🔥 Top Story

A fresh CBT News piece built on Cox Automotive's AI in Auto Retail Tracker lays out the gap in black and white: most shoppers are already researching their next vehicle through AI before they ever call your store, and most stores haven't touched what AI says about them.

Source: https://www.cbtnews.com/is-your-dealership-discoverable/

📰 Other Notable Stories

  • GM Puts an AI Agent Under the OnStar Brand, Targets Half the Vehicle Development Time — At GM Forward 2026, GM shared new details about a proprietary AI agent it's releasing under its OnStar brand, plans for a fourth generation of more efficient all-electric vehicles and a target to cut its vehicle development time in half, while reconfirming a 2028 target for eyes-off highway driving, starting with the Cadillac Escalade IQ EV before rolling out to other, more high-volume models. Source: https://cnbc.com/2026/10/21/gm-vehicle-development-ai-software.html

  • A Dealer Group Fired Its AI Vendors and Built Its Own — Saved $1M a Year — VIP Auto Group's CMO says the group has developed more than a dozen AI-powered tools, with its largest returns coming from replacing third-party software with internally built solutions, saving about $1 million annually and 5,000 hours of work each month. Source: https://www.cbtnews.com/vip-auto-group-ai-tools

  • Cox Automotive Wires Fullpath's AI Customer Data Platform Straight Into VinSolutions — Cox Automotive's VinSolutions announced a milestone upgrade: all mutual Fullpath and VinSolutions clients will have an embedded Customer Data Platform with AI insights built in, powered by Fullpath technology. Context: Cox Automotive announced the acquisition of the AI customer data platform Fullpath in April. Source: https://www.coxautoinc.com/press-releases/cox-automotives-vinsolutions-embeds-fullpaths-ai-powered-customer-data-platform-directly-into-mutual-clients-crm/

  • AI Dealership Startup Flai Raises $27M, Now Booking 50,000 Appointments a Month — Flai works with more than 10 of the top 50 dealer groups in the country, and its AI is being used to answer and engage with customers, run outbound campaigns, and schedule appointments — 50,000 per month — across both sales and service, and the company just closed a $27 million Series A funding round on 20x revenue growth. Source: https://techcrunch.com/2026/10/06/flais-ai-dealership-software-is-booking-50000-appointments-per-month/

💡 Tool Spotlight

CarNow — An AI-enabled conversion platform for automotive dealerships that combines managed chat with digital retailing capabilities. Its Search by Payment feature lets shoppers filter inventory by monthly payment rather than by price, and the platform also includes CRM-integrated lead follow-up, automated email and SMS campaigns, and AI conversation summaries. It carries a 5.0/5 rating on G2, based on 4 reviews (verified October 2026).

  • Price: not publicly listed — pricing is "contact vendor" per the vendor comparison; verify at carnow.com before you buy.
  • Who it's for: Franchise stores whose BDC drowns in payment-shopper leads and needs chat-to-deal continuity without adding headcount.
  • Who it's NOT for: A rooftop that still can't get its CRM data clean — bolting a conversational layer onto a messy lead pipe just automates the mess faster.

📊 Stat of the Day

82% of dealers report using AI in some form, flat from Q1 2026 and consistent across franchise and independent dealerships. But among those same AI-using dealers, expected sales/revenue growth sits at 69% — while experienced sales/revenue growth comes in at just 22%. Plain dealer terms: eight out of ten rooftops say they're "doing AI." Roughly two out of ten can point to a dollar it actually moved. That's the gap between flipping on a chatbot and running a program — and almost nobody's checking which side of that line they're on. Source: Cox Automotive AI in Auto Retail Tracker (Q2 2026), https://www.coxautoinc.com/retail/ai-in-auto-retail-tracker/

🔮 Trend Watch

Follow the money and the metal this week and a pattern shows up fast: OEMs and platforms are racing to put AI everywhere a dealer touches a deal — GM's new OnStar agent, Cox wiring Fullpath straight into VinSolutions, Flai raising fresh capital off 50,000 AI-booked appointments a month — while the one surface that decides whether a shopper ever reaches your lot, how you show up when they ask an AI model about their next car, sits almost untouched at seven in ten stores. Vendors are selling you the back half of the funnel — booking, desking, CRM — faster than ever. Nobody's forcing you to check the front half, the part where the shopper forms an opinion about your store before your BDC ever gets a shot at them. That's the opening. Check it before a vendor sells you a fix for a problem you haven't measured yet.

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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.