In this episode, Paul Essery talks with MOTOM CEO, Julian Humphreys, about how MOTOM uses digital technology to re-market cars.

Listen here: https://open.spotify.com/episode/3M5WxgGucIzLHdDU3NnYbL

Much has been written about the period of unprecedented change that the fleet industry is currently undergoing. In this environment, business resilience is key to enabling businesses to survive and thrive.

Resilience is often portrayed simply as the capacity to bounce back from setbacks, but it's much more than a passive endurance of adversity.

True resilience embodies the spirit of not only surviving challenges but also seizing the moment to thrive and grow in their aftermath.

It involves a dynamic process of adaptation, where organisations transform obstacles into stepping stones for future success.

Understanding resilience is crucial, especially in a world increasingly characterised by volatility and unpredictability. Whether it's navigating the complexities of a global pandemic, dealing with economic fluctuations, or adapting to the rapid changes in technology and work environments, resilience calls for a proactive stance.

Resilient businesses can recognise hazards early, adjust to unfavourable external changes, and carry on with operations even in trying circumstances.

Data is essential to understanding the market and making better decisions.

Fleets face the challenges of navigating the roller-coaster BEV market. In a fast-paced market, real-time data allows remarketers to quickly identify trends, respond to customer actions, and adjust in the moment. This agility is crucial to capitalise on buying intent.

Real-time data provides granular insights into BEV trade buying behaviour, allowing remarketers to build highly targeted remarketing audiences.

It improves the efficiency and return on investment of sales by ensuring vehicles are shown only to the most qualified prospects.

A digital approach that directly connects buyer and seller will help minimise risk when the EV market remains ‘bumpy’ as it evolves.

It is essential to consider days in stock when seeking to maximise the effectiveness of the remarketing process.

It can be less of an issue in a rising market, but with the falls the BEV market has seen recently, every 30 days could cost around £300 per book drop, plus additional de-fleet and remarketing costs might account for an additional £975.

Several models have fallen in value by more than -40% and a handful more than -50% over the last 18 months.

A digital marketplace also significantly reduces vehicle movements, which will aid fleet companies in achieving their carbon reduction goals.

It's time to assess the effectiveness of the de-fleet and remarketing process using more environmentally friendly KPIs.

Modern image and data technology can enable vehicles to start their remarketing process prior to de-fleet.

Vehicles can be imaged using AI tools at remote locations and published for sale. This will expedite time to market, which is critical in a dynamic market and drastically lowers the quantity and cost of logistics moves.

Data and digital technology have advanced. It can now empower vendors to take more control over the process, accelerating de-fleet and remarketing and redrawing a greener and more efficient model that is fit for today’s market.

Benjamin Franklin, one of America’s founding fathers, said, “When you’re finished changing, you’re finished.” This sentiment still rings true over 200 years later.

Fleet companies have made giant steps forward with digital transformation in recent years and have radically changed a range of functions from customer service to fleet management.

It’s time to apply the same logic to the remarketing process and take a data-led approach to navigating an ever-changing market.

Fleets can help mitigate the worst of the volatile EV used market by using the latest technology to speed up the remarketing process, according to Motom.

On average, EVs sell in 17 hours and one minute on the Motom digital marketplace

Cap HPI data shows increased used volume and other issues have impacted demand over the last 18 months, with significant decreases in used values for several models – some have fallen in value by more than 40% and a handful by more than 50%.

But Motom says its digital marketplace has enabled fleet vendors to sell vehicles in as little as 19 seconds by using its technology to target active buyers.

Julian Humphreys, co-founder and CEO of Motom, said: “The used EV market has seen unprecedented volatility over the last year. It’s essential that EVs are targeted to engaged and active buyers to achieve the best prices and a quick sale.

“Under a traditional process, transporting, refurbishing and auctioning an EV can take weeks, with vehicles potentially facing two monthly guide drops. The ability to remarket a vehicle on the same day as defleet will help to insulate the fleet company against a volatile market.”

On average, EVs sell in 17 hours and one minute on the Motom digital marketplace. The ability to image and remarket a vehicle from any location also means fewer vehicle movements and reduces the carbon footprint of the entire process.

Detailed data insight will help remarketing managers stay aligned with current trends and pricing to ensure that vehicles are priced appropriately for the market. Motom argues that it is essential to understand pricing, how quickly vehicles are selling, and the volumes of similar vehicles.

Motom has also developed a benchmarking tool that allows fleets to assess their vehicles against other vendors and produce reports for internal stakeholders. It provides buyers and sellers access to a digital wholesale marketplace. Since its late 2022 inception, it has expanded rapidly by offering remarketing managers and wholesale buyers alike an effective and data-rich platform.

Humphreys concluded: “Real-time pricing is essential in today’s market. The EV market constantly evolves as new technologies are introduced and the range of models available rapidly expands. It is very easy to do what we’ve always done, but we believe this market calls for a fresh approach.”

Electric vehicles are selling faster than ICE vehicles while also outstripping them on Cap Live performance, according to digital remarketing firm Motom.

On average, EVs on the Motom platform sell in 17 hours and one minute, which is one hour and 15 minutes faster than ICE vehicles

The digital marketplace examined data over the last four months and found that EVs sell in 17 hours and one minute, which is one hour and 15 minutes faster than ICE vehicles.

The study also showed that EVs achieved 106.87% of Cap Live, with ICE vehicles at 106.39%.

Julian Humphreys, co-founder and CEO of Motom, said: “The data shows that confidence in EVs continues to grow. There is a clear buyer appetite for the right EV, and demand has recovered since the middle of last year.”

Humphreys noted that buyers are still selective around EVs; the swing in terms of Cap performance runs from 103% to 119.5%.

But he added: “We’ve found that demand remains constant, and we don’t hold special EV sales as buyers come from all corners of the market.”

Motom, which launched late 2022, says its platform is built for the fast-moving EV market, as vehicles are available to buy as soon as they are listed.

Humphreys concluded: “Our fastest vehicle sold in 19 seconds. In a dynamic market, it’s essential to remarket vehicles quickly and effectively to take advantage of market trends. We provide in-depth market insight to help vendors and buyers price their vehicles efficiently. Traditional remarketing routes can take weeks to sell a vehicle and be impacted by multiple book drops – we believe there is a better way.”

Used electric vehicles (EVs), on average, are selling faster than petrol or diesel vehicles, according to digital remarketing firm Motom.

The digital marketplace examined data over the past four months and found that EVs sell in 17 hours and one minute, which is one hour and 15 minutes faster than internal combustion engine (ICE) vehicles.

The study also showed that EVs achieved 106.87% of Cap Live, with ICE vehicles at 106.39%.

Julian Humphreys, co-founder and CEO of Motom, said: “The data shows that confidence in EVs continues to grow. There is a clear buyer appetite for the right EV, and demand has recovered since the middle of last year.

“Buyers are still selective around EVs; the swing in terms of cap performance runs from 103% to 119.5%. We've found that demand remains constant, and we don't hold special EV sales as buyers come from all corners of the market.”

Motom provides a digital wholesale marketplace for vendors and buyers and has grown quickly since its launch in late 2022.

“Our fastest vehicle sold in 19 seconds,” continued Humphreys. “In a dynamic market, it's essential to remarket vehicles quickly and effectively to take advantage of market trends.”

Used electric vehicle stock

With data from Motom showing the appetite for used EVs, separate analysis by Indicata suggests that UK dealers have got fewer used EVs in stock than any other country in Europe.

Through a combination of growing used EV sales and dealers limiting their stock levels of zero emission cars, their market days’ supply (MDS) of 54 days is the lowest in Europe.

To put this into perspective Austria and Spain have the highest MDS of 143 days and 135 days respectively for EVs and Denmark the lowest at 55 days.

The MDS gap between EVs and other powertrains are narrowing with hybrids and diesels at 45 days and petrol cars at 42 days.

Market days’ supply is derived from looking at the relationship of used cars between dividing the currently available supply of inventory and the average daily retail sales rate over the past 45 days.

Dean Merritt, Indicata UK’s head of sales, explained: “Our data records the levels of stock being held by dealers rather than the total amount of used cars available in the market.

“We know the wholesale market is backed up with large supplies of used EVs, but dealers are still being quite cautious about stocking used EVs.

“There are signs that there is a growing confidence to invest in older used EVs as well as the premium high-end models as they currently look very good value.”

He added: “The car industry continues to invest in tactical campaigns to educate and incentivise consumers and dealers alike so there is no reason that used EV volumes cannot grow quickly. These are all signs that EVs are close to becoming an integral part of the used car market.”

Used EVs fell in price by 0.7% between March and April, while prices overall fell by just 0.1% month on month, according to Indicata, which suggests the UK has seen some of the last of the major price falls experienced since early 2023.

Q1 used car market bounces back followed by a strong start to Q2

Fleet procurement and management company Liquid Fleet reported record used car sales in the first quarter of 2024 selling almost 450 units through its remarketing network.

This positivity has been experienced across all its wholesale remarketing channels including - direct, franchised dealer and car supermarkets.

Retail sales have also produced some strong results as Liquid Fleet aims to mitigate any potential losses from Q4 2023 which saw residual values fall by 12%.

Liquid Fleet runs 2,500-vehicles, and its cars are typically petrol and petrol hybrid and replaced every 13 months and around 22,000 miles. It also runs a few diesels, some vans on 48 month/48,000-mile replacement cycles and a handful of six and eight-month contract cars.

Its high used car conversion rates have seen cars selling in just 15 days or less with residual values exceeding CAP Clean figures when adjusted for damage.

Martin Potter, Liquid Fleet’s commercial director, said: “This change to the market has come at a very important time as new prices have been increasing and interest rates high.

“We needed residual values to stabilise in Q1 to inject confidence back into the market and to enable us to remain competitive when procuring and leasing cars into the market.”

EVs are selling faster than ICE vehicles on average reports digital remarketing firm MOTOM.

The digital wholesale marketplace said it examined data over the last four months and found that EVs sell in 17 hours and one minute, which is one hour and 15 minutes faster than ICE vehicles.

The study also showed that EVs achieved 106.87% of cap Live; ICE vehicles achieved 106.39%.

Commenting on the trend, Julian Humphreys, co-founder and CEO of MOTOM, said: “The data shows that confidence in EVs continues to grow. There is a clear buyer appetite for the right EV, and demand has recovered since the middle of last year.

“Buyers are still selective around EVs; the swing in terms of cap performance runs from 103% to 119.5%. We’ve found that demand remains constant, and we don’t hold special EV sales as buyers come from all corners of the market.”

MOTOM says its platform is built for the fast-moving EV market, as vehicles are available to buy as soon as they are listed.

Humphreys concluded: “Our fastest vehicle sold in 19 seconds. In a dynamic market, it’s essential to remarket vehicles quickly and effectively to take advantage of market trends.”

Vendors can choose to sell a vehicle to the whole market or selected buyers such as franchised dealer groups. The process can be automated using an API to speed up the sale process for one or hundreds of vehicles.

THE digital marketplace examined data over the last four months and found that EVs sell in 17 hours and one minute, which is one hour and 15 minutes faster than ICE vehicles.

The study also showed that EVs achieved 106.87% of cap Live, with ICE vehicles at 106.39%. Julian Humphreys, co-founder and Chief Executive of MOTOM, said: “The data shows that confidence in EVs continues to grow. There is a clear buyer appetite for the right EV, and demand has recovered since the middle of last year.

“Buyers are still selective around EVs; the swing in terms of cap performance runs from 103% to 119.5%. We’ve found that demand remains constant, and we don’t hold special EV sales as buyers come from all corners of the market.”

MOTOM provides a digital wholesale marketplace for vendors and buyers. It has grown quickly since its launch in late 2022 by providing an efficient and data-rich platform for remarketing managers and wholesale buyers alike. Users benefit from no subscription or selling fees, while buyers only pay a flat fee of £150 plus VAT.

MOTOM says its platform is built for the fast-moving EV market, as vehicles are available to buy as soon as they are listed.

Humphreys added: “Our fastest vehicle sold in 19 seconds. In a dynamic market, it’s essential to remarket vehicles quickly and effectively to take advantage of market trends. We provide in-depth market insight to help vendors and buyers price their vehicles efficiently. Traditional remarketing routes can take weeks to sell a vehicle and be impacted by multiple book drops – we believe there is a better way.”

Vendors can choose to sell a vehicle to the whole market or selected buyers such as franchised dealer groups. The process can be automated using an API to speed up the sale process for one or hundreds of vehicles.

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• D.M. Keith snaps up Suzuki heavyweight dealer group Colin Appleyard
• JLR’s lead times become ‘far more acceptable’ as supply woes ease, says boss
• Selling Supercars: Meet the team behind supercar dealer Alexanders Prestige
• UK slides into recession after output shrinks more than expected, according to ONS
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• Kia XCeed named fastest selling used car in the UK as Vauxhall Crossland proves harder to shift

2023 was a tough year in many respects as the used vehicle market started a downward trend in values – something it hasn’t experienced for a few years now.

In some respects, this provided MOTOM with an enhanced value proposition as the market was looking to sell vehicles quicker than traditional routes, and with our proposition allowing trades to be made in under a minute, we found ourselves with lots more interested sellers.

Over the full year, we managed to market more than 4,500 vehicles from over 50 different sellers, covering 40 brands with prices ranging from £2,600 to £180,000.

The age profile ranged from 2006 to 2023 and included car and LCV (ICE, EV and hybrid).

Our community continues to grow and we closed the year with over 750 users – and it’s great to report that the growth has continued into 2024.

We are often asked what type of sellers we have on the platform.

We have lease and rental companies, fleet management companies, OEMs and dealers of all scales selling everything from trade stock, over-age stock, end-of-life lease, rental and corporate fleet vehicles, as well as OEM demo and staff cars.

From our discussions with our community, our uncomplicated pricing proposition stands out – no selling or subscription fees and just a standard buyer’s fee. There are no add-on fees either.

Equally, the ease of use of our app-based platform (web, mobile and tablet) stands us in good stead, and we’re hearing some great feedback.

We invested in relationship managers in 2023 to ensure our community is highly engaged and trained on how to get the best from MOTOM.

But while we have some great feedback, we all accept that we can’t rest on our laurels and need to constantly support our community to ensure MOTOM becomes the platform of choice, whether it’s for buying or selling.

We also invested in the platform to allow the ease of transfer of stock to MOTOM, and we’re delighted with some of the work that connects stock from our sellers seamlessly into vehicles marketed for sale.

2024 will see MOTOM scale, which will mean a growing community of sellers and buyers, more vehicles being traded, and some great results being achieved for our users.

We also have some developments coming to our app that include stocking finance, logistics and inspection, all designed to deliver significant value to our users.

We remain committed to our pricing model of no selling or subscription fees, we have a proposition that is greener than other sales routes, and we deliver trades in minutes not hours, days or weeks.

Reimagining remarketing

We spoke with Julian Humphreys, MOTOM CEO. After its launch last autumn, we find out how the business has helped with some of the challenges faced by the sector

One year on how has MOTOM been able to reimagine remarketing?

The first thing we’ve done is bring an independent business to market, which our community really values, as we have a single focus to support their business.

The second is that we’ve deployed great tech, which means the wholesale buying process can be more efficient and quicker, in some cases we’re selling vehicles in less than a minute. From a selling perspective, the tech is so light touch once we’ve onboarded a dealer to market vehicles. In summary, we’ve brought speed and efficiency to the wholesale remarketing process and taken cost out. Our sophisticated platform allows sellers to choose who they market their stock to; in a sense creating closed or tiered sales, which can be important for OEMs.

We hear that you have more than 700 users, who are they?

We have a real mix of users, from vendors who are selling on our platform; among these are (rental, lease and fleet management companies). Across the dealer network, we have independent dealers, several of the top dealer groups and some of the car supermarkets, so we add value to a cross-section of the market.

Buying stock is still a challenge, how do you think you’ve helped?

With our tech platform being so light touch, it does the searching for the buyers, so we have made it easy to buy vehicles. We have managed to bring new sellers to several buyers, so we have made a difference. This is not to say that MOTOM is of the right scale yet, we still have lots of work to do. The challenge when building a wholesale community is ensuring the right mix of users.

Our team are constantly focused on best aligning the requirements of both the seller and the buyer. Big data gets talked about a lot these days and MOTOM is harvesting transactional data to help its community achieve the best outcomes.

Moving overaged stock can be key to a dealer’s profitability and cash flow, how have you helped?

As I mentioned earlier, we have worked hard to build a seamless approach to marketing stock. This means that our sellers can leverage our APIs and have stock auto-published for sale. All of this at no cost to the seller. We bring a contemporary approach and are real partners, so well positioned to help as the market starts to turn.

Are there future developments?

It would be wrong to stay silent on this as we have a great development roadmap. We have updated our app this month with new features aimed at making it even easier to use. We have stocking finance, logistics and inspection currently in test, which will allow our users access to their stock finance partner, book vehicle movements and provide vehicle inspections using AI tools – all from the MOTOM platform.