GM challenges Carvana with CarBravo online used car marketplace

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Logo of General Motors atop the company headquarters
The new GM logo is seen on the facade of the General Motors headquarters in Detroit, Michigan, U.S., March 16, 2021. REUTERS/Rebecca Cook

DETROIT, Jan 11 (Reuters) - General Motors Co (GM.N) said it will launch an online used vehicle market called CarBravo that will allow the automaker and its dealers to challenge Carvana Co (CVNA.N), CarMax Inc (KMX.N) and others profiting from selling secondhand vehicles.

GM's CarBravo site will aggregate vehicles owned by Chevrolet, Buick and GMC dealers, as well as cars and trucks that GM Financial, the automaker's consumer finance arm, controls after taking them back from rental car agencies or vehicle leases. GM officials said the company's dealers have about 400,000 used vehicles in stock.

GM said CarBravo will launch to consumers this spring.

About 40 million used vehicles are sold annually in the United States, more than twice the number of new cars and trucks. Auto manufacturers are largely removed from the profits from those sales, as well as information about customers and the opportunity to sell recurring revenue services such as satellite radio subscriptions.

The price of used cars has skyrocketed during the pandemic due to lack of new inventory in the wake of supply-chain constraints.

Online used-car marketplace Carvana, with a market value of $34 billion, filled the e-commerce space left open by automakers and most traditional dealers, offering consumers a way to shop for a wide range of used vehicles from multiple brands, and get their purchase delivered at home. Now, GM is joining auto retail chains such as AutoNation (AN.N) in setting up online used vehicle marketplaces to counter Carvana, whose shares have fallen nearly 50% from their 52-week high.

Steve Carlisle, head of GM's North American operations, said on Tuesday that CarBravo could outsell Carvana because of the supply of vehicles that GM and its dealers control.

"We think we stack up pretty well against anyone else out there," Carlisle said.

Carvana in a statement on Tuesday did not address GM's move directly, but underscored that it "pioneered online car buying" and has bought and sold over 1 million vehicles.

CarMax Chief Marketing Officer Jim Lyski said in a statement, "While we are still learning about the newly announced service from GM, what they have set out to do is difficult."

Reporting by Joe White in Detroit Editing by Jonathan Oatis and Matthew Lewis

Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

Thomson Reuters

Joe White is a global automotive correspondent for Reuters, based in Detroit. Joe covers a wide range of auto and transport industry subjects, writes The Auto File, a three-times weekly newsletter about the global auto industry. Joe joined Reuters in January 2015 as the transportation editor leading coverage of planes, trains and automobiles, and later became global automotive editor. Previously, he served as the global automotive editor of the Wall Street Journal, where he oversaw coverage of the auto industry and ran the Detroit bureau. Joe is co-author (with Paul Ingrassia) of Comeback: The Fall and Rise of the American Automobile Industry, and he and Paul shared the Pulitzer Prize for beat reporting in 1993.

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