How Carvana Will Sell 3M Cars Per Year, Used EV Cost Curve, Gemini 3.1

Episode #1274: Today we unpack Carvana’s push toward 3 million annual sales and what ADESA means for scale, a new study showing used EVs winning on long-term ownership math in a firm wholesale market, and Google’s Gemini 3.1 Pro raising the stakes in the accelerating AI arms race.

Carvana is doubling down on its bold goal of selling 3 million retail units annually by 2030–2035 — and ADESA is the engine under the hood. After a record 2025, the company says the runway is real.

• Carvana sold 596,641 vehicles in 2025, up 43%, with revenue jumping 49% to $20.3B. Net income hit a record $1.9B, and Q4 adjusted EBITDA reached $511M.
• CEO Ernie Garcia outlined a four-part plan: increase staffing, integrate retail production lines into more ADESA sites, build new lines, and eventually develop greenfield inspection centers.
• The company plans six to eight new ADESA integrations in 2026, with full buildouts costing $30–35M per site and adding 40,000 units of annual capacity each.

We’ve got something a little tactical from this morning’s Automotive State of the Union email: A new University of Michigan study says three-year-old EVs now deliver the lowest seven-year total cost of ownership in the U.S. And in today’s firm Q1 wholesale market, that early depreciation story matters even more.

• • Researchers reviewed 260,000 used listings across 17 cities, modeling price, depreciation, financing, insurance, maintenance, energy, and resale. In most cases, used BEVs came out cheapest to own.
  • The key? Front-loaded depreciation. EVs drop harder in years one through three, lowering second-owner acquisition cost. After that, curves normalize — with battery warranty remaining as a major variable.
  • With more off-lease EV volume coming, the opportunity is simple: buy where depreciation already did the heavy lifting and let the second buyer win on the math.

Google just dropped Gemini 3.1 Pro, and early benchmarks suggest it may be one of the most powerful large language models yet. As the AI arms race heats up, the leap in “agentic” performance is turning heads across tech.

• Gemini 3.1 Pro is currently in preview, with general release coming soon. Observers say it’s a significant jump from Gemini 3, which was already considered highly capable last November.
• On independent benchmarks — including Humanity’s Last Exam — Google says the new model significantly outperformed its predecessor.

Today’s show is brought to you by ESi-Q. ESi-Q measures employee satisfaction and provides actionable insight into what’s driving employee engagement and tur

Join Paul J Daly and Kyle Mountsier every morning for the Automotive State of the Union podcast as they connect the dots across car dealerships, retail trends, emerging tech like AI, and cultural shifts—bringing clarity, speed, and people-first insight to automotive leaders navigating a rapidly changing industry.

Get the Daily Push Back email at https://www.asotu.com/

JOIN the conversation on LinkedIn at: https://www.linkedin.com/company/asotu/