Imagine dropping in a coin and watching your newly purchased vehicle be retrieved and brought down to the ground floor. For people in Austin, Texas, it’s a reality as Carvana, the online marketplace for buying used cars, has opened another multi-story vending machine for automobiles.
This is the Phoenix-based company’s third vending machine location. Carvana launched its first one in late 2015 in Nashville, and its second location in Houston opened last December.
According to Fortune, calling them vending machines isn’t quite accurate. They are really five-story glass buildings with three delivery bays that can store up to 20 vehicles, loaded in advance of a customer’s pickup. Carvana customers can also have their cars delivered to their doors, with locations throughout the U.S. that enable free, next-day delivery to residents in nearly two dozen markets, including Austin, Atlanta, Dallas, Pittsburgh and Washington, D.C.
The location in Austin was opened due to high demand, and the company said it will subsidize $200 in airfare and even arrange transportation for customers who live at least 100 miles outside the city and want to pick up their cars at the vending machines.
These machines serve “as a metaphor for Carvana’s business principles: easy and efficient, with the customer in complete control,” said CEO and Founder Ernie Garcia.
All of Carvana’s vehicles — whether they are delivered to the customer or picked up at a vending machine — undergo a 150-point inspection and come with a seven-day test drive and a 100-day or 4,189-mile bumper-to-bumper warranty. Carvana has a “no questions asked” return policy if a customer is dissatisfied before the seven-day test drive is over.
Carvana raised $160 million in new funding from unnamed investors in Aug. 2016. Last month, Ally Financial agreed to provide $600 million in financing to support Carvana’s retail operations over the next year.
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