Connectivity Resulting in Driver Exposure and an Exposed Purchase

Kyle Mountsier: 0:19

Good morning. It's Tuesday, March 12. I got Ben Hadley sitting next to me because Paul still in Florida, we're hanging out talking about connectivity and cars, insurance and a weird purchase. The people that were purchased it, they stopped. Like, just soon when you start to look at the mechanics of this thing, you start to realize how, I don't know. We'll make some speculations by the end of the show, and maybe be wrong, but all opinions are our own. You know what I mean? Man, we, you know, it's really exciting. You're here for the day that we get to announce the presenting sponsor of a soda con. So this would be release. Yeah. So Reynolds and Reynolds and goober Gu are going to be the presenting sponsor of a soda con they are, they're actually teaming up with us to do a couple of really cool things that are, you know, whenever whenever partners come on and work with us, so do more than cars. We always we say this, like, you could just sing off the song sheet. We've got a media kit, that's all good and well, but we like those that kind of like, sing off the song, you know, just a little bit off and like, we love a little freestyle. So there's freestyle

‍Ben Hadley: 1:38

acapella and Christopher Walsh did both of acapella masters.

Kyle Mountsier: 1:46

Maybe there'll be some karaoke as the as the freestyle and then we'll drop some sick rhymes at ASOTU CON. Yeah, we're only what 60 to 63 days away from a soda con. So get your tickets now. Or early bird pricing ends the end of this week only got a few days for the cheap tickets so gotta get in right now. And have you read unreasonable hospitality yet? I'm kind of asking everybody

Ben Hadley: 2:11

This unreasonable hospitality? No, but I've gone to the restaurant you

Kyle Mountsier: 2:15

hate. That's like basically reading it. And I basically read it because I've experienced it. If you've been to emp, you've experienced the thing. So you're good to go. Yeah, yeah. All right. Let's get into it. We I like Michael Cirillo talked about ASOTU CON for about three and a half minutes yesterday, he just geeked out about it. So we got to get into the show that people want the news. We're talking about the news. And hey, it's all fun and games until your favorite car gets in an accident with technology at the wheel. So recently, the IHS has provided a rating of 14 driver assistance systems across nine manufacturers, all all of which they have given either a marginal or poor mark. here's the here's the data basically, there is now no evidence of actual real world safety benefits from any of the systems that they that they looked at, across ensure stability or accidents per capita, on the vehicles tested. So all of these are vehicles that have some level of driver assistance, not just safety elements like you know, like an automated braking system but actual Driver Assistance like automated systems. Despite Tesla's particular claims of safety, federal regulators are investigating nearly 1000 accidents involving autopilot where drivers were not paying attention. The only there was a single system within Lexus's team of systems which only has been given to a few vehicles, they received an acceptable rating for their teammate and advanced drive system. Here's IHS President David Harkey, he said we've been able to look at vehicles without these systems and determine there is no reduction in claims as a result of these more advanced systems. Yikes.

Ben Hadley: 4:05

Surprising, surprising. I mean, you know, there's like a fallacy of energy. The more efficient we are with production of energy, the more we use, probably applies here somehow, which is like, the safer we make a vehicle the more risky we get. Like I have a Tesla put it in an autopilot. And like yeah, do I creep on that phone? I do. I get on that. I'm like, oh, I should. I got a couple extra seconds to pick out. You know, the perfect Spotify Song d you know, and I think you like fool yourself into thinking it's safer making you risk even more. Have you ever seen a guy skiing with no helmet on? super safe? You know, soon as they put that helmet on? They go like, Oh, right matter like Mac and trees. Same thing, I think.

Kyle Mountsier: 4:57

Yeah, I would agree with that. you'd like, I mean, you know, how many people have tried on, you know, tried to get in that big bubble and roll down a hill, it's like you just whatever, you know, then you just roll down a hill as an adult and you stop three rolls in and wonder why I'm questioning your life choices, right? You got 12 year old, just like rolling down the hill, like nobody's business, they haven't seen the pain of, of the result of missing it. But yeah, I think there's still so much, you know, back in 2018 2019, the world was like, we're gonna just have autonomous vehicles, but there's still so much to be discovered. There's tons of work to be done on it. So many acts of, you know, FSD for self driving. So many changes. The one the one note in there is that there was actually on systems where it was just automated braking, for forward collision warning like that was that was a test that was outside of the autonomous driving that's in particular, has a significant reduction in both vehicle and pedestrian accidents. So it makes total sense as a safety feature, it definitely has productivity for insurability and for like actual here's,

Ben Hadley: 6:16

here's the layup segue. I'm so I just found out I forget what the exact number is. But something like Tesla is feeding back like multiple gigabytes per night of data back to the mothership, to use to train for full self driving, and a lot of analysts are hypothesizing that that's like, that's what's going to keep them way ahead of everybody else is basically, as they learn, right? That dataset is actually making the cars more safe. So here's, here's what I think is interesting. There's no really competing, you know, group out there that has a similar structure of data. That is like sharing it and using it to make things safer.

Kyle Mountsier: 7:05

Well, you know, Tesla is a data company that on a car company fight me prove me wrong. Speaking of a whole bunch of data connected segway. There were like eight layups that you could have gone into that segway with, Hey, we all love the idea of a connected car, Ben and myself in particular, but it looks like insurance companies are actually taking more liberties with the data available for manufacturers connected systems to determine insurance rates per driver. So this New York Times article chronicled a particular driver from car near Seattle and name is Ken doll. That's that's shout out

Ben Hadley: 7:49

the asado.

Kyle Mountsier: 7:52

know Ken doll, who was stunned when his insurance spiked by 21% due to data collected by a Chevy Bolt and share with General Motors by Lexus next, share by General Motors with LexisNexis. The report detailed over 640 trips, monitoring speed, braking accelerations, but not locations affecting his insurance rates. So GM and a whole bunch of other manufacturers are collecting driving data for things like insurance purposes, often with actual driver consent, in the little fine print, either in the showroom when you sign up for things like OnStar, or when you sign up for an for the connected driving app. A researcher at Mozilla Jen caught writer who has reviewed the privacy policy for more than 24 car brands last year, called cars, quote, a privacy nightmare. It's really interesting, actually, Nathan, our producer pointed out the show instead. Last year, actually at ASOTU CON Mike Stanton on the mainstage, President NADA, said dealers need to be aware of how data is shared with their car company. It's the customer's data. It's not the dealers data or the OEM data, and we're stewards of that information. So customers are kind of calling for this. There's a lot lot going out in the world is, hey, look, where's this data going on? Which Who is it being shared with? And how is that impacting other financial pieces of my life? Right?

Ben Hadley: 9:24

Yeah, there's so many layers to that, too, if you think about, I mean, how there's that, that that data grab, right, and I actually think it would make sense to make a conglomerate of sort of the traditional OEMs in partnership with LexisNexis. So they can create a driving set of data to train future autonomous vehicles on that's part one. Part two, though, is, I mean, who you have the you have the data itself coming from the vehicle, then you have the phone, you have Apple CarPlay you have Google Android Auto, you know Like, I'm, I'm wondering when you're

Kyle Mountsier: 10:02

into like cross App Tracking ads other others app like,

Ben Hadley: 10:06

Hey, Ben seems to take a long time on Spotify while he's going, you know, 45 miles an hour in a 40. This guy is risky A F, like, you know, I think they could probably figure that out. Even with just the phone. So, right, yeah, this, I can totally see why this is a privacy nightmare. It's a big privacy

Kyle Mountsier: 10:32

issue. And I mean, when we're worried about like cross app, app tracking on devices, and like browser security, this is way more into your life. Actually, one of the one of the drivers in the article said that they had found out with their insurance company, there's an erratic Reddit thread, basically, they had looked with their insurance company, and their vehicle, it was a Corvette, that they that they took to the track, like every weekend, and the track data was obviously also getting shared alongside their regular driving habits. So like massive acceleration, massive braking, tight corners, all of the things that you would expect from tracking a core event we're also starting to impact this drivers insurance rates

Ben Hadley: 11:21

what because they don't know location, right? They couldn't, right. So that's the weird one like do you really want to give them location because now you can actually sell that to like health care? Oh, this guy is rolling through McDonald's way too much. Likely, Jack is healthcare up. I mean, everything about this is, you know, a little spooky but Yeah, speaking

Kyle Mountsier: 11:43

of being a little spooky segue so I'm gonna call this a little bit spooky. But after filing for bankruptcy in October, a California Court has sanctioned the sale of shift technologies, if you remember is California retailer online retailer. Their digital assets, including domain names trademarks, and social media accounts, along with the sale of a few other things. Here's the here's the fun one. Former true car founder and also founder of fair Scott painter, one the domain names trademarks, and social media accounts of car lots.com, auto acquired.com canvas and exchange leasing for 35,000. He also acquired the platform's patents and records of shift and fair technologies for get this $120,000 companies that range combined, that originally raised over a billion dollars combined. Yeah, patents, records, platforms.

Ben Hadley: 12:57

What is it that I don't know, I don't know how substantial that is, but just on a person's like, I mean, Scott painter, man, like just

Unknown: 13:08

a full on discount.

Ben Hadley: 13:12

Purchase, here's what's crazy. Just the

Kyle Mountsier: 13:15

shift.com domain and social media accounts got sold to a totally different non automotive Canadian company, also named shift technologies for 1.3 million bucks. Right? So just the domain name and the social media accounts. They wanted for a whole big money grab.

Ben Hadley: 13:34

Absolutely nuts. I mean, it's so it's so interesting seeing like, first of all, I didn't also know that car lots was associated with the shift. Like I remember, I don't even know if the Buy Here Pay Here was sort of like a used car operation. I thought I saw them in like Virginia. I don't think we're

Kyle Mountsier: 13:55

I don't think they were this is like they were two different it was just the same transaction in the same or different transactions in the same auction. Oh, yeah. Yeah. So it was just it was just random that they were all in the same auction. So my man rolled out with some serious social media trademark domain names, platforms, patents records for 155,000 When shift technologies and a management company snagged two domains, and some social media accounts for like $2.2 million. That's nuts. I mean, this is just the world of auto that I'm still just interested to see what Scott painter does next. Right like we he's always gonna push the boundaries you You better believe he's going to come out with some sort of platform or technology to sell something because he's constantly in the sales game and he has revolutionized a ton. I mean, what what true car and fair did in the marketplace, like, you can't replace those. At this point. You can't replace that learning For the technology, I

Ben Hadley: 15:01

think I think it's like a test and I mean, anytime you can make something that massive that well adopted, whether it you know, goes to the moon or not, it's like, Yep, definitely had an impact. You can't deny that.

Kyle Mountsier: 15:17

Can't deny that. I look a little bit of impact this morning but the real impact is in the showrooms in the service lanes. That's you doing a whole lot of things for a whole lot of customers employees that is about so much more than cars.

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