Over the past decade, AI and automation have quietly rebuilt nearly every step of how people shop — product discovery, checkout, customer service, scheduling, follow-up. Car buying has been one of the last holdouts, particularly the test drive, which at most dealerships still runs on phone tag, walk-ins, and manual paperwork. Test Drive To Go (TDTG) says it's finally applying that same automation to the test drive itself — without automating the drive away.
That distinction matters, because the auto industry has already seen one wave of automation aimed at car buying. Carvana and platforms like it used software to remove the car, and the in-person sales process, from the equation entirely, letting buyers complete a purchase without ever getting behind the wheel first. It's a real convenience, and it's why those platforms have found an audience. But it solves for speed by cutting out the one part of the process research consistently shows buyers trust most.
Buyers don't seem to want that trade-off, either:
66% of U.S. auto buyers would consider purchasing directly from a traditional dealership's website.
— 2026 Urban Science/Harris Poll auto buyer study
That's evidence the appetite is for automation layered onto the existing buying relationship, not a replacement for it.
Where Carvana automates the sale so the buyer never has to visit at all, TDTG automates everything except the one moment that still requires showing up.
TDTG's AI is aimed at a narrower, more specific problem: everything that makes scheduling and completing a test drive slower and more painful than it needs to be. The platform's AI-driven scheduling engine matches buyer availability with vehicle and dealership availability in real time, then automatically collects license, insurance, and trade-in information before the buyer ever arrives. From there, an automated email and text sequence handles confirmations, reminders, and — critically — lets buyers set their own preferences for what happens after the drive, including opting out of a finance-office pitch, all without a phone call.
The results suggest the automation is working: dealerships on the platform report a 93% test-drive show rate and a 23% average close rate on scheduled test drives — meaning nearly one in four buyers who book a test drive through TDTG go on to purchase that vehicle, with minimal human intervention required to get them there.
"We didn't set out to build another online retail platform that skips the car entirely," said Khalida Cook, co-founder and CEO of Test Drive To Go. "We set out to apply the same AI-driven automation other online retail platforms already use for scheduling and follow-up, and point it at the one part of car buying that still has to happen in person. Buyers get the no-pressure, no-phone-call experience of an online retail platform, right up until they're behind the wheel."
As AI-driven automation continues to work its way into industries long considered resistant to it, TDTG's bet is that the winning approach won't be the one that automates the car out of car buying, but the one that automates everything else around it.
Founded in 2021 and fully trademarked by the USPTO, Test Drive To Go is a fast-growing, Fort Myers, Florida-based automotive technology company with dealership partners spanning Florida, New York, New Jersey, Michigan, Washington, and Texas, and continued expansion underway nationwide. Built to strip friction out of the test-drive process for dealers and shoppers alike, TDTG is a subsidiary of Digital Diagnosis Marketing, the automotive advertising agency also founded by Khalida and Taylor Cook. TDTG partners with dealerships and automotive vendors nationwide to streamline the consumer test-drive experience while lowering dealership overhead. Co-founders Khalida and Taylor Cook bring a combined 25+ years of experience across the automotive and technology sectors, including hands-on work inside dealerships, automotive agencies, and Google. Learn more at www.mytestdrivetogo.com.
