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Transportation is freedom.

Mike Darrow, President and CEO of TrueCar, recognizes that automotive can often live in the space between supply and demand, where a dealership is looking to purchase cars in order to meet the needs of customers. And TrueCar has a lot of experience in that position. This conversation jumps around a bit, from the chip shortage to serving dealers to serving consumers to tracking the shopping journey to building community. The threads that tie it together are that transportation is freedom, and the car business cares about people.

What we talk about in this episode:
0:00 Intro with Michael Cirillo, Paul J Daly and Kyle Mountsier.

6:11 Mike Darrow has been in the industry for 40 years, and so he’s seen a lot, and knows that retail automotive is up for whatever challenge might be thrown at it.

“I've certainly seen a lot of these cycles, you know, come through the industry, and they tend to be a bit of a roller coaster. You know, I've seen high interest rates and low interest rates and high inventory levels and low inventory levels and big incentives and no incentives. And it's just, you know, the industry is amazingly responsive. And that's the thing I like about dealers is, they're such entrepreneurial people that they just adjust to what's going on in the marketplace.”

10:24 TrueCar conducts a lot of consumer surveys, and they’ve found that 65% of their respondents would be willing to do the majority or all of their car shopping experience online.

15:29 About 50% of TrueCar shoppers want to trade in their current vehicle when purchasing, so TrueCar has worked to integrate that into the deal-building step of the sales process.

18:57 Mike is looking outside of the automotive industry for inspiration. Companies like Expedia, Amazon and Grubhub have changed the way consumers shop, and Mike thinks those principles can apply in the automotive industry.

23:23 The car business cares about people, and TrueCar does this specifically with veterans. Mike lays out some of the ways that they support veterans find their transportation freedom.

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