AI and car sales, October 6. AI handled one million UK dealer leads

Today the issue has more Europe and Asia than the US. You will find AI on dealer leads in the UK and cheap electric cars in Japan and Germany. There is also a waiting list for Mercedes in India and new buyer surveys. I added my opinion to each story.

AI handled one million UK dealer leads and booked three visits per hundred#

The British trade magazine Car Dealer Magazine writes about Impel. Its Sales AI system answers leads from dealer websites, continues the conversation and books appointments. It has now handled more than one million leads in the UK. More than 300 dealership sites use it. The named customers include Sytner Group, Swansway, Vindis and Available Car.

All the numbers come from Impel, and the article shows no independent check. From September 1, 2025 to August 31, 2026 the system took 519,982 leads. The year before it took 258,956. In that period 139,315 customers started a conversation and 15,237 booked an appointment. The company counts 6.3 million messages and 313,142 hours saved for salespeople.

My opinion. One million leads is a measure of work, not a result. I did the maths on their own numbers. Out of 100 leads, 27 people start a conversation and three book a visit. The article gives no number for store visits or sales.

The agent does its part here. It answers every person and does not get tired after six million messages. From measurements at dealers in different countries, 40% of requests come outside working hours. I would ask the supplier for the full funnel. Appointment, visit, sale, and the same three numbers for night leads.

Source Car Dealer Magazine

OpenAI will put an invisible mark on ChatGPT text in the EU#

OpenAI said on October 5 that it will add an invisible watermark to text from ChatGPT and Codex. A watermark is a hidden sign that shows who made the text. In the coming weeks it will reach users in the European Union on all plans. This is how the company follows the transparency rules of the EU AI Act, which apply from August 2. Developers around the world can use the mark now, and it is off by default.

The technology is called textGrain. It changes the choice of words a little and leaves a pattern that only a detector can see. The mark stays when you copy the text. It has limits. When 10% of the words were replaced with synonyms, detection fell from 92% to 66%.

For now only approved researchers and expert organisations get the detector. OpenAI also says that a text without the mark is not proof that a person wrote it.

My opinion. A dealer in Europe who writes customer emails with ChatGPT will soon send marked text. Hiding AI from the customer was a weak idea before. Now it can also be checked.

I would tell the customer directly. An assistant answers first and works day and night, and a person signs the offer. Customers accept a machine that answered in one minute. They do not accept a machine that pretended to be a salesperson.

Source TechCrunch

Suzuki launches an electric car in Japan for 2.12 million yen, below BYD#

Suzuki of Japan showed the e-Sky on October 6. It is the company's first electric passenger car in the kei class, where the law limits the size of the car. The price is 2.12 million yen, about $13,400. Nikkei Asia calls it the cheapest car in its class. Sales in Japan start in November.

Nikkei reports that the e-Sky costs less than the entry version of the Racco from China's BYD and drives further on one charge. The open part of the article gives no exact range. Suzuki plans to bring the e-Sky to Europe in 2027 at the earliest. Nikkei explains the plan with high fuel prices and a weak yen.

A third Nikkei article says that Japanese carmakers depend on Chinese batteries. The details are behind a paywall.

My opinion. Yesterday I wrote that BYD built a small electric car for Japanese rules. Today a Japanese brand answers with the price. In 2027 these cars will come to Europe from two countries.

The margin on a $13,400 car is small. A salesperson cannot spend three hours on it. I would give the agent all the work before the visit, from the first reply to the payment quote and the booking. The person keeps the trade-in and the handover.

Source Nikkei Asia, and on the Europe plan also Nikkei Asia

100,000 households in Germany got a subsidy for an electric car#

Electrive writes about the German subsidy programme for private buyers of electric cars. It was set up on May 19 and applies from January 1, 2026. By October 1 the state approved 97,790 applications and passed 100,000 soon after. Approvals almost doubled in September, from 52,473 one month earlier.

The state has paid 432 million euros, or 4,418 euros per household on average. Households with a taxable income of up to 45,000 euros a year made 52.3% of the approved applications. Fully electric cars make up 91.6% of applications. Purchase and leasing have almost equal shares.

Tesla is first with 12,155 approvals. Škoda follows with 7,224 and Cupra with 6,229. The Chinese brands Leapmotor and BYD have 5,816 and 5,814.

My opinion. A new buyer has come to the showroom. This is a family with a middle income that did not look at electric cars before. They do not know where to charge or how to apply for the subsidy. The dealer who helps with the application wins, not the dealer who talks loudest about speed.

I would ask the agent to calculate the subsidy for every lead before the visit. Income, model, purchase or leasing, final price. The person in the showroom answers the fears about charging and winter. I would also remember one number. Two Chinese brands are in the top five, fewer than 500 approvals behind Cupra.

Source Electrive

Mercedes in India read demand wrong, and customers wait until March#

Mercedes-Benz India sold 15,190 cars from January to September. That is 8% more than a year ago and the company's record for nine months. In the third quarter it sold 5,422 cars, up 6%. Expensive models such as the S-Class, Maybach and G-Class give more than a quarter of sales and grew 13%.

The head of the company, Santosh Iyer, told Autocar Professional that demand was higher than the forecast. About the forecast he said "we read a bit wrong". With normal supply, growth would be in double digits, and this is after three price increases in one year. The electric CLA has more than 1,000 confirmed orders, and a part of the customers will get cars in March 2027. He said the electric EQS SUV has run out completely.

My opinion. The demand was there and the cars were not. For a dealer this is more dangerous than a weak market. A customer with a confirmed order waits half a year and looks at the next brand every month.

I would run the waiting list as a separate process. Every two weeks the agent sends the customer the order status and an honest date. A person calls when the date moves. An honest "no car, the date is March" keeps the customer longer than a nice "soon".

Source Autocar Professional, and the sales numbers also Autocar Professional

A salesperson's social post with a price is now a risk for US dealers#

CBT News talked about checks by the US Federal Trade Commission, the FTC. Two people spoke. Vince Melkumyan founded the service Auto AI Radar. Sam Weaver is a vice president of Chevy Chase Automotive and chairs the Maryland dealer association. The article gives no numbers and no fine amounts.

Melkumyan says the main risk is the personal accounts of employees. A salesperson posts a special offer, a lease or a payment without the required disclosures. The dealer is responsible for it. Weaver adds that the dealer is also responsible for ads made by an outside agency. A dealer who was not checked before is not protected in the future.

Melkumyan expects the checks to reach the service department and the finance and insurance office. Keep in mind that he sells a service that looks for these problems.

My opinion. A salesperson's personal page is a contact point that the sales department does not know about. It has a price and no record. No record of every contact means no sales department.

I would not ban social media for salespeople, because it brings customers. I would give them ready post templates with the price and the disclosures. Once a week the agent compares employee posts with the price on the website. It finds a difference and shows it to the manager. Fix the system, not the person.

Source CBT News

Research#

Half of US car buyers visited two or more dealers in September#

CDK Global asks US car buyers every month how easy the purchase was. The September report came out on October 1. The publication does not give the sample size or the method.

79% of buyers called the purchase easy. The score has not been below 80% since December 2025. 45% chose a car from dealer stock, and the 2025 average was 50%. 49% visited two or more dealers, against 37% in August.

56% called the credit application easy, against 70% a month earlier. 39% said the purchase took longer than they expected. One buyer said the financing took forever and they spent 40 minutes looking at papers.

My opinion. A customer drives to a second dealer when the first one has no car or no answer. You can find out both things before the visit. The agent confirms that the car is on the lot and collects the credit application in advance. Then the person in the showroom spends 40 minutes on the customer, not on papers.

Source CDK Global

Europe doubled its choice of electric cars below 25,000 euros#

Transport & Environment published a report on the EU electric car market on October 5. It is a campaign group that supports electric transport, so read its conclusions with that in mind. The sales numbers cover January to August 2026.

In eight months the EU sold 1.64 million electric cars, 45% more than a year ago. Their share is 22%, and in August it reached 28%. In the second quarter electric cars outsold pure petrol cars for the first time in a full quarter.

There are now 16 models below 25,000 euros, double the 2025 number. Four of them cost less than 20,000 euros. The authors forecast that sales of these cars in 2026 will be seven times higher than in 2024. The Volkswagen ID. Polo has more than 40,000 orders and a waiting time of 10 months.

My opinion. The buyer of a cheap electric car was always there, but the car was not. Now the car exists and the queue is ten months long. In ten months the customer can buy from another dealer.

I would run the waiting list as a funnel. The agent writes to the customer once a month and offers a model in stock. A person calls before delivery.

Source Transport & Environment, report slides PDF

India has record sales and dealer stock at twice the norm#

India's Federation of Automobile Dealers Associations, FADA, published retail sales for September 2026. Autocar Professional reports the numbers.

Dealers sold 427,213 passenger vehicles, 32.10% more than a year ago. FADA itself warns that the base is distorted. In September 2025 people delayed purchases before a tax reform. Against August the growth was 6.17%. Electric cars have a share of 8.45%, against 5.74% a year ago.

Dealer stock is 43 to 45 days, and the FADA norm is 21 days. 60% of passenger vehicle dealers reported higher stock before the festival season. Maruti Suzuki is first with a share of 39.59%.

My opinion. Record sales and double stock are in the same report. The factory shipped cars for the festivals, and the dealer pays to keep them. After the festivals demand falls and the stock stays.

For each model I would count the leads per car in stock. Where leads are few, the agent already contacts customers whose car is more than four years old. Waiting for the end of the festivals with a full lot is expensive.

Source Autocar Professional

At 64% of companies an agent gave a wrong answer because of messy company data#

VentureBeat published two of its own surveys from August 2026. The first has 130 respondents and the second has 140, all from companies with 100 or more employees. The respondents chose to answer and read the outlet, so this is not a random sample.

In six months 64% traced a confident wrong agent answer to problems in the company's own data. For 32% it happened more than once. When companies choose a document search system, 11% put accuracy first and 36% put easy data loading first.

The second survey is about checks. 61% of companies released an agent that passed internal tests and then failed in front of a customer. 9% trust automated evaluation. 42% plan to keep human review with no end date, up from 20% in July.

My opinion. The agent answers with what is in the CRM and on the website. An old price in the database becomes a confident answer with an old price. Before I start an agent, I would clean the prices, the stock list and the order statuses.

Lab tests do not replace a real customer. In the first month I would run the agent on a part of the leads, and a person would read every conversation. The 42% number says the same thing. Companies tried to remove the person and now bring the person back.

Source VentureBeat, and the second survey also VentureBeat

In short#

Dealers are offered an AI agent that gives tasks to other agents. The US company IgniteUps.ai released NEXUS on October 5. The company says it splits a manager's goal into tasks, gives them to sales and service agents and finds unanswered messages. The article has no prices and no dealer names. Until there are numbers, I would ask to see a log with every action of every agent. Auto Remarketing

A dealer group in Indianapolis trains technicians in its own university. Tom Wood Auto has 33 students and a waiting list in Tom Wood University, and expects 50 to 60 next year. With Indiana Wesleyan University the group is building a bachelor's degree in automotive technology. Staffing is engineering too, and I would build my own school before the market runs out of technicians. CBT News

Wholesale used car prices in the US fell 3.1% in September. This is the Black Book index, and it is down 3.3% in a year. In retail, the Carfax index shows prices up 0.2%, with hybrids and electric cars down 0.8%. Wholesale falls faster than retail, so I would update trade-in values this week and not at the end of the quarter. Auto Remarketing

ChatGPT will show ads next to generated images. OpenAI starts the ads in the US later in October, next to images that a user creates. The company says the ads are labelled and do not change the answers. ChatGPT has 1.2 billion users a week. Buyers ask about cars in the same place, so I would check what ChatGPT says about my store without any ads. TechCrunch

TikTok added an AI shopping assistant and one-click checkout. TikTok announced both on October 5. The assistant remembers what a person likes and answers about the product, stock and shipping, and the purchase happens inside the feed. eMarketer estimates that TikTok Shop sold about $15.8 billion of goods in the US in 2025. Customers learn to get a stock answer in one second, and they expect the same from a dealership. TechCrunch

Chinese brands took almost a quarter of new car sales in the UK. This was in September, and five Chinese brands are among the top 25 in the country. Car Dealer Magazine writes that the government is preparing tariff options for Chinese electric cars under pressure from the EU. Officially the government says it has not put tariffs on them. A dealer of a Chinese brand should not promise today's price for a delivery in six months. Car Dealer Magazine

Nissan dealers in the UK give a Lego set for a winter car check. The 20-point check costs £39.99. The customer gets a 319-piece Lego model of the Nissan Skyline GT-R. A reason to visit the service department can cost less than a discount. An agent can send it to the whole customer list in one evening. Car Dealer Magazine

A British dealer sold 17.9% more cars and lost 88% of its profit. The Yorkshire group D.M. Keith had a turnover of £435.13 million in 2025, and pre-tax profit fell from £2.56 million to £309,583. The group runs six BYD sites and opened Changan sites in four cities. Volume without margin is work for the factory and the bank, so I would count profit per deal and not deliveries. Car Dealer Magazine

Changan brought the Deepal S07 plug-in hybrid to Europe at 36,000 euros. The Chinese brand showed it at the Auto Athina show in Greece, and the price is about $40,280. The car drives 100 km on electricity and about 1,000 km in total. New brands enter Europe through small markets. I would watch prices in Greece to understand what will come to my city. CarNewsChina

Taiwan bought 15% more cars in September. Sales were 37,054 cars in the month and 307,210 in nine months. Electric car sales in nine months were 31,924, up 44%, and 18,632 of them were Tesla cars. The island's economy grows on demand for chips, and buyers with money choose electric cars. I would look at the income of customers in my city, not at the national average. Just Auto

Hyundai will invest $500 million in hybrid production in Alabama. Hyundai of South Korea will build the new Tucson Hybrid there, and today the hybrid comes from South Korea. About 182,000 Tucson cars were sold in the US in the first nine months of 2026. More hybrids are coming, so I would already keep a list of customers who wait for a hybrid. Just Auto

Phishing passed ransomware on the list of threats for US dealers. CDK Global published its 2026 review of dealership cybersecurity on October 5, with no numbers in the open part. Attacks are fewer, but fake emails are harder to tell from real ones. Dealers use AI widely and have few rules for it. I would set one rule that the customer gets payment details from one channel and confirms them by phone. CDK Global

Hype of the day#

These are headlines without my review. The largest number of outlets write about them, or the source did not open.

• The Information. Microsoft Slashes Internal Claude Spending by a Third, 32 outlets
• Automotive News. European EV share hits 33% as fuel prices, affordable models drive demand, 29 outlets
• The Economic Times. Claude comes closer to India's data, Anthropic brings in-country inference to AWS, 19 outlets
• Forbes. People Paid Male AI Agent More For The Same Work, Study Finds, 6 outlets
• The Japan Times. Toyota's 'baby' Land Cruiser seen bolstering Asia car sales, 2 outlets
• Automotive News. Customer sues dealership group after $101,000 payment for Porsche Cayenne intercepted, 1 outlet
• Forbes. How IKEA Used AI To Reskill 8,500 Workers And Build A $1.4 Billion Sales Channel, 1 outlet
• Gartner. Your Sales Team Has a New Workforce, 1 outlet
• Automotive News. AI enters the C-suite as auto leaders deploy the technology to shape corporate strategy, 1 outlet
• Automotive News. Most car buyers don't know if they have GAP, service contracts, survey says, 1 outlet