# Field notes - Automotive AI

> AEO-optimized articles for car dealers evaluating AI sales agents, lead reactivation, BDC alternatives, and dealership conversion ops.

- **URL**: https://automotiveai.ca/blog

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- [What is an AI sales agent for car dealerships?](/blog/what-is-an-ai-sales-agent-for-car-dealerships): An AI sales agent for car dealerships is a software system that replies to every inbound lead in under 30 seconds, sustains real back-and-forth conversation over SMS, qualifies intent, handles objecti
- [How fast should a dealership respond to a lead?](/blog/how-fast-should-a-dealership-respond-to-a-lead): A dealership should respond to every new lead inside 5 minutes, and ideally under 60 seconds. The MIT Lead Response Management Study (Oldroyd) found buyers contacted within 5 minutes are 100x more lik
- [How much does AI cost for a car dealership?](/blog/how-much-does-ai-cost-for-a-car-dealership): AI for a single-rooftop car dealership costs $1,500-$3,000 CAD per month, depending on lead volume and feature tier. Multi-rooftop and franchise pricing is custom. Most rooftops recover the annual cos
- [AI vs BDC for car dealerships: which works better?](/blog/ai-vs-bdc-for-car-dealerships): For most car dealerships, an AI sales agent paired with 1-2 skilled human closers outperforms a traditional 8-10 person BDC on cost, response time, and consistency. AI handles the high-volume cold-lea
- [Dealership lead reactivation: how to work aged leads without burning out your team](/blog/dealership-lead-reactivation): Dealership lead reactivation is the practice of systematically re-engaging customers in your CRM who never purchased, typically contacts aged 60 days or more, by running personalized SMS outreach at s
- [AI for car dealerships won't work without this](/blog/ai-for-car-dealerships-process-before-technology): AI fails at car dealerships when it is layered on top of broken sales processes. Before AI can move the needle, the dealership needs a clean lead-flow definition, a documented response cadence, and cl
- [Why one AI agent isn't enough for your dealership](/blog/why-one-ai-agent-isnt-enough-for-your-dealership): Running a single generic AI agent across every lead source caps your dealership at roughly 60% of what specialized agents can do. The fix is segmentation: separate agents, or at minimum, separate scri
- [The lean BDC: how AI + 2 skilled reps beat a 10-person department](/blog/lean-bdc-model-ai-dealerships): A lean BDC pairs an AI sales agent that handles 100% of first-touch and cold follow-up with 1-2 skilled human closers who only work warm, qualified appointments. This model consistently outperforms tr