Bringing Back Buttons, Buick Buyouts, Cybertruck Jr

Paul J Daly: 0:30

All right. Good morning. It is Wednesday descent. What's today's date? It's all a mess today. What is this? Today's December 20? Oh, I think tomorrow's Winter Solstice. We'll talk about that. But today we're talking about bringing back buttons Buick buyouts. cybertruck. Jr.

\Kyle Mountsier: 0:46

Oh, look at that. Look at that. Oh, my alliteration. When they did say, oh my oh my goodness, they're great. So if you're just listening, we have a brand new first commenter Leah's income. Congratulations, you got the first comment today. And then we got James kurtenbach. He's just here for the button discussion.

Paul J Daly: 1:12

I understand. The discussion is definitely worth having. We have a lot going on right now. One of the things we want you to know about first before anything else is that tomorrow you if you're watching, you can see we're in the studio today. This is in Syracuse, New York, typical studios, and we're working on our year and extravaganza is going live tomorrow at 1pm. Eastern 1pm. Eastern PM. You need to be there. We have had so many great conversations with people across the industry. We have a really fun game called who said it, it may or may not involve Shawn fain comments versus carp comments from people like I don't know Elsa, Karl Marx, everyone showed up for the party. And you can check it out by just going to LinkedIn or no actually go to a so to.com the very top banner of the website, you can just click on it join the LinkedIn event. And the comments are going to be live Kyle and I will be in the comments. And we're going to have just a great time and if you check it out, you want to share it the more the merrier at the event Hey, thanks to pure influencer two for helping us pull that off and making making sure it's a great event and a ton of people can see it across auto bring your friends too because the comment section is a lot more fun when you get some friends to jab with and the show is just gonna be it's gonna

Kyle Mountsier: 2:22

it's we just can't tell you everything to talk about you got to talk about Solstice you're so excited about

Paul J Daly: 2:29

I am but I don't want to talk about it too early. But my favorite day of the year is Winter Solstice because it's the moment that the day start getting longer. Yes, and if you live if you live in upstate New York, right we're pretty far up here. Kyle's in Syracuse right now. Yeah, it's gonna be cold it's gonna be snowing we at least one a little daylight. So I'm excited that like the shortest day of the year, I think is tomorrow and then then we'll be back in the water before you know it.

Kyle Mountsier: 2:54

Yes, in six months. You don't worry about it. You'll get warm again. I know.

Paul J Daly: 2:58

I know. All right. Well, let's go to our first story. Volkswagen is heaving consumer feedback by reintroducing physical buttons in his vehicle moving away from a solely touchscreen based interface, as seen in the new ID to evey I'm excited about this. We've talked about this when they took them away. Interior Designer Darius what Tola cites European consumer feedback as a key influence

Kyle Mountsier: 3:22

for the chain mean they're listening to the customer sounds like it in Europe anyway.

Paul J Daly: 3:27

CEO Thomas Schaefer acknowledges the previous touchscreen design harm to customer loyalty. How about that one feature harming loyalty?

Kyle Mountsier: 3:34

Well, I can. I've been in multiple cars with dealers that are frustrated by their own manufacturers car you can only imagine what a consumer is experienced without

Paul J Daly: 3:45

a doubt. So that led to new interior features backlit physical buttons, a rotary dial for the screen control balancing with touchscreen infotainment. Volkswagen also plans to phase out hard plastics, leather, Chrome, and glue for sustainability. How do you hold things together? Without significantly raising costs? There you go. I don't know if the glue was a consumer feedback thing. I

Kyle Mountsier: 4:07

have no clue. But you know, I think keep the buttons. It's all like, you know, a little I don't know how they do all that. But apparently that you know, sustainability has always been a thing with VW. It's cool to see them reintroducing features based on customer feedback. We've talked about this a lot that hey, there's there's something to the tactile physical button that actually like increases the ability to engage, you can understand where you're actually located on something without having to be there. That's why like we I think we talked about this a few months ago, the old ti nine, right? You could you could

Paul J Daly: 4:41

look under the decks desk while having somewhat conversation with someone else having a full message do to do right, exactly a little bit.

Kyle Mountsier: 4:49

So when when there's concerns over vehicle safety because of the touchscreen, and we talked about it yesterday, actually with GM kind of citing that you know whether or not it's fact based sort of or, or not, is it's something to be seen on like, hey, users want to be able to know what they're touching where they're touching it and quickly make changes while they're driving their vehicle. Volkswagen coming in with the heat.

Paul J Daly: 5:12

I think everybody like thought they needed to switch right away because Tesla did it right. And so it was like, well, we're like Tesla. Tesla's got a different interface. And Tesla drivers are also in a kind of a different mindset.

Kyle Mountsier: 5:22

Absolutely. Yeah. They are thinking tech first when buying absolutely Oh,

Paul J Daly: 5:26

by Brian Ortega is dying for us to incorporate a backstreet boys melody. But and but we did it sang on the show. I don't know how to get the notes back up for the notes. Right. Nearly half of Buicks Evie dealerships so these are Buick stores now. Half of Buicks, US dealerships, have chosen a buyout over investing in evey into infrastructure make marking a significant shift in the brand's retail strategy. So they offered voluntary buyouts to other dealers across the country who were reluctant to invest in like level three chargers and all Evie tooling. And half of the dealer said,

Kyle Mountsier: 6:06

We'll take the offer arm is

Paul J Daly: 6:08

the brand aiming for an all electric lineup by the decades in year 2030. If we had the trigger button, we'd press it, they now operate about 1000 dealerships down from around 1958

Kyle Mountsier: 6:19

Isn't that nuts 47% of the day, and I think the buyout was only like a few 100 grand also was not much. We'll have to check back on that. But I think it was. Yeah, and then and then the investment is 300 or 400 grand.

Paul J Daly: 6:35

So it's just billion dollar swing. Yeah, right. And like, I have what it takes a Cadillac made a similar move earlier in the year offering buyouts to dealers who didn't want to go forward, because they're also going all the V and they they lost a third of their dealers, and the ones who stayed seem to be happy. The ones that left seem to be happy so far, you know, but despite the loss in the network, Buick sales are up a lot, 58% year over year, how much of that is inventory driven? How much of that is actually because they made a move? I mean, you can make the decision there with a couple of new models that are gaining some traction. So yeah, like you said, dealers who are saying three to $400,000 investment doesn't get the Alldredge, Vice President of Global Buick GMC said the network where we are now is a good size with dealers who are focused on the business so

Kyle Mountsier: 7:19

well. And I have to think that having 1000 deals I mean, you look at right now Toyota has, I think, a little over 1200 dealers in the US. So for Buick to have you in okay for Buick to have 2000 dealerships was probably a higher higher dealership per capita than they actually needed. So getting down to that 1000 allows them to focus on those retailers focus on what their go to market strategy is with them and lean into this. Hey, if we're going all Evie we're going to focus all of our attention in the dollars on the infrastructure build on those things. So I think it's actually going to be an accelerant for. For the OEM.

Paul J Daly: 7:54

I mean, the decisive nature. I mean, I think I feel like Buick is one of those brands, who's really been trying to figure out who they are their last 10 years and has legitimately beat been 10 years remember when when Tiger Woods started driving the rendezvous? Yeah, right. They have a lot to drive a lot to drive that car. Oh, sure. But they're trying to obviously go a little more progressive, more, etc. Volvo going all up and you say where does Buick fit in the mix? Well, yeah, because historically, like in the 80s and 90s, it was kind of like your grandparents, grandparents. It was like it was legit, a Cadillac competitor. Yep. Right. And now it's like, what, where's it gonna land with 1000 stores is a lot easier to manage that than 2000 stores. I couldn't tell you where my nearest Buick dealer is not a chance. Right. But maybe I will know. I don't know. So yeah, but still, they say according to the new network, Americans are still no more than 25 miles away from Buechler. Which if you're in Atlanta, could mean three days. All right, last one, so much fun. Got

Kyle Mountsier: 8:48

no segue. So much fun. So if you have ventured over to the Tesla site anytime recently, you've seen a new cyber truck for kids. It's an electric ride on toy inspired by the iconic cybertruck design. It's available now while kinda was it's got a 12 mile range and adjustable seats so better than your basic Kia Rio. The kicker production is still an issue for Tesla as they are already out of stock. The cybertruck is priced at $1,500. It's all electric naturally, and it has a design exactly like the cybertruck. It has a 22 volt VAT battery 500 watt motor and can reach get this a top speed of 10 miles per hour that's cruising, which is cruising for a little kid and deliveries are already set to begin in here in December. But they're not guaranteed holiday delivery. Now.

Paul J Daly: 9:43

I would love to see what the build quality is on this because it's probably awesome compared to like big

Kyle Mountsier: 9:47

wheels. You're going from like a $300 big wheels to a $1,500 bike designed,

Paul J Daly: 9:52

engineered, manufactured. And so one of the coolest things about this that we don't have in the show notes is it has a 12 mile range right 12 Miles well I could literally drive it to work we made Nathan and I were joking the beginning like she get it drive to work and like make the video I drove my little cybertruck to work and you'll never believe what happened. Right GoPro it up? You know put that would be. The reality is this is probably an awesome toy for anyone who gets it but for Tesla, it's just another brand play, right? They've they've made these these small little one off, they had like the little quad, right? And then they have the cybertruck they made the flame thrower.

Kyle Mountsier: 10:27

Hey, if you want people buying your stuff in 1015 20 years, you might as well get them in it young. I mean, how many little kids grow up wanting a Jeep because they had their little Jeep electric toy riding up and down the street without

Paul J Daly: 10:41

a doubt. You know? I feel like they missed a couple opportunities to put like, you know, some of the new ones have like Bluetooth speakers in them. Yeah, so a little kid little phone, that little dashboard like they they really could go that way. But hey, we have a little cybertruck for kids. Listen, we hope that you take this little shot of energy go into your day. Pay attention to the consumers. Pay attention to one another and please go to a soda.com join the LinkedIn live event tomorrow. 1pm our urine extravaganza is coming in Super