Dealerships, Desperate to Survive, Could Use Robotic Salespeople
Chery wants to "reimagine the car-buying journey." Apparently, building a robot that acts like a cliched salesperson is the answer.
Does anyone enjoy buying a car through a dealership? Actually, let's rephrase that question—nobody enjoys buying a car through a dealership. Is it the salesperson that makes the experience so miserable? Well, in the future, pushy salespeople could be replaced with pushy robots.
And you have China-based Chery Automobiles to thank for it. The company's division in South Africa came up with AiMOGA—pronounced ai-MOga—to serve as a pseudo-sales consultant at Chery 4S dealerships in Malaysia. The life-size female-shaped robot was shown at Auto Shanghai, where "she" chatted up visitors with various welcome routines. She also reportedly danced (always a key activity at dealerships) and engaged in "interactive challenge games." We couldn't confirm if those games involved asking people what they needed for their trade-in.
Naturally, the Ai in AiMOGA's name stands for artificial intelligence. This robot incorporates "CheryGPT" and DeepSeek AI modeling to understand natural language and respond in context. It walks and gestures with bionic limbs, wears cool blue sunglasses, and even has a band of blonde hair. Truth be told, it seems pretty lifelike. But since we're talking about a lifelike car salesperson, is that really a good thing?
It gets worse. A demo video shows AiMOGA in action, showing a prospective customer around a new car. We're treated to a full gamut of automotive sales cliches, from "sleek profile" to "comfy seats." At the end of the video, AiMOGA even says "very impressive, right?"
No, it's not right. This is not right at all.
It's amazing how automotive dealers have fought so aggressively to not evolve with the times. In 2025, any person can log onto the internet and learn as much about a specific new car as they desire. That was possible 10 years ago, 20 years, even 30 years past, though it took a long time in 1995 to download a brochure on a 28.8 modem.
Point being, people don't need to be educated with generic sales talk at dealerships. Moreover, they don't want it. And yet here we are, watching a robot saleswoman spew out the same dopey one-liners used since the 1950s. Is it any wonder so many automakers want to ditch dealerships and sell direct to consumers?
In any case, AiMOGA robots will be on duty at Chery dealerships in Malaysia. Here's hoping the robots don't spread to the US.
Cars And Robots:
Source: Chery South Africa
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