GM’s Gold Medal, Fisker Ditches DTC, Costco’s Accountability 

Paul J Daly: 0:08

Thursday January 4, guess what it is the first Thursday of the new year. I'm gonna say it every day it's just easy enough now. Today we're gonna talk about GMs gold metal Fisker ditching direct to consumer and Costcos accountability good a ton coasters I

‍Kyle Mountsier: 0:25

mean that's a legit title and it is proud of you yesterday you ran that like hot fire right into the drop and then today you

Paul J Daly: 0:34

wrapped got on it last yesterday

Kyle Mountsier: 0:37

Yeah so good.

Paul J Daly: 0:38

Oh man. Well it's snowing in Syracuse no red alert. I didn't know I mean you know we talked about this all the time you live in Syracuse you

Kyle Mountsier: 0:46

don't even check the weather. You wake up but apparently it's gonna get dicey up in your parts

Paul J Daly: 0:50

is it see I didn't even know that. Yes, when it was snowing I didn't even be like is it gonna keep selling? I was like I don't even care

Kyle Mountsier: 0:57

I gotta go I got like a notification this morning. It was like a weather.com stories like all of the Northeast is going to get I mean weather.com

Paul J Daly: 1:05

is definitely I'm trying to think of how to say this a polite way. I'm not gonna they have a knack for sensationalized anything. Yes, absolutely. Like that's why I click on a weather.com notification of weather channel notification I'm always disappointed.

Kyle Mountsier: 1:25

I'm always like, open you are right.

Paul J Daly: 1:28

Oh well, it was a puddle that he was standing in the whole street isn't flooded. I get I get it. Well, look, we're coming in are we releasing a new Auto Collabs episode if you didn't know we have a several podcasts this one but we also have other ones Auto Collabs is where myself Kyle Michael Cirillo get a little deeper, a little more under the surface with our guests a little bit more long form. And today it's with oh, this was such a good one. Alan Brown. Who would you work for is the title of the episode. Alan is the GM of Sam packs, five stars Chevy and one of the most driven and I don't know inspirational. What else can you say? Like he's the kind of guy that when he comes into a room, you just feel better about your life.

Kyle Mountsier: 2:08

I think every like section that he spoke, I was like, this is an inspirational speech that I need to write down right like it was like, oh, it's

Paul J Daly: 2:17

gone. Absolutely. We're gonna have him at a soda con and hopefully you'll get to check him out live but you can go to any podcast platform search Auto Collabs co L L ABS right. If you're on Apple, you can just search us Soto and all of our podcasts will show up. So you can join us there. Good morning. Oh, Leah got first comment today. Props. Oh, we got. She's like New Year. Shout at the title this year. Tony. Also good morning. It's early for you. You're rocking it? I guess not that early. It's 920. So here the East Coast. Yeah, he I wonder what time Tony Lucas wakes up. Like, the real question is what time it was biceps. Wake up. I bet they get up before he gets up. Yeah, he's wake up. They wake up first. When he wakes up comes through. He's actually on the curl bench. So biceps are like nice of you to join us. Oh, Adrian, Nathan. Just said, That's Instagram. Adrian was first. Now we're gonna have segment to title but we'll take that I love it that there are people on Instagram watching now. It's so fun. It was my it was really I mean, I guess Facebook was my first social platform. But I do you remember your first Instagram posts when you finally were like, Fine, I'll get it.

Kyle Mountsier: 3:25

I have no clue. I remember mine and we're gonna go scroll and find it. It's gonna be sketchy.

Paul J Daly: 3:32

I was sitting outside my building with my other business back in the day. Outside working outside was a nice morning and I took a picture of like me working like first person me and you can see the table in my notebook and the moon was still out.

Kyle Mountsier: 3:46

Yeah. And you hashtag no filter that job?

Paul J Daly: 3:50

I don't even know. I don't know. But there was a day kids when you couldn't even post a video on Instagram actual

Kyle Mountsier: 3:58

photos only? Yeah.

Paul J Daly: 4:00

Well, that's why I had this fight to this thing. And they evolved. So yeah, that's a lot of fun. I think we should talk about some automotive news at some point and do it. Let's get it all right. So it was really fun. Like yesterday, all of the sales numbers started to draw from all the manufacturers and apparently GM will be keeping its top spot in the US for 2023 marking the industry's best performance since the pandemic selling 2.6 million vehicles, which marks a 14.1% increase year over year, and they slightly edged out Toyota for the number one spot. So GM saw a 14% increase in their sales, Toyota sales 6.6% Nothing that nothing to sniff at. The US auto industry sold 15 point 5 million units last year total shout out to Jonathan smokin Cox automotive who just do a really great job of predicting these things. EVS made up 17% of sales which is I think, I think that probably includes hybrids.

Kyle Mountsier: 4:54

Yeah. That's That's strong.

Paul J Daly: 4:57

So Toyota is Evie sales including hybrids jumped 30% though to represent almost a third of their overall sales volume, yeah, because Toyota isn't in their cars I

Kyle Mountsier: 5:07

feel like becoming, you know what I saw this morning. And this is not exactly Toyota, but Lexus IS has just announced their first plug in hybrid. Right. So like they're coming with it who did the hybrid game who announced

Paul J Daly: 5:21

that Lexus

Kyle Mountsier: 5:22

Oh, okay,

Paul J Daly: 5:23

that's no surprise less Lexus in the like less q4 jumped like 80% I don't have the full list here. But it was crazy. Jason Brecon, he's just chiming in on the live stream. How much fleet right so I guess the Chevy GM question, right? How much of that was fleet sales? We don't know. But obviously fleet coming back has a big deal. Toyota really doesn't have a big fleet penetration. I don't think not another thing like GM. So many other brands are so record numbers across the board, including Tesla Whose vehicle who increased deliveries by 38%. Now the Tesla numbers global 38% year over year to 1.8 1 million, while their production capability grew 35% to 1.85. They made almost half a million, half a million cars in q4. So talk about really ramping up and they're moving. It is. Here's even over there when thinking about what's it gonna look like moving forward. Randy Parker, CEO of Hyundai North America, or Hyundai Motor America says the competition is going to be arguably very heated in 2024. Everyone is going to have inventory everybody's going back to marketing and advertising and sales, promoting merchandising, putting incentives on the marketplace, it's going to be monthly hand to hand combat versus our key competitors.

Kyle Mountsier: 6:35

Absolutely. There is like I wrote a post about like margin compression and the changing consumer experience and there's going to be a change in the way that brands go to market. All except for Subaru. They're gonna keep doing their thing to everybody else is gonna be like What are we going to do to drive and I saw a Subaru commercial this morning on my run. I was like these guys, they're just so good. So good at what they it's Unbeliev like, nobody needs an incentive on that thing. I'm almost crying while I'm running watching a Subaru never owned a Subaru in

Paul J Daly: 7:11

your life.

Kyle Mountsier: 7:13

It's unbelievable. Yeah, so you know there's there sounds like we're back to the car business back to the car business

Paul J Daly: 7:20

like I mean gosh, how many times if we had this conversation with clients and dealers everybody's talking about NADA last year everybody was saying we're gonna get back to the basics right like that was the the constant theme we heard over and over and over but it's funny how it actually took a year for to be like full reality for the

Kyle Mountsier: 7:41

reality to hit like I wonder if everybody after got actually got after what they were talking about it no no that guy check on did you do it did you get after it so that you're ready for though we

Paul J Daly: 7:50

can look at the list of the top sellers and we know who did and who do dealers dealers understand good dealers really understand speaking of great dealers segue this This warms our hearts so much stories like this Evie startup Fisker has decided to ditch direct to consumer model and jump on the dealership train in a significant strategy shift driven by what they will say high costs and logistical challenges Fisker produced 10,100 Ocean SUVs and 2023 but only could deliver less than half Wow citing difficulties in logistics and lack of physical store so Fisker has two showrooms one in LA one in New York, but those showrooms can't even execute test drives, or sell a thing just like you know, the Tesla stores kid. It's more like a boutique like it sounded really fancy. All the you know, the pinkies up,

Kyle Mountsier: 8:44

we're just going there real nice there. You haven't seen a picture. It's a full Onyx.

Paul J Daly: 8:48

They really are awesome. And so CEO Heinrich fix Fisker says some people don't want to drive three hours or fly to another state to see a vehicle. The man had a revelation. Now, they do plan to launch Main Street Vehicles upcoming with like the $30,000 pair and an electric pick, which is a small lecture pickup in Alaska. So basically, here's the deal. vinfast Now we know adopted a dealer network opening their first store in North Carolina with 50 More coming real soon. Pollstar.

Kyle Mountsier: 9:19

That dealer group is getting bought by home home

Paul J Daly: 9:21

and yesterday. I did. I did. Yeah. Well, we'll talk about that. We didn't have any chance to talk before we got on the show. I know. So basically, pulsar started out that way, right. Good friend Pollstar dealer Matthew Hakan, right crushing it. Why? Because he's a dealer and the dealer network. So basically, the company is looking to sign up 50 us dealers this year recognizing the efficiency, the inventory cost savings, and the ability to reach more customers and hired Fisker didn't say again, this is where we think we have to go as a company if we want to be a high volume company yet don't say

Kyle Mountsier: 9:57

it don't say you know, I that you if you put a vinfast table with a tablecloth over it and a Fisker table with a tablecloth over it out to out there in like the hallway at NADA there'd be lines apps lines out the door on those things without a doubt without

Paul J Daly: 10:19

a doubt and like it'd be interesting to see how the dominoes start to fall on this I think it is an indicator also to some of the major OEMs that like they know this truth already right and they've been like toying around agency model and all this right but they understand that dealers figure out very hard to solve problems at point of sale we

Kyle Mountsier: 10:38

haven't gone through is Steve greenfields, I'm gonna give you like, we'll go through it. Yeah.

Paul J Daly: 10:42

He put like goodbye, the he said, the

Kyle Mountsier: 10:44

agency model because now prediction he all these new OEMs going, Oh, no, we need the dealers. And now the legacy OEMs are going to look at that and be like, you know, we love these guys all along. And we're just

Paul J Daly: 10:59

they are, hey, that's the cool thing about business, right? It's like a really great equalizer like you can be like, unless you're kind of like one of those people that has like really deep personal views like if like Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos or Larry Page, and he like, right, unless you have that. Business people are typically like, hey, we had this great idea. We were supposed to be excited about it. We were we thought it was the best way we learned that it wasn't. And now let's figure out what we can do progressively together. One of the reasons we love this industry, right? It's people of all different areas of all different starting points, figuring out what we can do great together. So hey, all of a sudden that changes my perception of the Fisker brand like Wild

Kyle Mountsier: 11:35

Wild thinking, speaking of what figuring out what we can do together. Segue. I love this story. So Costcos leadership is taking a self critical stance on a recent vote, which led to the unionization of one of their Virginia warehouses seeing it as not a detractor but a wake up call to their own management style and not a knock on their team, which a lot of other companies like Amazon have had an adversarial response to unionization. The unionization of the Costco warehouse house is in Norfolk, with Teamsters, as the Union and its current and former CEOs Ron Ron vacuous and Craig Jellinek. I'm going to go with that. C as a managerial failure. In a letter that was emailed to the employees and posted in break rooms I love this part wrote, they were like, Let's just email it and post it. Let's put it everywhere. We are not disappointed in our employees. We're disappointed in ourselves as managers and leaders.

Paul J Daly: 12:40

Can we have some more accountable leader in

Kyle Mountsier: 12:44

I get that let's go. So there's already about 18,000 Costco employees representing 5% of the workforce unionized with teamsters represented them. Business Insider article featuring California manager said, I agreed with that letter, how heartedly because it means that over 50% of those employees felt like they couldn't go to management with issues, or they went to management and couldn't get their issues resolved in a way they deem fit. He continued, it was disheartening for that location to be to be to vote to be in the union. But at the same time, it's a good time for us to reflect and be like maybe we really need to retrain management. So

Paul J Daly: 13:25

when maybe me when this article came up, I thought one person right away, I was like, if Ed Roberts was the CEO of Costco, this is exactly how he would respond. Same exact letter, right? Because that's good leadership that first of all, when there's an issue, they don't say, Who can I blame for the issue? They say What have I done wrong to allow this to exist in my organization and Costco, obviously, you see the business outcome that is the result from this type of leadership, which is why one of the reasons we focus so much on the human element and the things that are we say more than cars in the auto industry, because we know that when you focus on these things, and these mindsets, the business outcomes follow. Yeah, we pay attention to the insights and the stats, and the releases and the data and the technology and the progressive nature. But at the core of it, the simple things are what make the massive impact on the other side. So you know, you and I are big Costco fans to begin with. And this just deepens it's like, wow, you can be a massive company and still exhibit high level empathetic, responsible, accountable,

Kyle Mountsier: 14:27

understanding about and self reflection about who you actually are as the leadership and management team. Kudos to them. And I bet you they're gonna get it right in the way that they interact with the union as well.

Paul J Daly: 14:37

They sure I think I think you're right as well. Well, listen, we hope this helps you self reflect you're about to go out there into the automotive world, talk to consumers, talk to your co workers self reflect, how can I give more than I take and I guarantee you, the day will be better