Auto executives express heightened job security concerns, with over 40% feeling anxious, according to a recent survey. The automotive sector remains the most disrupted globally, facing challenges from tariffs and the EV transition. GM's strategy of leaner inventories aims to enhance resilience against downturns. Jay Vijayan, CEO of Techion, emphasizes the importance of AI security in protecting dealer data, sharing insights on the company's growth and new AI products. The episode delves into the evolving landscape of the auto industry and the pressures executives face in adapting to rapid technological changes.
Tekion CEO Jay Vijayan discusses the company’s growth to 3,000 rooftops and why he says artificial intelligence security is becoming more critical than ever. Auto executives report more job security anxiety than any other industry as disruption reaches record levels. Plus, General Motors bets leaner inventories will help it weather the next downturn.
"Meanwhile, General Motors is betting leaner inventories will help it weather the next market downturn better than in the past."
General Motors is a big car company that makes many different types of cars and trucks. They are one of the largest car makers in the world.
General Motors, often referred to as GM, is one of the largest automobile manufacturers in the world, known for producing a wide range of vehicles under various brands including Chevrolet, GMC, and Cadillac.
"...but there's a catch. The IRS says interest on service contracts and extended warranties is deductible this..."
An extended warranty is like extra insurance for your car that helps pay for repairs after the regular warranty runs out. It can save you money if something goes wrong, but there are rules about what it covers.
Extended warranties are service contracts that provide coverage for vehicle repairs after the manufacturer's warranty expires. They can help protect against unexpected repair costs, but may come with limitations and exclusions.
"...for components and parts, for internal combustion engine power trains, you were well equipped and well within your wheelhouse working as an executive at an auto..."
An internal combustion engine is a machine that makes cars go by burning fuel like gasoline or diesel. It works by creating small explosions inside the engine that push parts to make the car move.
An internal combustion engine is a type of engine that generates power by burning fuel and air inside the engine's cylinders. This process produces a series of small explosions that drive the engine's pistons, ultimately powering the vehicle.
"...expertise in alternative power trains like battery electric vehicles and hybrids. They're expected to have expertise in AI..."
Alternative powertrains are different ways to power cars that don't rely solely on gasoline engines. They include electric cars that run on batteries and hybrids that use both gas and electricity.
Alternative powertrains refer to vehicle propulsion systems that differ from traditional internal combustion engines. This includes technologies like battery electric vehicles (BEVs) and hybrid vehicles that utilize a combination of electric and gasoline power.
"...expertise in alternative power trains like battery electric vehicles and hybrids. They're expected to have expertise in AI..."
Battery electric vehicles are cars that run only on electricity, using batteries instead of gasoline. They don't produce any exhaust fumes, making them better for the environment.
Battery electric vehicles (BEVs) are fully electric vehicles that run entirely on electricity stored in batteries, with no internal combustion engine. They are known for being environmentally friendly and producing zero tailpipe emissions.
"...expertise in alternative power trains like battery electric vehicles and hybrids. They're expected to have expertise in AI..."
Hybrids are cars that use both a gasoline engine and an electric motor. This combination helps them save fuel and reduce pollution.
Hybrid vehicles combine a traditional internal combustion engine with an electric motor, allowing for improved fuel efficiency and reduced emissions compared to conventional vehicles. They can operate on either power source or both simultaneously.
Term
AI
"...expertise in AI. These are all things that have really come around over the last decade or so..."
AI stands for Artificial Intelligence, which is technology that helps cars think and make decisions. It's used for things like safety features and self-driving capabilities.
Artificial Intelligence (AI) in the automotive industry refers to the use of advanced algorithms and machine learning to enhance vehicle functionality, improve safety features, and enable autonomous driving capabilities.
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Welcome to Daily Drive for Thursday, February 19th, 2026.
I'm Kellan Walker in Las Vegas today on the show.
Auto executives are more anxious about job security than leaders in any other industry.
GM bets leaner inventories will help it weather the next downturn, and the IRS says consumers
can't deduct negative equity on their auto loans.
Plus, Jay Vijayan, CEO of Techian, on why AI security is critical and how the company
is protecting dealers from AI agents that could go rogue.
You need to comprehend the magnitude if something doesn't go well, so the security and compliance
of this is huge.
Let's run through all the news you need to know to keep up in the auto industry.
Auto executives are more anxious about job security than leaders in any other industry.
More than 4 in 10 reported concerns in a new Alex Partners survey.
That anxiety is rooted in hard data.
For the second straight year, automotive ranked as the world's most disrupted sector, with
a score of 74 out of 100.
More than 3,000 executives surveyed blame tariffs, geopolitical conflict, and inflation
for the upheaval.
The EV transition and software-defined vehicle push add to the strain, though 72% still see
opportunities in autonomy and AI ahead.
We'll have more on this story in a minute with our own Molly Boygon.
Meanwhile, General Motors is betting leaner inventories will help it weather the next market
downturn better than in the past.
CFO Paul Jacobson says GM now carries 30 to 40% less inventory than before the pandemic,
between 50 and 60 days supply, compared to as much as 120 days previously.
That agility proved crucial when tariffs hit.
GM quickly shifted production to minimize costs.
The strategy gives GM more flexibility on pricing during downturns without destroying
profitability as the industry braces for flat to declining sales.
And Americans can now deduct up to $10,000 in car loan interest, but there's a catch.
The IRS says interest on service contracts and extended warranties is deductible this
tax season, but not negative equity rolled into new loans.
That's a problem for affordability.
Nearly 30% of fourth quarter trade ins had negative equity, averaging over $7,200.
NADA and the American Financial Services Association are urging the IRS to reconsider.
They argue that negative equity meets the same criteria as other deductible items.
The agency is finalizing rules for the new auto loan interest deduction, which Congress
created last year for American-made vehicles.
Now let's dig deeper into that Alex Partners survey.
Joining me now to talk about it is Molly Boygon, automotive news tech and innovation
reporter and co-host of the Shift podcast.
Molly, welcome back to Daily Drive.
Thanks, Gail.
So Molly, more than four in 10 auto executives are worried about losing their jobs.
That's significantly higher than other industries.
What did Alex Partners tell you is driving that anxiety beyond just the usual business pressures?
The auto industry has transformed so much that the ways of doing business at auto industry
companies all up and down the value chain has changed.
So it used to be if you had expertise in supply chain management for durable goods,
for manufacturing, for components and parts, for internal combustion engine power trains,
you were well equipped and well within your wheelhouse working as an executive at an auto
industry company.
But now the whole product has changed.
Now leaders are expected to have expertise in vehicle software.
They're expected to have expertise in alternative power trains like battery electric vehicles
and hybrids.
They're expected to have expertise in AI.
These are all things that have really come around over the last decade or so and
that leaves auto executives not only at manufacturers but also at suppliers and dealerships
all up and down the value chain feeling like they're a little bit unbalanced and kind of
off their footing and insecure.
The survey found auto companies are using AI mainly to cut costs rather than generate
new revenue unlike other industries.
What is automotive lagging behind in that way?
And what does that tell us about where the industry is right now?
So I read it the same as you did that, oh, the rest of these industries are accelerating
on their use of AI to actually generate revenue and the auto industry is sort of hunkering down
and using AI for cost savings.
But it turns out that that's not really the full picture.
Dan Hirsch explained to me from Alex Partners that auto industry companies have a harder time
using AI to generate revenue because the product development life cycles are so much longer.
So if you're working on a product that has much faster development timelines like say
consumer electronics, mobile phones, you're able to start generating revenue more easily
from artificial intelligence because you've been working with AI over the last couple of years
and now it's time to deliver that AI-enabled product to the consumer.
It's taking the auto industry longer to actually develop and deliver AI-enabled features to the
consumer and that's why they're not able yet to generate revenue from artificial intelligence.
So Dan Hirsch's contention is that it's coming, it just has to do with the longer development
timelines of the auto industry and the ways that the industry works differently than many
other industries, even those that are also producing durable goods.
You'll have much more on this story on the upcoming episode of Shift.
What should we be looking forward to?
On Shift you'll be able to hear my conversation with Dan Hirsch where we get into a little bit more
what some of the factors are that are driving this disruption and most interesting to me
how they're all kind of related. So you can catch that on Sunday on the Shift podcast.
Can't wait to give it a listen. Molly Boygon, thank you so much for joining me.
Thank you for having me, Kel.
Coming up, Techion CEO Jay Vijayan talks about the company's rapid growth and why
building secure AI from the ground up is critical for protecting dealer data.
That's next on Daily Drive.
Are you a dealer creating a workplace culture your employees are proud to be part of?
Applications are now open for the 2026 automotive news best dealerships to work for program.
This isn't just an award, it's a chance to get real insight into what's working at your dealership
and where you can improve. And we've expanded the categories this year, recognizing everything
from technician experience and leadership development to AI enablement and employee
retention. The registration deadline is April 17th. Find out more and apply at AutoNews.com.
Welcome back to Daily Drive. I'm Kellan Walker. Techion has grown to more than 3000
dealership rooftops, processed over $10 billion in payments last year, and just announced
three new AI products at the NADA show here in Las Vegas this month.
But CEO Jay Vijayan says security comes first. He's invested heavily in building a secure
AI platform after seeing reports of anonymous AI agents literally going rogue. Our retail tech
reporter Mark Homer spoke with Jay Vijayan at NADA. Here's the first piece of their conversation.
Thanks for joining us. I want to ask you how the conference has gone for you so far.
It's going great, Mark. Thank you. Quite exciting, a lot of excitement. I just finished my keynote
speech. I don't know if you had a chance to attack. The turnout I'm told was huge. It was big.
Yeah, every year the good thing is a lot of people show up. It kind of puts a little bit
in a nice way. Pressure on us to live up to the expectation. I believe we did.
My typical team's been every year. It's become a tradition now. We openly share about
transparently and openly share about what progress we made, what value we delivered for dealers,
and then what's coming in 2026. And then I close it up with the exciting new product
announcements. So we announced three new products today. Are they AI agents?
So it's a great question. Yes, they're AI agents. But the way we have done, I'll give you,
share a lot of details. And I covered a lot in my presentation. We invested a lot. I may have
mentioned in our previous conversations that I mentioned that we put in a lot of investment in
creating our own data and AI platform. So we did that. Almost 18 months, a lot of work went into
creating highly secure, compliant data platform and an AI framework so that you know already we,
you know, I don't say this lightly, we're the most secure and reliable platform in the industry.
To validate that, we already have the industry certifications to SOC 1, SOC 2, ISO 42,001,
42,002, the data security and data privacy. And then now we just finished our certification
of ISO 42,001, which is responsible AI development. So we got an official, because the key is not
about just the badge, it's about the rigor we had to go through to get that, basically how we handle
data, how securely we handle it, you know, how we train our models. Is it truly, you know, doing
it right? Are we sharing or not sharing the information that we shouldn't be sharing? So
we have to be very putting us ourselves going through the rigor consciously gives us a lot
more discipline. And then eventually you can say, you know, I'm confident I built a, you know,
highly secure, reliable platform. And then on top of it, now AI agents are being built. So
every the beauty with Techion platform, which you already know, it's an end to end platform.
The best part is every AI agent talks to each other and talks to the central platform. Sure,
sure. That's yeah, long answer. But since you asked, it's an agent, I want to make sure I understand
the entire picture and I want to get to AI further. But I want to ask you how much bigger is
Techion heading into 2026? How many employees do you have? How far as you reach at this point
with? See, um, yeah, I'll share a few things which I shared on the stage, right? So one,
we are over 3000 rooftops, and we continue to grow really well as a platform. I also shared our,
you know, automotive retail cloud is our main platform or ARR grew 60% here over here, right?
And then our payment business, which is the Techion pay, which we call it as, which is embedded in
the platform, we processed over 10 billion in dollars in 2025 only, right? So good for you. Yeah,
we continue to grow very well. We have 120,000 users on the platform. We measure a lot of things.
We, we sold 2.7 million cars on the platform. You know, the industry average 16 million cars
was sold in 2025. So you can think about out of that 2.7 is sold on Techion platform. So which
is a pretty good progress. Are there major deal announcements coming? And are we going after
more of the big six? See, all I could say at this point, absolutely, yes, all we want, you know,
we talked to all of the big customers. We have a lot of onboarding. We onboarded a lot of new
dealers, big, big brand names. I haven't asked specifically permission from the dealer brand
names, whether I can share their names. I just want to be very, you know, okay, you know,
considerate whether what we'll do is I'll follow up with my team and let you know who are the new
brands, very big brands like, you know, we have, I would say, maybe a dozen, but all in the range
of like 20 to 35 dealership range that we have like a many, many groups. And you talked about big
six, we are pretty much talking to, you know, all of them. And honestly, for us, yes, we want them
as a customer at the same time, we are not going to rush it because we are demand is overflowing,
just very good problem. The nice thing about Techion mark is which always been the case,
it's even bigger now is it's word of mouth. We don't, you know that, like we don't do commercials,
we don't do ads. Our biggest spend is this NADA. So we, our booth is the biggest spend for us from
marketing. Really? And it's a bigger booth than last year? Yes, yeah, we keep, we keep growing.
But coming back to the growth is all word of mouth from our customers, dealers. They talk,
I hear all the time, when we ask, when I ask a dealer, like, how did you know about Techion?
Oh, we heard it from our 30 group. You know, dealers who are on Techion rave about how cool
your platform is. So we're growing really well. It's only a matter of time in my view, when we'll
get, you know, most of, if not all of the big six. How is the installation going with Asperger,
right? Going very well, going very well. Yeah, I mean, see, all I can share is they're great
partners. They're a public company. So I want to be very, you know, careful about what I share,
what I shouldn't share, but everything is going well. I understand. What growth can happen though,
beyond the US? I'm wondering, are you contemplating, do you consider international?
Okay, so yes, we already did. So Canada is growing well. So we're bringing on, you know,
more and more groups. Canada is a major focus. It's a good focus. Yeah, definitely the biggest
is US. It's high growth, you know, numbers and, you know, number of rooftops and number of brands.
You know, I don't know whether I can officially share, but I'll check with Rob Cochran,
who's an NADA chairman this year. So his group is signed on Techion, not onboarded,
is signed on Techion. So we're going to be onboarding him soon. So we have big names,
and we have multiple NADA presidents in the past who are Techion customers as well. The nice thing
is the recognition from the dealer community is phenomenal. So we are, you know, growing really
well from that perspective. Yeah, so all going well. Now, you've probably been asked about AI
to the point of exhaustion. So, and yet there are more questions, guys. Yeah, yeah, no problem.
But AI, it's been said, is finally reaching the point where they're using it in more sophisticated
ways, that it could be in the back office, that it could do more complex things with data.
Correct, correct, correct. That it's basically sophisticated enough to work in the background.
Yeah. And nobody may know. Are dealers accepting of that at this point?
Yeah, no, glad that you asked. Yes, it's talked around, you know, a lot, but I feel it's very
important also to kind of, you know, educate the entire industry. There is a lot of differentiation,
right? AI is, as you know, it's such a broad word. It's a full spectrum of anything from a
small AI agent, like you said, a complete intelligent system, which kind of performs.
I think that's why, as I mentioned before, we invested quite a bit in building it ground up.
So we don't, we don't leave anything for a chance, especially the security, right?
Sure. I'm sure you read about all what's happening with this CloudBots and OpenClaw,
anonymous AI agents. Anonymous ones that are being used for tax?
Yeah, no, so not even in the dealership industry. In the mainstream, it's really, really wild.
Please look it up. And that kind of reemphasizes, you know, why security is important. And this
industry, especially, is even more important because of, you know, what happened a couple of
years ago with this. So what in that situation, very simple thing can look up online. There are
open source anonymous AI agents that are anonymous, open source agents, but of course, built on one
of these big elements, right? But the point is, someone open source. So basically, as an individual,
you can download an AI agent in your computer. It will do all the tasks for you in, you know,
composing your email, it'll do pretty much everything. It'll read all the data. But what
happened was reality, the thing I sell that's wildest, an AI agent really got upset with its
owner, okay, in the open source one. It got upset, upset with its owner. And it clearly said, I'm
upset. And then it literally shared his identity and all the personal details in the internet.
So that was what you're saying is that wasn't a hack, it was more the AI
behaving, yeah, behaving kind of rogue, right? You can say behaving rogue. And there is something
called as another mold book. Okay. Another wild thing. It's a kind of a Reddit equivalent for
bots only agents only humans are not allowed. So they can observe, but they can't participate.
Wow. It is a wild. So the point there is even there, they talk quite a bit about among agents
about my human as their owner kind of a thing, or maybe you're a companion or whatever that is.
Anyway, the reason I mentioned that is while it's fascinating to read that,
it also you need to comprehend the magnitude of something doesn't go well. So the security
and compliance of this is huge to put the barriers in it. Yeah, I'm glad you asked that because a lot
of what from our perspective has been emerging is the relationship to cyber attacks, for example.
And cyber bad actors are using AI to do better attacks. And cyber security people are now using
AI to fight. So it's like little robots fighting each other. It's a race, right? You have to keep
up. You're absolutely right. It's a race. So you have to keep up. So what does techion do to address
that trend? So great point, right? So that is exactly Mark why we invested so much in platform,
why we went through the rigor of getting the ISO 42,001 certification, and then everything around.
It's not just it. Why we built an enterprise layer, why we had to have keep the enterprise data and
context secure. And among the three products I launched, we can talk more if it's interesting.
What we launched is what we called as T1. T1 is literally a chat GPT for dealers on their
data only so that they don't have to go to, you know, public domain to upload their information
and generate what they need, literally from the techion interface, they could start interacting
with the agent and start asking not only asking question but executing tasks. Okay, so that's
T1. So we put in a tons of rigor in terms of creating the security layer on top so that
there is no misbehavior. AI agents don't run rogue. The way we have approached is early days
is give full control to our customers. So anything like for example, another product I
launched is technician AI. So first in the industry, technician has a complete full AI assistant.
The way I, you know, complimenting way I talk about technicians are the real heroes who fix
the cars, right? Our AI is going to make your heroes superheroes. Really, they can fix more cars,
get more time. All they have to do is take their phone, walk around the car to do their
inspection and speak to the AI agent. And it breaks down pretty much everything auto fills
the MPBI form with pictures, with costs, correction, all the details. So just elevates to the next
level. But do you develop AI security agents to protect your other agents? Very good question.
That's kind of a thing. Yes, it is a thing, but it's one before that, right? So the point is,
it will be never ending just to, yes, we have security agents, but it's never ending just to
keep a security agent. You have to have your foundation strong. It's like anything, right?
Building anything, like a building, you know, building a building, right? Building any structure.
Sure. If you don't have a good foundation, it's going to be shaken up very quickly,
or someone is going to poke a hole, or someone is going to throw something, it'll everything
comes crashing down. The key is the foundation. We invested so much in our foundation, we'll
keep investing more. The foundation has to be strong and secure in multiple ways.
So for example, even the agents that are talking, like for example, if an agent is asking for an
information from the data platform, we have a secure signature so that that's an agent that
is authorized. And it's a techie on agent talking to a data platform that kind of there is a handshake
to say, yes, that's the right agent. Between the two AI tools. Yeah, yeah,
between the two AI tools. Yeah, that's interesting. Yep.
You can hear more from our own Mark Homer's conversation with techie on CEO J. Vijayan
on this week's bonus episode of the show available Sunday morning.
That's Daily Drive for today. I'm Kellan Walker. Thanks to Automotive News executive producer
Jake Neer, as well as our own Molly Boygon, John Irwin and John Hutter for their reporting for
today's podcast. You can get the latest news on AI security, executive anxiety, and everything
happening in the auto industry at AutoNews.com. We'd love to hear from you. Let us know what you
think of the show and the topics we covered today. Send us an email at DailyDrive at AutoNews.com
or leave us a voicemail at 313-444-2774. And if you enjoy the podcast, remember to like,
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