Even before its purchase of ADESA’s U.S. auctions in 2022, Carvana was already a major player in the wholesale auto industry as both one of the largest buyers and largest sellers in the space.

So, the company had a firm grasp on the ins and outs of conducting a wholesale vehicle transaction.

“We wanted to take all of the experiences that we’ve had in the wholesale marketplace and address all of the pain points that we have felt over the last decade in transacting in that (wholesale) marketplace,” said Nikki Behrens, who is senior director of strategy and analytics – marketplaces at Carvana, in an interview on Monday.

“We’ve wanted to build the wholesale market that we would want to conduct business in and solve all of those pain points that we felt along the way,” she said.

Enter ADESA Clear, a new proprietary online auction product the company developed and started testing in late 2023.

The company describes Clear as blending “ADESA’s extensive wholesale auto expertise and Carvana’s deep technology and digital merchandising capabilities” and plans to expand the platform this year with greater selection of vehicles and features, while bringing it into new markets.

The geographic expansion starts with the addition of Las Vegas next week, Behrens said.

ADESA Clear currently provides inventory offered through online sales from ADESA and Carvana locations in the Washington D.C.; Atlanta; Birmingham, Ala.; Charlotte, N.C.; Jacksonville, Fla.; New Jersey; Orlando, Fla.; Raleigh, N.C.; Sarasota, Fla.; Tampa; Phoenix and Los Angeles markets.

It offers timed wholesale auction sales that the company says are “optimized for efficiency and transparency,” where the starting bid is the floor, so every vehicle that has a bid sells. Vehicle condition reports include OBD-II scans and engine audio, with vehicle listings including visual merchandising from Carvana.

Fees are also clearly displayed, the company said.

Among the “convenient interfaces and value-added tools” on Clear are Web and app-based access that allow single-click bidding and 24-7 accessibility; artificial intelligence-based vehicle recommendations; and machine-learning-based vehicle valuations.

“After a strong 2024, ADESA remains focused on what has always made us successful — helping our wholesale customers buy and sell cars as efficiently and profitably as possible,” ADESA executive vice president of operations Mike Caggiano said in a news release.

“As the market evolves, digital services like ADESA Clear, our new online auction product, play an increasingly important role alongside our traditional in-lane infrastructure. With Clear and other new offerings, we are proud to combine ADESA and Carvana capabilities to drive even better outcomes for our customers.”

Behrens said ADESA Clear leans on three key pillars: ease of use, transparency and efficiency, for both buyers and sellers.

“When we started Carvana 12 years ago, that was a time where the idea of buying a car online, sight unseen, a used car online, sight unseen, that was a very foreign concept to most buyers,” Behrens said.

“From the very start of building Carvana, transparency was one of the most like core tenants we had as a company. We knew that if we wanted to build trust with buyers to get them to buy a car from us sight unseen online, we had to become a very transparent marketplace, which on Carvana, that meant things like point out every imperfection with the car, make sure that we’re taking really good imagery of the car, so the buyer has the utmost confidence that they know what they’re getting,” she said.

“Well, we wanted to bring all of those same principles to the wholesale marketplace, where dealers want all of that same transparency and confidence in what they’re buying.”

That means things like being upfront about buy fees before the buyer bids on the car, for example. And emphasizing “clear condition reports,” providing engine audio recordings on every car listed on Clear, along with OBD-II scans.

“You can see very plainly everything that we know to be wrong with that car,” Behrens said. “And so we’re trying to lean very heavily into what we’ve learned on the retail side of the business and bring that same transparency to our wholesale buyers.”

In addition to offering vehicle choice and expanding available inventory, the company has also leaned in ADESA Clear having a similar ease-of-use as Carvana’s retail platform. The aim is to make the wholesale buying experience for dealers just as intuitive as the Carvana retail experience is for consumers.

“It looks and feels a lot like Carvana.com,” Behrens said of the Clear platform. “It looks like a retail experience that’s obviously tailored to the wholesale buyer.”