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joe.pistell · 2026-06-25T11:34:29-0400

I just watched the video, finally, a fresh new way to look at a personal vehicle that isn't two-thirds technology.

I see this as a spark to create a wonderful new wave of product innovation in our industry. This platform that is nearly infinitely customizable, and make it affordable will cause our sleeping, stuffy OEMs to realize that the Harley-Davidson model can work in automotive. Its much more than electric colored wraps, it allows the buyer to, through a modular system, customize the platform or not.

Buy the slate in March, get a work bonus later, and put on those running boards and the stereo. Get some extra cash saved up and plug in a remote start preconditioning unit. A well-designed platform will be plug and play.

This has home run written all over it, and it's a complete reset on the unaffordability of new cars.

Alex Snyder · 2026-06-25T08:49:06-0400

joe.pistell said:
Is Slate going to copy the Harley Davidson model and build a platform with the intent for users to spend big $$$ on customizing and accessorizing?

It looks that way, but far more reasonable pricing than Harley. I think their aim is affordability over chrome.

joe.pistell · 2026-06-25T08:15:06-0400

Is Slate going to copy the Harley Davidson model and build a platform with the intent for users to spend big $$$ on customizing and accessorizing?

joe.pistell · 2026-06-25T08:11:47-0400

jon.berna said:
lvlupauto.com is being cited by AI now on vendor related requests!

WIN!

jon.berna · Wednesday at 7:30 PM

Sent from an industry friend today - lvlupauto.com is being cited by AI now on vendor related requests!

Chris Apostalides · Wednesday at 4:54 PM

I built one for shits and giggles. With reasonable accessories, plus wall charger, you're at $31k. Add in a few more upgrades that "current pricing is unavailable" for and you're likely at $33-$34k.

That's for the blank slate model. The fastback starts at $32k.

Alex Snyder · Wednesday at 4:37 PM

Slate

Slate Auto | The Customizable EV That Works for You

www.slate.auto

If you haven't seen this $25,000 EV that you can customize into... nearly anything, then you should check it out. We have needed a cheap new pickup (remember the old Isuzu PuP - we used to sell them for $4,995 + $495 freight + a $199 processing fee) to have on our streets and it is an EV. What could better for local businesses?

Or be cool and make it look like a Bronco :bow:

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Alex Snyder · Wednesday at 8:33 AM

We have had the Vendor Deals section and it has been great to see the vendors placing their promotions there, and now they have a place to bring their newest updates or accolades to the forums: Vendor Announcements

Do you have a new product release?
Did you have a killer client success story that our community would find value in?
Are you hosting an event?
Did you hire someone from our community?

These are the kinds of things we'd love to see you talk about. I'm especially looking forward to product release updates and if you hired someone from the DealerRefresh crowd.

What not to do:

You hired someone we don't know... nobody cares, don't tell us.
Your client's success story has no practical story that shows another dealer how to succeed.
You integrated with some other company, but don't tell us the details of the integration.
Your company made an acquisition or you were acquired and don't give us the details of what that means to us.

Cardinal Rule: if you want to add good content, always fashion it in a way that your audience can get value from it.

You live deeply in your own world. Things are important to you that others do not understand nor care to try understanding it. When you want to tell the world something try saying it out loud and substitute another company name or person's name to see if you would care if you heard that. If the answer is yes (be careful with your bias), then it should be good content. If no, don't post it.

If you ever have a question about posting, @Jeff Kershner and I can help. Just direct message us.

Brad Burlingham · Tuesday at 7:58 PM

cressidi65 said:
How to can look at pmax campaigns by channel?

you need to go into google ads, then click on pmax and then choose channel performance under insights

Alex Snyder · Tuesday at 2:06 PM

Jeff Kershner said:
Pretty crazy to experience two such monumental shifts in an industry and LIFE.

The Internet (capital I) proved it wasn't a fad. I think we would be smart to embrace the technological changes and start considering that we may see 2 or 4 more of these in our lifetimes.

craigh · Tuesday at 1:52 PM

Mitch Gallant said:
How was the event?

From a Tekion perspective I think it was great. They really showed what "the future of DMS" looks like - embedded AI, but not just a random chatbot, actionable insights that will be followed by action itself. Assuming that all of this is real and gets released, they seem to be doing everything the right way - AI inside the platform itself, not sending your data to other AI providers, letting the AI actually do things other than surface insights, etc.

I also had meetings with their partner teams and talked about ways we can go back to the OG days of Tekion where we (vendors) were all excited to build on top of an open DMS system - that is also exciting on our end.

For their first exclusively Tekion event I think it was a big success - the only complaint I might have is that some of the sessions are more of a commercial for Tekion than they are educational, but that was intentional given the audience.

Chris Apostalides · Tuesday at 12:21 PM

craigh said:
As I understand it, this ended up getting banned because someone somewhere in the Amazon universe managed to jailbreak Fable and prove that they could turn it into Mythos and it would do the work everyone is scared of.

This may also be why GPT 5.6 is on ice - they don't want to release before Fable 5 comes back out but they also don't want to release and get banned by the government. In the meantime there are hundreds of reports about how GPT 5.5 is performing terribly, which typically happens just before a new model release.

And then yesterday they dropped his interesting gem:

View attachment 11378

AI is great. On the flip side, we aren't far from models going full ham and creating their own updates. Anthropics test of a fictional shutdown scenario and Claude's blackmail response will seem minor.

Mitch Gallant · Tuesday at 12:05 PM

craigh said:
I'm in Vegas for the Tekion One event - anyone else down here?

‎Home - Tekion One

Join Tekion One 2026 in Las Vegas, June 15-17. Connect with industry leaders and explore AI-native innovation shaping the future of automotive retail.

events.tekion.com

How was the event?

joe.pistell · Tuesday at 11:31 AM

Alex Snyder said:
Right now.

yup.

We're a ship at sea with no wind. My org is dead in the water... adrift... waiting...

Alex Snyder · Tuesday at 11:10 AM

Claude said:
API Error: 500 Internal server error. This is a server-side issue, usually temporary — try again in a moment. If it persists, check https://status.claude.com.

Right now.

Chris Apostalides · Tuesday at 11:04 AM

Too many people overpromise and underdeliver. As a vendor, it makes me nauseous. I have always been of the mindset that you must manage expectations and underpromise and do your best to overdeliver.

craigh · Tuesday at 11:02 AM

When I first started programming (about 2 decades ago) the biggest fear we had was "what happens if the site goes down" and we made all these ridiculous promises like 99.999% uptime and 1 hour SLAs. Fast-forward to 2026 and one of the fastest growing companies in the history of the planet has an uptime graph that looks like this:

Tallcool1 · Tuesday at 10:34 AM

I voted for Overpromising because it was the closest fit.

I don't like being pitched all of the features only to find out that the Subscription Level I am signing up for doesn't include the features that I was really wanting.

I called that overpromising which if believe fits pretty well.

Tallcool1 · Tuesday at 10:31 AM

craigh said:
Having just done a roadtrip across Canada with an OEM partner to showcase our product, I got to have roundtable discussions with around 400 dealership representatives across 3 weeks of travel. As far as this question goes (at least here in Canada), the resounding questions we got were:

1. Bad Reporting - many dealers just expect that reports provided by the same vendor providing the product or service are tainted, especially if they have to be "prepared" and aren't available immediately

2. Poor integrations - many vendors say "yes" to every integration question and only after signing the contract do you realize that their idea of an integration is that you manually export the data and send it to them or you call the vendor yourself and tell them to make the integration work. Dealers want a much cleaner idea of what is and is not actually integrated.

Bad support also came up alot, but typically in the context of a few key vendors who have been acquired and downsized their support teams to the point where you can't get any support at all.

Wow you got a fantastic opportunity to sit with that many dealership employees over a short period of time. You of course earned that. You had to be ready to be home when that 3 weeks was over.

I admire that level of commitment Craig. Great job.

craigh · Tuesday at 10:26 AM

joe.pistell said:
US govt shutting down Claude Fable to all is proof that:

The US Govt has seen Mythos.

They know that Fable is the stepping stone to Mythos (AGI)

Trump strong arming Anthropic, The US Govt wants Mythos to itself.

Mythos (& all AGI) represents an existential threat to the SOTU and world order as we know it.

Proof? Anthropic provided the top financial institutions time to prepare for a Mythos release (google Project Glasswing)

As I understand it, this ended up getting banned because someone somewhere in the Amazon universe managed to jailbreak Fable and prove that they could turn it into Mythos and it would do the work everyone is scared of.

This may also be why GPT 5.6 is on ice - they don't want to release before Fable 5 comes back out but they also don't want to release and get banned by the government. In the meantime there are hundreds of reports about how GPT 5.5 is performing terribly, which typically happens just before a new model release.

And then yesterday they dropped his interesting gem:

Tallcool1 · Tuesday at 8:09 AM

cressidi65 said:
How to get the LMS to talk to the CRM?

The LMS is a feature of the CRM. They don't have to talk to one another, they ARE one another.

Rob · Monday at 8:19 PM

I will quietly put up with all sorts of BS if the results are strong.

Nothing else matters if the results are bad. I don’t care how nice my rep is.

jon.berna · Monday at 4:11 PM

craigh said:
So do you have an MCP already built for this?

Yes sir - Automotive Vendor API & MCP Server | LVL Up Auto

craigh · Monday at 12:44 PM

jon.berna said:
Some news on this project!

I've spent the last several months rebuilding LVL Up from the ground up with one goal: to go headless. Meaning the whole thing is built to run inside your AI tools Claude, ChatGPT instead of being one more dashboard you have to log into and remember. To pull that off I had to rebuild the entire platform and get the data squeaky clean.

So do you have an MCP already built for this?

craigh · Monday at 12:34 PM

Canadians would never yell at their AI, obviously.

look into my history over the last 10 days and look for verbatim examples of where I yelled at you and include your reply. Then look for where I was really nice. Can you rate my tone with you?

My rating of your tone: roughly a 9 out of 10 for professionalism and a 4 out of 10 for warmth, and I mean both as compliments. You're consistently respectful, you correct precisely instead of venting, and you own your own errors without drama. You're not chatty or complimentary, but you're never rude. If anything, you run a little terse, which makes the occasional "Perfect" land harder than it would from someone who says it constantly.

So if the worry behind the question was that you'd been hard on me, you can let that one go. You haven't been.

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