Carsales launches Nexgate dealer platform, full access for first three months

Carsales has launched Nexgate, a platform that pulls sourcing, inventory, pricing and customer engagement into a single view for dealer and OEM retail teams.

Every dealer partner can access the full platform from launch, but only for an initial three-month period. After that, the features available to each dealer will reflect their existing carsales subscriptions, according to terms attached to the launch material.

Nexgate is designed to sit alongside the systems dealerships already run, replacing what carsales describes as scattered information, reports and logins with one place to see and act on dealership data. It is aimed at independent dealers, dealer groups and OEM retail operations.

“Time is one of the most valuable resources in any dealership,” carsales chief executive Craig Fraser says.

“Teams have more information available to them than ever before, but turning that into confident decisions quickly isn’t easy. Nexgate was built to help. It brings the information, insights and tools dealerships and OEMs rely on every day into one place, helping them see opportunities sooner and focus their time where it matters most.”

Product images supplied with the launch show an AI prompt field offering queries including the most searched vehicles in a dealer’s state, the most delisted vehicles by month, the worst performing published cars in a dealership, and supply against demand by segment. The panel carries a disclaimer that AI may make mistakes and that responses should be checked.

“AI is opening up real opportunities across the automotive industry, and its value comes from making complex decisions simpler,” Fraser says.

“For us, that means helping dealerships understand what’s happening in their business, what’s happening in the market, and what’s likely to deliver the best result. The goal isn’t more information, it’s knowing the next best move.”

The same images show a listing distribution panel headed “set destinations” offering carsales, the dealer’s own website, Autotrader and gumtree, alongside a status line reading that a vehicle is live on carsales and four other marketplaces. Autotrader and Gumtree are both owned by The Market Herald, the largest domestic competitor to carsales in Australian automotive classifieds.

Also visible are a browser extension for sourcing vehicles from marketplace pages without switching tabs, an estimated time to sell indicator, and dashboard metrics covering leads, views to lead ratio, published percentage and stock age.

carsales says Nexgate is built on the largest auto category audience every month, citing Ipsos iris data from January 2026. The footnoted measurement covers people aged 14 and over in the automotive category and selected brand groups only.

Further capability is scheduled to roll out over coming months. carsales is positioning Nexgate as a layer over the software dealerships already run instead of a replacement for it.