AI agents are now being used to negotiate car deals for consumers. Zach Shefska, founder and CEO of CarEdge explains this shift in a new episode of #TheBraveTechnologist podcast. Watch the episode, hosted by @LukeMulks, here: brave.com/podcast/e125/

over the last few years, automakers got greedy and dramatically increased msrps (and dealers added markups and egregious fees) …. now dealers are texting me asking for help selling $100,000 lincolns that have been sitting in their lot for 533 days for many brands it’s a BUYERS market, do your research and negotiate wisely!

What happens when AI starts negotiating car deals in real time? At the AutoIndustry.ai Summit at ASOTU CON 2026, Zach @Shefska of @MyCarEdge took the stage and launched 100 AI agents to mystery shop 100 dealerships in real time. Watch Zach's full keynote now on YouTube: asotu.be/ZachShefska

I just mystery shopped 100 car dealers with AI agents... in a room full of car dealers. On Tuesday, Paul J Daly and Kyle Mountsier kicked off the first-ever Auto Industry AI Summit. As the keynote speaker, I didn’t want to give a boring talk ... I wanted it to be engaging and thought provoking. So, I deployed AI agents to mystery shop 100 dealerships in real-time while I was on stage. The result? Total transparency (and some chaos). As I presented, the dashboard behind me flashed live updates: "Olivia Marston received an OTD quote from Warner Motors." It was wild. Well now, two days later, I want to share the importance of this exercise more broadly. Was mystery shopping 100 car dealers (in a room full of car dealers) with AI a fun and engaging gimmick? Sure, but it was also a demonstration of how fundamentally AI changes retail automotive and what comes next. The AI agents that mystery shopped those 100 car dealers captured over 160 pieces of data in each interaction. Was the dealer's online price FTC compliant? Did they respond with an auto-responder or a human? Did they give us the out the door price like we requested? AI agents allow us to get answers to these questions (and so much more) in an organized and auditable way. Third parties (like CarEdge) can use this data to score dealers on their operations. This is a huge step forward for retail auto. AI agents are a force for positive change towards fairness, efficiency, and transparency for both consumers and dealers. And this comes at a time when regulatory and competitive pressure is building. Of the 100 dealers we contacted via email and sms, within 24 hours: - 92 replied within 24 hours - 62 provided some price information - Only 33 provided a full, requested OTD price breakdown - The average response time was ~1 hour Many of the OTD price breakdowns we received did not match what the dealer had advertised online. Some dealers added additional products that we did not request, others did not disclose their doc fee in their online listing, etc, etc. What happened then? Two things: 1. The AI agent negotiated off the add-ons; and 2. CarEdge graded that dealer and shared the receipts publicly on our our Dealer Transparency Index At CarEdge, we’ve already scored nearly 12,000 dealerships on our Dealer Transparency Index. AI agents are the heavy lifters that make this possible, providing an auditable way to ensure fairness for both consumers and dealers. The 60% of "A" rated dealers are leading the way, while the 10% in the "D" and "F" categories have some work to do. The genie is out of the bottle. Just like the arrival of the internet in the 90s, AI is fundamentally shifting car buying forever. Regulators will demand transparency, and consumers will demand an "A" grade. Welcome to AI-enabled car buying, where transparency, fairness and efficiency are rewarded.

carvana and carmax are both selling used cars for more than their original msrp do your homework folks before buying a car

it is nearly May 2026 and 210,000 UNSOLD 2025 "new" cars are on dealer lots right now Ford has 81,000 (39%) of all the UNSOLD 2025s right now most of those are their most expensive Ford Bronco and Bronco Sports if you are a "deal hunter" and in the market for a new car, find your local Ford dealer and negotiate hard on an unsold 2025 unit -- they are desperate to get rid of them