Recurrent, a Seattle-based startup, aims to provide EV batteries with what an odometer does for gas-powered cars: showing the battery’s wear and tear and its future value.
The used car market is more than twice the size of the new car market, and electric vehicles are quickly becoming a part of it. This presents a problem when evaluating these cars that run entirely on batteries.
Consumers have fundamentally different issues with used electric vehicles, especially when it comes to battery life. The battery is an important component of an electric vehicle because the cost of replacing it can exceed the value of the used vehicle itself.
“We help used electric car buyers understand the range they’re getting for their vehicle and how that range changes in different weather conditions and as the car ages,” Recurrent CEO Scott Case told CNBC. “Electric The battery in your car doesn’t wear out like an iPhone battery does. Your electric car is not an iPhone on wheels.”
Recurrent uses no hardware, just software that runs on thousands of electric vehicles every day. It can analyze a car over and over again, normalizing factors such as weather, driving and charging patterns, in order to compare two similar vehicles and show which one has a stronger battery and therefore a higher value.
“It’s similar to how everyone in the used car ecosystem needs to know the odometer on a used internal combustion engine car,” Case said. “Everyone needs to have a common currency to be able to value these vehicles when they come on the market.”
Electric vehicle owners can connect to Recurrent through methods such as OnStar or Tesla accounts. Dealers can also use Recurrent to compare with buyers, which could increase the sales price of cars with stronger batteries.
As the market for used electric vehicles grows, the technology, which so far has no rival in the United States, is attractive to investors.
“When we look at electric vehicles, we’re thinking about this huge shift, which is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity where you see the entire global automotive market shift from gas vehicles to electric vehicles, and most of Recurrent’s investors, Wireframe Ventures co-founder CEO and managing director Paul Straub told CNBC that this will happen over the next decade.
In addition to Wireframe Ventures, Recurrent is backed by ArcTern Ventures, Powerhouse Ventures and EnerTech Capital. It has raised $19.25 million so far.
Recurrent has about 20,000 drivers on its platform since its launch last June, and Case said the company’s revenue tripled last year.
He estimates that the used electric car industry will grow tenfold over the next five years because no matter how much adoption of new electric cars grows, the used car market will grow faster simply because of how many of them are already on the road.
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