Recall Rodeo, Polestar Pitched, Deepfake Millions

February 6, 2024
The ASOTU Crew is back in the saddle after an inspiring week at NADA. Today we’re talking about the variety of recalls across multiple manufacturers. We’re also covering Hertz’s parting of ways with Polestar, as well as an impressive and sobering deepfake scam
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Show Notes with links:

Recalls are everywhere in the news from tailgates that may pop open on the road to airbag anomalies and tiny-font safety warnings, as GM, Honda, and Tesla announce significant recalls affecting millions.

  • GM announced recalls for 323,232 vehicles, including Chevrolet Silverado and GMC Sierra models, due to tailgates that could unexpectedly open, posing a road hazard.
  • Honda is recalling over 750,000 vehicles in the U.S. for airbags that may deploy unintentionally, covering models like the Pilot, Accord, Civic, CR-V, and Passport.
  • Tesla's largest recall to date affects about 2.19 million vehicles for warning lights with font sizes too small, risking crash due to unclear safety information. Over-the-air fixes are planned.
  • GM will repair or replace the tailgate mechanisms on certain Chevrolet Silverado and GMC Sierra models to prevent them from unexpectedly opening.
  • Honda plans to inspect and possibly replace the front passenger seat weight sensor in affected Pilot, Accord, Civic, CR-V, and Passport models to ensure proper airbag deployment.
  • Tesla is issuing an over-the-air software update to adjust the font size of warning lights on the instrument panel for better visibility and compliance with safety standards.

Amid a broader EV market downturn, Hertz is reevaluating its electric ambitions, pausing a significant acquisition of Polestar vehicles due to soaring repair costs and market uncertainties.

  • Hertz is halting its plan to purchase 65,000 electric vehicles from Polestar, reflecting the changing dynamics of the EV market.
  • This decision follows Hertz's recent move to sell off 20,000 EVs from its fleet, including Teslas and Chevrolets, driven by high maintenance expenses.
  • The rental giant's pivot away from an all-electric fleet underscores broader industry challenges, with demand for EVs cooling and resale values dropping.
  • Polestar, facing its own hurdles, adjusts to Hertz's decision amidst a pause in Volvo's financial support and missed delivery targets for 2023.

In a sophisticated scam a finance professional from a multinational firm was  duped into transferring $25 million through an elaborate scam, with the scammers using an impressive array of deepfake technology 

  • The scam involved a fake video call where criminals closely mimicked the appearance and voices of company staff, effectively lowering the employee's suspicions.
  • Initially the victim received an email from the firm’s CFO and was suspicious until he was invited to a video call with several of his colleagues prior to him making the transfer. 
  • The fraud was discovered when the employee finally spoke to the real CFO 
  • Hong Kong police have arrested six individuals linked to similar frauds, where they found 8 identity cards used to open 90 loans and 54 bank accounts by tricking facial recognition software by imitating the faces on the cards.

Paul J Daly: 0:00

Hey man, it's Tuesday, February 6, we're back. It's like, I don't know 6am on the west coast, but we're back on the East Coast for the first time in a long time. We're excited about that.

Kyle Mountsier: 0:29

People really want to know who isn't who I guess. I guess I'll count myself as on the East Coast. Because I kind of run east coast time in my day, you know, kind

Paul J Daly: 0:39

of have to Yeah, your central you know, I always forget how far west Nashville actually is. When you look at a map. It's way way over from the like, it's

Kyle Mountsier: 0:49

way over there.

Paul J Daly: 0:51

40 How far do you have to drive to get to the coast?

Unknown: 0:55

Man, okay, so

Kyle Mountsier: 0:56

Asheville is like five. I mean, it's probably like a 10 hour drive to get to me.

Paul J Daly: 1:01

How long does it take you to get to the Gulf Coast? Seven. So you can actually get to the Gulf of Mexico fast you can get to the Atlantic

Kyle Mountsier: 1:08

Ocean. Yeah. And everybody wants to the Gulf of Mexico is way better than the Atlantic all day, every day.

Unknown: 1:13

Unless you like waves. Oh, there's some waves over there.

Kyle Mountsier: 1:17

I mean, not big ol waves. But way better. The beach is way better.

Paul J Daly: 1:21

I believe that I can believe that. Oh, man, we're back from NADA. It's it's interesting. Having like, just gone through that I got back to my studio today. And I was just like, it feels like I haven't been here in a month.

Kyle Mountsier: 1:33

It's a while. It's like it's like, well, because you get transported into this world that you feel like, has no time or space time and space. You know, it's like, why does this even exist in the world? You know? Yeah, then

Paul J Daly: 1:45

you factor in you know, timezone changes just the just the the general, I don't know what time it is a Vegas. And when you're at the NADA show, you don't even see daylight for most of the time, right?

Kyle Mountsier: 1:56

So it might as well be 5pm at night, all day. And then, and then you keep going when you leave there and you're like, I don't know whether it's nine or two in the morning. And for

Paul J Daly: 2:06

our crew, right? We show up early. So it's not like really light that light out yet. And then we leave and it's already getting dark. And then before you know you're back, but it was an amazing trip. Glad to be back here. Welcome to all the new people that are in the community. We met hundreds and hundreds of people at the show. And I'm sure that other people have found out about it. I know that the LinkedIn requests have definitely been coming in new followers new email signups. So it's one of the best parts about the NADA show, just be able to like open arms and gather new people towards this amazing movement of other dealers and industry partners and frontline workers that kind of are on the same mission to love people more than they love cars while being absolutely, like, I dialed in. I was outside another word. But yeah, yes. So we, we,

Kyle Mountsier: 2:56

we ended our time there with a conversation with David Spees Zach. And the theme of the conversation was really that hey, look, like we at ASOTU Like we love to throw a good party we love you know, a solid, a solid downbeat on a podcast, right? But there is that there is a growing amount of the automotive population that has the theme of culture, the theme of people in the theme of business operations aligned and dialed in at the same exact time and they don't sacrifice one for the other. And, and that that is like the core of everything that we're doing here to so do more than cars, that people culture, the way of doing business, the way of being in the community is is held an equal balance to the business operation side of the of everything we

Paul J Daly: 3:48

do. Without a doubt. Well, we're gonna get back to the regular flow of things have some new things coming as well. But I just want to let everybody know we are only 98 days from the soda con under 100 days, a lot of conversation around a soda con it's going to be in Baltimore, on May 14 through 17 circled on your calendars. There's going to be a lot of people there. I'm going to have a lot of amazing speakers, including our primary keynote, Keynote, we'll get Dara, author of unreasonable hospitality a lot in the industry know him he's starting to make inroads. You know, epic work for Danny Meyer on the best restaurant in the world. And he's sharing that hospitality with the rest of industry, I guess read the book. It's unbelievable. He's gonna be there Come meet him. You can get tickets are live right now we have a few speakers up on the site at ASOTU con.com. But there are a whole lot more dozens and dozens more speakers coming so just check that out. Get it on your calendar and get your tickets now you save a bunch of money if you buy them now. All right, let's talk about some news. It's been a while since we've done it this way. But let's get going. recalls are everywhere in the news. You can literally not open an automotive site without seeing them from tailgates that may pop open on the road to airbag issues to safety warning. So in this round GM, Honda and Tesla are announcing recalls that are affecting millions of vehicles GM is recalling 323,000 vehicles including Silverado Sierra models due to tailgates that could unexpectedly open. I think we all know why that's a problem. Honda is recording over 750,000 vehicles in the US in the US for airbags, that could deploy unintentionally so back to air.

Kyle Mountsier: 5:27

When are we gonna get the airbags out of here? Like someone figure that out?

Unknown: 5:31

Please, once would you do?

Kyle Mountsier: 5:34

Like not out of here, but like the airbag recalls oh

Paul J Daly: 5:37

man still going for Honda's two models like pilots Accords, civics, CRVs, and passport. So just about every best selling vehicle. And then Tesla has the biggest recall 2.1 9 million vehicles, which is about everything they built in the last year. Yes, but get this for warning lights with font sizes that are too small. So they're saying, you know, the traffic. You know, the traffic Highway Safety Commission is saying, hey, font size is too small people don't notice it's important when it comes up. And so Tesla's gonna go people, people pop up, click one button, and

Kyle Mountsier: 6:15

date over there on size 14 pixel to 16 pixel Dun,

Paul J Daly: 6:19

dun, thank you very much. GM has to repair or replace tailgate mechanisms on the certain model. So obviously, those vehicles have to come in, Honda obviously has to inspect and possibly replace the airbag. So GM and Honda, you're gonna have a lot of cars coming in your service department and so free service riders opportunities for Tesla, they're just going to push it over the air

Kyle Mountsier: 6:39

update. What are recalls? Lifetime value mechanisms?

Unknown: 6:45

Oh, boy,

Kyle Mountsier: 6:45

that's it.

Unknown: 6:46

They go I mean, it's all it is.

Kyle Mountsier: 6:48

It's a lifetime value mechanism to make a customer for life just in front of its opportunity a bounce pile and

Unknown: 6:55

imagine if you pair the unreasonable hospitality mentality an airbag every now somebody comes in and you do something that's just a little extra over the top and unexpected. Yeah, it's opportunity is opportunities entity speaking and taking some opportunity. Segue. I know I know. Well, amidst the broader Evie market downturn, hertz is taking the opportunity to reevaluate their electric ambitions pausing a significant acquisition of now the Pulsar vehicles due to the high repair costs and market uncertainties that have been plaguing the rental car business regarding EVs. So they're stopping their plan to purchase 65,000 EVs from pulsar, and it's following Herson hertz his recent move to sell off 20,000 EVs from their fleet, mostly Tesla Model threes and some Chevy bolts, talking about high maintenance and repair expenses. So they're moving away from an all electric fleet which was their big trajectory a

Paul J Daly: 7:58

couple years ago. Look, we know what's going on with TVs. Pollstar is also facing some additional issues bad time for this news from them. Volvo has recently like kind of Volvo parent company, both owned by Gili, Volvo's Financial has pulled away from Pollstar too, so them having to find some new solutions for financing. So it's like man, nothing but rough roads for the

Kyle Mountsier: 8:21

new imagines. That's I mean, Paul, just at and I don't know what the selling price of these things was going to be. And I couldn't find the actual deal value, but it's a two, it's approximately $2 billion in gross revenue halted by one company's decision like that is game changing for Pollstar? And it is, I can't imagine being in the Eevee space right now just trying to figure out like, how to move where to move, and Hertz just saying, Hey, we can't continue to repair these vehicles keep them on the road long enough. And if you go look, there's still a ton of these cars sitting on the open marketplace available for for purchase. They've got all those Tesla's that they're trying to offload from their fleet 20,000 of them. They're all like, they're all like basically 19 to$21,000 sitting in used the basically like you use card hertz graveyard,

Paul J Daly: 9:16

it it's crazy, because I overheard a conversation was

Unknown: 9:20

Jimmy Douglas and somebody else. I can't remember. But very easy focused. Right, Evie informed. And it was it's when something like that starts to sell and 20,000 DVDs hasn't been on the market. It's like well, how many like us DVDs are on the market like wholesale market for dealers to buy, you know, right? It was like 14,000 No way. Yeah, they've doubled

Kyle Mountsier: 9:43

the more

Paul J Daly: 9:44

than doubled. That's doing so if you want to get an entry level Evie now if you want to model three if you want to see what it's all about. They're not gonna get any cheaper than they are

Kyle Mountsier: 9:55

cheaper than this. Yeah. Wow.

Unknown: 9:57

I don't know I thought about it. Just think about But speaking of thinking about it, good

Paul J Daly: 10:06

man and geez, I've been thinking about it. This is great

Kyle Mountsier: 10:11

just blows my mind. So in a sophisticated scammer seeing this all over the internet finance professional from a multinational firm was duped into transferring $25 million through a super elaborate scam with scammers using an impressive array of deep fake technology. So first, they sent an email that was that was fake to be the company's CFO. The CFO was in Europe, and this was the the agent was in Asia. And then so initially, the victim of the scam kind of said, hey, look, this doesn't feel exactly right from just the email the way it was written. And so then there was Prince from Nairobi, you know, the whole thing, the whole thing well, so the, so he kind of disregarded it. Well, a follow up email was sent with a video call request, he jumps on the video call. And he or she they haven't disclosed the the bright person yet, but jumps on the video call. And all of like the CFO, or just like eight colleagues on the colleagues are on there in with deepfake Full Video personalities. And having like gone through that feels confident about the transfer transfers, just over $25 million. And out of the firm's accounts. Hong Kong Police have arrested six individuals linked to similar frauds where they found eight identity cards to open 90 loans and 54 bank accounts by tricking facial recognition software by imitating the faces on the card. So you got video, you got cards, you got just AI being utilized in the craziest ways right now. The fraud was discovered later when the employee finally did speak to the real CFO. And the CFO was like, Yeah, that wasn't me.

Unknown: 12:11

You know what my family has? Like a special word. That Oh, no, well, I'm

Paul J Daly: 12:17

not gonna tell you. Because somebody told me about this voice fake thing. It was on the news about like somebody calling and saying I have your whatever, you know, kidnapped to your end, here's their here's their like, proof of that I have them. And we were like, Okay, here's the word. You have one word, and no one knows what it is. But can you imagine jumping on a call with eight of your colleagues or seven of your colleagues? And I have a lot of questions around this. Where did the call originate? That they have access to like, how did the usual internal communications go? Is it the company zoom,

Unknown: 12:51

but I mean, dang. I thought I kept thinking about this. And if you think about people that don't have a lot of personality, this is probably much, much easier, so much easier. But if you got like most of the asoto crew on a call, I don't I couldn't even come close to mimicking nah, I was like you could do the words and the face but people are like what is up with pilots? Were

Kyle Mountsier: 13:16

Loctite we were crazy over here our zoom calls are never the same and we certainly don't have 25 million to get not a chance not a chance Hey, just watch out for it like especially when when scams come to you know, I know that there are a lot of people trying to take into account like driver's license and credit fraud and it's getting more proliferated across our industry so just something to be on the on the lookout for watch your compliance measures, watch your you know measures to look for scams and fraud especially when cash purchases are happening. Just because you know, hey look of a multinational firm that probably has a lot of safeguards in place can get duped like this. Absolutely.

Unknown: 13:59

Watch out for it. People know there's a couple of dollars floating around the dealership world to so high targets of targets. Oh my I think that's what we got for it. That's

Kyle Mountsier: 14:09

what we got for today as

Paul J Daly: 14:10

well. Let's get into it ever you do know you have a lot to do getting home sharing those notes with NADA servants and customers on the front line go out make today about so much. You know the phrase so much more than cars

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