How connected vehicle capability can reshape used car market

Data harnessed from connected vehicles could dramatically increase the information available to the used car trade and change the way fleets and remarketing organisations engage with used cars. 

According to e-commerce specialist Epyx, manufacturers – many of which have been cagey about allowing third parties access to data – are now considering sharing it for commercial gain. Dwindling production has hit OEMs’ bottom lines and some are allegedly looking to commercialise data and investing accordingly. 

Matt Waller, director of connected car at Epyx’s parent company, Fleetcor, told Autocar that there are currently “circa 1.2 million OEM telematics-capable vehicles” on Epyx’s 1Link e-commerce platform, which specialises in vehicle procurement, maintenance, hire, remarketing and relicensing. There are more than four million vehicles registered to it in total. 

Waller said OEMs were sharing data from around 600,000 of those vehicles, and that was “rapidly, rapidly increasing. I would expect that to at least double in the next two years”.

The fleet industry’s keenness on data-driven services is also said to have caused some brands to reconsider their approach to remain competitive. 

“[There is] significant demand [from fleets] for data from manufacturers, especially in cases where aftermarket telematics options come with significant hurdles in terms of both price and complexity,” Epyx told Autocar.

Connected vehicles on 1Link

Epyx is currently trialling a 'connected vehicle solution' with several fleets, with plans for a finished product by the end of the year. The company reckons there is potential to employ the increasing amount of data across multiple areas of fleet management, including remarketing. 

Waller believes it could effectively provide a live service history, with intricate detail about condition, which would inform the leasing company, the fleet, and the remarketer ahead of the defleet date. 

“At the minute, there’s quite a lengthy manual process when it comes to giving back a car… [but] actively tackling residual values through a three-year period is a key part of discussions we’re having with the leasing industry. It’s been the focus of at least one of the pilots we have run – understanding what is happening in-life and how it will affect the residual value of the vehicle. And then, knowing that, going with eyes open through the remarketing process so that we don’t need seven cycles to shift the vehicle.”

The limits to the detail a vehicle could provide are allegedly set only by what its telematics system monitors. It could feed back the likes of mileage, service records, whether any warning lights are on, tyre pressures and, if they are low, how long they have been like that – all of which could theoretically date from the day it left the production line, with information gathered at no more than 30-second intervals. Fundamentally, the data set would issue a much clearer picture about the state of the vehicle well before a delivery driver was dispatched to collect it.