Flexible Ford, Toyota’s Fines, and a Fireproof Social Windfall

Paul J Daly: 0:34

Well, well well, two days from Turkey today we have some interesting backpedals to talk about we're talking about flexible Ford, Toyota being fine and a Stanley Cup surviving a fire. A real fire. who is and who is not an Eevee fire but a fire nonetheless. Repeat.

‍Kyle Mountsier: 0:54

Some mornings when we read the when we read the opener, my first thought is, what are we even? What world is this?

Paul J Daly: 1:02

What have I done with my life? That I'm here every morning, Adrian gets the first comment on LinkedIn. If you didn't know if you just listen to the show, there's a live stream community that watches it live on x, or LinkedIn is probably the most and YouTube and there's always like a little competition going on and who can make the first comment on the show, especially on LinkedIn. Adrienne wall gives not a hockey Stanley Cup, correct? She she already Adrian's getting clarification on what we're talking about. Is this show no, a Stanley tumbler, not a Stanley Cup. Let's just Yeah. Oh, that's that. So it's just so much fun to be here with you. Just in the regular day in day out ongoings to the auto industry and culture and Thanksgiving and the people side of the business. And we could do a segue right there. Speaking of the people side of the business, we

Kyle Mountsier: 1:48

could do that. I'm not going to do that to her. We're in the intro. So you can't do that. So tonight, we are live streaming and premiering on YouTube, LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, the whole nine yards, a mash up of episodes one through three of more than cars. I know we haven't released Episode Three yet, but you get a little sneak peek preview at the end of the mashup. If you're around the dinner table with friends, family, a lot of that's happening this week, make sure and pull this guy up. But it will live forever on all those platforms. So you can pull it up and just share exactly what this industry really is. This is a gift to you to say, Hey, bring people around, show them exactly who is in this industry, what the communities are being impacted how the employees in this industry are being impacted by retail auto dealers across the country. And we just want to share that with more people. This is their Is there a LinkedIn event for this already. There is a LinkedIn event you can go to our page. So do and it'll be the first event right up there.

Paul J Daly: 2:48

There you go. And I know you know, I forgot about this yesterday. But last month, we just experienced a big spike in podcast listenership and its way up, which made me think like, there's a lot of people probably in the podcast audience that may not know about the rest of what we do. And the kind of the the backbone of what we do is this daily email that comes out, it's called the automotive or the daily push back, and you can get it by going to aso two.com It's right there. One click Sign Up kind of thing. And it's kind of the podcast form in an email that's fun, informative, digestible to make you laugh. And it will also tell you if you got the email today and probably forget it tomorrow that we're having a buy one get one sale, the first Black Friday sale ever in the history of life. We did and so It's buy one get one on all shirts, and hats so like the quintessential staples of what we do you've maybe seen around the love people more than love cars, shirts, different colorways different lengths. We have long sleeve tees that are gonna go up there they're not up we have them. We have some colors that are still not up. They'll be up later this week, like the mint green, you can still order it and the hats buy one get one and we also have some really dope stuff on there. Like the shoe laces are my favorite. Do I have some of those laying around? I don't have them laying around. I'm gonna show

Kyle Mountsier: 4:08

them to you. So yeah, shoe laces Wait, oh, wait,

Paul J Daly: 4:10

do you do you do they come into slip? Oh, there you go. We got white guy. Coming that test tube, you can get the test tube thing that your kids that can fill it with sand and it says love people more you love. If you haven't noticed, it's kind of an embedded part of who we are as as a collective of 1000s of automotive professionals that are part of this community. You can go to shop.sotu.com and go right to the store or go to a soda.com and click merch and you're there. Oh right. I think it's time to talk about some news when it's time for that. Okay, so following a legal dispute in Illinois, where Ford's Evie program was challenged for violating state franchise laws. The company has now made significant like very significant changes to its Evie certification program for dealers significantly cutting true Running costs, reducing requirements for Evie chargers installations extending the timelines, it's all changing. So basically, training costs have been cut in half. And backup for a second, if you're not aware of this Ford has two levels of Eevee certification, there's certified elite, which is the top level and then just certified. And this was Ford's way of saying if you want to sell EVs, if you want to get this inventory, and you want to be an Eevee, dealer, you have to certify, which comes with a lot of expenses. So basically, they're certified elite and they're certified. The requirements, the training costs had been cut in half from like 20 grand to 10 grand the requirement to install a level three charger which are like 400 grand has been removed from certified elite it was never part of certified. And then the number of level two chargers that both levels need has also been reduced certify elite Elite has gone from five to three certified is down to two, level two chargers muscles much less expensive. So kind of a little bit came out at the hearing. And here's a quote from an officer in the trial basically saying no witness and the witnesses were car dealers basically no witness has reported issues with charging vehicles. Nora could explain why a level two charger might be inadequate for future test drives. Like why it would be inadequate to keep cars charged. In fact, many dealers testified they have never had a problem charging vehicles for delivery, or to customers for taking test drives. Yeah, so

Kyle Mountsier: 6:30

the like, backup, first of all, remember when this all came out, and like there was an uprising and everybody was like there's gonna be some state that figures out how to talk to forward about whether or not this is a good thing for for dealers and for consumers. There's kind of two roads here. And I can understand Ford side saying, hey, look, we want to have this charging network which is available for customers, it's clear that level three is absolutely the best way to go for that because you don't have to rely on a time to sit there and wait. Level two takes that longer charge. But yes, for dealers, they have the ability to charge these things overnight, or let them sit there for a little while charge of that vehicle and then let it sit. It's not going on long rides or anything. And so the level two is obviously just an easier way to get in, you know, taking taking this down from you know, someone going from five, which is going to cost them 450 to 500 grand probably to install plus all of the power that's necessary to probably well under 300. Grand is a big that's a big change in a dealer's investment, especially in more rural areas if they do want to have access to the larger inventory of EBS. And so kudos to getting this on the ground, my guess is this is going to set a precedent and other states and other states and other dealer networks are going to start to talk to forward about exactly,

Paul J Daly: 7:56

I think, oh yeah, for sure. And you know, it's like one of those things were the leverage and the influence and the momentum shifts. And that's what happens in business and culture. A year ago, year and a half when this came out. It was like hey, these EVs you're gonna miss the boat if you don't have these. So pay up if you want to be part of the thing that we're making. And now it's like, you know what, you can keep the inventory. We don't really want it. Now, it's like other than that, actually, you can? No, no,

Kyle Mountsier: 8:22

yeah, absolutely. And look, this is coming on the heels of the report that we talked about last week, where Ford was the lowest in their dealer relationships right now. And so they've got to do things to maintain dealer trust, and you know, this is going to be one of them. I think it'd be a positive thing for everybody. Even Evie rollout. I

Paul J Daly: 8:38

think it'll help it all speaking. It's not a positive thing. Very negative interest. Yeah. An unusual one coming from Toyota, but it's Toyota Motor Credit. It's not really. So Toyota Motor Credit. Toyota Motor Credit Corporation is facing a $60 million penalty by the US Consumer Financial Protection Bureau for alleged violations in refund practices on bundled products and loan contracts impacting credit reports. So basically, the CFPB has ordered Toyota to pay 40,000,040 $8 million back to affected customers and a $12 million penalty, a little icing on the cake, but they're gonna hang on to the issue centers on difficulties and canceling bundled products that are pushed into car loan contracts and saying they're hard to cancel and when they are canceled, the consumers are getting inaccurate refunds. So they were also accused of providing misleading information about borrowers payments, so affecting the credit scores. Toyota did not admit or deny findings but just said we'll pay the money. So I mean, basically this action it does highlight and increased scrutiny on junk fees. You know, being upfront transparent with the customer and obviously following through on the back end and you know, if you buy Something and the thing says you can cancel it, you should be able to cancel it easily. So it feels like a win. Yeah,

Kyle Mountsier: 10:07

I think this is when this is it is it's it's just a heavier eye on everything that is auto lending auto privacy, like the details around an auto purchase are getting scrutinized at a very high level right now. We've seen it all over the last two years. And this is another example of that. You know, I will say just from being in dealerships, like the systems necessary to quote cancellations and refunds are not well developed and so you know, this is in Amazon What's it ain't amazon it Amazon is what they're saying you know, you can you can't return this joker at Kohl's and get a $5 coupon for the thing you know what I'm saying? But you know, so I can I can see how this could have easily just kind of become an issue little few cents here a few dollars there and over time just builds up to to a massive issue. So yeah, just watch out for consumers having questions or wondering exactly whether or not they should purchase these things because this will be someone in the consumer eye because you know how they love the dude dealers and auto people. Yeah,

Paul J Daly: 11:18

and it's just and it's just stuff like this is just bad for everybody. Right? Just bad for everybody. So it's getting fixed. You know, you're out there on the front lines be extra transparent today. I don't know. Especially if your Toyota dealer because this isn't the Wall Street Journal. They

Kyle Mountsier: 11:35

see a major news oh

Unknown: 11:40

we only see the biggest story for

Kyle Mountsier: 11:42

last around here. This is straight up the biggest story in a remarkable instant it just straight up made for Tiktok a Stanley tumbler so if you don't know what is that that is why you'll see it here in just a second survived a Kia Sorento car fire, which has led the company to not only replace the tumbler, but also the burnt car as the owner made a video where she pried the tumbler from the charred interior and shook it to reveal that we're still ice in it. That video has now seen over 80 million views. We have the video. Yeah, we've got the video nice. There it is. She's going in the car. The Stanley tumblers there She rips it prise it out of a burnt car and then shakes it don't have AC in it. And it still has

Paul J Daly: 12:33

it. After the car cupholders are full of water from like the firefighters putting the car. It's plastics melted. And this thing literally at first I was watching I was like, Is this fake one? Like, is this a plant? Because it looks like it's in such great condition. Right? But I mean, the Stanley tumblers like your dad had one when he went to work right? Remember his green, big green one, you unscrew the top cup. And that's where you keep your chicken noodle soup. This is like the tumbler modern version of that. This is just a I mean, this is a big brand. Doing what a big brand should be doing that not paying attention. Like just Glenridge attention. Leverage attention right there. Yeah, so 80 million 80 million views and growing this kind of reminds me the Ocean Spray guy. Right? Yeah, very similar dog face some, some some where he's on the skateboard drinking the Ocean Spray after his car broke down. You know. So I like this stuff. This is just a reminder for all of us. I think for you at the dealership level at the industry partner level, be paying attention to what's happening in culture and happening around especially in dealerships look for opportunities, where people are posting things,

Kyle Mountsier: 13:36

simply like pay attention to the user generated content around your dealership and make opportunities for that to happen, right? Or do things that encourage user generated exactly encourage that. I mean, how many people are posting pictures of their new car that they just bought from you? You know, like lean into that that's probably an audience network that if you just expose and and and lean into like it's right there for the taking. You know, I will say ideas right? Yeah, probably isn't loving this because it's all attached to a potential flip side of this. There was like a whole recall that came out on these 20 tended to Cerritos and people are pointing to hey, maybe that's the issue there. So if I was Kia, I would get involved wanting to brand play to Stanley was

Paul J Daly: 14:22

I don't know how I want to make it go away. Yeah, I didn't know it was a 22. I thought it was an older model. Man. Yeah,

Kyle Mountsier: 14:30

I think it's like a Gen three and or no, the recall was was noted in 2022. But

Paul J Daly: 14:36

it got Gen three. Yeah, they're still saying like, Hey, if you have one of these effective vehicles parked outside, yeah, park it outside. What's your parking outside, it could still stand they still keep your coffee hot. We hope you have an amazing Tuesday, just a day or two away from Thanksgiving. So if you're traveling or if you're in the store, just take care of some people. Be thankful for the people around you will see here tomorrow. Coming

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