ATLANTA—August 28, 2026—vAuto, a Cox Automotive brand and leading provider of inventory management and pricing solutions for automotive dealers, announces the availability of vAuto Test Drive for dealers to preview and test emerging product innovations and provide feedback before broad release.
“The best technology partners innovate relentlessly and let dealers adopt on their own terms,” said Derek Hansen, Cox Automotive Senior Vice President of Dealer, Lender, and Inventory Management Solutions. “With Test Drive, we’re creating a more direct connection between our product teams and the dealers who use our solutions every day. This gives dealers an opportunity to shape new capabilities early, helping ensure they solve real dealership challenges, fit the way dealers work and deliver value faster.”
The launch follows a beta test with 700 dealers earlier this year, where dealers took advantage of the opportunity to inform future innovations intended to support dealer operational efficiency and business performance.
Appraisal Enhancements Shaped by Dealer Feedback
Two recent enhancements launched out of Test Drive, helping dealers more thoroughly appraise and acquire vehicles from customers—a must in today’s inventory-constrained used vehicle market.
- Common Problems: This enhancement uses AI to analyze publicly available market information, including owner forums and discussion groups, to surface commonly reported issues associated with specific vehicle makes and models.
- Vehicle Journey: Brings available ownership and service history from the Cox Automotive ecosystem into the vAuto appraisal workflow, helping dealers evaluate factors that may affect vehicle condition and estimated reconditioning costs.
Test Drive is also helping vAuto refine new and expanded capabilities, including vAuto AI Assistant and a new enhancement to AI Descriptions. Together, these capabilities are designed to help dealers work more efficiently by automating routine tasks, surfacing actionable insights, and supporting more consistent inventory merchandising. Building on vAuto’s existing AI Descriptions capability, the enhancement is designed to automate description generation and approval across inventory before the workflow is considered for broader release.
“Dealers were instrumental in helping us develop and prioritize these enhancements to support a more informed assessment of a vehicle’s condition for decision making,” said Felipe Arias, vAuto Vice President. “In the end, Test Drive helps our dealers and vAuto collaborate faster, innovate more effectively and deliver solutions that address real-world dealership challenges.”
About Cox Automotive
Cox Automotive is the world’s largest automotive services and technology provider. Fueled by the largest breadth of first- and third-party data fed by 2.3 billion online interactions a year, Cox Automotive tailors leading solutions for car shoppers, auto manufacturers, dealers, lenders and fleets. The company has 29,000+ employees on four continents and a portfolio of industry-leading brands that include Autotrader®, Kelley Blue Book®, Manheim®, vAuto®, Dealertrack®, NextGear Capital™, CentralDispatch® and Cox Fleet®. Cox Automotive is a subsidiary of Cox Enterprises Inc., a privately owned, Atlanta-based company with $23 billion in annual revenue. Cox Automotive has been included on Glassdoor’s Best Companies in Tech & AI 2026 and Best Place to Work in 2026 lists. Visit coxautoinc.com or connect via @CoxAutomotive on X, CoxAutoInc on Facebook or Cox-Automotive-Inc on LinkedIn.