How Robots Are Changing Car Sales – And What's Next

Alex Lawrence, CEO of Utah-based used-EV dealer EV Auto, joins host Sam D'Arc and Podium's Ross Tinkham to explain how he built a business that sells nothing but used EVs, moves roughly 100 cars a month out of a single lot of about 60 vehicles, and has become an early, hands-on adopter of conversational AI. Lawrence describes EV Auto's AI agent, which he calls Glow (Podium's underlying product is named Jerry), as an after-hours and overflow teammate that answers texts in the dealership's own casual, emoji-friendly voice, and credits it with millions of dollars in incremental sales without shrinking his sales team.

Tinkham explains that Podium's AI is model-agnostic, currently built on OpenAI but swappable as better models emerge, and is strengthened by years of conversational data across roughly 7,000 dealerships. He urges dealers to treat rollout as a three-month cycle of integration, observation, and tuning rather than a one-time setup, since every store's voice and customer base differ. The conversation also covers AI's effect on headcount growth, the coming shift toward voice AI for inbound and outbound calls, and fixed ops as the next big frontier for AI in dealerships.

Key takeaways

• EV Auto sells around 100 cars a month from a roughly 60-vehicle lot, turning its entire inventory over in under a month.

• Podium's AI BDC product has grown from a roughly 50-dealer beta to more than 1,000 dealers using it, drawing on conversations from about 7,000 partner dealerships.

• Ross Tinkham recommends dealers plan on a three-month cycle of reviewing AI conversations and refining responses after initial CRM and DMS integration is set up.