More car buyers are using AI before they ever call a dealer. In 2025, a Cars.com survey of its own marketplace audience put the share at 44%, while CarEdge found one in four shoppers had used, or planned to use, tools like ChatGPT to research, compare, and negotiate.
Buyers ask which models fit, whether a price is fair, and how to handle the negotiation, then visit a dealer or manufacturer website.
AI Car Shopping Research: What the 2025 Surveys Show
Three 2025 surveys measured AI use in car shopping. The numbers differ, largely because each one asked a different question, and each tells you something useful about your buyers.
| Publisher | Sample | Fielded | What it measured | Headline finding |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Cars.com | 936 in-market shoppers and recent buyers, drawn partly from its own marketplace audience | 4–10 November 2025 | Past use of AI car-search tools | 44% had used AI car-search tools; 97% of those users said AI will shape their purchase |
| CarEdge | 500 US respondents from CarEdge’s car-buying-advocacy following | 19–24 June 2025 | Used or planned to use AI tools | About one in four used or planned to use AI; 88% of users called it helpful |
| Cox Automotive | 2,300 vehicle buyers, 16th annual Car Buyer Journey Study | Autumn 2025 | Use of AI chat tools and AI-generated search overviews during the purchase | 19% of all buyers and 25% of new-vehicle buyers used AI tools |
One of the clearest reads comes from Cars.com. Surveying 936 in-market shoppers and recent buyers in November 2025, it found 44% had used AI car-search tools, and 97% of those users said AI will shape their purchase.
Worth knowing that Cars.com ran this survey while launching its own AI search product, drew partly from its own marketplace audience, and reported the 97% figure among people who had already used AI. Both numbers lean high, and the company’s commercial interest in the answer is the reason to read them as a ceiling rather than a baseline.
“Car shoppers aren’t treating AI as a novelty—they’re using it as a trusted co-pilot in their research.”
CarEdge surveyed 500 buyers in June 2025 and found about one in four had used, or planned to use, AI, with 88% of users calling it helpful. The past-tense-only figure in that survey is lower, and it is the honest floor for the trend. That audience came from CarEdge’s own car-buying-advocacy following, so it also skews toward engaged shoppers.
Cox Automotive, in its 16th annual Car Buyer Journey Study of 2,300 buyers in late 2025, reported lower usage, with 19% of all buyers and 25% of new-vehicle buyers using AI tools like ChatGPT or Google’s AI Overviews.
The same study found that buyers who used AI came away more satisfied. 84% of mostly-digital buyers who engaged with AI assistants were highly satisfied with the buying process, the most satisfied group in the survey. That is an association, not proof that AI caused the satisfaction.
This is Cox’s first year tracking AI use, so there is no trend line yet. What the study does report on direction is expectation rather than behaviour: 83% of buyers expect AI to reshape how people buy vehicles within 10 years.
How the AI Car Buying Journey Works
Buyers start with AI and finish on your business website. They do the early research with a chatbot before they ever reach your lot, and that early step decides whether you make their shortlist.
Here is how shoppers use ChatGPT and other AI tools to buy cars, according to Cars.com:
- They ask. The shopper asks an AI tool to compare models, check reliability, or get a price.
- They decide how much to trust it. 59% use AI as a starting point and keep researching, while 30% take its answer as final.
- They click through. 41% head to a dealer or manufacturer website the AI named.
- They buy in person. Most still want to deal with a person on budget and financing, and at least 64% are open to a salesperson’s suggestions on the lot.
This is how buyers describe it themselves. One shopper said that after a week of researching every current model and landing on their pick, they asked Copilot to quiz them on what to buy, and it suggested the same car.
The buyer has not handed the decision completely to a machine. They still want to sit in the car and deal with a real person before they sign.
But they only walk onto the lots the AI put in front of them first. If the AI names the dealer down the road instead of you, 41% of those buyers go to that competitor’s site, and you never even knew they were shopping.
What Shoppers Ask ChatGPT About Cars
Buyers now use AI to do the digging that used to mean a dozen open browser tabs. The good news for you is that the questions they ask are the exact pages you should be publishing.
Cars.com found that buyers mostly use AI to compare models, check reliability, and get a price. CarEdge found that 11% of its AI users turned to the tools for financing or leasing questions. Note the denominator there: 11% of AI users, not 11% of all car buyers.
So the questions keep coming back to the same short list, and each one maps to a page.
| What the buyer asks the AI | The page your dealership should publish |
|---|---|
| Which models fit my needs and budget? | A budget-and-body-style buying guide for your market, ending with matching cars in current stock |
| Is this vehicle reliable? | A model-by-model reliability page citing the common failure points and your inspection standard |
| Is this price fair? | A pricing-transparency page covering doc fees, reconditioning, and what “out the door” includes |
| How do financing and leasing actually work? | A plain-language financing explainer covering credit tiers, terms, and lease-versus-buy |
| How should I approach the negotiation? | A page setting out how your pricing works and what is and is not negotiable at your store |
Every one of those is a question you can answer better than any chatbot, because you have the real cars, prices, and the local knowledge a general AI does not.
When Buyers Use AI to Prepare for Negotiation
Some buyers now walk in already coached by AI on how to negotiate. CarEdge found that 44% of its AI users used the tools to prepare for the deal. So tell your sales team that “I checked with ChatGPT” is now a normal way to open, and the right move is to talk through the number.
If your pitch does not match the numbers they already checked, they will spot it. That is a good reason to run pricing and a process that holds up when someone looks closely.
Five Ways to Optimise Your Dealership Content for AI Search
The answer to AI-first buyers is not to fight it. It is to help them make the right decision. This is the practical side of Generative Engine Optimization (GEO): each move below gives the AI something accurate to quote and gives the buyer a reason to pick you.
1. Answer the Buyer’s Question First
Open each page with a direct 40-to-60-word answer to the real question, then elaborate. The answer-first structure is what we recommend for AI citations, since assistants can extract a direct answer more easily than they can pull one out of a sales pitch.
- Lead with the answer. A page titled “What to bring to buy a used car” should open with the short list a buyer actually needs: a valid driver’s licence, proof of insurance, and a pre-arranged payment method.
- Then elaborate. Once the direct answer is in place, expand into the detail: how financing changes what to bring, what a trade-in adds, and what to confirm before you arrive.
- Serve both readers at once. The direct opening gives an AI assistant a clean answer to quote and gives the buyer a reason to keep reading instead of leaving.
Writing in Investopedia, Sara Clarke described asking ChatGPT what to raise with dealers and getting back exactly these questions:
- The certified pre-owned inspection checklist
- When the warranty starts
- Any required add-ons
- The out-the-door price with all fees
2. Be Open About Your Pricing and Fees
63% of Cars.com respondents worried AI might steer them toward a biased pick, so the buyer arriving from an AI tool is already primed to check whether your numbers are straight. A plain page on how your pricing and fees work answers that worry and gives the AI something honest to cite.
Spell out your doc fee, your reconditioning standard, and what “out the door” actually includes.
3. Build Model and Trim Comparison Pages
Comparing models is one of the most common things buyers ask AI to do, so give them the comparison yourself rather than letting a general model guess. Publish model-versus-model and trim-versus-trim pages built on real specs and the cars you actually have on the lot.
A page like “2022 Honda Accord LX vs Sport: which trim is right for you” that ends with the three matching cars in your current inventory does something no general AI can, because it pairs the comparison with a car the buyer can drive this week.
4. Get Into the Sources AI Assistants Trust
AI tools answer from places they can read and trust, so your business details need to match everywhere a machine looks. Keep the same name, address, phone number, and hours across your own properties and the third-party sites these tools read.
| Source type | What to keep updated | Mainly feeds |
|---|---|---|
| Your website | Name, address, phone, hours, inventory, pricing pages | All assistants |
| Google Business Profile | Category, description, services, hours, reviews, posts | Gemini, Google AI Overviews |
| Bing Places and Apple Business Connect | Name, address, phone, hours, categories | ChatGPT browsing, Copilot, Apple Maps |
| Automotive marketplaces | Edmunds, Kelley Blue Book, Cars.com, CarGurus, Consumer Reports listings and dealer profiles | All assistants, as cited third-party sources |
When those records disagree, the AI has no clean answer to quote, so it names a competitor instead.
Where an assistant pulls from depends on which one the buyer opens, and they do not all read the same web. ChatGPT’s browsing leans on the Bing index. Gemini and Google’s AI Overviews draw from Google’s own index, so your Google Business Profile and your standing in ordinary Google search drive what they surface. Covering only one side leaves you invisible on the other.
The stakes here are the whole game, because 41% of Cars.com’s AI users go straight to a dealer or manufacturer site the AI named. If your data does not add up, you are not the store it names.
If your Google Business Profile is the weak link, our full guide to Google Business Profile for car dealerships covers the fields these assistants read.
5. Hand the AI-Briefed Buyer Off to a Human
The sale still closes in person, so every page should point the AI-briefed buyer toward a real conversation. Capital One found in-person shoppers were more than twice as likely as online-only shoppers to call the experience transparent, at 40% versus 18%.
That is the moment your page is built for. Once budget, financing, and the actual car come into play, buyers still want a real person at the dealership, so give every page a clear path to that conversation rather than another form to fill out.
Sara Clarke, documenting her own AI-assisted purchase for Investopedia, found AI strong for research and weak once real pricing and negotiation began.
See Where Buyers Find You in AI Search
AI-first buyers land on pages your usual analytics never show you. By the time a shopper reaches your lot, the AI has already named a handful of dealers, and you are either on that list or you are not. The trouble is that most dealerships have no way to see which one is true.
An AI visibility audit shows you where your store appears across ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Gemini, where a competitor appears instead, and which questions the AI answers without you. From there, publish the pages the AI can read and trust, and keep your business details consistent everywhere it looks.
For the strategy behind that work, start with our guide to becoming the dealership AI assistants cite.
Car Buyers and AI Research FAQs
How many car buyers are actually using AI to research vehicles?
Between 19% and 44% of car buyers, depending on which study you read and what it asked. Cars.com found 44% of in-market shoppers and recent buyers had used AI car-search tools, while Cox Automotive found 19% of all buyers and 25% of new-vehicle buyers.
The spread is not just different samples. Cars.com asked about past use of AI car-search tools among a marketplace audience, CarEdge asked whether shoppers had used or planned to use AI, and Cox asked about AI chat tools and AI-generated search overviews during the purchase.
Does AI research mean car buyers skip the dealership?
No, AI reshapes the research stage rather than replacing the dealership visit. Cars.com found that most shoppers move from AI tools to direct contact with a dealer once budget and financing come up, and 64% remain open to a salesperson’s recommendations on the lot.
What should a dealership publish to show up in AI answers?
Publish plain answers to the questions buyers actually ask, including model comparisons, reliability, fair pricing, and financing explainers, and keep your business details consistent everywhere machines read them.
There are no guarantees of citation, but assistants tend to draw on accurate, well-structured, locally specific content.
Which AI tools are car buyers actually using?
ChatGPT is the most common tool for car research, but buyers also use Google’s AI Overviews, Gemini, Perplexity, and Microsoft Copilot. Cox Automotive grouped usage into AI chat tools such as ChatGPT and Copilot alongside AI-generated search overviews.
Sources
- Cars.com. “AI in Car Shopping Consumer Survey.” 20 November 2025. Survey of 936 in-market shoppers and recent buyers, fielded 4–10 November 2025. Accessed 4 September 2026.
- CarEdge. “One in Four Car Buyers Is Using AI to Get a Better Deal.” July 2025. Survey of 500 US respondents, fielded 19–24 June 2025. Accessed 4 September 2026.
- Cox Automotive. “Car Buyer Journey Study Finds Efficiency, Digital Tools and AI Drive Record Satisfaction.” January 2026. 16th annual study, 2,300 vehicle buyers, fielded autumn 2025. Accessed 4 September 2026.
- Clarke, Sara. “I Used AI to Buy a Car—Here’s Where It Works and Where It Doesn’t.” Investopedia, updated 27 January 2026. Accessed 4 September 2026.
- Capital One. “2025 Car Buying Outlook.” 4 December 2025. Survey of 2,042 US car buyers, recent and future, aged 18 and over. Accessed 4 September 2026.