Amazon Keeps Expanding a New Niche: Selling Cars

If you're comfortable tossing paper towels and protein bars into your Amazon cart, the company is betting you might add a $55,000 minivan—or a Corvette—next. As the Wall Street Journal reports, Amazon has quietly widened its Amazon Autos program, which debuted in late 2024 with Hyundai, to list new vehicles from Kia, Mazda, Subaru, Chevrolet, and Jeep in more than 130 US cities. Shoppers browse local inventory from participating dealerships, line up financing, and handle much of the paperwork online. Then they head to the dealership to pick up their vehicle. The pitch is they're able to spend less time in the showroom getting the hard sell.

The story rounds up some early hitches, from people showing up with botched paperwork to cars being sold on-site before Amazon buyers arrived. "I think it will take off, but it will take time," says Alex Ruiz, general sales manager at South Bay Hyundai in Torrance, Calif. Still, Amazon has signed up hundreds of dealers—they pay a fee to be listed—and expects to see a second payoff in lucrative auto advertising. For now, however, the $1 trillion-plus market is "one of the largest remaining retail categories still heavily reliant on in-person transactions," per CBT News.