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>. Profit per vehicle fell 25 percent too, to $3,144,

Three thousand dollars?!? Just to run an ebay-like website?

Their profit per car should have been $50 and they should have been shifting millions of cars a month.

I spent 10 years at car dealerships. The hardest part technically of the dealer business is finding enough cars. I honestly don't believe they were making $3,144 a vehicle after costs. I think that's some error in reporting. National average is around $2000 on used cars, and that's at brick and mortar dealers that manage to get more out of customers in my opinion.

But either way, IMO the biggest reason these large sellers are having trouble is because they end up having to overpay to acquire so many cars. Carvana lost $800M in 2018 for example. IMO this happened because they overpaid for their cars so they had something to sell.

Paperwork. It's way more hands on than one would think. For instance, just think of the logistics of transferring a vehicle registration from one random place to another. There are no APIs, etc...

But as a tech startup I'd expect them to solve all that. Automatically generate and fax the necessary forms to the right places. Sign with a robotic hand controlled by the users mouse if needed. Etc.

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