10:08 am, February 4, 2026
Car dealers attending this year’s NADA convention in Las Vegas will find AI topics rippling through the halls and speeches as the industry attempts to make sense of it.
Car Dealer attended a panel session on Tuesday which highlighted where some dealers have deployed artificial intelligence and where other experts think it can help the most.
What was abundantly clear was that, when it comes to AI, no one really knows what they’re doing.
The NADA convention is often seen as a showcase for the rest of the world’s car dealers to follow, but when it comes to AI, this panel session proved that even the big US firms still don’t know where it’s best to deploy it.
Matthew Laughridge, a Hyundai and Genesis dealer, cautioned dealers when they were choosing which AI tech partner to work with.
‘This is not magic,’ he said. ‘These are tools. Don’t get oversold on the product.’
He said he’d implemented AI solutions throughout his dealership but explained getting his team on board at the start was key.
‘You can’t just buy a tool and expect it to work,’ he said.
He added that making sure staff saw AI as a companion and not a replacement for their jobs was critical.
‘This is still a relationship business,’ he added. ‘AI should enhance their job, not replace it.’
Laughridge suggested dealers should not view AI purely as a cost-saving measure, either, but instead see it as a potential driver of revenue.
He has deployed AI in his warranty administration department to great effect helping streamline claims, documenting the process and automating submissions to manufacturers.
He has also added AI to his telephone process to follow up leads, in his sales departments to deal with some customer enquiries and in his marketing to help improve messages.
Team player
Thinking of AI as a ‘team mate’ was a good start for dealers, explained Jennifer Suzuki, from eDealer Solutions. However, she warned that applying AI to a bad process would just make ‘that bad process even worse’.
She told the packed auditorium that AI ‘doesn’t fix operational problems’. If dealerships automate poor messaging or broken processes, they’ll ‘simply scale those mistakes’, she explained.
Suzuki said the best way for dealers to work out where to deploy AI was by identifying the biggest pain points in their processes and then getting those staff affected involved in the solution.
‘Train everyone on how and when to use AI,’ she said.
And use AI in team meetings, she added, as this will encourage others to do the same.
Steve Greenfield, an investor from Automotive Ventures, echoed these views. He told the audience that getting your staff to experiment with AI was vital.
He added: ‘Humans are lazy – they’ll find ways to make their lives easier. Encourage your employees to experiment.’
He also explained how more consumers are using AI to help them buy a car and are moving away from traditional search engines.
Because of this, dealers need to work out where they rank in the likes of ChatGPT’s answers and if they’re not there work how to be there.
‘We’re back in the very early days of SEO and trying to figure out how to show up in AI search results,’ he said.
He advised searching for your dealership in ChatGPT, checking if you appear and, if you don’t, study what your competitors have done to get there instead.
He also implored dealers to deploy AI to help answer phone calls. He said ‘lost phone calls were lost money’ and AI is able to help fix that.
The panel also stressed the importance of discussing AI with dealership staff. They warned that a staff member may already be innocently uploading sensitive data to large language models and may not understand the risks.
Car Dealer’s coverage of the NADA conference is sponsored by Cox Automotive. Follow the website daily for updates and listen to our Podcast from the show on Friday.
Car Dealer Live, our conference for the UK automotive industry, takes place on March 19. If you’re looking for inspiring automotive sessions and great guests, grab your tickets now at CarDealerLive.co.uk.
