Editor's note: The report has been corrected to accurately reflect flat fees charged by Roadster. Carvana's revenue has also been corrected.
SAN FRANCISCO -- With the rise of e-commerce, the Internet became a great place to shop for cars, but not a good place to buy them, despite the high hopes of a wave of startups that crashed on the rocks of the dot-com bust of late 2000.
Fast forward by 15 years, and Silicon Valley has come back to the dream of e-commerce for cars with a vengeance. According to CrunchBase, a website that tracks startup funding, four online marketplaces for used cars -- Beepi, Carvana, Shift and Vroom -- have raised $530 million since 2013, refining their technology to mount what could be the largest challenge to brick-and-mortar retailers.
New cars could be close behind.