RV dealers, lenders skeptical about AI

Most RV dealers and lenders agree that AI will revolutionize how the industry makes and saves money, but they wonder when it will be worth the investment. That question dominated at this week’s RV Dealers Convention and Expo 2025 in Las Vegas, where fintechs lauded AI’s potential to increase dealer revenue, while RV dealers and lenders remained skeptical of the technology’s accuracy and ability to meet compliance regulations. “AI is going to be a big change ... We’d all agree with that, and with that comes a couple of feelings. We’re excited. We’re also scared.” — Ron Wheeler, Wheeler Advertising “AI is going to be a big change,” Ron Wheeler , president and founder of Wheeler Advertising , said during a panel. “We’d all agree with that, and with that comes a couple of feelings. We’re excited. We’re also scared.” The case for AI RV leaders championing AI see opportunities to increase sales, train F&I staff and better evaluate inventory. RV dealers can use AI chatbots to reach out to prospective customers who call, email or visit their websites, Brad Shepard , chief executive and founder of AI-powered dealer sales tool LAHZO, said on the panel. Some dealerships with fully autonomous sales setups have already seen “20% to 40% higher sales conversion,” he said. “If you have 1,000 people at your website today, how many of them do you have a real sales conversation with?” Shepard said. “The [AI] opportunity is unlocking that.” AI can help dealerships engage with customers “in a way that resonates with the customer’s communications style,” Mark Goldsmith , head of learning and development at financial services company iA Financial Group , said during the panel. AI-powered tools can also help train new F&I salespeople, Goldsmith said. By inputting a dealership’s F&I programs and the consumer’s personal information, AI can create “customer scenarios” so new staff can practice personalizing their F&I pitches, he said. Dealers can also evaluate their inventory using AI, Kishore Rajgopal , founder and CEO of AI-powered RV evaluation software provider Rapidious , said during the panel. With enough data, dealers can compare inventory by price, mileage and number of units to national averages, he said. Lenders waiting on compliance Some RV lenders need better guardrails on AI to ensure compliance and need more use cases before they implement AI. M&T Bank has “dabbled” with AI on its funding side and is kicking around use cases for it, Mark Breeden , executive vice president and head of dealer services, told Auto Finance News . However, consumer-facing AI tools need to be compliant with regulatory fair lending standards before being released to the public, Breeden said. “How do we cross-reference AI against our model, risk management process? Where does that all fit in?” he said. “I don’t know when we get there.” For RV and marine lender Source One Financial Services , which mostly underwrites to prime credit consumers, traditional scoring metrics are already reliable without AI, President Michael Opdahl told AFN . “If I was a subprime auto lender, yeah I’d be investing heavily in AI to figure out how to make myself more efficient and have a better score card,” he said. “For what we do, not so much.” Instead, the Lakeville, Minn.-based lender prioritized investing in fraud prevention tools in 2025, Opdahl said. Dealers need reliability While some partners of Katy, Texas-based dealer group Holiday World have integrated AI, the dealer group isn’t directly using it, co-owner Michael Peay told AFN . Holiday World prioritizes a human relationship with consumers , which current AI tools could damage, Peay said. “I’m still not convinced that the consumer doesn’t still want that personal touch, and I’m not convinced that AI can give it." — Michael Peay, Holiday World For RV dealer Mid America RV , consumer-facing AI tools are too inaccurate to be viable, President Josh Schmutz told AFN. “AI tools in our space are in such infancy right now, there’s nothing that we feel confident, especially from a communication standpoint, that is going to benefit us,” he said. However, the Fidelity, Mo.-based retailer uses generative AI for administrative tasks, including expanding on human-written blog posts or rephrasing explanations from service department staff to be more consumer-friendly, Schmutz said. “Sometimes we can use something like ChatGPT to more eloquently convey the same information in a way that’s relatable to the customer,” he said, noting that human employees review all AI-generated content. Given how quickly AI is advancing, dealers may feel comfortable adopting AI soon, Schmutz said. “We might be sitting down having this conversation next year, and it might shift,” he said. “At this time, it’s just not enough that we feel comfortable putting it in part of our processes.”

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