In this transcribed episode of the Used Car Dealer Podcast, Zach talks with Kevin Roberts, Director of Economic & Market Intelligence at CarGurus, to decode today’s whiplash market—from March’s tariff shock to the spring surge in used-car supply. Kevin explains how CarGurus marries first-party shopper data with macro-economics, why dealers shifted from clearing aged units to stocking up, and what rising interest rates and affordability crunches mean for pricing strategy. The conversation digs into EV and hybrid demand curves, the pitfalls and upside of used-EV retailing, and the “COVID playbook” tactics dealers can dust off to stay nimble when policy and consumer sentiment swing week-to-week. Whether you’re wrestling with inventory turn, scouting low-price cars for budget-strapped buyers, or debating how tariffs will reshape new-versus-used dynamics, Kevin’s data-driven insights deliver a roadmap for 2025 and beyond.
Kevin’s data is based on the following CarGurus report - https://dealers.cargurus.com/drc/cargurus-intelligence-report-april-2025
Zach: Zach here, and today we're excited to welcome Kevin Roberts, the director of economic and market intelligence at Cargrews. Kevin brings deep expertise in the auto market analytics and plays a crucial role in helping dealers navigate the complexities of today's automotive landscape. It is a role at Carrews. So Kevin, thanks for joining me on the podcast today.
Kevin: Hey Zach, thanks for having me.
Zach: So Kevin, just to start out, can you give a brief overview of your background, your role at car gurus, and what does a director of the economic and market intelligence do?
Kevin: Yeah, so, kind of lengthy title there. So, education background, I was in math and economics, so not surprisingly, economics and math have kind kind of to my kind of focus, and then I'm from the Detroit area, so I like to always kind of say that I'm the stereotypical auto guy from Detroit, so a lot of family and auto, so it's it's kind of like a perfect kind of kismet. Merging of, you know, what I kind of liked from an academic point of view of like economics and mathematics with the auto industry, and so that's what I've been doing for a long time now, spent a lot of years with kind of consultancy firms. So working on the kind of consulting side of things, so strategy, forecasting, production, you know, all the way kind of up and down the automotive value chain, and then joined Cargrus about 4 years ago, and so in my current role, it's really just kind of, I view it in a couple different ways, really kind of taking all the great kind of first party data that we have with cars, and marrying that with all that kind of third party data that's out there trends that we're seeing. And really trying to be able to educate both consumers, dealers, media, you know, a lot of different kind of verticals, but what's going on within the auto industry is kind of what my day job, kind of sits around.
Zach: And Kevin, you've been analyzing auto market trends for a while. How have you seen the industry change over your career in terms of data-driven decision making?
Kevin: Yeah, so I, I like to think about it is, you know, when I came into it, you know, right around with the Financial crisis was starting kind of a disruptive time period, but we really just kind of went back to the way we were always doing things, right? I, I think if there was a time period where you maybe have looked at things like, hey, inventory got a little tighter, maybe we could take some different paths. I say mostly like the, you know, teens decade was pretty much pretty consistent of what we've seen previously. how I'd really say is COVID. , the chip shortage and everything out of that, I think really was kind of the turning point where you started to see dealers, automakers, kind of everyone in there started to be like, hey, there actually is an opportunity to try some different things out there. , and so be it with data, whether it's being with different inventory strategies, you're really starting to see a lot more kind of change out there. and I think, you know, later on, a lot of, you know, technological change that's kind of coming into the auto industry as well, you know, a decade ago was still almost exclusively in terms of combustion engine vehicles, very low, I mean there was a lot of attacking cars, but it wasn't really high tech, right? But now, I mean, Basically you're driving a computer on wheels effectively, to a large degree. So I think all that kind of coming in together is also helping to take the industry and really kind of shift it to another level as well.
Zach: And can you share any insights or examples of how your research and intelligence at Carters directly informs dealer strategies or helps dealers navigate the market?
Kevin: Yeah, so what what we like to do is, Put out monthly reports so be those kind of just kind of monthly updates where we see the industry going, or, we also tend to put out quarterly reports, which is kind of a deeper dive into topics just kind of standard metrics. So I think that's kind of the easiest way to. Look at it as we put out those type of reports, help dealers really understand what's going on within the marketplace, and then also allows, you know, all the different kind of verticals within car brewries and then kind of take that, data analysis and kind of work it in themselves, to also help out kind of further, dealers out. And I mean, let's be frank, I always say it's a really kind of dynamic market. 2025 I thought might be getting back to a more stable market and once again we're with another really, really dynamic market situation right now after a couple of really just kind of interesting years for the industry.
Zach: Definitely agree with that, and I wanted to pivot into talking about the used car marketplace. So inventory, it's at a 3 year high. The latest Carguru's April 2025 intelligence report shows that used vehicle inventory has bounced back to a three-year high. In your opinion, what are some of the factors that are driving this rebound in supply?
Kevin: Yeah, so you're gonna hear this a lot as we kind of go through and talk about the report. March and April were really unique time period for the industry, both the new and new side, and that's because March 26th is when we had the announcement of the auto tariffs, then that's when the industry, I think, for everything we can see in our data through Q1, I think the industry and consumers, dealers, OEMs, I think everyone just kind of assumed tariffs, yeah. And then March 26th hit and it was like, oh, this is gonna be happening, and you can really see it in, you know, our consumer data, you can see that with inventory data and the like where things to really start to shift at that point. So, I think a couple different factors really led to use inventory levels really rising in in April 1 is that we saw dealers looking to get ahead of potential tariff pricing. If you're thinking that used prices are likely to go higher, in the year because of tariffs, then if you acquire. Inventory sooner, you're gonna get it at a lower price. so I think we saw increased acquisition of inventory there. also heard we were seeing dealers who, if you had aged inventory in your lot, historically, you know, once something gets to whatever your day threshold is, you want to move it off that lot faster, right? Because it reduced the cost. We saw strategies totally shift where people were like, hey, I don't know if I'll be able to get a replacement vehicle if I move this vehicle quickly because it's been sitting on my lock for too long. Maybe I don't want to decrease the pricing on it. Maybe I'm just gonna hold on to that vehicle. and so we saw that go on and then frankly, we also saw a surge in new car demand. And with new card demand you're likely seeing a decent amount of trade-ins as well. So I think all those factors kind of combined to kind of supercharge used inventory at that point. And what really is kind of fun, challenging to parse out is how much of a tariff and just how much is this normal spring selling season seasonality going into. So it's kind of like. If you're talking about a super cycle, you've had tariffs and then you stack on the fact that we're just already in the middle of what looked like it was going to be a pretty strong March sales wise in the used vehicle market just due to spring selling season and tax season, and then tariffs really just kind of added on to that.
Zach: Yeah, that was kind of gonna be my next question. So we've seen used car prices rise. It is it because people are rushing ahead of those potential tariffs on new cars? Are there like other forces you talked about like seasonality that could be influencing pricing and what's that mean for the consumer or the buyers in the market?
Kevin: Yeah, so we saw a, it's much easier to say what happened on the new side. So the new side we saw really increased because everyone went I bought all the cheap cars. It really see people were just like going out and buying all those cheap cars and when you reduce the amount of cheaper vehicles out there, puts upward pressure on average prices and used it was really we saw. Inventory levels basically increased across the board, although we didn't see it increase as much like in the kind of mid range, in the like 10 to 20% or 10 to $20,000 range. we didn't see as much increase there. We saw a lot of more kind of increase on the lower price side of things and then the higher price side of things. So both those factors kind of helped to increase overall average prices, and then, yeah, I mean it's, it's, it's tough to say what's the whole leading factor, It's we've got the normal seasonality going on and we have the tariffs going on. So the used market saw a bump, it didn't see as much of a bump as what we saw in the new market, new, obviously directly impacted by tariffs used kind of indirectly, so we didn't see as big. Of a bump there, but we did see a bump. and so yeah, it's gonna be interesting to see how it moves. We're, we're seeing the market start to normalize, as now we're, you know, 2/3 of the way done with May market kind of normalizing on that front.
Zach: And then just for clarification for the audience, when we talk about a low price vehicle, I know in the past it could have been like under $10,000 vehicle, under $15,000 like what, what do you think that range is for like the low price?
Kevin: Yeah, so I'm the, I would say in the used vehicle market we still we still see a much wider array of price points than we do on the new side. I knew, you know, finding a vehicle under $20,000 is almost impossible. There are still out there. under $30,000 is even a challenge at this point, right? And tariffs are going to make that even more of a challenge. We continue to see more price points on the use side. , although what you will find is if you compare the price of, you know, a 1015 to $20,000 vehicle now, you compare to what it was in, you know, 2020, you'll still find that price point, it's just gonna have a lot more miles on it and it's probably years older than what it is. So the price points are still out there. it's just the, the age and mileage of those vehicles has gone up quite substantially.
Zach: That makes sense. And I wanted to talk on a little bit about days on market and sales velocity. So this report indicates that the average time a used car stays on the lot is trending down, suggesting that cars are selling faster than before. What's contributing to this quicker turnover and is strong demand the main driver or dealers replenishing inventory more efficiently? Curious your thoughts.
Kevin: Yeah, so that that's days on market is so it's one of those, and even if you look at Day tour, or metrics I always like to say are heavily either numerator or denominator or both impacted, and so what you're seeing is days on market going down a lot of the time what happens there is that. The younger vehicles on the lot are moving faster and because they just have less time on the lot that helps to reduce kind of days in turn. And conversely with days on market, which is looking at month end inventory, so if we look at just kind of an average of all the vehicles left at month end, how many days have they been on the lot, because we've been seeing Higher sales rates means we've been seeing more fresh inventory come onto the lot, and that's been helping to bring down, the average days on market there. And so that's one of those metrics where, yes, there's more turnover happening. Well, a lot of times what happens there is that starts to take over the turnover of some of those aged inventory and then when you have that younger inventory come in, it starts to reduce kind of the average, waiting, for the, that metric.
Zach: So, how would you describe the balance between supply and demand right now, and despite the recent inventory growth, are we still in a seller's market for used cars or is power shifting back towards the buyer is supply catches up?
Kevin: I think it honestly depends on what week we're talking about it. It is, it's, it's shifted so much, right, cause it was like the tariffs were announced, things were crazy, sellers were highly active in the market, you know, that first kind of 10 weeks of April were crazy, unlike the year over year sales demand. Things have moderated down since then. it's, it's a tough, it's a tough question to answer from the point of view of, if I put my econ hat on, right, I'm looking at consumer sentiment data, and it doesn't look good, right? Like I, I think for the April report they said it was the worst 3 month stretch for consumer expectations since 1990. , you know, really kind of potential downward trend on consumer sentiment, the economy, you know, Q1 GDP was negative. There's some reasons why that was, but you know, inflation looks to be coming down. So a lot of different macro factors, I would say potentially consumers being buyers not being into it, so maybe it's a buyer market, but then, you know, we've been seeing sales demand remain quite strong, so maybe it is selling market. It's really. It depends how you look at it, and it really kind of depends on the week, and it could be shifting in the coming months here, particularly if we saw kind of a large kind of pull ahead in sales, sales demand and now we've got inventory levels rising and, you know, it's, it's, it, it's, I would say it's one of those such a rapidly evolving, situation, it's difficult to put a single kind of peg on it, in the current market.
Zach: So shifting gears, I wanted to talk a little bit about EV market trends and one kind of funny personal story, I recently, I traded in my Porsche. I was driving an ice vehicle for a very long time, got a EV Mercedes, and what surprised me and when I talked to the dealership, a lot of People are just rolling negative equity into these EV leases and you have like the 7500, EV like federal credit, you have other like state level, you know, incentives, and I'm curious, you know, from your vantage point, like what trends are you seeing in consumer interest for used EVs lately? And what are shoppers considering when they're buying secondhand EVs? curious your thoughts.
Kevin: Yeah, so it's a growing market and so that's one of the things I think it gets the new EP market and the UB market continue to grow. Now if you look at kind of the year over year percentages, they're gonna continue to decrease because we're coming from such a low base that as the base starts to grow, it's. Stars to increase there. I mean, but when we look at used EVs, I, I believe it's still in the single like 1% 2% range of total used listings. I mean, it's a really small base we're coming from, but it is growing. so I think there's consumer interest is clearly out there. We can see that in some of the fastest moving vehicles on the used side of the market are used DBs. , particularly some of the used Tesla models that have come down quite substantially in price are out there. and then in our Q1 report we flagged that, you know, we, I was mentioning before that the average age and average mileage of used vehicles continues to head up. , when you look at if there is a segment of like really affordable low mileage vehicles out there, it's use EVs, the con is that obviously, EVs have been on such a price volatility. I mean, you talk about a roller coaster, things went up so high in 2022, they've been coming down, from the dealer side of things. I think most dealers are kind of burned on EVs. Right. I don't want to touch them at the current market. And you know, anyone who bought a new or used EV in 2022, 2023 are likely gonna be, you know, you're mentioning underwater. Chance you're significantly underwater on those vehicles because the prices have come down so much. So it's a balance there. you also mentioned the tax credits, that's another thing we're keeping an eye on right now. Obviously legislation is still working its way through Congress right now, but in the current draft bill that would get rid of the used EV used EV and new EV tax credits out there, so another kind of potential, disruption, although that would, as it's currently written, I believe, make it through the end of this calendar year. , so we'll be like an immediate, removal like we were initially thinking. So yeah, it's, it's, it's continuing to be a dynamic kind of evolving market, low base, still lots of room for growth, particularly as we see more kind of use these, enter the marketplace.
Zach: And what about Tesla versus non-T Tesla dynamics, you know, in fact, like Tesla has been dominating kind of the EV conversation for years now, especially with some of the incentives, there are more manufacturers offering EV vehicles. Like, what's your perspective on like the non- Tesla kind of dynamics of the market?
Kevin: Yeah, so it's one of those things where I think people see that, hey, the number of Use Tesla's on the marketplace continues to grow. It's yes it does. If you actually compare it to the rest of the market, the percentages aren't really shifting that much. I mean, Tesla was the dominant new EV for a number of years and not surprisingly, it's a huge percentage of the current used EV marketplace. But as we continue to see all these additional makes and models come in on the new side, those eventually turn into used vehicles, right? And so we're starting to see a lot more kind of Options hit into the marketplace, and a lot of those are coming in at really attractive price points. I mean, The the old Chevy Bolts and the Bolt EUVs are really attractive price points out there, and that's always one I like to flag because You know, historically when the vehicle's ending current models ending production right and the bolts away for a year or two, historically those vehicles tend to linger on lots, Those flew off lots. I mean, all those kind of pre previous gen bolts and bolt EVs move rapidly off new new lots. So again, there's there's a lot of interest in EVs, for consumers. I think a lot of people find out they don't have the range anxiety as much as they want, and especially if you can have charging at home, and it's maybe a second vehicle, it's a great kind of option for consumers out there. So we're continuing to see. You know, interested to use EV market for Tesla and then a growing share of, you know, Ford, Chevys, and, you know, Nissan's really kind of get out into the marketplace and take more share as well.
Zach: Yeah, and I love, it's kind of funny. Next, I was gonna ask you about some of the challenges in retailing EVs I know just personally like one downfall for me in my condo complex is it takes 12 hours to charge my car. So if you're in a hurry or something like that, it it may have an impact, but from a dealer's perspective, what are the biggest challenges in retailing used EVs today?
Kevin: I, I mean, the biggest thing I whenever I talk to dealers and I mentioned, you know, using these potential kind of opportunity, I think so many dealers got burned with the price volatility for the past couple of years there, I think a lot of people are just like, no, I I I don't want to look at these, but I, I mean, I, I think we've bought it out on prices, so I do think there's potential some real kind of opportunities there. , you know, hey, it's, it's, it's a growing market and it's there's gonna be a lot of additional things to kind of learn on there, you know, it's down to things like Yes, you're gonna have less kind of maintenance on the front end of those vehicles, but tires, I mean, I can't tell you the number of times you hear people forget to get their tires rotated, and the EVs are just heavier and they're rolling through tires faster, so are there things you can do around that. , batteries, you know, the battery life is good for a set period of time, right? And a lot of that depends on charging. So it's not only dealers need to get smart about figuring out what's the battery health of the vehicles. It's a lot different than just looking at mileage, right, on an internal combustion engine vehicle. It's how was it charged, you have to get smart on that. Also there's opportunities there, and then I also like to think of, you know, you mentioned condos. You know, find out, hey, where are you going to be parking this? Are you gonna be in in a house? if so, like, you know, are there ways you can kind of like, work with a local electrician and find like additional ways cause I mean like I know a lot of friends who been getting EVs, right? And they gotta get those, you know, chargers installed in their house and a lot of people, you're looking at 220 lines. I don't think most general consumers should be 220 lines and stuff. And then it's also gets down to, I know, I have another friend who just got 2 EVs. Well, hey, you probably only have enough power running to your garage to handle one EV charger. So realistically, if you're gonna try to put 2 in, you're gonna need a whole additional line kind of added in as well. So I think that. Yeah, I, I, I just think there's a lot of kind of additional opportunities if you kind of take a step back and kind of, you know, beyond just kind of the initial sale, are there other kind of ways you can kind of help out on there as well. And then anecdote I've also heard that EVs can also be good for Kind of recall maintenance work as well.
Zach: True, very true. And kind of my next segue, I want to talk about tariffs, the impact policy changes. So of course we saw in April potential new auto tariffs kind of triggered a sharp spike in early April sales, but now that that initial rush has passed, what lasting impacts do you see from tariff concerns both on used and new car markets?
Kevin: Yeah, so I mentioned the market is starting to normalize now, so that's that kind of immediate spike demand we saw was, I think people being like, I mean, I know I had a, I don't know if you had it. I had friends text me, hey, should I go buy a car right now? Yeah. And I'm like, well, you know, it depends like were you already in the market? And it's like, yeah, I was. I'm like, well, I'm like, depending on what you were looking at, it might be a good, you know, behoove you to go take a look at that right now. So, we saw that out there. What's really kind of unknown unknown right now, is what's gonna happen to new vehicle pricing as time goes on. So now we've seen More vehicles arriving post tariff. We really haven't seen prices start to rise yet, mainly because automakers are really kind of absorbing a lot of the costs in April, so we really haven't felt the new vehicle side of the market yet with the prices, expectations, those prices are gonna start to go up, As the tariffs start to get fully absorbed in, and as that price goes up, what we don't know is what's gonna happen between consumers who look to non or less tariff impacted vehicles on the new side, or do you go to the new side of the market? I think that's kind of the biggest kind of supply shift demand there, and then the fact that, we continue to see so many revisions, both on additional executive orders which kind of reframe some of the impacts that we initially saw on March 26th, and then we see these additional, parts of trade deals or rumors of additional trade deals that could, you know, kind of dynamically adjust things as well. So it's, it's still a kind of a Wait and see approach, and we'll know more as time goes on, especially once we kind of get the trade deals kind of set up, then we'll have a much more kind of firm analysis of what what's gonna happen.
Zach: So in terms of like dealer strategy and guidance, like more broadly, how should dealers navigate this kind of volatility and uncertainty and what advice is car brews kind of giving its dealer partners in the face of tariffs and policy changes that could impact pricing and inventory?
Kevin: Yeah, so I mean, one of my general thoughts is kind of dust off some of the old COVID playbook, so anything we are kind of thinking of a couple years ago, you start to rethinking about that again, you know. Maybe you expect some consumers maybe expand the range of what you're looking for for a vehicle for dealers, maybe you look further afield for consumers, right? you might be able to find the right consumer for a vehicle. , out there, you know, stay nimble, you're gonna have to monitor your inventory, you, you're gonna have, particularly on the new side, it's gonna be an interesting mix of you might have tariff and non-tariff impacted vehicles on lots, and then, on the use side, you know, hey, maybe you need to be be aware of what's happening on new vehicle pricing. And you know, maybe you, you know, even if you're completely independent and you don't have anything relating to new, but you're specializing in a particular kind of, you know, make or model, be aware of what's going on, on the new side of that, I think it's gonna be important, market day supply obviously could be highly important, keeping up to date what shoppers are looking for, you know, it's and, and honestly communicate communicate to consumers, They're hearing a lot out there. I think it's gonna be a really kind of a trusted advisor situation, to help consumers as they kind of work through a really unique, again, I keep saying really unique, but we've had what, 234 really unique environments for the past 5 years, and this is just kind of an additional one out there for dealers.
Zach: So in terms of like future outlook and trends to watch in 2025, what are some key trends that dealers should be paying attention to? Are there any emerging developments or potential market shifts on their horizon that you think could significantly impact the auto market?
Kevin: Yeah, so we've kind of touched lightly on a couple of them, so I'll just kind of call them out, you know, affordability vehicles continued, new vehicles continue to get ever more expensive. Tariffs are just gonna put forward upward pressure on that. That's likely gonna put forward upward pressure on the used market. And then let's be honest, interest rates are still really, really high right now and potentially could be going higher or staying staying where they are for longer. So affordability I think is really kind of key trend. And so dealers who can help consumers hit different price points and help them through that process, I think it's gonna be key tariffs obviously is a major kind of unknown factor at this point. We'll see how that plays out. what's gonna happen with tax credits. So we talked about the new new and used EV tax credits. Conversely, there is. , an additional part of the legislation where you might be able to write off the interest on a loan for a US built vehicle. so that is, you know, as we talk about the affordability thing, go away, there could be some real kind of interesting opportunities there, and then one thing we haven't talked about yet is hybrids. , if we saw one trend in 2024, you know, we thought it was gonna be the year of EVs. It actually turned out to be the year of hybrids, and so we see tons of consumer interest for hybrids, and so, you know, if maybe you don't want to get into the EV side of the marketplace, maybe getting a better selection of hybrids, could be a real kind of win out there if you're looking for more kind of affordable and fuel efficient vehicles out there.
Zach: And then lastly, I wanted to ask you about some market predictions. We've talked about kind of some trends to watch in 2025, but what is your outlook for the used car market and the EV segment as we move towards 2025 and beyond? Any curveballs we could see in the market?
Kevin: I mean we that we've already got some really good curveballs right now that make it exceedingly difficult, The forecast. I mean, going into 2025, I thought we'd see some moderate growth on the new vehicle side and continued recovery growth, right, cause we're still not back to pre-COVID. Volumes on the use side. it's much more challenging to know what those are gonna look like now with tariffs, and we don't really know kind of the uncertainty about what that's gonna shake out. So the Chris ball is a little cloudier than what I'd like it to be, and EVs, I think it, it's still gonna be a growing share of market. Just due to the fact that if you're in 1 to 2% range right now and new side of the markets in 78, 9% range depending on individual months, that's going to move into the used market over time. Obviously the average age of the fleet continues to get older and older, so we do still have a supermajority of internal combustion engine vehicles out there, but hybrids and hybrids and EVs can continue to grow and share in the used market, so that is going to continue to grow. , and you know, if, if they continue to be, an affordable option out there, you could see a lot more kind of consumer interest on that front.
Zach: And for the dealers listening, where can they find the card gurus intel reports like the one we've been discussing for April?
Kevin: Yeah, so it's on our Carders dealer Resource Center. so if you just search Carre's Dealer Resource Center on your favorite, search search tool, pull your brain up on the page, and then we normally have the most recent one just kind of front and center, on page for dealers to keep an eye out for it.
Zach: Awesome, and Kevin, I've learned a lot, really enjoyed having you on the podcast today.
Kevin: Hey, thanks for having me. I really appreciate it.
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