Since last summer, we have been meeting regularly with car, machinery, motorcycle, and boat dealers. A recurring theme in our discussions has been how digitalization and artificial intelligence could develop the industry to make trading smoother and improve results—for both dealers and customers alike.
Based on these encounters, we have identified five key, recurring challenges that affect nearly all players in the industry:
- Reaching customers is difficult. Interest is sparked, but the customer disappears before the deal progresses.
- Trade-in history is unreliable. Obtaining the usage and service history of trade-in vehicles is uncertain and laborious, especially in remote sales.
- Matching needs with inventory. Aligning the customer’s needs with the right unit takes too much time and doesn’t always hit the mark.
- Slow conversion. Moving from initial contact to a closed deal is slow, and dealers are looking for more speed in the process.
- Market monitoring. Tracking price changes within one’s own market area is laborious and challenging.
The buying process has been studied extensively. To simplify: a consumer takes anywhere from a week to a month, and a company several months, to move from the initial decision to signing the bill of sale. However, this time is not spent on the showroom floor, on the phone, or in emails; more than half of the total time passes between the initial need and the actual sales dialogue. Where is that early stage spent? These days, in addition to marketplaces like Nettiauto and websites, it is increasingly spent chatting with AI; this was also noted at the 2026 Car Dealer Live event. Some also browse social media and dig for user experiences.
AI AutoAgent
At Fiare, we have developed the AI AutoAgent to help customers clarify their needs and find the right vehicle. The Agent is like one of the dealership’s salespeople, except it works 24 hours a day and is perhaps more patient in nurturing the sales pipeline. It also has the ability to hand the customer over to a human colleague when the time is right. According to our experience, it is easier for a customer to tell an AI about their situation, budget, and wishes. This information is, of course, then available to the human colleague later on.
Condition Assessment Tool
Regarding trade-ins, especially in remote sales, cases unfortunately often end up in the unrealistically long processing queues of the Consumer Disputes Board. To simplify once more, there are two main reasons: first, sufficient information about the car’s defects and “characteristics” was not obtained from the previous owner; and second, the history of that specific unit—and thus the features affecting the price—were not presented clearly enough, at least in the customer’s opinion.
Fiare is developing a Condition Assessment Tool to be integrated into DMS (Dealer Management Systems) in collaboration with a car dealership consortium. The purpose is to provide model-specific questions regarding a vehicle’s history and a user-friendly interface for the customer, making the collection of data easy and effortless. The goal is, of course, to avoid disputes, but also to improve the dealer’s profitability.
We believe that the industry’s greatest challenges are also its greatest opportunities. By developing solutions together with dealers, we can build smoother, more transparent, and more profitable trading—one step at a time.
