Automotive News Daily Drive Feb 19, 2026

Feb. 19, 2026 | Tekion CEO Jay Vijayan on AI security; Auto execs anxious about job security

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Company

General Motors

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.

Term

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.

Term

internal combustion engine

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.

Term

alternative powertrains

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.

Term

battery electric vehicles

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.

Term

hybrids

Hybrids are cars that use both a gasoline engine and an electric motor. This combination helps them save fuel and reduce pollution.

Term

AI

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.

LIVE

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,

leave a review and subscribe so you never miss an episode.

0:00

22:05

Feb. 19, 2026 | Tekion CEO Jay Vijayan on AI security; Auto execs anxious about job security

General Motors

extended warranties

internal combustion engine

alternative powertrains

battery electric vehicles

hybrids

AI

About this episode

Original notes