Vroom Jobs, Black Book for EVs, Tesla and Apple Plans

Paul J Daly: 0:15

Yo, welcome. It is Wednesday, January 24. We're streaming to some personal pages today. So if you're seeing us that way, welcome. Today we're talking about room BlackBook for EVs and Tesla and Apple's plans, not together, the people not planning anything together.

‍Kyle Mountsier: 0:31

It's just the plans that they individually have we like this. We just pulled them all together. Yeah.

Paul J Daly: 0:39

Good morning, everybody. If you haven't seen the show before. I'm Paul, this is Kyle. We have a media company called a soda automotive State of the Union. And we do a show every morning 10 to 15 minutes, quick shot of automotive company, pop culture, a little retail, and a lot of fun. So we hope you We hope you enjoy being with us today. And we'll see where it goes. It's kind of an exciting time yesterday, we had a pipe post really hit because as many of you heard, the company room digital retailing company that sells cars online, went out of business yesterday, or at least they announced closure of their used car sales, so displaced a lot of workers. And it's kind of it's one of those situations where traditional car dealers were in fierce competition with them and this new process. But you know, we kind of Kyle do things like a little differently around here when it comes to love and people more than they love cars. Yeah,

Kyle Mountsier: 1:31

you know, I'll just say this, like, just on the record, probably one of the first things were some people may remember me from LinkedIn, Joe Chura, shared a post of me, basically, after the 2021 room commercial, putting out a commercial with the dealer group that I was at there was like, No, that's not who we are, and kind of saying, hey, vroom, stop talking about us that way. I've not always agreed with the way they go to market. Right. I think that they've they've, you know, put dealers at a disadvantage in the way that they communicate about dealers. But I will say they've gotten to market strong. And they have a ton of people that know a lot about auto that are in our automotive family that have done some things in tech that the rest of auto hasn't done, have done some things at scale and enterprise and moving vehicles around the country that a lot of auto hasn't done. And these people are part of the fam, they are put that way, right.

Paul J Daly: 2:29

Oh, go ahead. And sorry to cut you off.

Kyle Mountsier: 2:31

Well, yeah. And so like we we didn't want to just like leave, let that die on the vine. And kind of there was a lot of LinkedIn posts, we saw going around going hot, told you so and we knew it was going to happen, it would never work out. And our thing is like, hey, look, this is still lives impacted. It's a company impacted. It's a wake up call for automotive retailers saying hey, look, if they couldn't make it in there, they're primarily on us cars. What what does that look like for the landscape? So how do we recover out of this and use it as a benefit to our industry. So we

Paul J Daly: 3:00

did this, we put made a post on LinkedIn, wrote a little letter to our room employees, we called it dear room employees, and the post is really taken off overnight. And we have 1000s of people checking it out. We have a lot of engagements on a lot of reposts and reshares. Pretty much with the post here, maybe we should just read the post. Should we just read the post, I'm just gonna read the post. When we get up there room employees, we know what it's like to have something you've worked hard to build not workout. That feeling sucks. The silver lining is there's an entire community of auto dealers who love people more than they love cars. They're ready to welcome you and your roommates as their next greatest team member. We're just here to connect the dots and tell you that we have your back. So basically, we compiled a list, you can go to a sotu.com, forward slash room sorta.com forward slash room, it'll bring you right to the LinkedIn posts. And we built a Google sheet that has how many people are on the sheet, I

Kyle Mountsier: 3:58

think a little over 600. There were a bunch of LinkedIn members of the 898 that we couldn't find. But there's over 600 people across accounting and sales and HR and technology. And every every one that is current was currently listed as a room employee on

Paul J Daly: 4:14

Yep. And so the hope is that, and there's a lot of comments. So if you're watching this, some people from room got into the comments, if you're watching this, you work with room, go back to the post, because there are a lot of dealers and tech companies that are saying like I'm hiring for these positions, right? I'm interested. So we're trying to just keep everybody together so that we can welcome you into the automotive community. And we happen to think you will find that there are some auto dealers in our comments and around this community that are going to be the most amazing people to work for and provide you with more opportunity than you ever thought was possible. And I haven't heard of any auto dealers that are scaling down.

Kyle Mountsier: 4:52

Yep, put it that way. Not at all and leaning in. So

Paul J Daly: 4:56

we hope you join us again, it's a soda.com forward slash room and if You're just in the industry Share the posts, right? Let's get more people more eyeballs on this. In a days we will be on the ground with so much of the auto community yet and a DEA in Las Vegas. We have all kinds of coverage plan. We're bringing the whole big crew. We're rollin heavy. So you'll see us moving around. They're just talking to people interviewing people doing podcasts live, and we will be on the NADA live stage on Thursday at 315 to 330. We're doing a meetup. So we're gonna have a lot of the members of community we have pins for everybody more than cars pins. We have stickers. So make sure you join us at the NADA live stage. We're going to be showing some footage from our upcoming Docu series episode for more than cars with Andy Wiltshire, who is a Chevy dealer featured in one of the episodes and Chairman of the Chevy dealer Council. And it's right by registration in the main hall. We hope you can join us there there isn't can't wait to get into our LinkedIn page. And then I think we need to just like get into some news because that's kind of what we do. That's what we do. All right, here we go black book, a leading provider of vehicle valuations and analytics introduces battery adjusted values for EVs, the new valuation system and incorporates very important battery condition adjustments, collaborating with our friends at recurrent who has really, really changed the game and Evie analytics so that they apply and will increase or decrease a VIN specific valuation based on the battery data. Addressing the gap, right, and what's the car really worth because used to think mileage? And now we think battery health health, Jared Kalfus blackbox President emphasized the significance quote, he said while electric vehicles are still vehicles, a single component, the battery has never played such a significant role in the US vehicles value. Isn't that true? Initially, this is going to be available on black box Cherry Mobile app, the system will expand across the portfolio and give comprehensive coverage to customers pretty soon. This

Kyle Mountsier: 6:53

is this is changing. The first thing that I love about this and I hope someone at Black Book figures this out. They got ba V's for EVs EVs for bvo back, Bev, yeah, we've been waiting for this as an industry, there are a couple of people trying to tackle this right now. In the valuation space, it's going to be key because we can't just look at year make mile model trim miles and condition, we have to look at battery condition, which is not just readily available, it's not visible by the eye. And so I'm excited to do this. And here's the thing, we have the data now, like, historically, if you ask someone, what's the condition of your car, right? They're always gonna tell you it's excellent. got smashed in front quarter panel, but it's excellent. Noise least your battery? Well, we already know it's connected. We have the connected data. So why will Shouldn't we connect that to the vehicle value via data stream? So I love that recurrent as partner with BlackBook. And we'd love you know, Scott Case and the crew over there are current really changing the game and what it looks like to just look at, you know, how a battery impacts valuation.

Paul J Daly: 8:00

This is another step closer to a car being similar to a device. You know, when you sell a computer, a phone secondhand, right? Everybody wants a screenshot of the battery health, a lot of conversation around that whether it's a phone, this is just another extension of that. So interesting little step on the electric journey. Speaking of the electric journey. Oh, there we go. All right, so Tesla has officially announced its plans to start production of a new mass market EV codenamed Redwood by mid 2025. So it's not that far away. The Redwood project is aiming for a compact crossover, expanding their reach into a budget friendly market. Obviously, they've been kind of luxury, very expensive, and that's changing quickly. Tesla's initiative is challenging you know, both those budget conscious gasoline vehicle purchasers, but also the inexpensive EVs we're starting to see. Like from China's BYD, which recently passed, China, BYD recently passed Tesla in global sales, and are rumored to be coming to the US really soon. 18 To 24 months. The production forecasts initially, say 10,000 vehicles a week beginning in June 2025, and a price point around 25k. So I mean, definitely sounds competitive. And Elon Musk CEO ambition reflects in his statement when he said both the design of the product and manufacturing techniques are head and shoulders above anything else that is present in the industry. So we'll see if they can deliver.

Kyle Mountsier: 9:32

He says a lot. He says a lot. I was never surprised. You know, I think that that this is like a shot across the bow right now. When they've got to start getting more aggressive. I've seen multiple reports over the last week, saying hey, look, is Tesla really the is Tesla really going to make it you know, they've got all of these competitors going to come into the market. They're losing market share overseas. And so I think they have To create this kind of like mass market thing to to gain market share outside of their current consumer base, because that's that's going to be the place where the where the competitive matrix actually hurts them. So we'll see 10,000 vehicles per week, but beginning 20, June 2020. I can't I just can't

Paul J Daly: 10:22

wrap my head around having so many things going on at once. Whenever I think of Tesla and Elon Musk, I mean, I just think of like, the cybertruck is still like, no, do I just it's, it's phenomenal. Well, maybe it is. Maybe it isn't. I don't know. But we'll find out. Speaking of other companies that are phenomenal, also and worth a trillion dollar companies,

Kyle Mountsier: 10:45

right? Yeah. Well, they did get they did get put in the back seat by Microsoft recently, but originally announced 10 years ago, Apple's long awaited electric car Project Titan has shifted gears and the ironic button is intended. an Eevee. Yeah, the gears the years Yeah, aiming for a more conventional electric car launch by 2028. So they have shifted and realigned on a project, giving it more like an a realistic electric car with basic driver assisted features, instead of just going like, Hey, sit there and will drive the thing. They were originally targeting a fully autonomous vehicle and recalibrated to a level two plus system akin to Tesla's autopilot requiring driverless driver alertness and control. The car is potentially going to be priced around yo 100k. Right mark a mass market, they are definitely going for that that premium market, it's something they've done with pretty much every product that they bring out. Yeah. So I mean, really not surprised. It's

Paul J Daly: 11:53

just this is a tough one. Because Can you imagine in 2014 be saying like, in 10 years from now, we'll be saying four years from now. Right, which is basically what it is. And like, I don't know, it's very difficult to take anything seriously, anymore. When people are saying like, Oh, by then because it's like, actually technology like

Kyle Mountsier: 12:11

a vehicle? Because, yes, but none of these manufacturers are used to what it takes to go from r&d, to production to the street, right? Like that is something that these legacy manufacturers have had to overcome for time and time, hundreds of years over and over and over. And they are constantly in this r&d to production process. And they've got it mapped out. It's just different than getting a widget like a phone into the pocket of someone. It's a wildly different process. And so I you know, Apple's clearly coming up against the difficulties there, but I'm still not counting them out and it like they all know, the first iPhone, everybody was like, nobody's gonna pay 400 bucks for an iPhone, right? Phones are free. And

Paul J Daly: 13:02

right now it's what he's gonna pay $1,300 for a vision Pro headset yet they are sold out. They are sold out. We'll see. I'm not walking around one of those things. I'm calling that I'm calling that right now. Call that right now. Hey, well, what's wrong button? Just said stop. We're gonna start laughing. However, you joined us today, whether that's on one of Kyle mais profile on the asoto profile, we welcome you into this. Make sure you go to a sony.com forward slash room. Check out that post and sign up for the daily email.

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