Death of the Car Salesman? BMW Makes AI App To Sell Electric Cars

cartechboy writes "You thought Willy Loman had it bad. BMW is launching an artificial intelligence app allowing consumers to ask questions about its new BMW i3 electric car without the hassle of having to pick up the phone or go into a dealership. Potential customers can text a simple question about the i3 and the system builds an appropriate response in real-time using AI — interpreting words, sentiment, and context. The futuristic robo-car salesman was developed by 19-year-old entrepreneur Dmitry Aksenov and operates around the clock. No word on whether the app says, 'Wait here — I'll check with my sales manager,' like human car dealers often do."

Comments

Car salesmen

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm not living in the american cultural sphere. Around here carsalesmen never go to their managers, they are also not aggressively pushy. They are actually pretty much the best salesmen a normal consumer will ever meet. (Seen B2B salesmen too, the really good ones usually end up there). Aggressively pushy ones end up in hospitals or unemployed. Are american carsales man really as bad as the stereotype suggests? If so, why do you think they end up being like that?

Re:Car salesmen

[itsdapead]

I'm not living in the american cultural sphere. Around here carsalesmen never go to their managers, they are also not aggressively pushy.

Eh? I didn't know they had car salesmen in Narnia!

Based on my last experience, we don't have car salesmen in England, either - we have financial product salesmen who push loans, hare-brained leasing deals and dubious extended warranty schemes to people who have already decided to buy the car and are (figuratively, at least) waving the cash in their face. Its pretty clear that actually selling cars has little to do with their business model.

Oh, and I have it on good authority that (as I always suspected) the "consulting my manager" theatre means "putting the kettle on in preparation for a celebratory brew" (maybe in the US it is more likely to be turning on the coffee machine)... or maybe headbutting the wall a few times if the stubborn customer has insisted on actually paying for the car, thus depriving you of the finance company commission.

"Salesman"?

[Konowl]

When was the last time you had to legitimately phone up a salesman to ask him a question anyways.

Last car I bought I knew the invoice price ahead of time. I picked two dealerships in different cities, emailed them my offer. When they both responded, I took the cheaper response and emailed the other dealership. Rinse and repeat. When one stopped negotiating, I then went to a third dealership with the lowest price so far.

In the end, I didn't even pick up the phone and talk to my salesman. I met him the day I picked up the car.