🔥 Top Story

Automotive Ventures partner Steve Greenfield told CBT News' Future of Automotive segment that labor is the biggest lever AI will pull in dealerships, and the BDC won't survive the next five years in its current form. F&I gets augmented, not replaced — but the phone-bank model most stores run today is on borrowed time.

Source: https://www.cbtnews.com/ai-could-shrink-bdc-and-f-and-i

📰 Other Notable Stories

  • Shoppers are using AI. Most dealers aren't changing anything about how they sell to them. Cox Automotive's newest tracker data shows 61% of vehicle shoppers say they plan to use AI during their next purchase journey, while relatively few dealers are actively adjusting their business strategies for AI search and discovery. Source: https://www.coxautoinc.com/insights/what-new-research-reveals-about-ais-growing-role-in-auto-retail/

  • VinSolutions ships new AI CRM features every two weeks now, not once a year. The Cox Automotive-owned CRM says a major wave of platform upgrades, built directly from what dealers have been asking for, and already showing up in dealer results this quarter, with dealers on the new AI stack reportedly seeing 25% more vehicles per month1 and acquire 37% more vehicles per month — footnoted, vendor-supplied numbers, so read that gross with a grain of salt. Source: https://www.cbtnews.com/vinsolutions-launches-ai-powered-dealer-upgrades

  • DealerOn built a tool just to check if AI chatbots are lying about your store. Its new OnPrompt platform is designed to help dealers monitor AI visibility, evaluate brand sentiment, identify content gaps and uncover opportunities to improve how their business shows up in AI searches. Source: https://www.autoremarketing.com/ar/technology/dealerons-dual-launch-includes-ai-search-visibility-platform-intelligent-layer-touching-full-dealership/

  • Cheap AI has a body count, and Podium's webinar has the receipts. One dealer case cited: Temecula Valley CDJR: 18,000 automated messages a month producing a 12% jump in monthly service revenue, 91 high-intent buyers surfaced in a single pull, and 40-plus hours returned to the BDC. Another: Madera Chevrolet: running 1,100 to 1,200 service appointments a month, the store lost three of its six service advisors and used AI to cover the entire gap without adding headcount. Source: https://www.cbtnews.com/podium-webinar-cheap-ai-is-expensive (vendor webinar — treat the specific dollar figures as claims, not audited results)

💡 Tool Spotlight

Ava (Get My Auto) — an AI BDC built into Get My Auto's CRM/website stack, not a bolt-on. It claims answers every lead in under 5 seconds, 24/7, in English and Spanish, follows up until they book, and re-engages your cold leads. Pricing: not publicly listed — verify at getmyauto.com before you buy. Who it's for: stores already on the Get My Auto CRM who want one vendor handling website, lead intake and BDC follow-up instead of stitching together three logins. Who it's NOT for: any store that hasn't fixed its lead-routing mess first — an AI BDC bolted onto broken CRM data just automates the chaos faster.

📊 Stat of the Day

61% of vehicle shoppers say they plan to use AI during their next vehicle purchase journey, per Cox Automotive's AI in Auto Retail Tracker (primary source, Cox Automotive Inc., published within the last month). Source: https://www.coxautoinc.com/insights/what-new-research-reveals-about-ais-growing-role-in-auto-retail/ — In plain terms: six out of ten of the people walking your lot already asked a chatbot about the car before they asked your salesperson. If your website and inventory feed aren't structured for AI to read correctly, you're invisible to more than half your traffic before they ever hit "contact us."

🔮 Trend Watch

Every story this week points the same direction: the AI conversation in dealerships has quietly shifted from "which tool do I add" to "which vendor do I trust to run a whole department." VinSolutions is shipping every two weeks instead of once a year. DealerOn built a monitoring layer just to audit what other AI systems say about your store. Podium's pitching outcome numbers instead of feature lists. Meanwhile Cox Automotive's data shows the shopper side of this equation is already six-in-ten deep into AI-assisted research while most stores haven't touched their strategy — which means the vendors racing to consolidate aren't chasing hype anymore, they're chasing a readiness gap that's already showing up in your showroom traffic whether you've noticed it or not.

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Reading about AI won't train your team

The stores pulling ahead aren't the ones with the most tools — they're the ones whose people know how to use them. That takes a strategy, a readiness baseline, and real training.