By Eve 
The auto industry spent NADA 2026 telling itself the same comforting lie it’s been repeating for years: that the next wave of technology will fix problems it refuses to confront. This time, the buzzword of choice was artificial intelligence. And if you listened to the stage presentations, press releases, and demo booths, you’d think AI was moments away from saving dealerships, automakers, and the entire retail car business.
Dealers aren’t convinced.
At this year’s National Automobile Dealers Association show, AI was everywhere — promising smarter pricing, faster inventory movement, better customer targeting, and streamlined operations. Companies like Cox Automotive pitched AI-powered tools as the next evolution of retail efficiency. The message was clear: adopt the technology or fall behind.
But behind the demos and marketing language, a growing number of dealers see AI less as a breakthrough and more as another distraction from deeper, unresolved problems.
Dealers are facing shrinking margins, rising floorplan costs, higher insurance rates, and buyers who simply aren’t showing up the way they used to. None of those problems are solved by smarter algorithms. Yet the industry keeps acting as if software upgrades can substitute for demand.
That’s where the skepticism comes in.
AI tools can optimize pricing all they want, but they can’t force consumers to buy vehicles they can’t afford or don’t trust. They can’t undo years of price inflation, bloated MSRPs, or the erosion of goodwill that followed pandemic-era markups. And they certainly can’t fix the growing gap between what automakers are building and what buyers actually want.
What’s being sold as “AI transformation” often amounts to automation of existing processes — faster ways to do the same things dealers were already doing manually. That may save time, but it doesn’t address the structural issues dragging down the industry. It just repackages them with better graphics.
There’s also growing concern about where this push really leads. Dealers quietly worry that AI tools marketed as “support” are actually laying the groundwork for more centralized control — pricing pressure, reduced autonomy, and less flexibility at the store level. The promise of efficiency often comes with strings attached.
The industry has been here before. Digital retailing platforms were once sold as revolutionary fixes. Subscription models were supposed to redefine ownership. EVs were marketed as inevitable replacements for gas vehicles. Each wave came with breathless hype — and each collided with reality.
AI appears to be the next chapter in that cycle.
None of this means artificial intelligence has no place in auto retail. It does. But pretending it’s a cure-all ignores the real reasons dealers are struggling. Until automakers address affordability, trust, and demand, no amount of machine learning will move metal.
NADA 2026 didn’t prove that AI is ready to save the auto industry. It proved how badly the industry wants something — anything — to believe in. And that desperation is starting to show.
Shawn Henry