People trip over Amazon boxes to get inside their homes. Online shopping was big business before the pandemic and is now the go-to for many consumers

Cars Are the Last Holdout of the Exploding Online Purchasing Trend—But That's About to Change

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2022-06-22 23:30:07

People trip over Amazon boxes to get inside their homes. Online shopping was big business before the pandemic and is now the go-to for many consumers for most goods with one notable exception: buying cars.

The auto industry is behind the rest of the world when it comes to online purchases, even though buyers consume everything else digitally, TrueCar President and CEO Mike Darrow said during a presentation at the Automotive Press Association in Detroit.

But that will change—and fast. In 2019, a mere 1 percent of auto sales, new and used, were conducted digitally. It grew to 10 percent in 2020, spurred by COVID shutdowns and lockdowns. By 2025, 40 percent of auto purchases in the U.S., about 23 million new and used vehicles, will be conducted completely online, Darrow says, and surveys show 62 percent of people say they would  buy online if they could.

It shouldn't be that hard. The IRS reported that 71 million people filed their U.S. income tax online this year with no help—that's gotta be harder than buying a car online, Darrow says.

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