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An auto dealer<\/a> software company is pitching AI-powered kiosks designed to replace car salesmen on showroom floors. Automotive News<\/a> says the industry is \u201cskeptical.\u201d But be honest\u2014would you really rather deal with the average car lot shark<\/a> than a computer?<\/p>\n Epikar<\/a>, a South Korean company that cooks up digital management solutions for car dealers, has named its new AI invention the Pikar Genie. The idea is that customers can talk to this device, ask it product questions, and basically do everything you\u2019d do with a car salesman except for actually closing the deal and signing paperwork.<\/p>\n So it\u2019s not quite like ordering nuggets from one of those giant-screen ATMs at McDonalds, but kind of the same idea.<\/p>\n Renault, BMW, and Volvo are already using some Epikar products at South Korean dealerships, but this new customer-facing AI product is still in its infancy. AN reported that \u201cRenault assigns three salespeople to its Seoul showroom enhanced with Epikar automation compared with six for other Renault showrooms in South Korea,\u201d according to Epikar CEO Bosuk Han.<\/p>\n The company\u2019s now looking to expand into America and is apparently already testing its products at at least one dealership stateside.<\/p>\n Car-dealer consultant Fleming Ford (Director of Strategic Growth at NCM Associates<\/a>) indicated to AN that U.S. dealerships \u201caren\u2019t ready for fully automated showrooms.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cThe showroom isn\u2019t just where you buy a car,\u201d Automotive News quoted him saying. \u201cIt\u2019s where you decide who to trust to help you to choose the right car.\u201d<\/p>\n I have to admit, I\u2019ve only been inside car dealerships as a buyer less than a dozen times. But, sorry, \u201ctrustworthy\u201d is not the vibe I\u2019ve ever gotten from a commission-motivated salesperson.<\/p>\n In fact, every conversation I\u2019ve ever had with an actively working salesman has felt a lot more like talking to a chatbot than an actual person.<\/p>\n Now, I don\u2019t mean to personally disparage folks in the car sales trade. I get it, you\u2019re just trying to get your quotas done and get home like everyone else. But in my experience, on-duty car salespeople don\u2019t really converse so much as work their way through a script to get whatever\u2019s been sitting on the lot the longest into your driveway.<\/p>\n Case in point, I helped my grandfather buy a new Nissan Frontier not too long ago. He\u2019s been driving pickups since the 1960s and very specifically wanted a low-spec, short-cab Frontier as, most likely, his last truck.<\/p>\n I went with him to a Nissan store, where I explained the above. The salesperson jovially nodded and typed out what sounded like the entire script of a feature film on his computer, then printed a spec list and handed me a deal \u2026 for a four-door top-of-the-line PRO-4X. We walked out.<\/p>\n Days later, we were able to get him the rig he wanted from a different dealership\u2014I had to literally read the sales guy the inventory stock number from the store\u2019s website to get him off his butt and into the key locker.<\/p>\n So, yeah, I would not consider myself a \u201cfan\u201d of AI, but this is not a human-job deletion I\u2019ll be particularly sad about. That said, who knows if Epikar will be the real catalyst here\u2014I can\u2019t get its website<\/a> to load on any browsers as of this writing (not a great sign for a tech company).<\/p>\n