Online used car marketplace Heycar recently set out its stall in the UK, following its launch in Germany in 2017. Backed by Volkswagen Financial Services and Daimler, Heycar launched with an inventory of more than 100,000 listed vehicles from over 50 automotive brands at 1,400 dealerships. Chris Lemmon speaks to chief executive Mat Moakes to find out more.
Motor Finance: Can you tell us a bit about how Heycar works?
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Mat Moakes: Heycar is about quality used cars. What we are doing for customers is giving them a really simple, easy way to find something that would work for them.
We are looking to provide customers with as much information that we can to make their experience easier, so for every car that is eligible, we are providing a HP and a PCP option. This gives people peace of mind in looking at how to pay for the car, rather than having a slightly awkward conversation in a dealership when you may not quite know what you are talking about.
MF: Is HP and PCP available for every car on the platform?
MM: Depending on the captive finance hubs we are working with, last time we looked 95% of cars offered HP offer, while about 75% have a PCP offer. It depends on the captive’s rules around which cars are eligible.
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By GlobalDataFor most people, that is giving a good service. If you go to other places on the web, there is a lot of information about what HP and PCP are, but not on an individual car basis.
MF: What are the benefits for a car buyer going through Heycar rather than shopping around in person?
MM: We still see big value in the dealer experience. What Heycar does specifically is help people find and drill down that painful research period of working out what sort of car they are looking for, and pinpointing where it is.
Whether they know what they are looking for or need inspiration, we are about creating that simple, easy-to-use experience. We also have some unique stock and typically go with franchise-branded dealerships to begin with.
Through the dealers, we also offer quality checks on cars, offering a warranty for vehicles that are less than eight years old and with less than 100,000 miles on the clock.
MF: Over the last few months, we have seen a number of online car sale platforms launch. What distinguishes Heycar from the others?
MM: If you look at Heycar, it stands out in terms of quality. We are not listing C2C consumer cars on the platform – that is not part of the offering. We are only looking for the best cars with the best online experience for customers, so we will not have all the stock in the UK on the site.
We are about offering quality stock and a really good experience, which includes the finance and payment option. We are already quite different from the competition.
It is great that the market is getting plenty of investment, because customers have been underserved for a long time. Greater investment means the market can make it really clear and transparent for customers looking to purchase a vehicle online.
MF: What is the selection process for dealers joining the platform? And how receptive have they been?
MM: They have been very receptive. Heycar is backed by two of the world’s biggest OEMs in VW and Daimler, so clearly, we have already got a lot of very good dealer relationships across the world specifically for Heycar UK.
They have all been saying the same thing to OEMs about wanting to be able to sell their used cars in a different way. That is what we are providing for them: a different style of engagement and a fresh approach to being data-led based on conversions.
I think that fresh approach has gone down really well with the dealers, and we have had universally positive feedback from all them so far. I think it is really early days for us, but we are taking that relationship with the dealer very seriously. We want to offer value and be able to demonstrate that we can match customers to cars in a better way.
We are playing in a marketplace where there are lots of dealers. We are picking ones that are happy to meet quality standards, where they agree to a quality check, warranty options, and having max APR for the cars that come through the site.
MF: Do you think this is the beginning of a change in how dealers will operate moving forward?
MM: I think the role of the dealer will change over time. Mobility and automotive is going through such a massive change at the moment. With the advent of digital becoming second to none, you will start to see models emerging which reduce the influence that dealers have over their end-time sales process.
Our job is to help make it easier for customers and dealers in taking away a lot of that matching and information serving, which helps to make the personal experience of looking at something physical better.
This is the second-largest purchase in monetary terms for most consumers and it is a very significant purchase. People are uncomfortable buying sofas online end-to-end: imagine how they are going to feel buying a £15,000 used car.
MF: What more could the industry be doing to make the used car market work better for both consumers and dealers?
MM: By making things more transparent and clear to people, we will create a market that works better. For customers, it has been an opaque and nervy experience and a bit of a lottery, and partially that is to do with standards.
There is always the fear of the unknown as well. It is a purchase that happens once every three or four years, not a purchase that is happening every week.
I think what the digital players can do, which is why it is good that there are platforms emerging, is help take away a lot of the issues around transparency up front and the same is true for dealers.
In a digital world, there has to be a better way of matching the stock that they have got, because it depends on things like part-exchanges and lots of other things at the dealer level.
MF: How have things been for Heycar since its launch in the UK, and what are your plans for the next 12 months and beyond?
MM: We have had exponential traffic growth since we started our marketing campaign and since launching on 14 August. We are growing significantly week on week, and making a really big impact. The amount of dealers and customers that keep talking to us about having seen the Heycar campaign – it is great.
The next step is going to be extending that supply base and growing the number of dealers we have on the platform, but also continuing to make the customer proposition even stronger.
Heycar also has its roots in a highly successful market launch in Germany a couple of years ago in 2017. We have a strong track record as an organisation of growing a business that works with customers and dealers.
I believe the physical experience will continue to remain very important for consumers, particularly in the automotive sector. High street retailers still exist, and they serve a purpose for customers that want to go and engage with products in person.
We think there is a nice halfway house between where the digital meets the physical, and that is where Heycar fits in, because we believe that dealers still have a lot of value to add in this market.
