ATLANTA, April 21, 2026 — This Earth Day, Cox Automotive is highlighting 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 enterprisewide 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.
A New Way to Reuse Water in Wholesale Operations
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.
Powering the Shift to EVs — Literally
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.
What Happens After the EV Sale? Battery Responsibility
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.
Laid end to end, those batteries would stretch roughly 15 miles, illustrating both the growing scale of EV adoption and the need for responsible end-of-life pathways.
Giving Materials a Second Life (Yes, Even the Cardboard)
Not all sustainability efforts are high-tech. 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.
The approach reduces waste and keeps materials in circulation as EV volumes continue to grow.
Fewer Papers, More Trees
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.
About Cox Automotive
Cox Automotive is the world’s largest automotive services and technology provider. Fueled by the largest breadth of first-party data fed by 2.3 billion online interactions a year, Cox Automotive tailors leading solutions for car shoppers, auto manufacturers, dealers, lenders and fleets. The company has 29,000+ employees on five continents and a portfolio of industry-leading brands that include Autotrader®, Kelley Blue Book®, Manheim®, vAuto®, Dealertrack®, NextGear Capital™, CentralDispatch® and Cox Fleet®. Cox Automotive is a subsidiary of Cox Enterprises Inc., a privately owned, Atlanta-based company with $23 billion in annual revenue. Cox Automotive has been included on Glassdoor’s Best Companies in Tech & AI 2026 and Best Place to Work in 2026 lists. Visit coxautoinc.com or connect via @CoxAutomotive on X, CoxAutoInc on Facebook or Cox-Automotive-Inc on LinkedIn.
Media Contact:
Patricia Calloway
678.245.1835
patricia.calloway@coxautoinc.com
