Critical Shifts:
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Digital = Dollars: Transitioning to digital contracting (eSignatures, online credit apps) isn't just eco-friendly—it’s a direct boost to the bottom line. Data shows dealers save an average of $50 per deal in paper, toner, shipping, and administrative fees.
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Infrastructure Evolution: Manheim is leading the charge by installing solar-powered charging canopies. As EVs move through wholesale channels more rapidly, expect your local auction to prioritize renewable energy to keep "intake lanes" powered without spiking utility costs.
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The "Circular" EV Market: Cox's EV Battery Solutions recycled over 13,000 battery packs in 2025. For dealers, this signals a maturing secondary market where battery end-of-life management is becoming a standardized professional service rather than a liability.
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Water Conservation as Scale: Manheim Nashville’s new water reuse pilot saves 1.2 million gallons annually. If this scales to all 80+ Manheim locations, it could stabilize reconditioning costs by insulating the wholesale market from local municipal water hikes or drought-related restrictions.
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Shipping & Logistics Efficiency: Beyond the vehicles themselves, there is a massive shift toward circular shipping (reusing pallets and cardboard). Expect future inventory deliveries to move toward "zero-waste" packaging standards.
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Incentivized Digitization: Through programs like "It Pays To Go Paperless," software providers are now tying digital adoption to philanthropic goals (like tree planting). This offers dealers a "social proof" marketing angle to share with environmentally-conscious Gen Z and Millennial buyers.
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This Earth Day, Cox Automotive highlighted five ways sustainability shows up across the vehicle journey, from reusing water at its wholesale automotive operating locations and generating solar power, to recycling electric vehicle (EV) batteries and cutting dealership paper waste.
For Cox Automotive, this isn’t about one day on the calendar. Sustainability is embedded into everyday operations across its family of brands, guided by a commitment to leave the world a better place for future generations.
These year-round efforts are part of something bigger, rooted in Cox Conserves, the enterprise wide sustainability program of parent company Cox Enterprises. Cox Conserves’ ambition is to be good stewards of the planet by driving measurable environmental change across carbon reduction, water conservation, circularity and habitat protection.
Below are a few examples of how Cox Automotive is driving meaningful progress.
Cox Automotive is piloting a modular water reuse system at its Manheim Nashville wholesale operating location. The system captures water from its reconditioning car wash lanes, treats it, and reuses it—reducing the amount of water drawn from the local municipal supply.
The shipping-container-sized unit, built by 4Earth, is designed for a small footprint and includes smart technology that can be run through a digital dashboard with remote monitoring. As Manheim Nashville washes an estimated 125,000 cars per year, the system is projected to save up to 1.2 million gallons of water per year.
Cox Automotive is evaluating the pilot to determine scalability across its other 80+ Manheim locations.
As EV volumes grow and move more rapidly through wholesale channels, the infrastructure supporting them is evolving just as quickly. At another of the company’s wholesale operating locations, Manheim San Francisco, Cox Automotive installed two new solar-powered canopies over its vehicle intake lanes. The canopies provide supplemental renewable power for EV chargers used to charge vehicles as they arrive. Together, the new installations generate about 600,000 kilowatt hours of onsite solar energy each year and reduce the location’s carbon footprint by 134 tons annually.
These canopies build on Manheim San Francisco’s existing solar investments, which include rooftop solar panels and additional solar canopies that also support EV charging. In total, the site now generates more than 1.3 million kilowatt hours of clean electricity each year from onsite solar assets, reducing its carbon footprint by nearly 300 tons annually.
Through its EV Battery Solutions business, Cox Automotive is managing batteries across their full lifecycle. In 2025 alone, the company recycled more than 13,000 EV battery packs, keeping critical materials in circulation and out of landfills. Across Cox Automotive’s EV Battery Solutions operations, where teams handle and process EV batteries, nearly every component of the shipping materials is reused. Cardboard packaging and wooden pallets are recovered and repurposed as batteries are processed and redistributed.
Sustainability also shows up in digital workflows. Throughout April, Dealertrack, a Cox Automotive brand that provides dealership workflow and financing software, is encouraging dealerships to move more of their deal processes online, including credit applications, contracts and eSignatures. User data from Dealertrack’s Digital Contracting Calculator (2022-2026) shows dealers can save an average of $50 in paper, toner, printing, shipping and form charges per deal by going digital.
As part of the “It Pays To Go Paperless” campaign, trees are planted through a partnership with the Arbor Day Foundation, supported by Cox Conserves. The goal is to reduce paper use while contributing to forest restoration.
