Sweden-based Carla, a digital auto retailer focused on EVs, has reached profitability.
Carla had revenue of SEK1.09 billion ($116 million) in 2024 but made a loss of SEK111 million. July was the first month in which Carla had a positive EBIT, and co-founder and CEO Patrik Illerstig hopes it will remain positive for the rest of the year.
“We sold 3,505 cars last year, with a market share of 0.57% (cars sold to private individuals/businesses, all fuel types under ten years of age). For YTD (January–July), we have sold 3,214 cars with a market share — according to the same definition as above — of 0.84%,” according to Illerstig.
Illerstig and co-founder Niklas Jungegård met with a lot of skepticism when they launched the business in 2020. Competitors used to burst into a “loud guffaw” when Carla was mentioned, according to tech magazine BreakIt. But Carla appears to have silenced the skeptics.
“Our unique selling points as a digital dealer are transparency, simplicity — experts in electric cars,” said Illerstig.
You cannot test drive a car you buy from Carla, but you do have the right to return it within 14 days before the transaction is finalized.
Carla delivers the car with its own transport fleet, which consists exclusively of EVs.
Illerstig doesn’t think there is another pure online/EV dealer in Europe, and he said that the company plans to expand within the wider Nordic region and perhaps even beyond that.
Carla did not start as a dealer: “Five years ago, we were trying to build a comparison site for electric cars. In Europe there are plenty: Leasingmarkt, MeinAuto, Carwow. Sites that let customers compare things. And five years ago we saw that didn’t exist in Sweden. And we made the classic mistake of not asking ourselves why it didn’t exist when it seemed so obvious that it should,” he said.
“After a painful first year, we realized that the Swedish car market is so consolidated. No one dares, wants or will compare anything on the dealer side. Four years ago, we decided to move from saying we’ll build an online marketplace without inventory, without operations, without all that to become a real car dealer ourselves — with everything that entails: logistics, repairs, purchasing and a balance sheet.”
Carla was able to survive because of patient investors: “The investor who really got it going was Luminar Ventures. They’re still with us. And then there were a bunch of angels as well, and almost all are still with us,” Illerstig added.
“I started Carla together with a guy named Niklas Jungegård. And of course, we own less and less now. But we’re still major owners.”
Carla has no facility where customers can come and test drive or where it can check trade-ins.
“We have a built-in process, but buyers can also tell us about the condition of their car over the phone. Then, when we deliver the new car, the customers check the condition of the new car and we check the condition of the trade-in so it matches. We usually do that well, and otherwise it’s usually quite easy to agree if we’ve missed something or if the customers have missed something,” according to Illerstig.
Carla has a large facility outside Stockholm: “There we have 50–55 people working with everything from inspection, photography, painting. It is a workshop — it is basically a regular workshop with car technicians. We have what we call a production flow where all cars go through the same process and then appear on the site.”
“Out there we work with both the cars we buy and sell ourselves. And then about 30–40% of all the cars we handle on behalf of someone else. It could be a leasing company, a bank or a car manufacturer. Most of those cars we sell on our website, but there are also processes where we just prepare cars — for example, for a car manufacturer.”
The business has two parts: “We call one retail, that’s about 60–70%, and then partner services is the other for bulk sales on assignment and preparation,” Illerstig explained.
In December last year, Carla raised SEK38 million in funding. Shareholders with a stake of more than 10% in the company are Illerstig himself, media company Bonnier, Black Ice Capital, Verdane and Luminar Ventures.
