Plug, an online wholesale auction that facilitates electric vehicle buying and selling, is looking to add more buying dealers to its platform and has hired a former Carmigo, A2Z Sync and ACV executive to lead that charge.

On Thursday, the company announced that Susan O’Rourke is now its vice president of sales and business development.

O’Rourke, who was a 2023 honoree in Cherokee Media Group’s “40 Under 40: Industry” program, was most recently head of sales at digital auto auction Carmigo.

Her background also includes time at A2Z Sync, where she business development and strategic initiatives. O’Rourke was also among the first 20 employees at ACV Auctions, which is where she started her career in the car business.

In the new role as VP of sales and business development at Plug, O’Rourke will lead the growth of the company’s wholesale auction dealer network.

“We’re definitely looking to get more buyers on the platform, particularly dealers that are leaning into the EV movement right now, and also ones that are particularly curious. (Dealers who) have wanted to get into EVs, but they didn’t really know where to start,” O’Rourke said in an interview with Auto Remarketing.

“But times are changing, so we’re trying to really cast a wide net to all the dealers to come and learn more about what we do (and) the EV experience on the Plug platform,” she said.

“We’ve been hearing dealers, even ones in the Deep South, that are starting to buy Teslas and selling them and making a profit. But our main focus right now is definitely to get a lot more buyers on the platform and then we’re going to be working with getting dealer sellers on the platform, as well,” O’Rourke said.

“And then (Plug founder and CEO) Jimmy (Douglas) and our team are also working on getting some OEMs for fleet sales, as well.”

The used EV market is not without its challenges, and Plug is aiming to help in that regard.

For example, dealers have struggled to buy and price EVs right, O’Rourke said.

She says there’s not a lack of consumer demand, citing one example of a Rochester, N.Y., dealer who had 58 EVs on the ground in February and sold 50 of them.

“The demand is there … (but) the pricing is tough for them,” O’Rourke said. “They don’t have the right tools to buy them correctly or value them correctly either and that’s kind of where we come in, as well.”

Douglas added, “One of the big distinctions there is the information required to properly size up an EV’s utility value and its longevity. That information is not always readily available at either the point of retail or wholesale.

“And oftentimes there’s an information asymmetry in a transaction where one party is privy, where the other might not be. And that’s what’s creating this inefficient market, where such a small percentage of dealers are capitalizing on a very large percentage of the overall used EV market share today.”