Lightning Costs More These Days, Texas Tax On EVs, Losing Faith In Ed

Paul Daly: 0:29I can tell already it's gonna get dicey today. Because Kyle and I were fired up before we even wrote the intro. It's a Friday close, let's say the month we're talking about lightning costing more Texas taxing EVs and losing faith in education. Higher Education.

‍Kyle Mountsier: 0:45

Okay, okay. Okay, because I don't think you know, in education,

Paul Daly: 0:49

it's kind of what we tried to do. A lot of them were just done.

Kyle Mountsier: 0:53

I thought we're gonna have a Schoolhouse Rock video played in our faces in just a second, you know? And I mean,

Paul Daly: 0:59

the amazing stuff. Oh, man, we were getting fired up before we even jumped on this call, because it's been Friday. And like, my little Fitbit watch didn't work. So I woke up way later than I usually do. I came in all hot and excited. And then we just started talking about this, and that this podcast and this conversation on LinkedIn. And there's a lot going on, there's a lot, and the backhauls of retail.

Kyle Mountsier: 1:21

Tell you what it's been like this full on, I feel like coming out of Chris coming out of COVID since since whatever date you think you we came out of COVID it's just been full crescendo. Like there wasn't

Paul Daly: 1:32

a Congress, we just came out last week.

Kyle Mountsier: 1:35

You know, like triple or whatever. You know, I love that.

Paul Daly: 1:40

I love that. Well, we're just getting reference for the for the well, so speaking of musical references, we're going to be at Arlington music hall next week on Wednesday, which is really the only reason Kyle and I leaned into a soda so much is because we're just trying to get a live band into music halls as much as possible. So we're doing that. Wednesday in Arlington, Texas, we're going to be in the Arlington Music Hall live with Nashville's hottest band with a bunch of automotive guests. With a game show with a live studio audience. Lots of dealer personnel coming in, we hope that you can come in once a night Arlington, Texas, it's easy to get to for a whole lot of people and you can still get tickets or if you just want to fly in fly out, we hope you can join us but if you can't we understand that's why we are live streaming the entire thing you should see the amount of audio and video gear we're hauling into this place. So that live stream can be so much fun just like the live in person events gonna be so you'll be able to hear the band in full effect and be a part of the motion in the guest so you can go to a so two x.com as ot ux.com so that you can make sure you connect to the live stream that you can get tickets if you want to get tickets and just get the popcorn and your family around because it's an evening event 630 Eastern or 630 Central

Kyle Mountsier: 2:55

US good TV dinner this thing this is like TV dance real old school

Paul Daly: 2:59

no I put it let's put it in some porous plastic and microwave it to a spicy so yeah, we're doing that obviously I'll right after this room. We are jumping into the all things use cars room with David Long. And that's on clubhouse and we're going to talk about accountability in your systems and why that's so important. I think we should probably get to the news because we're coming in hot, aren't we? Let's go. I think so. Okay, so for segue. Let's bring it down together. For increased prices yet again for its F 150. Lightning pickup due to high costs, material prices, supply chain constraints, we didn't throw COVID in there, this time. With a base price now including delivery of $61,869, which is in play that was second time. So this is 50% higher than the price was a year ago memory was like 39,000, something like that. We're like, whoa, that's amazing. Well, not quite 61,000. You know, the Lariat standard is 75,000. The Platinum range starts at 98,000. And the company is citing strong demand saying the model is sold out for retail customers and commercial order banks are just about to open up in mid April. So if you're a commercial customer, you can start ordering these in April. They just got the F 150 battery if you remember they closed the factory down. They just got it back online after recalling 18 trucks due to battery cell manufacturing defects and some fires that resulted and find are the companies that they're looking for an 8% pre tax margin by 2026 on these but right now man, they're charging all the money because they have to apparently

Kyle Mountsier: 4:41

they have to and they can I mean I found out this weekend I don't know if you know this, but just the depth that they've gone on the r&d and the technology in this lightning is proving out why they can demand such a price point. Did you know that this vehicle will actually tell you the Tang weight of a towed item on the vehicle, which is like everybody had to guess before. You know, that's really

Paul Daly: 5:07

cool when you sucker down the little actuator the springs, otherwise it's going to be like, tell

Kyle Mountsier: 5:12

you what the weight on the tongue is, which is just

Paul Daly: 5:15

okay. So for all the people that overload that, and don't want anybody to know,

Kyle Mountsier: 5:21

you know what else it'll do? It'll tell you your payload in the back in the bed, which is another thing to Home Depot. They're, like, throw away throw auto mulch in there, right? And it's like, no, that's

Paul Daly: 5:35

cool. I mean, it's cool truck technology like that features,

Kyle Mountsier: 5:39

with with all of the news. They're getting around it with the supply chain demands on on batteries and all of the things happening. I can see why they price it high. Now. That's a lot of money for a truck, though. So that you know it is it is

Paul Daly: 5:53

it is, I don't know, we'll see what happens. Look, people don't have to buy him. That's all I have.

Kyle Mountsier: 5:59

I have an apple, an iPhone, but people bought

Paul Daly: 6:02

over. Yeah, whatever. As long as people do, guess what it's called supply and demand. It's called capitalism. It works.

Kyle Mountsier: 6:10

Via prices and capitalism,

Paul Daly: 6:13

capitalism. In a bid to recoup lost tax revenue, state we're going to head to next week, Texas is considering a $200 annual fee for Eevee owners to contribute to the state's road repair budget. Critics argue the fee is unfair as fuel efficient vehicles pay less tax in gasoline excise tax. So basically, Texas funds a significant amount of its roadwork through a gasoline excise tax. So legislators are like where we're gonna get that money from if the EVS come online, we gotta get it somewhere else. So critics argue the fee is way too high at $200 a year and it should be much more reasonable, like $100 is completely arbitrary. But some researchers and states are considering introducing an annual fee based on mileage to provide a fair charge for evey drivers. The whole thing to me is a big mess. Because I don't know if you notice this, Kyle, but even before you had children, you paid a certain tax. Right? Right. It was called a school tax whether or not you have kids or not, right, we agree mutually that children are good for society, and we need them to continue. So everyone has got to go. I think the same is true with highways, right? Whether or not you drive a car, do you ever shop at a store? You ever want to be like all the stuff needs the roads still? So I don't know all that stuff needs the

Kyle Mountsier: 7:36

one man but hey, here's the answer. This just Texas be in Texas, just gotta give it to him. Right? They're like, give it to the gas people. Also, everything's bigger in Texas, right there like that's, you know, so

Paul Daly: 7:50

California is 100. California is 100 or 200. Yeah, take that take California. It'd be interesting. But this isn't a problem to ask. Oh, yeah, right. But this is, this is definitely a problem, because many states have revenue models for highways and roads that are based around gas taxes. You know, it's really not until gas prices get really high. And the state start, like, you know, all the legislators, like we're voting for relief at the pumps, right? And then you realize, like, wait a minute, the state gets like 40 cents of every gallon, depending on where you are. salutely Yeah. Then you realize like, oh, okay, this is going to be a major revenue disruption. And you know, if you consider governments like businesses, which I totally don't, because they don't actually produce anything right now. But But still, like there's a major revenue disruption that is coming and like the first states that have larger Evie adoption are going to be the first states that actually have to face the challenge, right. Upstate New York, Syracuse isn't worrying too much about the gas taxes in New York state. So it's coming. It's coming in. And this is just the early indicators, and it's really easy for us to be like, You guys just have to solve this problem. It's so easy. It's not so easy. We just have the luxury of sitting here.

Kyle Mountsier: 9:05

This is another part of education. We've been talking a lot about Evie Education recently. And just understanding this at the ground level gives you empathy and understanding and the ability to communicate to your customers. So just a quick bit of education for your most

Paul Daly: 9:19

speaking of education. Segue

Kyle Mountsier: 9:23

Friday,

Paul Daly: 9:25

realize it you didn't even realize you set the segue up that well. That's all you man.

Kyle Mountsier: 9:29

Come on. Americans faith in higher education is waning dropping crazy as a new Wall Street Journal NORC poll reports that a majority now 56% believe earning a four year college degree is a bad bet while 42% still have faith in this value. Basically, the numbers since 2013 have flipped when 53% of Americans advocated for college and only 40% showed skepticism. So literally a flipping in the advocacy or skepticism I'm most of the skepticism comes from people in the 18 to 34. Age, age range, and those with college degrees indicate a potential shifts in higher education future.

Paul Daly: 10:12

Hold on a second. So you're saying the people with the college degrees are the ones that are most skeptical? You mean your

Kyle Mountsier: 10:19

boy? Right here? 30 Okay, um, right out of the gap. 35 right. But yeah, so I'm right out of the gap, but it I will say like, as a college educated person, I like my outlook for my children is different than probably my parents was. Now I still advocate for college for a lot of things, but then there are great opportunities outside of college. I mean, just looking at my career path and understanding what it might have been had I you know, been trained in what I've done an auto earlier as opposed to just a general finance or business degree.

Paul Daly: 10:59

Well, I think that this this what you're saying right now is so clutch because I bet the sentiment is completely different from students and parents who send their students to a place like Northwood University. Right? Get a degree in automotive education or that level. That is probably a completely opposite sentiment.

Kyle Mountsier: 11:18

Absolutely. But it was much more of a trade secret, right? It's not a trade as we think about skilled or a specific

Paul Daly: 11:26

industry. Exactly. AKA the best industry in the world. Come on now. I may when you send it the Automotive is gonna be okay. We're gonna take care of them. So Ted Mitchell, president of the American Council on Education says quote, These findings are indeed sobering for all of us in higher education and in some ways, a wake up call. We need to do a better job at storytelling. Interjection for me there. I don't think storytelling is the problem, but we need to improve our practice. That seems to me to be the only recipe I know in regaining public confidence. I don't think the storytelling is the problem. I think it's the story itself. That is the

Kyle Mountsier: 11:59

problem. Bingo. They tell the story, but it's the wrong story to tell the story

Paul Daly: 12:03

they tell is is a dream. That doesn't, you know, doesn't pan out to be reality.

Kyle Mountsier: 12:10

We talked about it yesterday, people hire $90,000 truck operators, but they can hire $60,000 college grads

Paul Daly: 12:16

ba to work like crazy. Kyle, we're making too much Trump on this.

Kyle Mountsier: 12:21

This is called the automotive troublemaker. Okay.

Paul Daly: 12:26

We've got far behind audible. today. We're throwing governments under the bus higher education. There's a couple of people in both of those industries.

Kyle Mountsier: 12:39

recent college grads or college graduates shared her thoughts on advising her stepson about further education. She said I think college is good for certain things. But I have told him he would definitely benefit from some sort of tech or skilled job. I've suggested he joined a vocation a school where they teach skilled trades. So right in line, I think there's a lot of people thinking this way, you got Gary Vee shouting it all over the place. So all the kids are think are thinking that way. I look, here's the thing. The reality is as these things move, they shift they they trend differently. And and we have to recognize that as as as a business that doesn't have outside of Northwood, a degree program in many universities, like we have the opportunity to figure out skilled trade work outside even outside of technicians and move people into into a career path. Because people's minds are open to that more now than ever.

Paul Daly: 13:32

So true. So true. I mean, even think of the lanes of so many of the Great North Woods students we've gotten to spend time with over the last six months, right? Talk about finance and marketing and business administration all within the lane of we'll say it again the best industry in the world. And I think that the auto retail auto industry brand is just going to continue to grow in the season and if we don't accomplish it in this next five years, we are doing it completely completely wrong. This is our season. Hey, we got a busy day. Check us out. Follow us into the clubhouse room Max and please check us so do x.com or LinkedIn music calm next Wednesday. We need you to be there in person or on the live stream

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