By Paul Borden
MotorwayAmerica.com

(June 15, 2023) MIAMI — How we buy cars and what cars we buy are going through a radical change as manufacturers ramp up production of electrified vehicles and online sources that allow you virtually to car shop with your smartphone continue to grow. That was the message Michael Darrow delivered to members of the Southern Automotive Media Association (SAMA) at a special luncheon last week in Miami.

Darrow is president and CEO of TrueCar, an automotive digital marketplace founded just over 18 years ago in Delaware that last year launched an upgraded service dubbed “TrueCar+” in Tampa, Florida.

TrueCar+ allows consumers will be able to research prospective vehicles, confirm their choice, and complete their car purchase with a dealer, even arrange financing and delivery from the convenience of home. The service has since expanded throughout Florida and into five other states in the Southeast (Alabama, North Carolina, Tennessee, Maryland, and Virginia) as well as a few of other national markets (Colorado, Ohio, and Texas).

“We had dealers from all over the country seeing this and saying, ‘Hey, we’d like to participate’ so it’s kind of gotten random how it’s broken out,” Darrow said.

Dealers are interested, Darrow said, because they view TrueCar not as a competitor but as a way to increase their business. As opposed to some other popular online sales services that maintain their own fleets of vehicles for sale, TrueCar+ connects shoppers with an actual dealership for the final details. After a buyer finds a vehicle he or she wants, either new or used, he or she has the option of actually visiting the dealership for a first-hand look or completing the purchase online.

“I don’t think dealers are going to be going anywhere,” Darrow said. “They’re going to be part of this. The dealers who are working with us don’t see us as a threat to them. They see it as a way to extend their business.” TrueCar+ extends a dealer’s sales reach beyond the local area.

Darrow has more than four decades of experience in the automotive industry, starting out in the 1980s at Chrysler which at the time was run by automotive icon Lee Iacocca. He spent three years at Chrysler before moving on to Nissan, where he spent 17 years. In 2000 in joined Edmunds.com, a national online automotive review site, and has spent the last seven years with TrueCar.

He thinks the industry needs to adapt to the way people will be doing their car shopping in the future. “We think that by 2025 that 40 percent of vehicle sales will be online,” he said.

And more of those purchases will be an electric vehicle. Darrow threw out some interesting numbers from a recent survey his company did of 1,200 consumers — 600 nationally and 600 in Florida. More than half of the national respondents — 52 percent — said they are somewhat or extremely likely to consider an EV for their next purchase.

“In Florida, 60 percent of Florida residents, ahead of the national average, said they would be somewhat or extremely likely to consider an electric vehicle,” he said.

A major reason for that is that Florida residents have had more exposure to an EV. Nationally, 47 percent of the survey respondents said they have actually driven an electric vehicle.

“It’s 64 percent here in Florida,” Darrow said “All of our data shows us if someone has driven an EV, ridden in an EV, experienced an EV, that they are 50 percent more likely than someone who hasn’t to buy one as their next choice.”

More than half (52 percent) of consumers want TrueCar to help them find a vehicle and 65 percent buy within a week, Darrow said. “So not only what we are selling is changing,” Darrow aid, “what’s changing is how people want to buy things.”