GM To The Middle, World’s’ Largest Superchargers, Radio Flyer Innovates

Paul J Daly: 0:10

Good morning it's Wednesday already February 14 If you didn't know that's Valentine's Day better get to the store quick GN go into the middle world's largest supercharger and Radio Flyer. Yes, the wagon company. Hello that last mile save the best for last.

‍Kyle Mountsier: 0:26

This is a good show, like just so you know if you're if you're already listening and you're like, I don't know if I want to like stay for the whole way, stay for the whole thing. Every single one just feels really good to me.

Paul J Daly: 0:37

So I wonder if there's anybody out there that we're just that was just like, crap. It's thanks. I mean, it's Valentine's Day,

Kyle Mountsier: 0:43

right? Like turned it off that like,

Paul J Daly: 0:46

you know, we have we have an unspoken rule. I mean, maybe it's more of a spoken rule, Sara and I that like Valentine's Day isn't going to be like a holiday that we celebrate your holiday. Because Because corporate America can't tell me when to

Kyle Mountsier: 1:00

express love to tell me when to get flowers and gift cards. However,

Paul J Daly: 1:04

however I did like, like one year, I totally just didn't even mention it didn't even bring it up. And with all the other stuff going around, I realized maybe that was still a little bit of a mistake. So now I've like reverted back to like a very, very like kind of mild version of things. So like this morning that included a note of a handwritten note to Sarah and my two daughters each got their own note and a little Valentine's Day cupcake on the counter and thoughtful, acknowledging dad's

Kyle Mountsier: 1:33

already making the rest of us look bad. Kudos,

Paul J Daly: 1:39

I'm gonna send this episode to my wife to make sure she gathers the children and they listen to gather around your dad. I wrote the notes on a plane on a flight back from Orlando yesterday and there was turbulence. So definitely, this is extra special. Just say it fully handwritten,

Kyle Mountsier: 1:58

not with AI. Yeah, absolutely. No,

Paul J Daly: 2:00

not at all. Hey, we have a few extra special things going on right now. One we can't really talk about but I mean a soda con 90 days, 90 days away from a soda con everybody. Here we go tickets, if you want to be a partner, like spots are filling up. So if you want to be a part of it, and get like a booth or sponsor, some of the cool thing activations we have going on, now's the time to bring it up because it's not going to get any more available. As time goes on. We have tons of speakers, tons of content will get there as our keynote author of unreasonable hospitality. Whoa, Ken, women of color automotive network is doing a special breakfast event on May 15, before the show starts. So everyone, you know, can be a part of that if you're in that community, also. Oh, we can't talk about the last thing. But there's a real fun one that we're talking about. Just bringing the dealers closer to the event, which makes everybody happy. It's always good.

Kyle Mountsier: 2:52

Yes. All right. Also, you got to talk about next week. That's when he's good.

Paul J Daly: 2:57

It's been a while. I feel like since we've done a webinar, maybe it's because they have a da da and the whole thing. Yeah, I love our webinars. They are well, like first of all the format, right? Yeah, quick shot webinar. There's no 50 minutes of someone going on and on actually 20 to 30 minutes. It's it's heavily curated calm, I show up, we we kind of just spark a conversation, we make sure that there's a great linear narrative that goes through we take questions from the audience, and we always have learned a lot and have some fun, and we're out in like 2025 minutes. This one's going to be February 21. So a week from today at 1pm. Eastern, so circle the dot time on your date, we're going to be with upstart upstart auto retail talking about bridging the digital divide sharing data from a 100 dealer survey they conducted including questions like What's been your biggest challenge in 23? How advanced is your online and in store experience? And what's been your biggest challenge with financing so every dealer wants to know the financing want no kidding? I feel like every conversation involves a finance nuance to it now. Absolutely. Right

Kyle Mountsier: 3:59

now, affordability and finance and straights. Keywords. Yep. dropping bombs. Yeah.

Paul J Daly: 4:07

Hey, I just want to say hello to everybody on the Livestream. So new friend from Tachyon showing up in the live stream this morning. If you're just listening on the podcast version, we do live stream the show every morning from LinkedIn, X, Twitter, whatever, YouTube and if you just watch the live stream, we have the audio version so you don't miss an episode on Apple Music and Spotify and all the other things. Yeah, so just want to say hello, Eddie Del Toro are looking at you this morning. All right, talking about some news.

Kyle Mountsier: 4:35

Let's get into it.

Paul J Daly: 4:36

Shall we? Speak of NADA during their private meeting at this year's NADA show. GM has signaled a strategic pivot back to plug in hybrid electric vehicles. I know we talked about this a little bit but there's a little more insight or nuance to this one from the wards automotive article. Dealers are excited about this, GM announced their plans to reintroduce PHE V's partial hybrid electric vehicles in the US aiming to bridge the gap between In combustion engines and the future of electric vehicle, as opposed to a similar meeting a few years back, they're making anywhere big group of Buick dealer stood up and walked out. Do you remember that? That was the thing? That yeah, we're out of here. It wasn't like that it was real positive tone, according to some people at the meeting this year, saying, Hey, we're bringing these we have experienced with these vehicles overseas, we're bringing them back because the the EPA mandates are, you know, locking down and going to effect. And earlier in the week at the JD Power summit before they're making meeting, GM President Mark Reuss said, you know, PHE V are still to power trains in one car. He said they're complicated and expensive to make. But he said on the plus side regulators treat them the same as they do EVs and is That's it. One dealer Donald Hicks told Ward's auto in the article, the markets got here, this is so great. The market is going to tell us what it will buy, the government can tell us what we have to build. But the market will tell us what we can sell. It's that simple. No comms is nobody is bigger than the market. Wow. No

Kyle Mountsier: 6:06

bigger than the market, put that on a shirt and sell it. Hey, look, here's here's, here's what I love about this strategy. Because obviously, I'm a big fan of hybrids. You drive one. Yeah, we drive one in the house, I think that you know, just the gas mileage that you can get out of it. But what a plug in hybrid does for like making the next step is saying, Okay, we need to get people used to plugging in their vehicle setting up chargers being aware of the charger network without having to be completely reliant on it. And that's what I think I think that's like a really logical next step, because you still force a charger network to happen, you still force people to understand what that looks like in their home, but they don't become absolutely reliant on it. So it's like it's the training middle ground to moving to an Eevee future. So kudos to GM for making that kind of like the the going back to ground to get on that.

Paul J Daly: 7:07

I mean, I would say you don't force it, you encourage it. Yep. Right. It's like there's a real benefit to the gas savings, right? If you, you plug it in at your house, and you don't have if especially if you're driving short ranges, you might never have to go to a gas station unless you're taking a long trip. I was just in Orlando, and I rented a Ford Mach II. And I have to say, Man, the driving experience of an Eevee is freaking awesome that I had so much fun driving it. It was zippy. It's balanced. It's quiet. The center gravity is low. I was like, man, it's far superior. It is far superior, in my opinion. But I'll tell you what, when I watched that charging indicator going down, I was like, where am I gonna go make sure I didn't drive enough miles to have to charge it as what I did. That was my strategy. But there is a there's a fun thing about watching. I don't know if it's fun, but watching the battery indicator as a percentage. Yeah, right. Knowing I mean, because like we're just used to it on our phones and everything. And it's a lot easier than reading the fuel gauge. And yeah, I don't know, I was excited about it. I still don't own one, but I'll rent one when I have to drive less than 200 miles. That's speaking of charging vehicles. Yep. Segway I feel like it's time it's been time for an iteration on the charging station. And now Tesla's planning the construction of the world's largest super charging station, and of course, California, contributing some fresh ideas to the future of Evie infrastructure. The new supercharger station will feature 160 Charging stalls becoming the largest of its kind globally and we be located in Kern County near the intersection of the five number five freeway and the 46 highway. So in addition to the array of chargers lined up, like you're, we're kind of used to seeing them, they're also featuring 16, pull through charging stalls. So that if an Eevee is towing a trailer, right, and obviously with the cybertruck, that Tesla is incentivized to do that more. So someone's towing a trailer, you don't have to unhook it, you can pull in the stall parked there for 20 minutes, and then you're gone. And Tesla is also another innovation incorporating a micro grid at the actual site, including a battery banks and solar canopies over all the Chargers. So they say this helps them number one, cut peak demand cost, right electricity when it's very expensive in California for not familiar with peak demand, like up here in the northeast, we never even think about it. But in California, right when peak demand period Electric is more expensive. So they're going to be storing energy in the battery banks from the sun. And they're going to use that to to charge so. So I mean, it feels it feels like this is like a great

Kyle Mountsier: 9:41

step forward. Yeah. And if you look at I don't know if we have it, but there's, there's basically a land plot like this was someone found the land plot of what they were looking at. Yeah, click the link in the show notes you'll be and if you see that you can see that there's these like future development areas. There's nothing in the research or the articles were Right now that states this, but if I had to guess those are like little micro cities like little grocery shopping, little food little Jenny's ice cream. We're looking at your screen, we're looking at you, right? Yeah. So and also like this is immediately crushes buches. Right? Like, bikinis is a small town, little baby gas station compared to this deal. It's like 106. How many

Paul J Daly: 10:27

pumps do they have at a buches? I still never been to one, I have to get the one. Well, here's,

Kyle Mountsier: 10:31

here's what's interesting, because with chargers, it basically takes up the same amount of space as a parking spot, you get a massive new opportunity to have the same or less amount of land, get more chargers, because

Paul J Daly: 10:46

you don't need all the flow traffic. Exactly. You're parking and you're backing out, you're going

Kyle Mountsier: 10:50

I mean, just like this, you know, I think the future state this is the proving ground for how does a new just like shopping mall get stood up and just have chargers at every spot? Right? Because you don't like the land space needed additional down to a parking lot is maybe two or three feet. It's all underground, right? You just start to think about like, this is the proving case for how do we scale this out into every parking lot? Because it proves the thesis of like,

Paul J Daly: 11:20

you also 60s Not now that Kyle and I are playing amateur, you know, site developers, you also don't you also don't need the the required flow through and space for fuel trucks. Right. Right. Because like there's no more movement of like big fuel tankers and to fill up and I don't know, I don't average buches. Nathan, our producers putting it in the notes average buches has 100 gas pumps. Yeah,

Kyle Mountsier: 11:45

they're almost doubling that thing. Overnight. All right. Speaking of

Paul J Daly: 11:50

things that weren't built overnight, it's not built on a crane. If I

Kyle Mountsier: 11:57

say Radio Flyer and your brain doesn't immediately feel nostalgic, your heart do a little thing. I don't know what's up but is an iconic brand known for its red wagons and opened its first store now in Chicago with a unique race track for kids pretty to test drive products. So the new store is in the Woodfield Mall. It includes an adult size wagon, that you can just sit down in like yeah, like you're a kid again, a racetrack for product testing and aims to reignite night the joy of play for both children and adults. The move comes from out they must have been listen to the pod pa they're big fans over there. It's a response to online shopping fatigue, offering a full on experiential shopping experience that blends wait for it retail, with entertainment, fostering interactions between the brand and its customers. The there's a little bit of safety insurance question marks not not amongst any Gen Z parents not I'm sorry, Gen X

Paul J Daly: 12:59

parents, right? Anybody Gen X and older like Yeah,

Kyle Mountsier: 13:03

they'll fall there'll be been a birthday party event at the place. It's a screen free environment. And that's amazing. Right dad has been? That's amazing, actually. Oh, it is because everywhere has screens right? Um, I'm like, let's go. We're gonna do like, we are. Chicago on inbound. Yeah, inbound. So the chief wagon officer love that. Robert passing emphasize the experimental and adaptive approach said when we're in the store wearing red t shirt, but we're really wearing a white lab coat. Hey, I like. So this is our dude, you know,

Paul J Daly: 13:40

I mean, so I think that automotive can definitely take a couple of cues from this, right? Because there are a lot of nostalgic automotive brands. But Radio Flyer has, I think understood, if you look at pictures of the store, it's awesome. I totally want to go there. Between the test track the screen free environment, the way they have the products merchandise on the walls. I didn't realize Radio Flyer had so many things because I just think wagons and maybe some of those little new contraptions that you put a kid on where you can push them or pull them? Nope, they have scooters, they have like little Tesla four wheelers. They have things that go on their own, like pretty quickly. So I think Radio Flyer could definitely be the like, this could be a big pivot in coming from iconic brand known for one thing and shown people like yeah, we've been innovating for years and we are still the like, I just think of the goggles. And I think of the scarf and where you're on a Radio Flyer, right? You're in another world so I like it. And I think like you get back to the dealership side. dealers have space to build like little test tracks, little car like to grab some bison radio flyers. Or

Kyle Mountsier: 14:45

why not? It's gonna be In cultural news like that. That is, you know, it's just like core. It's that thing that gets wasted on

Paul J Daly: 14:53

cars, you sell transportation like I can't think of a better way to keep some self three kids busy. Oh,

Kyle Mountsier: 14:59

thank you about freedom. Radio Flyer that's freedom. Here it is.

Paul J Daly: 15:04

It is goggles, scarf, all that stuff. Well there you go. We'll be providing you a little freedom today. Freedom mostly to just think outside the box and think of how you can serve your customers grow your business. love people more than cars. We will see you here tomorrow when it's not Valentine's Day.

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