel Beau, MD of Autorola France.

“Buyers appreciate the power of bidding and buying used cars from their PC or phone, while vendors benefit enjoy reduced selling costs when compared with physical. We look forward to continuing our annual growth,” he said.

Used battery electric vehicles (BEVs) are now selling faster than petrol and diesel cars across Europe according to our latest INDICATA Market Watch used car insights report.

In April BEVs were the fastest-selling powertrain type at 6.8x whereas just 12 months ago they were the slowest at 3.7x.

Fastest-selling used cars

Electric cars took all three places in INDICATA’s fastest-selling used car table for the very first time in April with the Renault Zoe, Tesla Model Y and Kia Niro.

Market Days’ Supply for those respective used EVs was 27.7 days, 35.5 days and 44.7 days which compares with 74.8 days, 50.7 days and 60.8 days for April’s fastest-selling ICE cars, the VW Golf, Renault Clio, and VW Polo.

Speed of acceptance for EVs

This is a dramatic change from the start of 2022 when used BEVs were consistently the slowest-selling fuel type and shows the speed of acceptance of electric power within the used market after a slow start in previous years.

With supply now fully exceeding demand, dealer stock of used BEVs was 38% lower than in April compared with March.

EVs are reversing a negative trend

As supply tightens, BEV used prices are reversing the negative trend they have had for the last 4-5 years with a Europe-wide rise of 9.3 percentage points for used cars since the end of 2021.

Andy Shields, INDICATA’s global business unit director explains:

“April 2022 could be the major sea change in the acceptance of electric used cars across Europe. Last year we had seen excess BEV supply as OEMs over forced the market to reduce their CAFÉ liabilities.

Used BEV stock is drying up

“With retail buyers now seeing €50+ increases in filling a tank of fuel in an ICE vehicle they are swapping to BEVS. Long lead times on new BEVs and an ever-growing confidence in range and charging infrastructure means the used BEV market is now being sucked dry.”

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

We are only just into Q2 of the year, and 2022 is proving just as turbulent as the year before.

Nevertheless, the used car market carries on regardless, and Autorola Group has continued to support this crucial sector through increasingly volatile times.

The latest Market Watch report focusses on the price rises experienced in 13 European countries, which was 7.1% over Q1 of 2022. With demand continuing to exceed supply across the majority of territories, and currency fluctuations accounting for additional increases in territories such as Turkey, the outlook for the year ahead is that the current situation looks set to remain in the near future.

Andy Shields gave a brilliant report last month, in partnership with the major publication Fleet Europe, on the pricing fluctuations that we have seen in the used EV market. In a very clear, short video, he explains the market forces behind these fluctuations and why the outlook is bright for EVs as used vehicles. For anyone who deals in these vehicles, it is a must-watch.

We share the news of our recent contract signing between INDICATA and Toyota Motors Europe, which will aid the automotive giant with its used car pricing reports in 12 countries.

I am delighted to see that we end with an article on Autorola Group’s record two years. Each of our business units has excelled over a busy 24 month period, and as a result, we are expanding our business, and our offices. Read more about how we are evolving our group below.

I hope that you enjoy this newsletter, may it be a moment of data-driven insight in the midst of a fast paced world.

Peter
Best regards
Peter Grøftehauge (LinkedIn)