EV Battery Prices To Plummet, Honda Double Range, Coke’s AI Remake

Paul J Daly  0:00  
On Thursday, November 21 that's three weeks down in November. We're back in our seats after traveling the world. Get ready to travel it again. But we have to sorry about EV, battery, tech, coke, using AI and whatever else comes to mind in the next 10 to 30,

Kyle Mountsier  0:16  
whatever else you like, you're just gonna get all of it. Can

Paul J Daly  0:20  
we just jump on the dog pile real quick? Of the Jaguar rebrand?

Speaker 1  0:25  
It really got sideways yesterday, and

Paul J Daly  0:28  
we talked about it early in the day, and we made some predictions. And then we if you don't follow us on LinkedIn, you should go to LinkedIn and follow us. So do. And we made, like, our little version of a rebrand, which is a lot of fun. And like, this morning, it's like, in every news cycle, story, Ad Age, and everybody's jumping on the rabbit. Meanwhile, we got our buddy Michael Wood out here in JLR, Virginia. Like, hold up everybody, you wait for the product. Because he probably knows something about the product that we don't. He's like, wait, wait, wait, wait. And I bet the product is going to be awesome.

Kyle Mountsier  1:03  
Yeah, actually, I remember about three months ago, he said, because I think the Jaguar like dealer meeting happened, and there was basically this split. Actually, we had a comment on our on one of the threads that I read that that someone after that dealer meeting gave up their Jaguar franchise. They were like, you can have it back. But then other people were like, I'm digging, because the product looked unbelievable. So, you know, I think it's it, you know, there's, I wonder

Paul J Daly  1:32  
where that I wonder where the one that gave up you said, every time you do something bold like

Kyle Mountsier  1:37  
that, yeah, you're always gonna have, like, winners and losers, happy people and not happy people, true, right? You're, you're like, clearly drawing a line. And so I think that'll be a couple more in that place. I

Paul J Daly  1:47  
think they would have lost a couple more of those dealers if they played this ad campaign at the meeting too. Didn't just show the No,

Kyle Mountsier  1:52  
from what I understand, they played it, oh yeah. I talked to, I talked to a Porsche dealer at Portia dealer yesterday that said, like, they knew they already saw at least, maybe not played it, but like, saw some of the visuals and stuff. So okay, I

Paul J Daly  2:07  
look, I think the car is probably gonna look dope, and it's just, it's just fun. Talking about the branding, here's what I would have done. And LinkedIn is full of people like, hire me next time, right?

Kyle Mountsier  2:17  
You know? Oh no. It's

Paul J Daly  2:18  
just fun. It's fun. It's buzzy. It's fun thinking. Speaking of things that are fun and buzzy, we have a webinar coming up tomorrow talking about essential techniques for digital merchandising success with our friends at car cutter. Daniel Abel is an amazing, amazing person to talk us through this with car cutter. And we're also going to be talking to Brian free, former VP of Digital Marketing at a little dealership group called Auto nation. So we got some real big heavy hitters on the webinar. You can go to asotu.com sign up for the webinar so you either get the the recording, but we really would love for you to be with us in person at 2pm tomorrow, 2pm Eastern, so you can, you can check that out. What else? What else are we talking about? ASOTU con today? Soda con. Yeah, yeah.

Kyle Mountsier  3:00  
You know, go to ASOTU con.com you got to get them tickets, and the tickets are going to be the lowest price they ever have been. But only if you go to a soda con and put your little email in there and you're on the list, little early adopters, the first movers

Paul J Daly  3:14  
list. Shout out to all the the hundreds of people that are on this list. Now it's for just very patiently waiting for us to drip anything. They signed up for the list. They got to thank you, and then they haven't heard anything, some of them for months. But, you know, we're cooking. We're over here cooking, but every day, like, people are signing up on the system. Like, I think we're gonna sell out this year, like, much differently than we did last year. So it's gonna be nice, yeah. So make sure you're on the list, because we have so many things to talk about. We haven't released really anything but the venue and the dates and a little bit of the design esthetic, but, uh, conversations are roaring, and let's get into some news. Let's get into Honda is aiming to double the driving range. That's right, we said double the driving range of its EV battery technology by we're not even gonna say 2030 we're No, we don't say that anymore. Now Honda saying by the late 2020s and if you didn't know, like it's almost 2025 so around the solid state batteries research head kg Otsu describes the initiative as a quote, game changer that could redefine EV capabilities and reset consumer expectations. Basically, a $277 million pilot, pilot production line in Japan is set to manufacture the advanced batteries targeting a 50% reduction in size and a 25% cost reduction by the mid 2020s and aligned with Honda's broader goal of producing over 2 million EVs annually by, yes, they're gonna say 2030 here, and achieving 100% EV and fuel cell vehicle sales globally by 2040 that's the first time I've heard 2040 Wow. Talks of collaboration with Nissan have also emerged with Otsu saying, quote, there may be areas where we can work together.

Kyle Mountsier  4:48  
Yeah. Okay, so I got three main comments here. One is, okay, Toyota, uh, sorry, no, but solid state batteries, like we've we've all known every. What he's been talking about, like the potential of, if they can get it right, lowering the cost, lowering the capacity, lowering the size of these things, and really changing the ability to kind of build around them. Two is staggering that we just ran, what yesterday, or two days ago, that BYD, has produced 10 million vehicles three, two days ago, two days ago, and we're targeting 2 million EVs annually by 2030 it just shows what it takes for a legacy automaker to flip that switch. Really, really interesting there and then. I'm really interested in this Nissan collaboration with Honda. So that's definitely a strange one. That's one I never saw coming.

Paul J Daly  5:44  
Well, we'll see. We'll see if it actually comes across, uh, our friend Jim ganther chiming in on the live stream. EVs are interesting and all, but let's get down to brass tax. How are you preparing your turkey next week? Oven, oven, roast, deep fry or smoke, I am happy to say. And then he says, Brian or No, but I'm happy to say that I've gone 100% EV for my oven. It's fully electric this year, and so we're gonna be producing our turkey in an EV oven. If that, if that helps

Unknown Speaker  6:12  
you speak oven. But

Paul J Daly  6:13  
speaking about you, it's an EV oven. It doesn't go anywhere, though. Speaking of EV battery technology, though, these two stories kind of go together, right? So there's a new study predicting that EV battery prices are on track to plummet by 50% by 2026 guys, it's going to be 2025 in like six weeks, powered by advancements in technology and manufacturing. Obviously, some of the solid state Tech is a part of this gap, which 50% cost reduction really closing the gap between EVs and gas. Goldman Sachs is predicting battery prices will fall from $149 a kilowatt hour in 2023 to $80 a kilowatt hour by 2026 and potentially $60 a kilowatt hour by 2030, to put it in perspective, a 100 kilowatt battery for a large SUV could cost $6,000 while an 800 kilowatt battery for a semi might be priced under $50,000 so, you know, I guess would put it in perspective. But like those, these batteries right now cost way more than that, a major part more than major cost of the vehicle. Innovations like cell to pack design, simplifying battery construction, boosting energy density, some other lithium ion iron phosphate batteries, they could also claim almost half of the market by 2025 so cost parity on EV is expected to meet gasoline vehicles by 2026 even without government incentives, which is good news, because they're probably going away. Here's a quote from Nikhil Bhandari of Goldman Sachs research. He says, quote, rapid battery price drops and smarter designs will make EVs a mainstream option. Goldman Sachs getting into the EV conversation

Kyle Mountsier  7:58  
these folks, yeah. I mean this. This is the parody, you know, manufacturers know how to put skins on power trains, right? That's been doing that for years and years, and they understand how to reduce costs on those things, how to do it based on scale and and, you know, large print, type stuff. This is the parity that has to be get reached. And you look back and think about the parity that was reached, specifically with TVs. I liken this to TVs, like when the technology, the manufacturing volume, hit, like a certain curve, and all of a sudden we get to the parity. You know, whether or not that happens that quickly, and whether or not we need to bob and weave to a new technology like the solid state, or something else, we'll see. But this is, this is the opportunity for all manufacturers to get in at a lower price point potentially. And I think that's still going to be the driver. But yeah, like you said, tax incentives basically match the price difference here, and so it may just be like a balancing act at that point. Yeah. Oh, man,

Paul J Daly  9:02  
that sounds right. But either way you think of the Honda story, you think of this story, one thing seems very, very clear, that EV adoption is going to increase as a result of the lower costs, regardless of what happens within absolutely well, and we get the charging infrastructure right, I think, I think that adoption curve is going to even out. People still want their gas vehicles. It's funny. I it's funny. We would be in so many stores, right? It's one of the benefits, I think, that we have, traveling around, shooting more than cars, episodes, doing some consulting, just ASOTU is out in the world, right? We're not sitting in a tower just commentating on what we think is going on. So we get to actually talk about these sit in these cars, ask sales people how people are responding to them, how dealers are doing it. We see chargers at dealerships usually empty, right? Yeah. And like, every time did you see, I mean, we were, we were traveling this week, and I've we probably saw, I saw four of them that were empty. I don't know about you, one place, no, easy, easy. And these are places it's televised. So, like, we're still, we're. Still getting there, but I think we're going to get there as technology moves forward. Speaking of technology moving forward and the holidays and iconic Coca Cola commercials,

Kyle Mountsier  10:09  
I can't wait to get the comments on this. So Coca Colas decision to remake its 1995 holidays are coming. Ad using AI has sparked both controversy and curiosity. Obviously, critics debate the ads esthetics, while coke sees it as a bold step in exploring generative AI's potential for creativity and efficiency. Three studios combined to use AI to reinterpret the classic ad with tools like runway and Leonardo. A lot of people are claiming these ads actually look very fake and lack the original charm. Obviously, market testing from coke showed positive consumer responses with high emotional impact. Interestingly enough, AI obviously allowed this to go wide and not deep, allowing hyper localized content, adapting the ad for 12 different us regions with tailored detailed details. Pratak, the car coach, head of generative AI, said, We balance creative humans with new technologies. It is interesting to me that this was three studios working with these AI tools. Took a lot of people involved. It sure did. Let's

Paul J Daly  11:16  
watch the video. Let's do it.

Kyle Mountsier  11:18  
Let's check it out. Come

Paul J Daly  11:25  
polar bear in the reindeer

Unknown Speaker  11:28  
Coca Cola semis

Paul J Daly  11:32  
driving through a town and dogs wagging tails. Oh, a Coca Cola satellite broadcasting Collabs. I dollars.

You know what's funny? You know, I saw a different commercial than this because they made multiple versions, yep, and the one that I saw had a lot more people in it, interesting, and it actually had more real than that one. Yeah,

Kyle Mountsier  11:59  
there's, there's, there's multiple different versions of this. I saw a different I saw, like, a different headline to one. But that's, that's definitely one of them. The trained eye can pick it out, right? Yep, like, I can see it in the dogs wagging tail, like that was clearly generated by AI, so if you're looking for it, but here's the thing, this is, this is what I think is so clever about this, and this is where I think dealers and and and even industry partners, when you're making stuff like this, when you have a very, very little time to capture someone's attention, and they are actually not Like hyper focused on the content, there's the ability to, kind of, like,

Paul J Daly  12:43  
slide it through absolutely so I watched the production video about this this morning. Well, if I show the commercial my wife, because she was sitting there, and I was like, watch this commercial, right? What do you think? She's like, it's like, a coke holiday commercial. I was like, it's 100% AI. She's like, those people are AI. I was like, oh, yeah, everything. And then watch the production video. And they generated, like they went through the process and basically said, we generated 28,000 images and had all these teams working on she, she my wife says, I bet that saved them a fortune. And then we're watching, I'm like, that's a lot of people to be working on this. But basically what they said is we were able to do things in pre production visually that we would not be able to try until post production. And they went start to finish. The whole commercial was produced in three weeks. They used humans to be the models, right? They took pictures of actual humans, and they used that to generate the video content. So they used real people, and then use that. They wrote an original score and had real people record that. So that was another human touch. So they went through like, how they're trying to integrate it. So I think it's pretty savvy. It is indicative of what is happening. I think the smartest people, dealerships included, are figuring out how to work AI into the workflow, whether that's on the data side, on the creative side, and the ones that are doing it are going to be the front runners in 12 months from now, which is why we have a new email right. There

Kyle Mountsier  14:08  
you go, auto industry.ai. We'll keep you ahead of it.

Paul J Daly  14:11  
That's it. I'm here for it. Yeah, if you're scared, go to auto industry.ai. Get our email. We will hand hold you through this transition. And whether you're a neophyte and you're just figuring it out. Or if you're, like, kind of neck deep in it, we have stuff for you as well. And like Kyle

Kyle Mountsier  14:26  
said, he's here for it, we're here for it. I'm here for this.

Paul J Daly  14:29  
I think it's great if you're not here for it, you're gonna lose it's like, we'll make that bold in this statement. It's

Kyle Mountsier  14:34  
called the shot.

Paul J Daly  14:36  
I mean, it's, we call it a lot of shots this week. Just feel bold this week. Let's go, hey, whatever you're doing this Thursday, doesn't change the thing. You have people that are going to be in your face. You need to care for them. You need to sell them some cars, service their cars, and take care of one another.

Unknown Speaker  14:51  
We.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai

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