Experian and Recurrent Join Forces
Episode 10
This week, I have two guests and one exciting piece of news! I’m joined again by Kirsten Von Busch, Director of Product Marketing at Experian Automotive and I’m also joined by Scott Case, the co-founder and CEO of Recurrent. Recurrent is an analytics company that is bringing unparalleled insight into EV battery range and adding a new dimension to vehicle history reports.
I sat down briefly with these two during NADA last weekend to get a better understanding of the new partnership between Experian and Recurrent and what it means for consumers and dealers alike!
Episode Highlights
(0:00) – Introduction
(0:37) – Episode beginning
(1:17) – Quick background on Scott Case and Recurrent
(2:09) – Exciting news for Experian and Recurrent
(3:10) – What Recurrent brings to the table for consumers
(4:42) – How AutoCheck and Recurrent’s Battery Report are going to be working together
(5:16) – Episode wrap-up and a little podcast swag : )
Transcript
Elena: Good morning guys. Thank you so much for joining me on this very busy NADA weekend. Right? I don’t even know what day, it is Saturday now I had to check. Okay, thank you. Yeah, Saturday. So very exciting news with Experian and Recurrent. Scott Case CEO of Recurrent and of course the lovely Kristen Von Busch from Experian Automotive is here as well so very excited to talk about the new alliance that you guys announced during NADA. So before we talk about this exciting news listen to episode five for more information on Kirsten because we did a nice Used Car Week episode. So Scott, I want to just have the listeners get to know you a little bit better. Give us just a quick background on what you do at Recurrent.
Scott: Scott Case CEO and Co-founder of Recurrent, my company analyzes used vehicle batteries to help buyers and sellers buy with confidence and understand what they’re getting. And that means answering the question how’s the battery and then what the implications are like how far can you drive with it? How’s that with changing weather conditions and how will that change as your car gets older because EVs unlike gas cars.. like the gas tank doesn’t change size but in EVs it kinda does a little bit and that’s normal, but just something to expect and so we’re helping educate people on that.
Elena: Something that is so needed right now in this kind of very crazy times. Right? You know, everyone is trying to find the Holy Grail of information. So that’s why this alliance, this partnership makes so much sense. So Kirsten, tell us a little bit more about this alliance with Recurrent. What does it mean for dealers? What does it mean for consumers. Give me the info.
Kirsten: Well, Elena, we are so excited to announce this. So as you know, we just announced it at NADA. And from an Experian standpoint, we are of course all about the data all about modeling, and we want to make sure dealers are able to buy and sell pre-owned electric vehicles with confidence. Now, we’ve been supporting that effort with the AutoCheck vehicle history report, but we needed to augment the AutoCheck report to provide the additional depth and detail that Recurrent can offer through the battery health insight. So it was just really an ideal pairing between the two of us.
Elena: It makes so much sense and for people that are maybe not inside the industry, and are not really familiar with even what Recurrent does, Scott, I’m actually going to turn back over to our conversation we had just like briefly on the expo floor when we were talking about when you had the VIN lookup on your website and you had a flood of traffic of people coming to the website so tell me that story really quickly and how actually that connects really well with what you’re doing now with Experian.
Scott: Yeah, so this is like a deep cut from our conversation. But in addition to helping people understand batteries, the other thing that’s unique about EVs is that now a bunch of them are eligible for a $4,000 tax credit. So are starting January 1, that program started and we put up just a pretty simple VIN eligibility check on our website. And all of a sudden we were like listed higher than the IRS website for a little while, because people were like, this is something unique that was out there and it’s still out there. I’m gonna bring it back to Experian and the different unique combination here is like electric vehicles or vehicles as well. And so I think Auto Check really has like everything you know, that you’d want to know to buy used car confidently. And then Recurrent is really focused on what for the 5% of cars that are EVs right now, like what’s specific and bespoke about EVs purchasing, and that’s where we’re really like, by working with Experian we can just go deep, deep deep into the batteries. And and all the other things that are unique about EVs.
Elena: I love it. It’s so exciting. As soon as I heard from Carly from PR, and she was like, there’s this announcement. I’m like, this makes so much sense and my mind was blown. So we know that Auto Check and it is the Recurrent battery report. So is this now going to be available to dealers that are already subscribed to Experian or how to folks like get their hands on this information?
Kirsten: Absolutely. So anyone who has Auto Check today they can absolutely add this on as a layered subscription to their existing Auto Check. And if someone doesn’t currently work with us, then we would welcome the opportunity to offer them both Auto Check as well as Recurrent.
Elena: And also to shameless plug go and see Kirsten at the booth. But this is going to air after NADA. I was gonna say go see her at the Experian booth but always next year. So we are at NADA and I know that everyone gets or gives out useless swag during NADA so I don’t want you guys to leave empty handed right? You traveled all this way to this hotel and it’s super early in the morning and I appreciate you so much. So without further ado, Scott you get a brand new bottle of water and Kirsten you get a free hotel pen. Look how…just just treasure it with your life.
Scott: You give out the best schwag This is amazing. Everybody should come on this show you never know what you’re gonna get.
Elena: You never know it’s a surprise and delight factor. Thank you guys so much for coming out spending time with me. I know you are super busy. I know that you know your schedules are packed so I appreciate you spending a little bit of time with me this morning.