Big Game EVs, Toyota Changes its Tune, & Hyundai Into Long Term Rentals

Big Game EVs, Toyota Changes its Tune, & Hyundai Into Long T...

Mon, Feb 13, 2023 9:42AM • 18:03

SUMMARY KEYWORDS

commercial, evs, evie, game, people, binky, superbowl, toyota, dealers, marketing, vehicle, bit, month, watched, play, long, adoption rate, moment, letters, news

SPEAKERS

Kyle Mountsier, Michael Cirillo

Kyle Mountsier  00:16

Good Monday morning the Monday after Super Bowl we're out here wiping off the tears from the Eagles suffering a loss last night but hey, we're gonna talk commercials Toyota changing its tune in Monday given options for EVs Oh God, they stopped every once in a while you just like get nailed the cut and you just have to smile about it you know better feeling there's no better feeling so now the cut this morning thriller Do you watch the game last night?

Michael Cirillo  00:46

I watched the game first. May I say the first time I've officially watched the entirety of a Super Bowl? Really? Yes. And that is because I have I'd never participated Central Time never anticipated that I would have children so deeply involved in sports that they would be like Dad, you're watching this deal.

Kyle Mountsier  01:06

Really? Yeah. Okay, that's that's a that's an added value. My kids are like, by like, the second quarter my son was whipping around in the bonus room like he had it was like Batman had a cape and was hitting everyone in the head and it's okay. Well,

Michael Cirillo  01:20

I watched it from a different angle, though. I gotta say I was like, Yeah, dang. Throughout the game. My wife finally was like, You need to shut up about this, but I was not in. Okay, great. two best teams in the league. This is fantastic. I'm like, these parents had two sons playing in like all the early morning practices and tournament weekends and and and and now they rich. I was like, I couldn't get over that piece. I was like, That's awesome. Yeah,

Kyle Mountsier  01:48

absolutely. Yeah. My My wife was like, I think there's I think brothers out there and like, I know it's wild. And I mean, the game itself. If you're a sports fan, the game itself was really good. Up until the last two minutes. Just because like I think it was a terrible way to end a game but hey, that the actual game was extremely exciting. But speaking of the game, segue we'll get right into it because everybody knows every news source media outlet article, Instagram, Twitter feed, Reddit, the subreddit everything in the planet is talking about the commercials whether they are good or bad. The overall grading individual commercials give me before we get in. Because we know we got to talk about our commercials before we get in overall grade from you for the commercial set last night.

Michael Cirillo  02:45

Like a letter grade,

Kyle Mountsier  02:47

it doesn't matter. Because your letters like

Michael Cirillo  02:50

A C plus.

Kyle Mountsier  02:52

Yeah, yeah. Yeah.

Michael Cirillo  02:54

Z plus, right. Yeah, there's no Darth Vader little kid commercial, like epic level happening.

Kyle Mountsier  02:59

Yeah, you know, speaking of little kids, it was interesting to see E trade come back in it's I think they've been off the off the Superbowl kind of thing for a couple years. But bringing back in the Middle East, the the kids and the business suits and all that that was kind of fun. But other than that, it was a it was a little rough. There were a ton of Superbowl commercials, talking about the Eevee landscape and the manufacturers that are pressing into that. So we're gonna run down just a few of them. We'll probably do some reaction videos later for you on YouTube or on the socials if you want to check those out. Let's say let's start with this one. The Jeep EVs doing the electric buggy, a whole bunch of animals doing the buggy EVs going all over the place plug in hybrids from the G perspective. And then they find a charger at the top of a mountain trail. Which to my friend Micah Birkholz. Last night, he texted me he goes can't wait to find that at the trail. So if you're gonna be the grater this this morning, we're gonna go we're gonna go one by one normally on the color commentator, you gotta be the color commentator GPV electric boogie. Give us a great See. See? Why, uh, see, you got to give the why

Michael Cirillo  04:14

I just cuz I mean, you know, I feel like they all tried to play. Like they tried to be big and bold. But they all tried just playing it safe. So I you might not be surprised with my letter grading on

Kyle Mountsier  04:29

C plus C C minus C. All right. So GM. We talked a little bit about this last week, because they came out with commercial early, but they told their marketing story through the Netflix partnership with World Ferrell. My my my daughter was sitting there she goes, Is that the guy from ELF? Like that was that was the through line for her. But let's give it a grade.

Michael Cirillo  04:53

B. I couldn't Okay, I think like that that was on it was probably the best one.

Kyle Mountsier  04:59

Really? See, my only problem with that one is like, and I love anytime where you tell everyone what you're going to do in marketing, like just kind of like put it plainly. So hey, we're gonna be marketing to you through all of the Netflix content that you watch was was the play for me the actual commercial. It was a little bit lackluster. The way my wife said it, and the way I say is, every moment, every new scene, I wanted to just laugh a lot, but I couldn't get past the just like, general smile, you know? So there was no moment there was no like, Oh, God, um, you know, like, they

Michael Cirillo  05:38

were like, hey, we'll how much for your Best Comedic acting, and he was like, $500,000 a minute. And they were like, how much for like your B level? You know, like, everybody's like, conscious of their spenders. It's like

Kyle Mountsier  05:54

if he could have written the commercial, it might have been better. Most Yes, exactly. Yeah, exactly. All right. Kia, Mary's Binky dad and the Rocky theme. And, and the punch line at the end, I think was the best part of this commercial when he gets there back with the Binky, and the baby spits it out. And Mama says, yep, likes the blue one instead. But kind of a fun little

Michael Cirillo  06:16

c plus for the emotional desiring to go down the emotional route with something everyone can relate to. Well, lots of everyone.

Kyle Mountsier  06:25

Yeah, I think it tried to pull at the heartstrings was the goal of the commercial, but it didn't really accomplish that level. You know, you kind of the end the where he comes in, holds up the Binky at the end. And everyone cheers. You're like, that could have been a moment. But it just it a little bit fell flat. So I agree with the C plus. Now I will you if you're staying in that range you and I may disagree with on this one on the last one. But the Lantis really, really pushed the boundaries. A wee bit there was there was some mixed reactions on the news was running this morning with their RAM commercial for premature electrification. Yeah, really going in and toying with the PC line just a little bit. Having a little bit of poking fun at some, some medical commercials and that there was there was a lot of hilarity all across the internet on the on the threads this morning on that one?

Michael Cirillo  07:22

Yeah, well, you know, okay, from B.

Kyle Mountsier  07:28

Okay, good.

Michael Cirillo  07:30

B and but I do have the marketing reasons for it, right. Like, we all know that. But the reason for it is because they're trying to like bring a whole new level of sophisticated understanding around EVs. And I think that people still need some of that baseline education, like, yeah, how long is it going to last in a winter storm so so I get where they're going with it. They're really trying to bring Evie conversation to the forefront for the mass. But you know, and then having some we all know, like, any marketing that has any measure of emotional response is going to stick with us longer. So I get where they were going there. I give it a B.

Kyle Mountsier  08:05

Well, and I think for me, the the reason why I agree with B, I thought you were gonna go with a C, the reason why I agree with a B is that there was a large swath of the population that could be alienated by a commercial like that. So you run the risk in a Super Bowl level commercial of alienating a good percentage of your target market, your target audience, right. And, but like you said, I'm going to give, you know, kind of pros and cons here. But the remembrance of the commercial is clearly there, people will clearly remember and talk about that one a lot. So all good, you know, all good. PR, all PR is good PR in a way. But also at the end, like you said, it didn't really say much about the brand. Right there. It was just an attachment to something to it to an idea there wasn't there was no through line, like why would I buy this? Why would I engage with the RAM brand other than they're just funny, but didn't say much about the car, or what the capacity was or why it might solve for this? You know, false, you know, false diagnosis. So it's, uh, I just, I think we can tell stories and still be funny or emotional or anything like that. So well,

Michael Cirillo  09:23

you know, I mean, the thing is to, I'm sure the marketing meeting went like this. Nobody's gonna judge us we're showing this to a billion people whose fingers smell like hot dog grease and queso.

Kyle Mountsier  09:38

Yeah, like, the end of the day, guys. lick your fingers,

Michael Cirillo  09:45

wham and a hot dog. And you know, it's like, we know who we're talking to.

Kyle Mountsier  09:49

There we go. We know who we're talking to. All right, keep it rolling. We're staying in EVs today and just some interesting stories along threads that we've been following for quite some time. So shortly after a change again Man, the new Toyota boss has promised and accelerated Evie future for the automaker. Satow. The news, man in charge, it said that the accelerated Evie rollout would center around a next generation platform, which is expected to arrive around 2026. This is a little bit of a shift. And I think a major reason for the change in command. But a shift from Toyota does very resolute and measured approach to EVs citing diversified powertrain, however, Satow did confirm that they are going to continue with a diversified set of power trains, saying that hybrids plug in hybrids, hydrogen and all electric battery electric vehicles would be a part of their plans moving forward, but definitely a change in tune from even the fall for the automaker.

Michael Cirillo  10:51

Yeah, I think I think it's actually a smart move on their part. And, you know, I think they early on, tried to stand out and be like, Oh, we're investing heavily in hydrogen. And we're just going to kind of sit back and, and see what happens here. But I mean, you got to get with it. This is the direction everybody's going. And I think, you know, Toyota with its brand recognition, and with its, you know, broad understanding of their reliability, and the fact that they build something that's made to last and all these sorts of things, they can't help but get into that game. So it's, it's, I think it's a it's not a departure, it's a good evolution for them.

Kyle Mountsier  11:25

Yeah, it is a good evolution, they're probably gonna you know, if anyone says evolution, they're gonna highlight the two letters EV, but they did say that it is going to come out with the Lexus brand first, knowing that that's going to be a quicker push to Evie. And some of the interesting comments were just around the fact that they're really taking a taking a look at their whole manufacturing process, taking a look at the platform and the way that the battery lives inside the vehicle in the way its platform, as well as the the battery manufacturing process because they see this as an opportunity for evolution in the entire supply chain, not just not just making it a different car. They cited aerodynamics as a big press for them. So I think, you know, I said this, I think a few weeks ago, I think as Toyota does this, they're gonna kind of be the apple of, you know, this is this is me saying this, this, this could be kind of the apple moment where back when, back when the iPhone came out, you know, we all thought BlackBerry was going to be the thing we all you know, Samsung flip phones were the thing. And then Apple came kind of behind the scene on the smartphone side of things, and, and entered with the thing that has now changed a whole generation of phones. And I think Toyota is probably going to make moves in a similar direction.

Michael Cirillo  12:44

Yeah. And I think, you know, if they play their cards, right, they could be the counter to the premature electrification by just saying electrification that lasts. Ah,

Kyle Mountsier  12:55

but I'm somewhere. Ah, well, we gotta stop that one. Oh, Hyundai has also launched a new month long subscription service, to try to try out an Eevee with registration and insurance includes included their new program called evolve, plus, lets owners test drive for 28 days as a minimum, and up to three months in a monthly plan that includes their registration, their insurance, for the ionic five, it's an 899 price per month plus, and you can add a couple add ons there. The Kona Evie is 699. And you get 1000 miles a month allowed. So this is a really new thing. You brought this up and, and saw this in the news. But what do you think about this for consumers? For dealers, the OEM, how it might play into the overall Evie landscape.

Michael Cirillo  13:50

The first thought was like, dang, that's expensive. And then if you look at the average lease and financing, you know, monthly that people are paying, they're paying well, more than that, in some instances, I know people that are paying $1,200 a month for, you know, a Ford truck and things of that nature. And so I think coming in at that 699, they were probably thinking, hey, well, for that price, we can get people to play around with this and not have made any major commitment, stop it whenever they want, and drive a brand new vehicle. And so I think, interesting, I think as more people enter that game, or as more companies enter that game as well, we'll see probably a softening of those prices. But I think here we are, we were just talking about this on our Friday episode, this whole concept of beta testing a vehicle and and sure enough, here we are with a similar model as a lot of sass, you know, software as a service companies that are saying, hey, 14 day free trial, 28 day free trial, 90 day free trial. I mean, who knows they I just think it's really smart as a testbed to see how market will react and to me I always love running tests like that. So

Kyle Mountsier  14:57

yeah, my my question is, is you You don't, you know, you're not, oh, excuse me, you're not going to get that might have been a first time that the interesting thing to me is you're probably not going to install a charger at your house for the potential of not having this car in a month if it doesn't go well. So it's, you know, it's a test. But it's not like a test, like if you were going to drive, you know, an internal combustion engine vehicle for a month and go do I like this or not, because your habits don't change. But there's definitely necessity for some habit change or to already have charging stations along your path in the way. So that's a big question. For me, I do love it, because it it allows customers to experience something without having to go rent a vehicle. I've known a few people that have gone and just gone to enterprise or gone to hertz and rented a Tesla and other Evie, just to see whether or not they liked the drive in the field longer than that, you know, test drive for right corners and back to the dealership. So it definitely extends that but I think there's still some questions to be answered along the way. One of those questions is, dealers starting to raise their hand and say, Hey, how does this affect us? And is this the first path to direct to consumer sales? To which my argument is, hey, they stopped to pick it up at the dealership. So what are we doing as dealers to create an overwhelmingly great experience when someone picks up their subscription service? So that they are committed to that dealership? So I would say that Hyundai did everybody a favor, not dropping these things off in driveways.

Michael Cirillo  16:35

Yeah, look at the adoption rate to going back to the software as a service model. Look at the adoption rate any, they we have enough data now at this point to know there's a large percentage of people who end up buying the software and probably even upgrading the software package when they have that free trial to play around with it. And I would almost expect that they're going to do the same thing here, like, Hey, you're gonna rent it for a month, we're gonna send you home with a technician and someone to install the free charging port just so you have it. And you're like, I can just see a whole variety of things in your right I mean, then what's the process is going to be internally that we delight them through that 28 day process so that by day 15, they've already decided they want it because they've been driving it they

Kyle Mountsier  17:18

like send it, send it, send a little video, send a send an education thing, send them thanks for picking up a little bit about your service department, how you can serve them in the future, all of those little micro moments through that 28 day period, massive opportunity for dealers. Hey, that's all we have time for today. There is always massive opportunity for dealers. We've learned that over the last couple of years and will continue to hey, I think I think there's something to do with when Superbowl hits and selling season begins. So let's get that selling season started now.

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