Trusted Sale started out in 2018 as a platform to help private parties sell their vehicles easier and more safely. After expanding in various ways since then, the company has now started a program to certify used electric vehicles.

Paul Brobson is founder and CEO of the company, which also included a certified pre-owned program when it started out. Independent dealers and then later franchise dealers eventually began listing vehicles on the platform.

“We built this … CPO program for private-party citizens so these folks could basically go to one of our partners like an AAMCO or Pep Boys location, get a vehicle inspected and then add a warranty on top of that, so that when I’m selling my car to you, you can walk away knowing that you bought a car that’s been properly inspected, you know what the condition of it is, and if something does go wrong, you have protection against costly repairs in the future,” Brobson said.

Independent and franchise dealers learned of the platform and began listing vehicles. They used it to certify inventory that their brand manufacturer program would not cover, allowing a Toyota dealership to certify Hondas and Fords, for example. Or it allows small independent dealers without a manufacturer CPO program behind them to better compete against franchise dealers who had certified pre-owned units on their lots. 

“They saw this as a way to certify inventory in the same way that the branded manufacturer programs were, and those programs have been very successful for a long time because they provide a way for a consumer to experience [that] the next best thing to a new car is a certified pre-owned car,” Brobson said. “It gives them more assurance and peace of mind than just buying a used car as-is, and it allows them to experience the brand.”

“And the natural next step would be for electronic vehicles or EVs,” Brobson said. “So that’s where we’ve evolved the program, and we have now launched our electronic version of this program as of the first of this year.”

The Trusted Sale CPO Electric Program provides a method for dealers to certify used electric vehicles from brands such as Tesla, Ford, Chevrolet, BMW, Audi, Volvo, Nissan, Cadillac, Hyundai, Kia, and Lexus.

Certified vehicles must pass a mechanical and safety inspection and meet minimum standards for battery health. The vehicles are protected by a 12-month, 12,000-mile exclusionary limited warranty. Customers have the option to extend the protection and include battery replacement.

Brobson said dealers are now acquiring EVs more frequently. Customers at Toyota dealers, for example, are trading in vehicles such as Teslas or Nissan Leafs.

Dealers would typically wholesale those vehicles because they did not have the infrastructure, sales knowledge or the reconditioning capability at their store, Brobson said. Those dealers might not have had experienced technicians to recondition those vehicles for resale. And they might not have programs allowing them to offer vehicle service contracts or warranty protection on those vehicles.

EVs have been “this kind of red-headed stepchild for a lot of these dealers, and so we decided that while it’s still early, we believe that it’s time for dealers to have a solution that allows them to certify their electronic vehicles in the same way they can certify any other vehicle in our program,” Brobson said.

How it works

Most production-level electric vehicles are eligible for the program. Brobson said some newer manufacturers such as Rivian, Lucid and Polestar, are not yet rated in the program. 

“None of those are in our ecosystem today, but if it’s an electric vehicle issued by Tesla or any other name-brand mainstream manufacturer, whether it’s Ford, Audi, BMW, or Mercedes, any and all of those normal manufactured production vehicles will be covered under our program, and they’re covered with the same protection that any vehicle certified in our program gets,” Brobson said.

That exclusionary bumper-to-bumper protection covers everything except for items it says are excluded, making it the most comprehensive form of warranty that can be placed on a vehicle, Brobson said.

“It mimics and mirrors the same programs offered by manufacturers and that regard,” Brobson said.

The Trusted Sale program certifies internal combustion and electric vehicles as well as hybrid vehicles of any age up to 175,000 miles.

Brobson said the inspection protocol is slightly different between internal combustion, EV and hybrid vehicles, but all vehicles must pass a comprehensive safety and mechanical inspection. All certified vehicles are protected with the included exclusionary (bumper-to-bumper) limited warranty provided by the dealer.

Battery not included

Brobson explained that the warranty protection does not include the battery because federal regulations require EV batteries to be covered for a minimum of eight years. 

“We’ve offered the consumer the option to upgrade that CPO coverage that we provide to them to include battery replacement if they would like to for an additional charge,” Brobson said.

The certified EV program will soon include a battery health report, showing the battery’s condition and the remaining range. That program is a partnership with Recurrent, a company that provides battery reports for EVs. 

Brobson said Trusted Sale’s certified EV program will eventually include more vehicles and “provide additional benefits to the certified vehicle owners,” such as ongoing battery health reports.

Trusted Sale’s current CPO program provides data such as five-year cost of ownership.

“We provide valuations that show what your car is worth today, and you can track it over time, and kind of like Zillow, you track the value of your real estate, you can track the value of your vehicle. So, we plan to introduce all of these things for the electric component as well to make the experience of being an electric vehicle owner more transparent and more informational so that the goodness just doesn’t end when the vehicle is sold at the dealership. The customer will continue to reap benefit from the program long afterward.”

He continued, “Our program will look to increase and include whatever value we can provide to those consumers who purchased a used electronic vehicle.”