GM Smiling, Tesla’s Fuel Toggle, Over-Surveyed

Paul J Daly: 0:22

Alright, Tuesday, it's only Tuesday. It's April 23. You have some fun stuff might get a little chippy. Today we're talking about GM smiling. Tesla's fuel toggle and consumers being over surveyed. Is that a thing? Is it possible to be over surveyed? Who is in? Need? They stopped?

‍Kyle Mountsier: 0:39

I feel as though it is. Over survey.

Paul J Daly: 0:43

Yeah, we'll talk about it.

Kyle Mountsier: 0:44

There's so much chip Enos to get after.

Paul J Daly: 0:47

There's a lot of chip Enos on on the internet right now. I mean, there usually is, but I mean, I feel like in the auto circles, there's a little chip Enos,

Kyle Mountsier: 0:54

there's always a little bit of choppiness. Hey, that like yesterday, it was unbelievable. You had this idea in the morning to to basically create a billboard for everybody that was a con. And like, by by noon, I'm on LinkedIn. And it's like, that person's going, that person's going that Oh, everybody. Oh, I see the whole world is going to ASOTU CON got it. It was good. You know,

Paul J Daly: 1:20

so like, maybe from like, hey, we want people to know soda cones is gonna be a thing. There's a part of it like it started out just with a graphic and then it and it's they're showing seeing it on billboards. I don't know maybe people will make their own. But hey, if you're coming to a soda con, by the way, you haven't gotten one, let us know, just reach out. What's the best way to reach out if you know us personally, or ever met just text or email. And it's not LinkedIn crew at ASOTU.com. Just on LinkedIn as a SOTU, who gets you through@asotu.com

Kyle Mountsier: 1:47

There's a whole bunch of what

Paul J Daly: 1:48

but here's really the founding principle to why that billboard thing is authentic to who we are, is because we think every person going is a big deal, because they're a part of the conversation that is moving the industry forward. So everyone should know that that person is going to be there. And that person is a reason that other people should go to ASOTU CON. So I know in my mind, you imagine if like people are driving from the airport, it's only like 10 minutes from the airport, if even the BWI Airport had south toward Annapolis. And you imagine if we actually had billboards up, people, oh

Kyle Mountsier: 2:26

are a couple of billboards on the way random. Like two years ago, we wrote this and we've kept it on the site since then, on the ASOTU CON site, it says attendees not welcome. Participants welcome, right. It's like, we do not want people that are just going to attend sit back, look at it hope they get something right, like active participation of being in community at the event is integral to the success of everybody in the event. Yeah,

Paul J Daly: 2:53

I'm so excited to be there with you. I want to thank our CO presenting sponsors, collaborators, Reynolds Reynolds Gugu thank you so much for helping us make that happen. Just looking forward to spending some time with you particularly they're going to have a great time. Get your tickets ASOTU con.com. You still can we still have some space hotel maybe has a room left, they keep drip feeding us up. We keep saying we're out but then they're like, here's like sprinkle of more. We do have over 200 rooms in this hotel booked already, just for a soda CON attendees. So it's gonna be a blast. If you're an industry partner. Join the conversation. If your dealer come join the conversation. And we'll do the thing together. Alright, let's talk about some news. Here we go. Good news. GM is smiling General Motors is kicking off 2024 with a robust financial performance boosting full year guidance. After a stellar first quarter, their net income soared by 24%. In q1 reaching almost 3 billion driven strong vehicle demand especially in North America. Were revenue hit a first quarter record of 36 point 1 billion they adjusted their earnings to before taxes and interest to 3.9 billion their reason raising their for full year EBITA or EBIT by 500 million so like they're everything's smiling right now despite new vehicle prices dipping a little bit. Their pricing is stable, good sales but like of the Chevy Trax, the Buick INVISTA you say what you want about Buick? That is a cool looking car.

Kyle Mountsier: 4:24

That one is the one cool one I'll give it to him.

Paul J Daly: 4:26

I looked at that I was I was tracking it on the highway the other day awesome. What

Kyle Mountsier: 4:30

is that? What is that? I was like it's a Buick.

Paul J Daly: 4:32

Okay, it was a you. They've been doing cost cutting measures it is go check it out. cost cutting measures over 300 million to reduce fixed costs from marketing and engineering on track to meet their $2 billion reduction goal by year and Mary Barra CEO said globally our team is leaning into every opportunity with a focus on profitability to build on our strong start to 2024. So lots of smiles. Let me

Kyle Mountsier: 4:57

ask you something. Do you think all of that profitability and growth came from EVs. Oh, so let's see, oh,

Paul J Daly: 5:03

they just managed to well, they managed to extremely well. You know why else they're smiling just a little bit bigger. Why they smile is because the VW plant in Chattanooga is now unionized. Yeah. Like, ah, go into the cloud.

Kyle Mountsier: 5:22

Look, I'm impressed. I, you know, I remember back in q4, they kind of like made a few adjustments. They talked about how they were going to go come into market this year, a little bit different. You look at some of the products that they're coming out with, obviously, much more attractive than what you've seen, especially from the Buick line. And like kudos to Mary Barra and her team for pivoting. Despite the hassle with, you know, all the talks last year with the UAW, despite the issues with evey kind of losing a little bit of traction is making a profitable first quarter like I'm smiling, because that's good news for the entire industry. Sure

Paul J Daly: 6:01

is sure is speaking, I can't say this is good news for the entire industry. But speaking of news, the industry is paying attention to segway it'd be a lot more conversation on this. But basically, we're calling this the Tesla toggle. Earlier this week, Elon Musk tweeted out a image on x and said it had a picture of a model Y like the shadowy picture, said starts at 29 490 in big bold white print. And then in really, really skinny white print underneath. Some might even call it fine print. I can't even read I got it closest after US federal tax credit. And here's the kicker estimated fuel savings. So basically, this was reflected on the website, when you go to the website and look for a model why it has this and then until you flip the little toggle switch over the actual price shows up. And when you adjust your payments to toggle back and forth, the price changes. The big question is Could a dealer get away with

Kyle Mountsier: 7:03

this? Okay, one, could a dealer get away with this or dealers on mass? Probably not. We know the reasons why to I will say Tesla has been doing some of this like gas savings fuel for quite some time. I think the big difference now is that though they've had like versions of toggles or gas savings as compared to the pricing, or the monthly payments of the cars on the website for quite some time. Now, the big difference is now they're utilizing it to share a actual low price point. They've attributed that gas savings to the price to show love started early. Exactly why the cars rule is in is in place and trying to come to the table. And so this is like a mass market brand that has a lot of foothold in the political landscape, basically, like holding up the middle finger to the cars rule that is still yet to be in place, but is definitely would definitely have something to say about this. Yeah,

Paul J Daly: 8:11

I mean, I made a post about this yesterday with a little video watching the toggle going back and forth. And I had a few thoughts as I was on the test site going through the purchase experience. Number one. It's an amazing purchase. It's so let me just say I almost bought a moto y by mistake. It was so easy again. Secondly, I do love the affordability calculator, that it kind of now it's just fuel and it allows you to adjust what your current vehicle is what your current fuel mileage is, how many miles do you drive, so it calculates the fuel rate. And it says, Hey, we're estimating that fuel costs 390 a gallon, we're estimate that electric costs use this, right? So it does kind of calculate those. What I'd love to see are some of the additional things right? Like, if you add in like a tire wear Toggler that's going to adjust the price up. Right? you factor in three sets of tires over 30,000 miles and all of a sudden you might be back closer to where you were. So I like the affordability part of this conversation because we talked about that a lot. But from like apples to apples what a dealer or dealers get away with it. Definitely not. We'll see what I think Tesla

Kyle Mountsier: 9:17

big talking point for me here is brands that have a brand worth being a part of that the rules, right? Like all

Paul J Daly: 9:29

consumers don't care. Like there was some Tesla nakliye Tesla owners that chimed in on the on the LinkedIn post and they were like, yes, but when you go to the next place, next screen, everything is laid out really clearly what the pricing is where it's coming from, and I bought that exact vehicle and I love it and I love the brand. And they don't see it as deceptive.

Kyle Mountsier: 9:50

It was simple. Yeah. And worth worth being a part of not just owning. And so that sets the rules and so like you can do a lot under that. And yeah, there is some transparency baked in. So from this is like, I look back at, like when everybody was like, you know, cars die Carvana, right? And it's like, what can we learn from this? What can we learn about what Tesla's built, what they've done what they're able to do in the market, but also like, you know, hey, Tesla, come on.

Paul J Daly: 10:20

I'm surprised we don't see more affordability Todd Caputo, who a lot of you know, they used to do the fuel savings, they had something similar to this on their site years ago. And so you can calculate, you know, because he might have been like truck, you know, he might have bought a bunch of Malibu's or something and you say, hey, these get 32 miles of the gallon, save gas and buy this new car. But I'm surprised there aren't more affordability type tools on the websites. Yeah, like search bar and search by affordability. Right. And

Kyle Mountsier: 10:47

well, and I think, I mean, best case scenario for me is like, how do you inject you know, we have all these, like insurance rate calculators that are dynamic and personalized. You've gotten, you know, f&i and tax like, the data is available as bring it all right to the customer and say, Okay, what can I actually afford? What can I actually buy? Because I think customers would absolutely crave and love the idea of being able to simplify that down to like a single spot they

Paul J Daly: 11:13

go met last year streamline, we're looking at you to figure this one out. Now, speaking of figuring things out,

Kyle Mountsier: 11:19

segue let's figure it out. Let's ask everybody call this the day after email. You know, customer satisfaction surveys are definitely pervasive. A New Business Insider article explores whether they really help businesses or just annoy customers with constant requests for feedback. So surveys have become a standard practice across industries, obviously, aiming at optimizing customer experiences for business gains, not necessarily for customer benefit. Check this, the spending on market research, specifically customer surveys has ballooned to $80 billion annually with a significant focus on monitoring and improving customer satisfaction metrics. Despite the intention to gather, useful data Business Insider saying the overwhelming number of surveys has led to over surveying, making people less likely to respond, which leads to more surveys being sent out. Brad Anderson of Qualtrics, a leading player in this industry says companies are using surveys to cling to unloyal customers, it's much cheaper to keep a customer than to acquire a new one. So there's definitely like, loyalty play, but also just a lot going on, you know,

Paul J Daly: 12:37

like if you go and check on the Lincoln reading this article, basically, can you imagine being surveyed, they're like, You know what quality of the product is not what we're going to ask questions about. And that's if you think about it, automotive surveys, all the stuff is about the qualities as quality that remember, they're like, no, we want to know one thing. Will you come back? Yeah. And that's, you know, so like, Net Promoter Score, like things like that, like, would you recommend, would you return are now like, they're saying, let's just focus on those?

Kyle Mountsier: 13:04

Because that drive? How easy is that is like just a single question. Like, some sort of Net Promoter Score. I think it just it takes everything out of the question. And then, like, what I've seen, especially in auto is these customers start thinking almost like, harder about their purchase process than they maybe would have. Like, hmm, well, now that you asked that question, and they didn't, are you telling me that they it was bad? Even if I did have a good experience? Like, I've noticed that in the past when I was at the dealership, it's like, all of a sudden, someone that was a raving fan before the survey kind of like, looks at it and and goes Ha, they didn't do that one little element that you asked a question about. Now I'm gonna feel less valued as an overall customer. It's kind of like that adverse effect. Yeah. I swear. I don't know about you, Paul. But I've been flying Delta a lot recently. I get two emails after every single Delta flight, both going and coming back. It's It's

Paul J Daly: 14:05

intense. It's too much. I mean, you think for company like delta, they just bought that sucker up in the app like Uber. Right? Right. Just give me a thing. Give me a feedback or stores whatever you want, right? Absolutely. Because you're also going to miss valuable feedback if I had a nice flight and my flight just arrived early or the the flight attendants were early, great or whatever. I'm going to review the same time if something was bad if I was unhappy about something the charger didn't work, whatever my bank, whatever, whatever the the complaint would be. By the time I get a survey, I'm so annoyed. I'm not answering it anyway. bothered, I'm more bothered and you're not going to get the feedback. Like you're not going to know never gonna happen. I don't know. Quick stuff. Quick stuff. I think Ubers got it down. How many stars? Do you like digitalise driver? Did you leave a tip? I don't know. Either way, if you're coming to a soda county you want a billboard graphic. Reach out to us or email crew at a sony.com If you don't know what a soda con is, you haven't been listening but go to a soda con.com Check out the speakers We hope to see you there

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