If you’re looking to buy or sell a used EV today, what’s the first step you should take?

A startup called Ever wants to be the answer to that question. The company, which bills itself as the first “AI-native, full-stack auto retail business” for electric vehicles, already has thousands of customers buying and selling their EVs on the platform.

Now it’s looking to scale with help from a $31 million Series A funding round led by Eclipse, with Ibex Investors, Lifeline Ventures, and JIMCO — the investment arm of Saudi Arabia’s Jameel family (an early investor in Rivian) — as co-investors.

Over the past decade, companies like Carvana and Carmax have helped pioneer the digital car buying experience. Recently, many startups have tried to improve the car buying experience using AI, ideas like voice agents or smarter scheduling software. Eclipse’s Jiten Behl thinks it’s the wrong approach if you want to truly modernize the car dealership experience, however.

“These bolt-on AI tools are band-aids,” he said in an interview with TechCrunch. He likens it to how many mainstream EVs from mainstream automakers are essentially combustion vehicles repackaged to fit electric drivetrains. That approach comes with big tradeoffs compared to designing a new EV from scratch, which is the approach of companies like Tesla and Rivian.

“Car sales is a perfect candidate for AI disruption, you know? It’s a lot of process, a lot of work, (very) rules-based,” he said.

Lasse-Mathias Nyberg, Ever co-founder and CEO, said in an interview that buying or selling a car often triggers “hundreds or thousands of different actions” that a retailer must perform to complete the transaction. “There are a lot of complexities or frictions on both sides.”

In 2022, he and his team began to reduce or remove complexities. What they settled on after a year of research was a digital-first auto retailer. The core technology is an orchestration layer or “operating system” that can manage all the different workflows behind a transaction, whether it’s processing information submitted by a prospective buyer or seller, or managing vehicle inventory.

“When you do appraisals, or pricing, or titling, it’s very deterministic about what steps need to be taken. And now, there are a lot of single point solution tools being used,” he said. Most companies “use these tools together in a very ineffective way, and you think you’re on a digital journey – but if you can clean it up, and if you can use the power of agent AI, and you can create a unified customer experience and remove all these micro-frictions.”

Nyberg claims that building the company this way has allowed Ever’s sales team to be two to three times more productive than otherwise, and he expects that to increase as the company grows. He said this increased efficiency and productivity will increase their margins, which can be booked as profit or passed on to the customer by offering lower prices.

This new method is often used in the online market and its physical locations. Nyberg said the hybrid model is important because seeing and testing a car in person remains crucial to the shopping experience for many buyers — especially those who may be assessing EVs for the first time.

Early reviews of Ever’s product were mixed. Users of a particular Reddit thread from last year was divided, with some enamored with how Ever was facilitating the purchase of EVs, while others detailed struggles to get in touch with the startup team. Back then it was just down to earth and a lot less stealthy, and so Nyberg chalked that up to a learning experience. He said his team is working hard to make sure its system is flexible enough to accomplish everything the company sets out to do.

A bigger challenge may be the general interest in EVs, which has cooled somewhat in the United States. Nyberg said he hasn’t ruled out buying or selling used combustion vehicles in the future, but wants to stick with EVs in the near term because no retailer is laser-focused on these vehicles.

Behl, who spent eight years on Rivian’s leadership team, admits he is a “hopeless romantic when it comes to EVs,” and said he still believes the industry is moving toward electric propulsion because of the inherent benefits. And he said his “first thought” when he started doing the hard work at Ever was: “I wish Rivian had done it.”

More broadly, Behl said, companies like Carvana still have a single digit market share when it comes to automotive retail. That’s why he sees so much upside in Ever.

“Customers will continue to gravitate towards a better experience when it comes to buying cars, which means it’s a digitally-led customer experience that takes all the hassle out of buying and selling a car,” he said.