I couldn’t resist saying this, anecdotal evidence and all that:
I never bought Carvana stock, but I at least considered it. But I did just try to use Carvana.
Listen:
I am Carvana’s ideal customer. I’ve never bought a car in my life, I have no intention nor desire to ever go into a car dealership (the stereotypes intimidate me), but have enough money (thanks it part to this board) to get a…used…car.
I looked up Teslas on Carvana. (What bliss, I thought. Delivered to my door. Push a button. Pre-insected. What could go wrong?!)
The site listed the Tesla’s MPG, (97?!) but not it’s range (?!).
Well, these things happen, I thought, so asked the Carvana robot for the car’s range (Alfred, I think it was called, or perhaps Earnest - “The truth is rarely pure, and never simple”.) Earnest’s answers were about as pleasant - and useful - as the bank’s call options when you call the bank, are in a hurry, and don’t want your &%*&$ balance but have an actual question.
If Carvana is so incompetent that they can’t even list a e-car’s range (but do list its MPG?!), and Earnest can’t answer, and there is no human being to answer, how in the universe can I rely on Carvana’s inspections? Their delivery? Anything? No one in the entire 10 billion dollar company knew that electric cars don’t run on gas? (Or caught this error. Or was pro-active enough to fix it? What’s the CEO doing with his time? Doesn’t he, like, look at his own website? Or someone…?)
Think about that.
They have lost, perhaps, a life-long customer. I will never, as long as I live trust a company to reliably check something so fraught with peril, and hidden from view, as the reliability of a used car - if this same 10 billion dollar company is too incompetent to fix something so self-evident, and public facing, as understanding that…electric cars don’t use gas.
(And, then I thought - wait, Tesla sells their own used cars, so…)
What will happen, in fact, in the real world, is what is already happening in such cities as Paris [see disclaimer at bottom], where companies such as BMW (as I recall) have a kind of u-drive-it service, with a phone app, to rent cars, as-needed - by the hour, or whatever.
This is the future.
The future is NOT Carvana’s twirling glass towers filled with cars…like Webvan 2.0.
Twirling towers - or an app to instantly get a car that is guaranteed to work for as long as use it - which sounds like the recurring-revenue future to you?
Not only will I not buy Carvana stock, nor buy a car for them, I can’t imagine trusting them for the rest of my life. I’m sure it was a tiny difference between Amazon, and whatever was just a little-less-good at the start of their rise. Weren’t there search engines before Google? No one’s going to use a second-rate company, especially when the future is, as most people here seem to think…the recurring revenue / perpetual lease economy…which already exists for cars such as BMW in a few big cities, I’ve been told…
NB I was told about the BMW thing in Paris by someone who lives there, just Googled and it looks like there are several options, including one by “BMW Group and Daimler AG” - not sure which one he was talking about… but Carvana smells like the wrong business at the wrong time…
But, hey, what do I know…except that I’m probably not unique…and am their IDEAL potential customer…(or was.)