Current Labor, Chip, and Battery Shortages Explained & Delorean not Stopping Short

May 31, 2022
Summer is here for many, but shortages are persisting. Today we talk through some of the reasoning. We also talk about the legendary Delorean that is about to spread its EV (gull)wings.
Listen On
Apple Podcasts IconSpotify IconGoogle Podcasts Icon

Summer labor shortages are thwarting those post-pandemic plans

  • In Phoenix, less than half of the public pools are opening because the city can’t hire enough lifeguards, despite offering a $2,500 incentive
  • Double the number of open jobs than the number of unemployed
  • Restaurants and other hospitality suffering disproportionately as workers leaave those industries for others
  • Many small businesses facing both reducing hours and lower quality of service
  • Current administration says they will make 35k additional seasonal visas available to help 
  • Sansdemic implications (coined by EMSI) meaning ‘not enough people’
  • Generational shortfall of reduced birthrates
  • More young males living at home
  • Gig economy
  • Pandemic acceleration of workers leaving the workforce

Chip Shortages & EV Battery Supply concerns still in play

  • North America YTD: 559,000     Projected: 781,000
  • The Electric Delorean is for real as the Alpha E5 EV
  • 0-60 in 3.99  0-88 in 4.35
  • Not the same original company, but the Texas based company who manufactures replacement parts for the original purchased the rights
  • “DeLorean partnered with Italdesign, the same Volkswagen-owned design team that helped develop the look of the 1981 DMC-12”
  • Full reveal coming in Pebble Beach on Aug 21

Get the Daily Push Back email at https://www.asotu.com/

SPEAKERS

Kyle Mountsier, Paul Daly


Paul Daly  00:25

Yo, what is up it is troublemaking Tuesday and Kyle I are in Charlottesville, Virginia, rockin the airport, talking labor shortage, the chip shortage, the battery shortage and every other show you can imagine. 


Kyle Mountsier  00:43

something particular about doing the bounce in the middle of the most quiet.


Paul Daly  00:49

It's very quiet and polite. Probably a lot like Charlottesville. Yes. Probably quite polite. And our producer Isaac was like, You guys are about to give everybody in this airport, like an interesting show. And we were like, we're like, we're kind of over it.


Kyle Mountsier  01:04

Like everyone's gonna stare at you. And we looked around and thought everyone


Paul Daly  01:08

actually somebody just popped up. And


Kyle Mountsier  01:11

like, what are these guys doing over here? Sounds like a son of music. It's absolutely hilarious. We just flew in if you don't know we're in Charlottesville, hanging out with one of our investors, Liza Meyers Borges, some of her crew. We're gonna get to see the stores today. We're going to see Scott Simon's as well. One of our other investors. A lot of people know about Scott Simon's No, we actually talked about we might actually have sit down have a conversation just so that our community can get to know Him have to do an intro. That'd be a lot of fun. So So let's got his love people more than you love cars. Yeah. So


Paul Daly  01:43

let me tell you a story about let me tell you a story about the airport. Okay, go because the lady checking me into my last fight. She said love people more than you love calves. She was like, Cabernet. I was like, Well, we are in the airport. And the only place you can drink Cabernet at 7:30am. Without being judged. She was like, that's true. And I think she went off to get one but let people know more than you love cars. This is this is a Liza Porsches like staple phrase. And I made this shirt for the family reunion we had. And it really is indicative of great culture, it's indicative of keeping the focus as the focus. And regardless of what else you're doing, you could fill in the cars part, fill in the blank with anything that you're seeing is, and in this environment. And in this, in this employment scenario, actually, that we're in, we're gonna talk about that in a second. Focus on people and focus on caring about them first more than it is that what you do is the way that you're going to win.


Kyle Mountsier  02:38

You know, what I love about the phrase is it's not love people don't love cars, it's love people more than you love cars, it means that your industry, whatever you do is extremely important. Like there's this guy Steve on LinkedIn that if you kind of always, you know, some of his his content and stuff is kind of jarring, and pokes fun at the bear. But what I love that his reminder always is is like, hey, yeah, all of that ethereal stuff, but there's still like the core of our business are still the things the blocking and tackling that have to get done. But it's the prioritization level that I think that Liza and so many people in the automotive industry, just make sure are in the right order.


Paul Daly  03:17

In the right order is is, is the I mean, in the right order is kind of the story of life. Right? You need the ingredients, right? If you're making something, whatever it's like that has to be in the right order where your priorities messed up. If you put profit, or cars, or politics, or fill in the blank in front of the people. You're gonna lose, you're gonna mess up the recipe. Speaking of I don't want to say we're button. Speaking of


Kyle Mountsier  03:46

weird, we think it's playing you don't have our ears in anymore. We apologize.


Paul Daly  03:49

But speaking of, I don't even remember what I was saying. But okay, so talking about the labor shortages, really, we're into the summer season and summer. There are a lot of seasonal businesses, a lot of people that have to staff up for summertime, right and you go to the beach or you get the ice cream stand,


Kyle Mountsier  04:06

or even Yeah, ice cream, sand or pools or anything that you can think of that's just a summer oriented business, whether it be students staffing it or in the


Paul Daly  04:14

Northeast probably understands this more than anybody right because northeast the weather opens up in the summertime and get ready for this Wall Street article journal today is telling us to get ready for a lot of long lines and a lot of closed facilities. You know, if you're kind of saying like man service isn't what it used to be the summer season is only going to exemplify that even more. You know, there's even in places like Phoenix where it's hot all the time. They're estimating that like a third of the public pools are going to be closed. It's it's a third


Kyle Mountsier  04:42

of the public pools nationwide. So there's over 300,000 pools nationwide, only a third of them will not open in Phoenix. Half of the pools aren't currently open. This is crazy. I read this morning that they are the city of Phoenix is offering a $2,500 bonus just to be I'm a lifeguard. So you've got to recognize that no matter what business that you're in, you are up against labor shortages in every single industry. And like, the need to have a great employee culture, a great, a great recruiting structure, all of that type of stuff is absolutely necessary. Plus, every consumer is dealing with this. And so there is there is an expectation level of, you know, okay, so maybe it's going to be a bad experience. But also it's great opportunity to go above and beyond from an experience perspective. Oh,


Paul Daly  05:32

man, it's so hard to do. I mean, all these factors are coming into play like restaurants, hospitality, you're suffering with this more disproportionately than everybody else for a few reasons. Number one, there's just a lot of jobs. So other industries are hiring, wages are going up. So people are getting out of the hospitality industry where it's a little more of a grind, right? Or maybe they want to try something new. Another reason is a lot of people have just exited the workforce and the pandemic, and they're not coming back.


Kyle Mountsier  05:57

Yeah, it's exiting the workforce, both because they have found other means of, of finding income. There's a lot I mean, I saw I think it was three or four months ago, that's our report of the number of cell phone businesses. So self employment, yeah,


Paul Daly  06:13

the gig economy, gig economy has changed it big time, because now a lot of people, especially if you're a creator, right, you might not have to go back to the workforce, you retreated because of the pandemic and an accelerated this push that we have. And there's, there's a great we linked it up in the show notes. There's a term called the SANS Demmick by a company actually, Darren, don't hook me up with this company EMSI. And they're called a Sans Annemiek. So a pandemic involves everyone. A sans Demak involves no one. Right? Just saying like, there's no there are no people decline, they say declining birth rates, people leaving the workforce early, they say COVID Just accelerated it was coming anyway,


Kyle Mountsier  06:51

I just a lot of articles kind of floating around in my head. But the reality that the birth rate is being outpaced for the first time by the death rate in the world, right. So you actually were like, just at a simple, are there enough people to fulfill the support for everybody?


Paul Daly  07:10

Not answer's no, not for long, and it's not going to get better, it's going to get worse. And you know, Elon Musk was just saying this, he's like, at this rate, he's like, Italy's going to run out of workers. You know, I mean, he was saying this. But meanwhile, you hear all this other stuff about there's too many people. So I don't know, we're not here to make sense of that. Right? It's a bigger conversation, all of these


Kyle Mountsier  07:29

things. Is, is care for the people that you already have, you know, in your, in your business in your company, and recognize that a solid recruiting effort, a real vision, and a mission to come alongside of that people desire to come and work.


Paul Daly  07:46

This is now if you're going to have a good culture, if you're going to have love people more than you love cars, having a great culture is going to be disproportionately game changing for the companies that do and it doesn't matter what you do, right? If your Chick fil A and someone's do I do want to work at Chick fil A? Or do I want to work at Taco Bell? Right? Well, you look at the Chick fil A culture and people are like, people seem happy. They're, they seem energetic, right? So if there are a limited number of fast food workers, guess who's going to get a disproportionate amount of them? So it doesn't matter which industry you're in. But company culture? You know, we always say like, Yeah, do it for the right reasons. Right. And it's kind of built in. But but really company culture and an amazing culture as a strategy to survive the next 30 years.


Kyle Mountsier  08:27

On strategy. It's not at all Yeah, it's I think it's, it's, it's kind of like this table stakes for being embarrassed.


Paul Daly  08:33

It's got to be, it's got to be and here's the thing, people won't stay at a job because you have a ping pong table, or some free snacks, or unlimited paid time off, they're not going to stay for any of those reasons. They're going to stay because they know you care about them. There's not drama, right? They know you got the back and there's room for growth and improvement, right. And there isn't a lot of jobs, but all the other things also exist. So company culture is just these are just like Kyle said, You go doom and gloom, or you can go hey, actually, we love people, we care about people, we want to have a great culture, this is a time to invest in it. And we say invest in it. We mean like literally invest. It does take money to write not just heart.


Kyle Mountsier  09:08

That's absolutely true. You can't just put words on paper, you actually have to invest time and money.


Paul Daly  09:13

A lot of people have words on a paper or on a plaque or on a door.


Kyle Mountsier  09:18

Everybody throws the quote up, everybody puts the plaque up, everybody puts the company, you know, some sort


Paul Daly  09:23

of and I think they're well intentioned, most cases, right. But there's an actionable


Kyle Mountsier  09:27

effort, both time and money that goes into creating and crafting a really positive company. Yep. Yep. All right. Speaking of shortages. We can't hear it. There we go. Look, it looks like and I think we've all known this is coming but there are continued chip shortages. But now the concerns are actually over Evie battery shortages. So between this fliers that make the things that go in.


Paul Daly  10:01

I'm just gonna say this. I had a concern about this way before they reported about it. But here we go. They've they're catching up to us. They're catching up.


Kyle Mountsier  10:13

Interestingly enough, it looks like you know, obviously the all the manufacturers go every single year. You're right now new car manufacturing is facing down about 800,000 vehicles delivered worldwide. So when you look at that, specifically in North America, it's still about 200,000 vehicles light so far year to five months into the year. That's a significant Well,


Paul Daly  10:41

that's chips. Yeah, right. Just on the that's just the chips, the battery shortage is going to play out there. Like, we might start filling it real bad. And like 2324. It's like, oh, we're not feeling it yet.


Kyle Mountsier  10:51

Well, that's what's interesting is everybody's pressing to this 2420 30.


Paul Daly  11:03

Yeah, because it needs it needs harmony. And I don't think we can pull it off live.


Kyle Mountsier  11:16

The volume production, accurate came out. Spherical coming out in 2024 will be our last gas engine.


Paul Daly  11:26

That's crazy. And, you know, there's another article linked up in this section in the show notes, talking about Hyundai taking a very a hybrid approach, right? Battery Powered hybrid, right. They're saying this is a transition step. And it seems like it might be a really good idea to have a gas powered engine and a lot of your vehicles over the next three or four years. That's the only place I've heard about it, though.


Kyle Mountsier  11:50

Yeah, it really is everybody's like fully. And so Hyundai coming out and saying that just you can see it in the leadup notes. But the lentes has come out and said that they're fearing Evie. Production can't keep up with the demand. Nissan has actually told their dealers Stop, stop


Paul Daly  12:09

taking orders, right, as they fear, we're just gonna make everybody mad, this, this is


Kyle Mountsier  12:13

a conversation. But they're fearing that the weight now that people are going to have to have for these is actually going to reduce the customer experience is going to make that a bad experience.


Paul Daly  12:36

So I mean, we're trying to think of like, that's the news, what are you going to do about it, and we say we're a little bit broken record, like you cannot control it, the manufacturer does. What we want to do is keep our heads up, so we can be aware of it keep our heads up so that we can be looking over. But we still need to control the things we can control. Right in our ecosystem. With a lot Hey, we even have we'll just stay on this last year. That's fine. We'll just share mic. You don't need that mic anymore. We have technical difficulties, it's fine. Run one mic now. But controlling the things that you can control, and you can't do anything else. But keep your head up. Keep your mind up. Be flexible, be nimble, right, because that is I mean, the new business survivors are the ones that are just agile period. Alright, so let's keep moving. Now. There were one mic rockin. So, all right, we're gonna end this on a little bit of a fun and positive note. So everybody remembers the DeLorean. If you were at nada, you actually were able to see several versions of a DeLorean there was a DeLorean in the main hall. And there's a DeLorean at the stadium. One of them actually was battery powered, converted to battery. However, DeLorean the company is now about to release the what's it called? I can't remember. It's the alpha e five, the alpha e five. You can see it Look at that thing. That car looks amazing. It looks like James Bond should drive that. You see the signature goings they have. And, you know, the story of DeLorean is, you know originally was made in 1981. So we think about 40 years ago, 41 years ago. What were you doing 41 years ago?


Kyle Mountsier  14:08

You don't want to ask that question. My mic is in there. Someone give me that thumbs up.


Paul Daly  14:14

Kyle. Kyle was because in a different form than you see here. 


Kyle Mountsier  14:19

Oh, we got Isaac on the live stream guy. 


Paul Daly  14:21

Thank you. So so the DeLorean in 1981 is when you know came out the GMC DeLorean. However, that company went bankrupt. And the company that sells the parts they make and sell replacement parts for the DeLorean actually bought the rights for the DeLorean name. It's so smart. And then they just made an Eevee.


Kyle Mountsier  14:38

I know we've talked about this a few months. I'm so excited to come in for us. And I almost like we don't I don't think we have any travel plans in August. We should be in let's sit in the DeLorean. That would be so much fun that


Paul Daly  14:51

we'll be able to come to you live from the DeLorean. It does zero to 60 in three point what is it nine nine seconds and in case you're wondering, you can get to 80 Eight miles an hour. There it is in 4.35 seconds is all it takes to get to 88. I, one of the things say about the DeLorean, it's got the gold wings. Oh, it's gone. It was a good thing to say about the dollar. I just


Kyle Mountsier  15:13

think it's cool. It's a shout. This is what's cool is, I mean, you see the DeLorean, you see the scout, you see all of this stuff coming back, because they're taking these shells and going, we can now put parts in there that actually make sense for them to be a part of this, like new technology age. And I think this is actually really, really core to a lot of what brands are doing a lot of what culture is doing in this kind of cyclical nature, that autos never really seen, where were like trends always kind of come back. And I think technology allows for trends to come back right now.


Paul Daly  15:49

In automotive without a doubt. I mean, it's it's nostalgia. Yeah, right. So you can because the technology has come about, and it's become much more convenient, honestly, right? A battery, a motor and a brain. There you go, right, you have a car now. And now let's allow them to start to become part of it without all the other stuff that usually gets in the way. I remember I was gonna say somebody DM me on LinkedIn, about some kind of NFT project that that DeLorean is doing. And they saw me. They're like, hey, I want to talk about what's going on. So yes, let's talk about what's going on. So there might be an NFT thing about the DeLorean. We're going to try to just finagle ourselves to be right in the middle of it's right in the middle of it.


Kyle Mountsier  16:25

Yeah. And that's, that's what's so interesting. And I think OEMs still have to figure this out, because they keep pressing into the EV thing. But and then there's some that are building some stuff in web three technology, but and like in decentraland, building actual buildings. But I think the idea of functionality of it functionality of tying NFT is tying communities tying a brand down to web three technology is something that OEMs really need to pay attention to.


Paul Daly  16:53

No, and I wouldn't be surprised if we see more of that coming up soon. I mean, DeLorean and the outsiders are obviously front runners. For the first one. I'm surprised we haven't heard anything from Tesla yet about NF T's. But I mean, look, when it comes to NFC and blockchain you know, we talk about it, we write about it, it's here to stay. It's a part of what your business will be. So, you know, we could pay attention now, right? Or we could just get run over later. Speaking, if we don't have to do another segway. But we know we mentioned this, if you haven't heard it, we are going to have a sudo con Yeah, a soda con in September 11 through the 13th Write it down on your calendar right now we've had like 50 calls with industry partners who are ready, or they're all not ready, but some of them are getting there. Right, they're ready to put on something different the rebirth of the automotive conference we have so much to talk about and we've been running so hard on this but go to a soda con.com as OTU ce o n.com and just fill out the form so you can be the first to know as we start to release everything there's a lot a lot a lot comm there's


Kyle Mountsier  17:53

a lot we've got some really interesting exciting kind of dynamics to how we're going to pour through the content. We've actually got a little site visit plan next week. So it's just it's gonna come hard and


Paul Daly  18:04

super excited about one of the speakers too. We're not going to tell you about who that's gonna be. But outside automotive, we're bringing outside automotive inside automotive, it's going to be pretty meaningful people so close this out Kyle.


Kyle Mountsier  18:14

Sounds good. Thank you guys for hanging out with us in Charlottesville in the airport. We're swinging mics it's going crazy today. Go do good in your business and close the month straw.

Get the daily email that makes reading the news actually enjoyable. Stay informed and entertained, for free.