inride launches a trade-in agent for dealership leads that arrive after hours

Why it matters

inride is taking its dealership-focused AI from outbound database outreach to inbound web leads, then into service and F&I workflows. Adoption and independently measurable results will determine whether its agent lineup becomes a core dealership tool or another layer to manage.

On October 9th, inride, founded by dealership operator Alex Perdikis, launched Trade Agent Acquire, an AI agent that responds to dealership website trade-in inquiries, texts shoppers a vehicle value, handles follow-up and books an appointment. The product is available to U.S. dealerships as a standalone service, inride said in its announcement.

The product targets a dealership problem Perdikis knows from the operator's side: dealers spend to attract shoppers, while valuable used cars may already belong to customers in their own databases. Perdikis is inride's chairman and founder, and also owns and operates Koons Motors in the Washington, D.C. market. CEO Nick Perdikis brings a different background to the product: he co-founded Deven Software, which built tools for managing mergers and acquisitions, before joining inride. A 2016 Washington Post profile identifies him as Deven's co-founder and CEO. The combination of dealership operations and enterprise software is the premise behind inride's automotive AI products.

From outbound outreach to inbound leads

inride's first product, Trade Agent AI, works outbound from dealership customer records, identifying likely trade opportunities and contacting past buyers. Trade Agent Acquire targets shoppers who have already raised their hands through a dealer's website. It uses the phone number collected by a dealer's existing valuation tool to send a value by text or email, then continues the conversation, confirms vehicle condition, answers questions and routes a booked appointment and conversation history into the dealer's CRM.

The pitch is that dealers do not need to replace a valuation widget or adopt another CRM or dealer management system, according to inride. inride says Trade Agent Acquire works with existing forms, valuation tools, CRMs and DMS platforms, and can go live in days. Its product page invites dealers to book a demo. The announcement gives no price; inride's product page says Trade Agent Acquire is month-to-month, with no setup fee or long-term commitment. inride says it has signed its first dealership customers without naming them or saying how many.

The announcement's early figures come from Trade Agent AI's integration with ACV's ClearCar in the Washington, D.C. market, not from Trade Agent Acquire. inride reports that 63% of trade-in leads engaged, 44% of conversations happened outside operating hours and 52% of appointments resulted in an acquisition. The release does not give the sample size, measurement period or comparison group, so those figures show company-reported early results rather than an independently tested outcome.

A September 22nd release about the ClearCar integration attributed a broader set of figures to Koons Motors, including the same 63% engagement and 52% appointment-to-acquisition rates. That release described Trade Agent AI as operating across more than 75 rooftops and said it had handled more than one million text conversations. Those are company-reported measures of the existing product's reach, not proof that the new inbound agent will reproduce the results at other dealerships.

The founder's bet moves beyond inventory

Alex Perdikis's dealership experience gives inride a built-in view of the workflow it is trying to automate. inride says its aim is to source more used inventory from dealerships' existing customer relationships, reducing reliance on the traditional auction channel. Trade Agent Acquire applies that thesis to a different pool of potential sellers: people who are already seeking a trade value online.

The Washington Post's 2016 profile of Deven Software says the company launched in June 2013 and describes tools for organizing acquisition pipelines, due diligence and post-merger integration. It reports that Perdikis had spent more than 25 years in consulting, helped navigate American Management Systems' integration after its acquisition by CGI Group, and was a senior vice president at Idea when Adecco acquired it. The profile also recounts an earlier startup he founded in the late 1990s that went through due diligence and an acquisition. At inride, the work is narrower and more immediate: keep a customer conversation moving long enough to put a potential seller in front of a dealer's sales team.

That product focus is widening. inride says its F&I Agent AI, now in beta, identifies vehicle owners without service contracts or with coverage nearing expiration and sends vehicle-specific protection options. Its Service Agent AI is also in beta, aimed at contacting owners around maintenance milestones, following up on declined work and open recalls, and booking into the store's existing scheduler. Those products would extend the same automated follow-up model from inventory acquisition into sales and service operations. Their eventual commercial value depends on whether dealerships will trust an AI agent with more customer interactions and whether the workflows reliably produce appointments and sales.

A competitor announced a similar product on October 1st: DriveCentric's Acquire Agent, which engages customers after a trade valuation. DriveCentric scheduled early access for October 15th and general availability for December 1st. DriveCentric says its agent runs inside its own dealership platform. inride's stated approach is to sit on top of a dealer's existing valuation form and systems. That makes compatibility a central part of inride's pitch, while putting the burden on the company to demonstrate that integrations across varied dealer software work as promised.

inride's expansion tests its decision to sell a family of agents built on what it calls a patent-pending core AI. The October announcement does not describe the patent claims or the technical architecture, and it gives no new-product conversion, retention or revenue figures. Dealership adoption, and whether the agents turn more existing customer interest into completed transactions without adding work for dealership staff, will show how the lineup performs.