Car Washinh Industry in the US

• According to a report conducted by the ICA in 2020, the US is the biggest player in the car washing industry, reaching over $15 billion in revenue in 2019.
• There are over 62,000 car washes in the US, with in-bay automatic car washes (over 17,000) being the most numerous in the US.
• The market in the US is highly fragmented, as the majority of the car washes are owned and operated by small to medium-sized independent car wash companies. The biggest company in the US holds just a 2% market share of the market.
• The biggest car washing services in the US include Autobell Car Wash, Mister Car Wash, Zips Car Wash, and Car Wash Group.
• Despite that, there are over 2 billion cars that are washed in the US every year.
• In fact, the penetration of car washing has increased tremendously in the last 20-25 years, going from 48% to 77% in 2019.
• However, car washes in the US seem to be under a lot of stress from stringent government regulation about water and chemical use.
• While we weren't able to specifically determine whether the majority of car washes offer only normal flat-fee payments, we were able to find that subscription services can be extremely beneficial to car washing services to attract new customers, which suggests that there are at least a few companies that have used the subscription model and have been successful.