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This startup's free service could help you make $1,400 more when you sell your used EV: 'You're actually getting paid for having taken good care of your battery'

Just like Carfax, Kelley Blue Book, and J.D. Power ratings can help dealers value a gas-powered car, Recurrent helps do the same for EVs.

Recurrent

Photo Credit: Recurrent

When it comes to buying or selling an electric vehicle, the process you're used to with a gas vehicle goes out the window. Without regular oil changes or maintenance records, how do you know whether a used EV will be a good buy? 

That's where Recurrent comes in, a free service to help make it easier — and more lucrative — to sell an EV. 

EV owners register their vehicles for free on Recurrent to nerd out on information about their car — and when it comes time to sell, that data provides transparency and confidence to potential buyers that can increase the value of the vehicle by $1,400 on average, according to an independent study by ADESA, the second largest North American vehicle wholesaler. 

They also make it easy for you to sell your EV by soliciting offers from their network of dozens of local and national dealerships to find you the best price. 

The Cool Down spoke to Recurrent's CEO, Scott Case, about how the company is creating the Carfax for EVs with a win-win-win solution that benefits EV owners, car dealers, and buyers looking to score a good quality used EV.

🚘 How to be a good EV owner

"We realized five years ago when we started the company that no one is good at being an electric vehicle owner," Case told The Cool Down. 

"We grew up learning how to buy and sell and take care of combustion engine cars from our parents and grandparents," he explained. Things like changing the oil every six months, keeping maintenance records, and checking Carfax for accidents if you're buying a used car are second nature when you have a gas-powered car.

"But basically none of this is relevant for EV owners." 

How do you know whether the EV has a good battery, or how long it typically takes to charge?

That's where Recurrent comes in. 


Recurrent is a free service that maximizes the resale value of your EV by documenting battery health and getting you top-dollar offers from a national network of dealerships. Get started in two minutes by signing up and connecting your license plate or VIN — and feel better knowing that you're putting $1,400 more back in your pocket.

The Cool Down may receive a commission on signups made through links on this page, but we only promote partners we vet and believe in. For more cool tips like this one, check out our solutions marketplace here.

💲 Free and easy: Here's how it works

Once you register your car with Recurrent for free using your license plate or VIN, the vehicle identification number, Recurrent reads data from your EV battery a few times a day for daily Vehicle Insights on range and vehicle performance, along with tips on how to maintain your EV and its battery.

"It's not creepy data," Case explains. "We don't collect your location information or driving behavior. It's just battery data."

Once a month, you get a report on your car that gives you a sense of your battery's health, how the range compares to when it was new, and what seasonal impacts might be affecting your vehicle.

With over 30,000 drivers and 60-plus makes and models in 50 states on the platform, they use machine learning to aggregate that data to compare your car to thousands of others like it from battery and make, model, year perspectives. 

"It's not a competition — it's more like seeing, how's your battery doing compared to what it should be? And if there are big problems, we can alert you and say, something's up with your battery."

The monthly report is the equivalent to your oil change visit with the mechanic. 

"The great thing about EVs is they don't require a lot of service," Case said.

"The downside is, you don't get a lot of feedback on, is this normal? Is everything OK? So our Recurrent Monthly Report is like a wellness check" on your EV.

💸 How EV data means money in your pocket

Just like Carfax, Kelley Blue Book, and J.D. Power ratings can each help dealers value a gas-powered car, Recurrent helps do the same for EVs. 

"It turns out that the EV seller can get thousands of dollars more when they go to sell their car because they're providing that confidence to the next buyer … that comes with knowing the car you're getting isn't a lemon, and it's in good shape," Case explained.

"When we put in Recurrent data on EV listings that were going to wholesale, they were, on average, selling for $1,400 more and at a higher sell-through rate, which also lines up on the retail side of things." 

"What we're trying to do is provide transparent information to the seller and the buyer of each car, and that builds confidence and makes the used EV market function better," he said. 

If you're thinking about buying an EV, which of these factors is most likely to convince you that it's a smart decision?

Seeing friends and family buy EVs 👯

Seeing first responders use EVs 🚒

Seeing businesses use EVs 🚕

Seeing celebrities drive EVs 🤩

Click your choice to see results and speak your mind.

If you want help selling your EV, Recurrent can also handle that — helping you get the best price without what Case calls the "absolute feeding frenzy" that can come when you try to sell a car online. You know the experience: "you immediately get texts from 25 dealers and scammers, and it's a nightmare."

They'll work behind the scenes to run a 24-hour "mini auction," pitching your EV to hundreds of reputable dealerships in their network to bid on your car. Once the offers come in, the Recurrent team sorts them and presents the best offer to you and hands it off with no spammy follow-up from multiple dealers. 

"We did all of this work, found you the best number, and we just make the introduction to the dealer, and you take it from there," Case said. "Aside from reducing the grossness of the transaction on the sell side, it means that you're actually getting paid for having taken good care of your battery, and that's, like, a pretty attractive thing."

Similarly, buyers looking for a used EV can browse used EVs for free on Recurrent's site, or on Edmunds, Cars.com, or lots of other dealership sites — but as Case explains it, sellers and buyers should both want to gravitate toward Recurrent for that additional peace of mind about the battery's health. 

💡 Lightbulb moment

Case has worked in the clean tech industry for the past 15 years, and when his previous company was acquired, he asked himself, "What's the best way for me to chip away at the emissions problem?" 

In 2019 he had a lightbulb moment realizing that there were "batteries everywhere on the roads — what are their opportunities in the EV space to accelerate the transition to reduce emissions from transportation?" 

Transportation emissions make up over 20% of overall US carbon emissions, according to the EPA, so keeping more of those EV batteries at work was a problem he wanted to solve.

Part of the solution for Recurrent was making it easier and more affordable to get a used EV. 

"The used car market is more than twice the size of the new car market," he said. "Every car can be sold new once, but gets sold used typically two more times, and so in a lot of ways, it's a more important market than the new EV market."


Recurrent is a free service that maximizes the resale value of your EV by documenting battery health and getting you top-dollar offers from a national network of dealerships. Get started in two minutes by signing up and connecting your license plate or VIN — and feel better knowing that you're putting $1,400 more back in your pocket.

The Cool Down may receive a commission on signups made through links on this page, but we only promote partners we vet and believe in. For more cool tips like this one, check out our solutions marketplace here.

🚙 Which EV he's driving

"I'm very, very, very excited — we leased a 2025 ID.Buzz," he told us. "It's so fun to drive … and it draws crowds in every parking lot," he said, from "the battery nerds" to "the aging hippies that come over and they want to talk about the time in the 1960s where they got baked and drove halfway across the country for some Grateful Dead show.

"It's really fun."

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