10 minutes with... Motorway's COO James Wilson

In the latest of Automotive Management's (AM) '10 minutes with...' feature series Aimée Turner sat down with James Wilson, Motorway chief operating officer, to discuss how the business has performed and what is in store in 2025.

2024 was a busy year for online platform Motorway which launched its end-to-end transportation solution through the used car marketplace.

Designed to boost the post-sale experience for dealers through making the process easier, faster, and more consistent, it features Motorway Collect, an app which enables more accurate and thorough vehicle appraisals on collection which allows drivers to compare the vehicle to its original profile.

Motorway Collect allows drivers to highlight any additional damage, upload photos directly to the app, and even conduct a test drive. The purchasing dealer is then able to review the vehicle’s full appraisal in the Motorway Pro app and choose to continue the negotiation processs, if needed. 

What are your predictions for the used car market in 2025?

James Wilson There's some broad themes - there's obviously a lot been talked about on electric vehicles (EV), and my sense from talking to dealers is that while there was still a little bit of hesitation across the community 18 months ago, in the last 12 months, there's been an acknowledgement that they, at a minimum, need to be dipping their toes into purchasing and selling EVs whether they're a small, independent or a large franchise dealership.

As part of that, the emergence of the Chinese manufacturers cannot be ignored. I used to work at Amazon and 10 years ago, we were working with Chinese companies that wanted to sell all kinds of products in the UK, and we were having very similar discussions about what's the impact was likely to be. Guess what? People did and they bought a lot of their products. I can see that parallel now with the car industry. So that's going to be really interesting.

It’s made even more interesting by the fact that the government hasn't applied any tariffs yet - we've got tariffs in the EU, we've got tariffs in the US, none in the UK.

So those are two big themes that probably are not surprising. The other one that's kind of an early one, is, how can we start to apply AI? This is at a much earlier stage than with EVs but I think we're going to start in 2025 to see several more advanced dealerships using AI. Some are already supporting their customer service, sales and internal administration in an effort to be more effective and reduce costs.

Any trends emerging in the used car environment?

We've returned to a more stable environment, particularly compared to where it was this time last year when obviously we saw prices reducing very significantly. I think it's going to see more consistency.

We’ll see continued growth of business models like ours because what we've seen over the last few years is private individuals are comfortable selling their vehicle through platforms like Motorway. Dealers are also comfortable using the platform. We now have 7,500 dealers, almost two thirds of the UK dealer community, using the platform.

What are the external factors that will affect the marketplace?

It will obviously depend a little on what happens to the broader economy. While some indicators are more positive, certainly, than they were last year, it's still difficult out there but hopefully we start to see some more positivity in the broader macro economy, which will mean more people looking to sell cars.

What are Motorway’s plans within the next 12 months?

We continue to innovate, both for sellers and for dealers. in fact, we've got a new product coming out at the end of January, launching dealer financing. We've partnered with NextGear Capital for that, which will enable dealers, at a click of a button, to finance the payment of the vehicle. We're very excited about that. It's our first foray into dealer financing. We know that's important for dealers.

We’re also continuing to look at other opportunities touching on other areas, particularly around post sales. So once dealers have gone through the process of winning a vehicle through our daily auction, we will be helping them in those steps afterwards to make it as simple and efficient as possible.

One of the things we launched last year was Pay, and we’ve been very pleased with how that's been adopted. We have thousands of dealers using it. We've had 2 billion transactions through Pay safely, securely and fast, which is important for dealers. We estimated it has saved about 13 minutes per car, because we set up that payment and we verify everything. The dealer just has to press a button.

If you’re buying 200 cars, which lots of dealers do, that's almost a week of time saving, and means they can focus on buying and selling cars on the forecourt.

You count two-thirds of the dealer community as customers – what do you put that success down to?

The feedback we hear is that dealers really like the quality of our private stock, which traditionally has been harder to get hold of, certainly at scale. With our platform, dealers can buy from 1,500 cars every day. The quality and consistency of the listings is really important as we have very high standards that we apply to every single car.

A consistent format is really important if you're buying hundreds of cars. It’s also down to the simplicity of the process. We collect all seller documentation, bank account details, set up payment through our platform. We also offer a transport service through our platform. It's that end to end experience within our platform that differentiates us, and that's why dealers have continued to buy through us and continue to grow with us as well.

How do you maintain high levels of stock?

Marketing plays an important role in driving demand. We’ve been around for seven years, and that's a relatively short amount of time so building our brand is essentially about explaining to private individuals why Motorway is a good place to sell your car because you get a better price and it's easy to do.

I'm really pleased that we can see the brand awareness of Motorway improving. That means we're more efficient, so we can spend less money to get those customers, which is important for our profitability.

There are lots of other people advertising, lots of other propositions, and we need to make sure we've got a very clear message about why we are an effective way to get a great price and sell easily.

What have you learned from dealing with the motor retail community?

Attention to detail is really important and understanding the complexities around selling and buying a car. On the surface, it sounds very straightforward, but there are multiple steps, and within each of those steps there are multiple things to get right in order to build trust

We’ve spent time building technology, processes and teams to verify documentation at the point of collection and the final inspection of the vehicle. We’ve built an app that enables dealers to see really easily if the vehicle is as described. We’ve also put teams in place to support them if anything goes wrong at that point. That attention to detail and building the processes, the people, the technology across each of those steps is my main learning. It's hard, but if you get it right, it's incredible.

What measures is Motorway taking to ensure accurate and transparent descriptions?

I understand dealers’ frustration when this happens and we've changed processes, technology and a whole bunch of things to solve this. First is that we educate sellers. There is going to be a physical inspection at the doorstep when the car is picked up by the dealer or by one of our transport companies.

It is in their interest to disclose all damage when going through the profiling process as a private individual. We prompt them for additional damage information. We ask them to submit the whole service history and get as much as we possibly can.

Another aspect is that sellers need to give details about any mechanical damage and we've also added in an instrument cluster with the engine turned on - which was requested directly by dealers.

We've also rolled out Motorway Collect, which is this app that enables a dealer to see any additional damage that may have been spotted by the driver. We’ve had very positive feedback on that and it takes out the emotion at the doorstep. Because the facts are there, the photos are there, we can then support a dialogue between the seller and dealer to agree a price adjustment.

We've also rolled out the Motorway Protect insurance product which dealers can take out to ensure themselves against any undisclosed mechanical faults once the vehicle is back at the dealership. We also have teams on both the seller and the dealer side that support the aftersales process if anything is undisclosed.

How long has that verification process been in operation?

We launched it last March although we've been running checks on things like service history for a very long time. Now we're continuing to refine and use technology to review documentation and present it in easy-to-digest way - that happened again in response to feedback from dealers.

What about buyers who back out of the sale?

We try to minimise that. I have a team who are dedicated to following up with sellers to try and explain the benefits of using our service and why they've got a great price from that dealer. We’re continuing to refine that by sending more information to the seller once they've received their final bid which demonstrates to them that that great offer is largely because of the number of dealers who have seen the vehicle.

So, by using both technology as well as operational teams, we’re making good progress on that and we've had some positive feedback from dealers that that aspect has improved significantly.

Do you go out to dealers and conduct surveys to address their issues?

We run surveys quite frequently. We just ran one in August where we'll ask for feedback about our service and how we can improve it. We also have account management teams who will go out and spend time with dealers to understand how we can improve.

That all gets fed into our product development process where we prioritise on the basis of what will have the biggest impact. For example, a couple of months ago, we relaunched the vehicle detail page where a dealer will go to review the car. We changed the format to make it much easier for them to scroll through vehicle details. Again, that was in direct response to feedback.

What can a dealership do if they're unhappy?

If a vehicle is found to have undisclosed damage, the dealer can renegotiate the price. Very often a dealer will involve us and we will explain to the seller that some additional damage was identified at the point of collection which means they need to adjust to a fair and reasonable price.

Our role is important here because we can be the honest broker. We have no vested interest. We want the sale to go through, but equally, there has to be a fair price adjustment for the seller as well.

We’re the only marketplace that offers this kind of end-to-end service where a dealer can find the cars, pay for the cars, transport the cars all through our platform. That’s important, because not only does it give them access to amazing stock but we’re also helping them make that process as simple as possible.

That’s what differentiates us and will continue to differentiate us. We will continue to invest in listening to our dealers, listening to feedback, taking that on board and improving the service to make it as simple and as easy for dealers to use because at the end of the day, we can help dealers grow profitably.