Automotive News Daily Drive May 19, 2026

May 19th, 2026 | Ford wants to supply military; the dos and don’ts of retail AI contracts

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Term

Fraud Protect

Fraud Protect is a tool dealers use to reduce fraud. It’s meant to flag suspicious information about the buyer and the trade-in while the deal is being processed.

Company

Experian Automotive

Experian Automotive helps car dealers spot fraud. Their Fraud Protect tool checks for things like fake identity or fake trade-in details while a deal is happening.

Term

Trade-in fraud refers to dishonest or falsified claims about a customer’s trade-in vehicle during a purchase. In dealer financing, it can involve misrepresenting ownership, vehicle condition, or the trade-in’s details to reduce the amount due.

Concept

AI features in cars

They’re talking about car features that use AI, like smarter driver-assist functions. The question is whether those features actually help in a real, measurable way.

Concept

subprime lending

Subprime lending is car financing for people with lower credit scores. It can help more people buy cars, but it usually comes with higher risk if payments don’t go through.

LIVE

Fraud is no longer just a risk for auto dealers,

it has become part of everyday operations.

Experian Automotive's Fraud Protect solution

helps you catch income, identity, and trade in fraud

in real time without slowing down the sale.

Stop fraud, keep deals moving,

Experian Automotive's Fraud Protect.

Welcome to Daily Drive for Tuesday, May 19th, 2026.

I'm Kellan Walker in Las Vegas.

Today on the show,

Ford wants to supply pickups to the military.

Only one fifth of AI features in cars

are actually making money.

And after years of tightening standards,

subprime lending is on the rise once again.

Plus, Steve Greenfield of Automotive Ventures

shares his advice for dealers

trying to navigate the AI landscape.

The ugly truth is,

there may be some segment of your employee base

that it just isn't gonna be able to make this transition.

Let's run through all the news you need to know

to keep up in the auto industry.

Ford is in talks with defense departments

in North America and Europe

to supply pickup trucks and software to their militaries.

The conversations started last year.

There's no contract yet,

but Ford says talks are going well.

The automaker wants to convert its F-Series pickups,

including super duty trucks for military use.

It's part of the Pentagon's push

to work with more contractors.

Army secretary, Dan Driscoll,

name checked Ford and GM earlier this year

as companies he wants in the defense space.

Just one fifth of AI features in cars

are actually making money.

And that's a problem for automakers

who've gone all in on the tech.

According to consulting firm, SBD Automotive,

the issue comes down to costs.

Unlike traditional features

with one time development expenses,

AI runs on the cloud.

So the meter's running every time someone uses it.

Many automakers don't even know

how much each feature costs,

leading to what SBD calls zombie features,

AI tools that eat up resources without delivering value.

And auto lenders financed more subprime borrowers

during the fourth quarter

and the share is bigger than it's been in years.

Subprime and deep subprime customers accounted

for more than 15% of all loans and leases in Q4.

That's according to Experian Automotive,

which says the trend reflects

both lenders loosening standards to grow

and consumers who need transportation

finally coming off the sidelines.

Here to talk more about it is our own John Hutter,

who covers retail finance and insurance for us

at Automotive News.

John, welcome back to Daily Drive.

Hey, good to be here.

All right, John.

So what's driving lenders to loosen their standards now?

It's kind of hard to say exactly,

but all we know is they are loosening.

The industry had kind of tightened up a lot

after about 2022 and 2023.

We had a lot of people get burned

because people's credit looked overly,

a lot better than it actually was after the pandemic,

what everybody had savings.

So a lot of lenders tightened up

and now they're coming back.

One theory is that it's a little bit easier,

like there's more and more data tools

to analyze consumers that have kind of mid-level credit

or like if it's weaker, it might look a little bit better

once they start looking at other factors

besides traditional credit score or things.

For example, if you're paying your Netflix bills on time,

data like that now,

you can build some of that into your credit models.

So it's people that maybe look bad on paper

might look like a safer bet today than they used to.

You spoke with dealerships

who are seeing more subprime customers.

Now, John, what did they see?

It was interesting, the one dealer mentioned

that it's subprime consumers just coming back

because their vehicle is just breaking down

or it's got issues, they've got to replace it.

So it sounds like a necessity play.

Another one was just consumers wanting to downsize

because they're having economic problems

is also bringing them back, like you're trading in it.

And then finally, one issue was just the

because subprime consumers maybe would have paid cash

in the past because of the credit,

the loan's more expensive.

Now vehicles are more expensive

and so they're having no choice

but to take out a loan for part of it,

what they used to be able to just buy outright in cash.

So that's kind of what we're hearing

from dealers on the ground so far.

Perfect, John, thank you so much for joining me.

Thank you.

Coming up, advice for dealers navigating the AI landscape.

That's next on Daily Drive.

Fraud is no longer just a risk for auto dealers,

it has become part of everyday operations.

According to Experian Automotive,

nearly nine out of 10 dealers say fraud is a top concern

and 70% say it's on the rise.

We're talking about real deals slipping through,

costing dealerships 10, even $20,000 per incident.

And it's not just one type of fraud,

you've got forged income documents,

fabricated salaries, synthetic identities,

even trade-in scams.

The worst part, catching fraud

often slows everything down,

adding friction to deals

and frustrating legitimate customers.

That's where Experian Automotive's

Fraud Protect solution comes in.

It's designed specifically for dealers,

helping you quickly detect income, identity,

and trade-in ownership before it hits your bottom line.

No guesswork, no unnecessary delays,

just faster, more consistent verification

so you can protect your profits

while keeping the buying experience smooth.

Because the goal isn't just to stop fraud,

it's to keep good deals moving.

Experian Automotive's Fraud Protect, no more, risk less,

sell smarter.

Welcome back to Daily Drive, I'm Kellan Walker.

Dealers are being pitched a lot of AI solutions right now.

But it's not always clear

which one delivers real return on investment.

Steve Greenfield is general partner

of Automotive Ventures.

He spoke with our own Dan Shine

about the do's and don'ts for dealers

looking for AI vendors

and what metrics they should focus on.

Steve, we're here at the AI industry

summit before SotoCon begins.

Speakers today all sorts of AI discussions.

We've obviously progressed from the chatbots

to conversational AI,

to inquiries about new and used vehicles.

And I wonder how would you think

how AI is progressing in automotive retail?

How are dealers handling this so far?

Yeah, I think that's still early innings.

I think dealers are having a hard time

kind of metabolizing it right now

and trying to figure out vendors

are pitching me a lot of things.

I don't know what to believe, what not to believe.

I think if anything, it's probably been underwhelming so far

in terms of the actual ROI,

the value on what they're spending.

But I think we are just scratching the surface.

I mean, you and I just sat through a lot of presentations here.

There's a lot of exciting stuff going on.

But if I'm a dealer sitting in the audience,

I'm overwhelmed at this point.

I don't know where to start.

I've got a bunch of legacy systems,

DMS, CRM, et cetera.

And now I've got a wave of new AI first

kind of like technologies that are coming at me.

And it's hard for me to kind of process

how are these all going to fit together?

Where am I going to get ROI?

Where to spend that incremental dollar of SaaS?

And maybe most importantly,

I only have so much budget every month for software.

Am I going to start making some concessions and trade-offs?

Like if I'm going to spend more on AI solutions

that are trying to sell to me,

where am I going to make trade-offs

and start reducing my budget elsewhere?

And that I think as a dealer isn't right clear to me yet.

Right, I think it's very overwhelming.

The acronyms we heard today,

Snowflake and all these other words,

I'm sure that I think this,

I think dealers would be shutting down

and say, I'm not going to do any of it.

I'm making money.

Why do I need any more of this nonsense?

Yeah, I mean, my observation,

I've been in the industry 25 years,

as dealers live in this very dysfunctional 30-day cycle.

A lot of it's driven by the OEMs, right?

I got to hit my targets

and I try to hit my targets by the end of the month

and then we have a reset

and the next month I'm back in that cycle again.

And that's why dealers,

I mean, it's the most flattery.

They're myopic around hitting those metrics every month

and if a vendor can come in

and help me hit those metrics, great.

I mean, I don't want to hear about

what life's going to be like five years from now.

I got metrics to hit this month.

And I think right now that's where the reconciliation

I think is having a hard time is like,

a lot of these vendors are talking about this future.

We just got off stage and they were talking about

three years from now, five years from now.

How disruptive is this going to be

and what does life look like for a dealer?

Well, dealers don't have the ability, right?

They don't have the ability to look like five years ahead

for the most part because they're trying to hit

this quarter, this month, these cycles.

And I think this is where we need to see the reconciliation.

If I'm going to spend an incremental dollar

on some AI-powered software tool,

it's got to help me drive metrics in the short term.

Yeah, so if I'm a dealer,

if I'm going to get Dan Shine, Honda or wherever,

I come to you Steve, help me figure this all out.

What are the first steps you say to me

to kind of start to figure out this AI landscape

and how it might help benefit my dealership?

Yeah, AI or not AI, I think dealers have to say,

what metrics am I trying to move right now?

Am I trying to capture more per RO, get more ROs,

try to capture more vehicles in operation,

sell an incremental car, be it newer used,

attach more gross profit to each of those units,

whatever it might be, start there and say,

which metrics are there opportunities to drive?

And then start working backwards into,

are there solutions out there that can help me?

And very stereotypically,

people process and then technologies,

you got to know which metric you want to drive,

make sure you got the right people in place,

make sure you got the right processes,

and then you can layer technology and over top.

I don't think that AI is suddenly going to be a panacea

and say like, oh, we can just drop AI

and magically things are going to move.

A lot of these vendors seem to be professing that.

But at the end of the day,

I think start with the metric in mind that you want to drive,

make sure you got good people that can absorb these changes,

the right people that can be trained up

in these ways of working,

and then figure out what technologies

can complement all of that.

Otherwise, I think you're almost doomed for failure.

Yeah.

What's the worst thing a dealer could do right now

in this kind of this growing age of AI?

Well, walk into this new world uneducated.

I think by going to conferences like this is great

because you sit there, you can absorb,

you can sort of discern between which of these things

can I believe, how ready am I,

and then prepare for sort of AI.

But I think everyone needs to have a basic knowledge

of what is this thing,

or play around with tools like ChatGBT or Anthropic

in your day-to-day, maybe even outside of work

to understand what we're dealing with.

Because otherwise, I mean, it is sort of a moonshot.

If you suddenly just say,

hey, I need an AI solution that's going to help me

drive more profit, and you go buy an AI solution,

you're almost doomed for failure.

The theme of the SodaCon is the year of the human.

And we've heard a lot of folks up on the stage today

saying AI is not going to replace jobs.

It's just going to help people do,

get rid of the stuff that they don't have to do

and make them focus on more important tasks.

Do you buy it?

I do with a caveat.

I think that what we're seeing in other industries,

even in the news this morning,

is that there are layoffs.

But one of the automakers this morning said

that they were going to fire a bunch of people,

but then replace them with the same amount of people

up in Detroit, but more AI natives.

And I think that this is the challenge right now,

is an automaker or a dealer has to think about,

are my people ready?

Right?

I have a hypothesis that AI is going to change things

dramatically.

It's going to make every one of my humans,

my employees, much more productive.

But there are going to be some employees

that aren't going to be able to cross that bridge.

And I think this is going to be the challenge, right?

The HR teams are going to have a hard time

looking at my current employee population and saying,

how many of these are going to make this transition?

How many aren't?

And what am I going to do to help them navigate

towards the future?

So I think a lot of that has to happen

over the next six months to 18 months for dealers overall

to say, what does the future look like?

How dependent are we going to become on AI

to drive productivity and customer satisfaction

and employee satisfaction?

But there may be the ugly truth is,

there may be some segment of your employee base

that just isn't going to be able to make this transition.

Steve, I really appreciate the insights.

Good to see you there.

Thanks.

Steve Greenfield of Automotive Ventures

spoke with our own Dan Shine.

That's Daily Drive for today.

I'm Kellan Walker.

Thanks to Automotive News executive producer,

Jake Nier, as well as our own John Hutter

for his reporting for today's podcast.

We also have reporting from Lois Jones

of our sibling publication, Automotive News Europe.

You can get the latest news on AI and automotive retail,

subprime lending, and everything happening

in the auto industry at AutoNews.com.

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