Auto Remarketing and Used Car Week are showcasing the dealers who are changing what it means to be an auto retailer through a new program called “Game Changers in Auto Retail,” presented by Conversica.

The inaugural honorees will be recognized on site next at UCW during an awards program and several will participate in a panel discussion during the event. They will also be spotlighted in the December issue of Auto Remarketing.

Next up in our Game Changers honoree Q&As is Alex Lawrence, co-founder and CEO of EV Auto.

What does it mean to be a car dealer in 2026 and how has that definition changed since you’ve been in the industry?

I’m new here. I sold my first electric car out of my driveway in 2020 and I’ve never really sold a gas car. I can’t tell you what the business felt like in 2005. I can tell you what it is like to build a multi-state dealership group in six years, mostly through social media, while the ground moves under us every quarter.

The old definition of a dealer was a franchise, a lot, a territory, and a customer who didn’t know what the car was worth. That is gone. The EV customer walks in with the auction data, the battery report, and three competing listings on their phone.

The edge now is trust. Did you tell me the truth about this car? Can you fix it when it breaks? Can I buy it from my couch at 11 pm? Do I have to do negotiating jiu-jitsu to get an out-the-door price, or do you just show it to me like the FTC says you should? And don’t get me started on EVs and politics. Who knew I was signing up for that when I opened a car dealership?

The product changed too. A gas car in 2026 is pretty much the same machine it was in 2016. An EV changes every year. If you want to lead the country in this category, it takes 100% specialization.

Your company addresses the entire lifecycle of an electric vehicle. What makes that all-encompassing, holistic approach important, particularly for EVs?

It is a scary bet when you say it out loud. We put the whole company on one asset class that is controversial, has depreciated faster than anything in automotive history, and that half the country has an opinion about.

But if you want to own a category, you have to be there for the whole relationship. Trading, buying, selling, charging, repairing, protecting, and upgrading. So, The EV Group runs EV Auto for retail, EV Acquisitions to buy direct from the public, EV Service for repair, EV SuperCharging for Tesla charging sites, and EV Warranties for the battery.

This matters more for EVs because the infrastructure is not built yet. A gas car has a hundred years of shops, parts, and gas stations behind it. A used EV buyer asks the obvious questions. Who fixes it? Who covers the battery? Where do I charge? We want the answer to every one of those to be us.

What are some unique challenges and opportunities for a used EV retailer that a traditional franchise or independent dealer might not face?

Depreciation was the big one. When Tesla cut new prices 20% in 2023, every used Tesla in America repriced overnight. No gas dealer has lived through the OEM torching their inventory in a press release. We learned to turn fast and hold nothing.
Battery health is second. A gas buyer can hear a bad engine. A battery is a black box. So we test every car, publish what we find, and built a warranty to stand behind it. A traditional dealer never carries that cost. It is also why customers trust us.

Policy swings are third. The federal used credit came and went. Charging standards flipped from CCS to NACS in about eighteen months. A franchise dealer gets a memo from the factory. We read the tea leaves.

The opportunities are bigger than the problems though. Nobody owns this category yet. Most franchise stores wholesale used EVs as fast as they can. That leaves millions of off-lease and traded EVs with no natural home. EV Auto is that home.

And the customer is online, so we built the company on organic social instead of listing sites. Hundreds of millions of views and buyers who fly in from out of state because they watched us on TikTok or YouTube. You cannot buy that as a dealer. You have to show people how you actually do business, behind the scenes, warts and all, and most dealers will not do it. Then you have to keep doing it over hundreds of videos and years of showing up.

What are some necessary next steps for EV adoption to increase?

We are still on the far-left side of the adoption curve. The next buyer is not a Tesla fan. It is a family in a suburb driving 35 miles a day that wants the cheapest reliable car they can get.

What wins them is a cheap used EV with a clear answer on the battery and charging. A three-year-old EV at $25,000 with a documented healthy battery, a real warranty, and a home charger is the most important product in the industry right now. The savings come from plugging in every night. Fuel at home runs about a dollar and a quarter for the gas-gallon equivalent. If you can charge where you sleep, the math is overwhelming. Renters and apartment dwellers get left out, and codes, landlords, and utilities need to fix that.

Two things are already doing the work for us. One is word of mouth. There is an army of owners who love these cars and will not shut up about them. That sells more EVs than any ad. The other is self-driving. FSD is hitting the mainstream, and once your neighbor rides in a car that drove itself, the gas car in the driveway looks old.

What does not matter as much as people think? Solid-state batteries and 500-mile range. The cars we sell today already cover 99% of what people drive. Dominant adoption is only a matter of time.