It’s Over Over, EV Makers Fighting For Life, AI Leadership Shuffle

Paul J Daly: 0:32

One day, holiday weekend Monday. On top of that, we have some things to talk about today we're gonna talk about EVs fighting for life. The very last post on the strikes at a big time shuffling AI leadership. Big time shuffled. The people really is pretty crazy.

‍Kyle Mountsier: 0:50

Drama is absolutely sublime. The drama is sublime.

Paul J Daly: 0:55

It is, it is. It's like nerd startup.

Kyle Mountsier: 0:58

Welcome to humanity, drama, Black Friday, Cyber Monday, Giving Tuesday. I feel like we've now embarked on an eight day week is Tuesday.

Paul J Daly: 1:09

Is that this week? No, it's

Kyle Mountsier: 1:10

next week. It's just like, you know,

Paul J Daly: 1:12

oh, it's after Cyber Monday.

Kyle Mountsier: 1:14

This is a week that ends next Tuesday. Yes, spend

Paul J Daly: 1:17

all your money on stuff on Monday and whatever's leftover, you can give a little something away. I like the order that let's let's tack it on. Let's talk about oh, we have announcements today. Okay,

Kyle Mountsier: 1:28

you know, tomorrow, I'm always excited about this. I'm very so it's seven o'clock, if you want to now with em. pm Eastern, we're not going to am seven o'clock pm Eastern. We took the best of episode wanted to paired it with some of the new edits that we're going to be releasing for episode three of more than cars, smashed it into a less than 30 minute hot take episode of more than cars. And you can watch it on YouTube or LinkedIn, you can throw it on the big screen TV. Yes, that's the best house and just check out and share with the family share with the people that are closest to you exactly what's going on in retail auto and the real heart of dealers and the real stories that are not being told. On Wall Street.

Paul J Daly: 2:14

Yeah, you know, there's a couple, and you'll be able to watch it too. Like you can't, it's not that you can only watch it on Tuesday, right? You'll be able to see the live stream later. So when the family is over, and you're explaining that you work for a car dealer, and everyone gives you that look that you get sometimes or often. Just have it Kyudo, right? Just be like, Oh, no, no, let me show you what that actually means. And that's part of the reason we're making it. And it's part of the reason we do a lot of what we do is to expand the horizons of people about the auto industry in general what it is to shop at a dealership what it is to work at a dealership, and how it's so much different than most people think. So everything we do here is really in that trajectory and to help those dealers get better at what they do. And the whole thing just kind of perpetuates itself. And by the way, we send out an email every single day, except for Sunday, and you can get it at a sotu.com If you're not on the list, you shouldn't be it is such a fun read first thing in the morning. It's in your inbox every I don't know, it's usually up between six and seven Eastern. And so it's their summary of the news, some things to make you laugh some things to talk to your coworker group was about. And if you're an industry partner, some things to talk to your dealers about I think that's the most one of the most valuable, valuable aspects of it. Look

Kyle Mountsier: 3:25

it. There's so much going on in the world of auto and we and even you and I try and pay attention to and every single day I'm like, huh, yeah, I miss that yesterday. It's right there. It's amazing. Yeah.

Paul J Daly: 3:38

And there's 1000s Literally 1000s of people on this email list. And same thing, probably 70% of them are dealers, GM sales managers, executive leadership and otter. So it's like, there's not a bunch of slouches paying attention. This thing hope you can pay attention to it, too. Speaking of paying attention, this the thing? Here's some segue into the first story today. All right, some expected we'll call it but important news broke late last Friday after our programming hours were over. And we'd be remiss if we didn't at least mention it after extensively covering the UAW strikes for like the better part of feels like forever, but two, three months. So basically, here it is, GM ratified their contract last week earlier, late on Friday for it and still answers both got the contract across the line with a surprisingly identical percentage of support for the contract. 68%. I don't know how that happens. But those two contracts alone affected 100,000 workers. And you know, the benefits that were agreed upon 25% base wage increase over the life of the contract, return of cost of living adjustments. And here's one that we haven't talked about. I didn't even know about it until I read it this morning, is that now workers have the right to strike over plant closures that could get tricky. Really? Yeah. So somebody closes a plant because they're Like, oh, we need to close this plant guess what workers can now strike?

Kyle Mountsier: 5:03

That's so interesting. I know I, you know,

Paul J Daly: 5:07

until I've read that little line Yeah, I

Kyle Mountsier: 5:09

hadn't heard it. It's like these little nuggets that come out of stuff. You know, hey, look, we did it. We made it to the end. Everybody's back to work. They're making cars and getting paid more so wins all around. Let's go into

Paul J Daly: 5:24

the last time we'll ever play this. Yes. When we were out on UAW coverage, officially, it's moving along. So as Evie demand has high has had a highly publicized drop, we've been hearing about everywhere customers don't want consumers don't want EVs. We're seeing many highly invested companies adjust their plans to make moves to bring in the demand back to life already. So one of those is Vietnamese, Evie, maker vinfast, who we've talked about quite a bit. They're hoping to get customers over the hurdle of buying from a new company, right new manufacturer and new brand, by promising to pay consumers directly like dollars. If they have service issues, I really like this, right? Because Oh, is it going to be reliable is it this, everybody can warranty it but all these stories circulating about people waiting for parts, or EVs breaking down and having to wait to get them fixed and being stranded? Well, here, what they did, basically, they have three tiers of repayment, a minor inconveniences, like, you know, H fax systems or camera, you know, issues $100 a day, if your car is down, you get 100 bucks for that service issue. If it's something more serious, like a regenerative braking, or a safety issue, right, and your car is down, like down, down$300 A day you're getting. And then if your car is there more than three days, on the fourth day, you start getting an additional $100 per day. So that's all this is all in vinfast, 10, year 120,000, you're like, Well, I'm gonna buy

Kyle Mountsier: 6:59

a vinfast and hope it breaks. This is a really interesting approach we haven't seen, they've got a massive warranty, 10 year 120,000 mile warranty. And so to say, like, hey, look, we recognize it's a big hurdle to get over this. And also, because they don't have this rich network of places that can fix these things. You know, there's there's like this uncertainty, uncertainty of what happens. However, they are expanding the dealer network, we covered this a couple of months ago, or just about a month ago, and they've already received 70 applications for dealers invested in interested in selling the EB brand. And they've got plans for 125/3 party points by the end of next year. So I think like the coupling of consumer care with a dealer network,

Paul J Daly: 7:51

there's a win. Once you start involving the dealers, their their probability of success goes way, way up. You know, a lot of the EVS as we, you know, we know are often like a third car. Right? Right. So and, you know, can you imagine, just like your car is, is locked down, because they're waiting for a part or something like that, and it's down for a month, you're like, I'll take the three grand.

Kyle Mountsier: 8:16

Yeah, that's a totally different approach. You know, and every every manufacturer is dealing with this right now. There's still parts supplies shortages, there's still issues specifically in body shops. So they're addressing like, a need within their own purview, like things that are people reasons why people may not be buying but they're addressing a broader needs. So they're meeting culture where it's at. So they might actually have an elevated moment in in the vertical. Yeah,

Paul J Daly: 8:44

speaking of elevated moments, segue segue within a story still on the Evie train, Tesla has decided to lift its ban on their much anticipated cybertruck ahead of their delivery event, which is coming up late with November 3 10 days from now sweet, right, we're gonna see this thing. So basically, prior to them changing the regulation in the contract, when you buy a cyber truck, it says you have to pay a penalty of $50,000, if you resell the vehicle within the first year, sounds a little familiar, Ford, and now have However, people are saying they probably did this because they know they won't be producing a lot. And they won't be able to fill demand anyway. So, you know, their plan is to gradually increase production to 5000 units a week by 2025, like by the end of 2025. So, you know, and they have this delivery event coming up in 10 days where they're going to deliver a grand total of 10 Cyber trucks. And

Kyle Mountsier: 9:40

this is my question now that they've lifted this. We've got to do like an over under a SOTU bet, like what's the first one gonna resell for oh, boy, you know, like, you know that that that cat is not holding on to that thing. One of those 10 people is gonna release that. Yeah, and it's gonna Roll. You know, they

Paul J Daly: 10:01

said the 10 people on the list is like a combination of you know, like VIPs and executive. So I don't think this is the this these are like the 10 people that you know, were the first to the list. And this is obviously 1010 people they want to feel really special. I don't know Alex Flores had one parked in his driveway he posted on Instagram like a few because he had a friend of work to test maybe I can see a flow like doing the stretch across the stage, sunglasses full dress, or taking delivery of his cybertruck I can see it shooting some machine guns out of the back better something.

Kyle Mountsier: 10:32

The the trick still here is is the fact that they have 150,000 pre orders, I think maybe more at this point that is shut off. And and then you've got a target of 5000 units per week by 2025. So there's still a question mark are like will people how do they get these you know, you do some quick number crunching, it's a lie. You know, it's going to still be a long wait for a lot of these users. So lifting that ban, watch this resale market light up once they start delivering these things. Speaking of

Paul J Daly: 11:00

things, lighting, lighting, way, way, way up.

Kyle Mountsier: 11:05

Right if you missed it, here's a little bit of the trajectory basically on Friday. Sam Altman, the CEO of open AI, which is the creator of chat up tea, was ousted by the Board of Directors released immediately, the President Greg Brockman was like, Yo, I'm out of here, left. Over the weekend for about two days, there was a whole bunch of protesting from some of the majority from the investors in open AI, specifically, Microsoft, which is the largest majority investor, and they were like, you've got to reinstate him. They gave open AI a deadline of late Sunday night. And then when that deadline wasn't met, hook, they came on in and have recruited and hired the ex CEO, and also have recruited President Greg, the ex president of open AI Greg Brockman. They've given each of them purview over a brand new research lab, which there's a lot of like speculation. If you would have seen the Twitter open AI lost a ton of employees this week, because of the backlash. There was just like the Twitter fights all over the place. I went and read some of the threads, it was quite wild. A couple of things. According to CNN contributed care contributor Kara Swisher who cited sources familiar with the situation the crisis at open AI was significantly only fueled by a divide between Sam Altman's push for rapid AI development and the board members preference for a more measured approach.

Paul J Daly: 12:42

Wow. Now for but you have that texture to the conversation. And you have the more aggressive push to development, super intelligence, right? There's a lot of conversations going on about regulation, safety, and it sounds like open AI was like, Yo, we need to slow our roll and be a little more cautious. Meanwhile, Microsoft is like screwing over like nah, come over here. We'll let you do whatever you want. In fact, we'll help you. And, you know, Microsoft does have a history of taking other companies and incubating them well inside the ecosystem. You know, President Satya Nadella said you know, look at our history of doing that well and not making it a Microsoft product. And he points to get hub Mojang the game company company LinkedIn, you may have heard of LinkedIn, right? Operating as their own identities, but owned by Microsoft. So man, this this is this is just going to speed advancement of AI. Right, because now Microsoft, Microsoft already has allocated so much resource into open AI and intervene billion dollars 13 billion into it. And now they have like the masterminds to do their own. I think the CEO, former CEO of Twitch is now in charge of open AI. I don't have no idea what that skill set looks like. But Twitch seems like a different skill set than AI generation. But I don't know. All these young smart tech founders just kind of seem to

Kyle Mountsier: 14:01

have a watch out for my watch out for me is open eyes. Last valuation was around 29 billion bucks. You think Microsoft might have a couple bucks laying around? We'll see what happened. A couple.

Paul J Daly: 14:16

Oops, wrong. Trigger pet. We gotta get out of this podcast. UAW is over. We hope you have an amazing week going into holiday. Everyone's got different plans. Whatever it is, this is an amazing time to share the news of the auto industry, to your friends to your family. We hope to see you Tuesday night

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