March 24, 2026 | Could AI replace vehicle listing sites?; Zoox expands to two new markets

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Welcome to Daily Drive.

For Tuesday, March 24th, 2026, I'm Kellan Walker in Las Vegas.

Today on the show, Toyota invests $1 billion in Kentucky and Indiana for EV production.

Porsche and Audi team up to cut costs at sales slump, and Zucs expands its robotexing service

to Austin and Miami.

Plus, could AI agents eventually replace third-party vehicle listing sites?

At least one startup thinks it's already happening.

Gone are the days of bait and switch.

Gone are the days of advertising aggressively low prices that aren't true in reality.

Agents really can level the playing field for the whole ecosystem, consumers and dealers.

Let's run through all the news you need to know to keep up in the auto industry.

Toyota is investing $1 billion at its Kentucky and Indiana assembly plants.

The $800 million at the Georgetown Kentucky facility will support production of the 2027

Highlander EV and a Subaru version, both launching this fall.

The automaker also plans a third three-row EV SUV for late 2027, potentially wearing the Land Cruiser

name.

Another $200 million goes to Toyota's Princeton Indiana plant to boost output of the Grand Highlander,

one of the brand's fastest turning vehicles right now.

The investment is part of Toyota's $10 billion U.S. commitment through 2030.

Porsche and Audi are cozying up out of necessity.

The two Volkswagen Group brands are both facing declining sales in China and U.S. tariff pressure,

so their CEOs are deepening cooperation between the brands to slash costs.

Future Porsche combustion models will lean heavily on Audi platforms.

The next Macan will be based on the Q5 while a new 7-seat SUV will derive from the Q9.

Both brands stumbled recently, Porsche with an aggressive EV pivot that didn't pan out,

Audi with a product offensive that underwhelmed.

As one person familiar with the matter put it, they have no choice.

Costs must come down significantly.

And Amazon's Zoox is expanding its RoboTaxi service to Austin and Miami.

The company's RoboTaxi's with no steering wheel or pedals have already carried 350,000

riders in San Francisco and Las Vegas.

Zoox is also doubling its Vegas coverage and quadrupling its San Francisco service area.

Meanwhile, Tesla's RoboTaxi ambitions continue to lag.

Despite CEO Elon Musk's predictions of serving half of the U.S. population,

Tesla remains limited to a geofenced portion of Austin.

Waymo leads the sector with service in 10 metro areas.

Joining me now to talk more about this is our own Lawrence Iliff,

who's been covering the story for us at Automotive News.

Lonnie, welcome back to Daily Drive.

It's great to be here.

So Lonnie, what's behind Zoox's ability to expand faster than Tesla right now?

Is it technology, regulatory strategy, or is it something else?

I think they're just further ahead in general, right?

They have been testing for several years and they have the technology with radar

and LiDAR and other sensors, and so they've been able to send in a fleet of test vehicles

and then launch their dedicated toaster style carriage seating dedicated RoboTaxi

and expand city by city.

They started in Las Vegas, then they went to San Francisco,

and now they're going to Austin and Miami.

Now, with Waymo in 10 cities and Zoox ramping up,

where does this leave Tesla in the RoboTaxi race?

I think that's really like a critical part of this story is that it looks like Zoox

after kind of an early period of testing and trying things out and doing public rides,

especially in Las Vegas, where they've been doing it for a while since September.

They feel like they're in a groove, right?

So they test, deploy, and move on to another city, right?

And that's kind of the Waymo cycle, right?

That's where Waymo started.

They were just kind of here and there, and then they started to accelerate

into more cities.

So Waymo's in 10 cities, it's going into 20.

Zoox is going to be in four cities, but they're planning like another half dozen.

And then Tesla's kind of stuck in Austin.

Tesla has plans for seven more cities in the first half of this year,

but it's late March, so we'll see what's going to happen there.

As always, good stuff, Lonnie Eiliff.

Thank you so much for joining me.

Thank you.

Coming up, a look at whether AI agents could eventually replace third-party vehicle listing

sites.

That's next on Daily Drive.

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Welcome back to Daily Drive.

I'm Kellen Walker.

Third-party vehicle listing sites like CarGurus and AutoTrader have been around for decades,

generating leads for dealerships and connecting buyers with inventory.

But two pilot programs are testing whether AI agents could replace that model entirely,

letting dealers connect directly with customers, potentially saving them tens of thousands of

dollars each year. Automotive news retail tech reporter Mark Homer wrote about it on AutoNews.com.

He spoke with our own Jake Nier.

Mark, welcome back to Daily Drive.

Thank you. It's great to be here.

This is a fascinating take on third-party listing sites and the direction that this is going.

Let's start by having you explain what's actually new here.

Third-party listing sites have been around for decades.

What are CarEdge and CarGenius AI doing that's fundamentally different?

Basically, they cut out the middleman. The middleman would be the third-party listings companies.

CarEdge uses an AI tool that started as a consumer tool to shop for vehicles online,

and now it's being expanded for dealership usage in terms of the data it collects.

CarGenius would use an AI tool embedded on a dealership website that would allow consumers

and dealers to do the same thing.

Now, you mentioned that those pilots just started this winter.

What kind of scale are we talking about?

How many dealers, how many transactions, that sort of thing?

It's just starting for CarEdge, so it's just a handful of dealers at this point,

but it'll expand over time. CarGenius slated about 35 or so before their pilot.

Yeah, so early days, for sure, but it is interesting to think about why dealers would

be interested in this, especially because you report that the typical franchise dealer

spends more than half a million dollars a year on advertising. Break down how much of that is

actually going to these third-party listing sites.

Well, according to NADAA, it's about 21% of that average spend is going to the listing sites,

and money is money if you can save it and be more official with it.

Why wouldn't you want to try it? At this point, it's early,

but dealers are showing some interest in finding another way.

Well, you spoke with a lot of really interesting people that are involved in this,

including Joe Lewis, who runs JC, Lewis, Mazda, and Savannah. He's testing the CarEdge pilot.

What did he tell you about his current costs?

He said basically he spends about 13 grand in change per month on third-party leads,

and in February, that spend produced 29 sold vehicles, so they came out to about $471 per car sold.

If we didn't have to spend any money on marketing and or lead providers,

now that opens up a door where we can start to discount cars more, give better deals,

because we're not having to spend that money elsewhere.

That's a significant amount of profit that would otherwise go to him.

Is that actually expensive compared to other lead sources?

Well, it's not that it's expensive. It's just that it's additional, I think,

is a better way to look at it. If you can streamline what you spend on these kinds of things,

then again, why not? Because money matters and profit margins are always going to be an issue.

I'm curious if there's a risk for dealers here. In the article, you note that 56%

of industry leads come from these third-party sources. If they pull back these sites,

could they actually be cutting themselves off from customers in some way?

At this point in time, the way the market is, absolutely, because they're still heavily reliant

on third-party listing sites, and they gain real benefit from it. What these two startups are

bringing to the table is a new form of competition. It gives dealers more choices, and it gives

consumers more choices in terms of how they want to find a vehicle. That's the immediate thing.

Longer term, if these pilots are more successful, or if they show a real clear return on investment,

savings, time, if they make customers happy, you're going to see a lot more of those.

So, I think, I don't know that you'll eliminate vehicle listings companies, but within the next

five to 10 years, assuming these AI agents take off, you may see some consolidation,

and perhaps more than that. Mark, every time I've bought a car in my life has been in the

internet age, and vehicle listing sites have always, since the very first time I ever bought

my first car by myself, listing sites have been around, and honestly, haven't changed that much,

at least from my perspective. You still kind of go through the same process. It's still not totally

clear whether the inventory is all up to date. You talked to Zak Shevska, the CEO of CarEdge,

who told you that, quote, listing companies have been outdated for a long time.

One of the benefits for consumers of working with agents is the agent doesn't get tired. The

agent will contact multiple dealerships, get you out the door, price quotes, show you real

transparent data. One of the benefits for dealers in the CarEdge dealer network is you get access

to the same exact data. Gone are the days of bait and switch. Gone are the days of advertising

aggressively low prices that aren't true in reality. Agents really can level the playing field for

the whole ecosystem, consumers and dealers. That's a bold claim, but what's his argument there?

It is, and it's the brassy attitude of the startup that we're going to change everything.

Sure.

You know, they may ultimately be correct in that, but it's early and it's too early to tell. I mean,

I think it's safe. They haven't had these tools yet, but it's important to also note that companies

like CarGurus and Cars.com are now aggressively adding their own AI tools embedded within their

systems and their search engines to bring more efficiency to both dealerships and consumers

who use those. So they're trying to keep up and they're trying to stay ahead of it. So

too early to tell if it'll work, but so far they're holding steady.

With my personal critique that sometimes you'll see a car that you like, it won't still be on

a lot by the time you get to the dealership, that sort of thing. It seems like transparency and

out-the-door pricing seem to be really central to these pitches, CarEdge, absolutely that is

central to their pitch. Is that something that traditional listing sites, that there is sort

of consensus that they're lacking or has there actually been improvement?

I don't know that there's a consensus, but there's an acknowledgement that consumers want more

transparency. They want the take-home price to be clear. They don't want to know about extra fees.

They don't want to have anything hidden in what they eventually pay. So that's one advantage of

these AI tools is it allows you to work on something directly with the dealership and

negotiate something solid that you could go to the dealership and finish it or you could do it online.

I am curious about the business model for these startups. I mean, they're all about cutting out

the middleman and saving dealership's money, but how do they make money if they're cutting out the

middleman? Well, they're not making money yet, that's important to say, but the common model seems

to be a monthly fee, basically like a subscription model. For example, Zach's chef, he's still beta

testing, so there's no final fee yet, but you can get a clue from the AI tool that just consumers used

or use. They pay $49 per month or 99 bucks a year to access this agent to help them

negotiate car purchases. Car genius is also on the pilot stage, so there's no final fee,

but they'll have like a startup, a free entry tier, and then there'll be various fees depending on

how much level of service you want from the AI tool. So they're developing a plan, but those

business models are untested at this moment. So I got to assume that pretty much all of the

established players here see this differently than Zach Shefska of CarEdge. You spoke with Scott

Painter at TrueCar. What is his counterargument? He's probably the most candid. He just took

TrueCar private, so he could speak a little more freely than a public company can, but he sees,

definitely sees AI agents as coming, but he sees everybody having a basically a plate at the table,

because they're going to need the equal listing sites, he said, to access all their data. So

it'll be like a symbiotic relationship that there's room for everybody.

Did you see any evidence that AI agents are actually connecting to these platforms rather

than replacing them? It's hard to say because with an AI agent to make it search well or to

search anything, you set parameters. So you say, search these, search these, don't search these

things. For example, I spoke to a car customer named AJ, and he developed his own AI agent,

and he set the parameters for the search for Reddit, where people post feedback and

readings of how they like the cars that they chose. And he did not use the listing sites at all.

Another guy named Zach, who I spoke to for the same story, he developed his agent to use

listing sites because he sees that data is crucial. So it all depends on how the agent is set.

You know, for example, the car genius tool will be embedded in the dealerships,

so it'll be dealership specific and have all that data at a keystroke. And so it'll depend.

Yeah. And of course, you mentioned AJ Steivenberg, who built that AI agent for just $25 and that

negotiated with dealerships for him and saved him 4,200 bucks on a Hyundai Palisade.

For any listeners that missed that interview, it was fantastic. You can go check that out on the

March 19th episode of Daily Drive. Now, Mark, just to leave off here, as we were saying here,

there could be some middle ground. And you talked with a couple of experts who say

that truth is probably somewhere in between completely replacing listing sites and just

flopping. So do you think that that's likely? And what are experts saying about, you know,

this idea that AI will reduce but not eliminate demand for listing sites?

It's not an easy answer because I think the parallels are probably true with something

like the airline industry, which heavily consolidated. And after the telephone industry

deregulated, it is now re-consolidated. So there's only a handful of players. I think listings,

companies are, well, they've been around 20 plus years. They have not really consolidated yet.

AI agents are transformative enough that in the short term and medium term, they'll probably

encourage some consolidation. Where some of the ones that invest in AI tools or form partnerships

with companies like Car Genius and Car Edge, they will do fine. The ones that don't adapt quickly

enough will find themselves an acquisition target or not relevant. And it comes down to that.

Mark Holmer covers retail tech for us at Automotive News and his piece is called,

Can AI Agents Replace Third-Party Car Listing Sites? Some dealerships are testing them. You

could find that at AutoNews.com and in the pages of this week's Automotive News. Mark,

thank you so much for joining us here on Daily Drive. My pleasure. Looking forward to the next time.

That's Daily Drive for today. I'm Kellan Walker. Thanks to our own Lawrence Ilyph and Larry

Velikwet for their reporting for today's podcast. We also had reporting from Michael Gerster and

Frank Volk of our sibling publication, Automobile Volca. You can get the latest news on retail tech,

the state of the RoboTaxi race and everything happening in the auto industry at AutoNews.com.

Come back tomorrow for a conversation with Toyota Motor North America COO, Mark Templin,

who talks about how the automaker is navigating rising tariff costs and the conflict in Iran.

We've been very clear with our dealers and with the customers we talked to,

we're not going to lead. We're going to follow the marketplace and we'll price to the market.

We'd love to hear from you. Let us know what you think of the show and the topics we cover today.

Send us an email at dailydrive at autonews.com or leave us a voicemail at 313-444-2774.

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March 24, 2026 | Could AI replace vehicle listing sites?; Zoox expands to two new markets

About this episode

Experian Automotive

Toyota Highlander EV

Toyota Grand Highlander

Audi

EV pivot

radar

LiDAR

Waymo

public rides

test, deploy, and move on to another city

coming off lease

positive equity

due for service

ROI

verified vehicle sales

impressions and clicks

CarGurus

AutoTrader

pilot program

lead providers

Zak Shevska

advertising aggressively low prices

AI tools

Cars.com

dealership negotiation

cutting out the middleman

AI agent

parameters for the search

industry consolidation

acquisition target

third-party car listing sites

tariff costs

price to the market

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