Stricter EPA Rules, Blue Oval City Rising, Jobs and Perks Dwindling

April 10, 2023
It’s a great Monday to make some trouble as we talk about this weeks anticipated EPA rules on tailpipe emissions, some details on Fords innovative new plant, as well as the job and job perk situation that is changing rapidly.
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  • We're going back to how Henry Ford set up the assembly line, we're going to do more of this ourselves." says Ford CEO Jim Farley about the company’s new “Blue Oval City” manufacturing plant in west Tennessee also calling it a “marvel of simplicity”
  • The plant is the first the company has built in 50 years and is scheduled to open in 2025 and to produce 500k vehicles in a space that is 30% smaller than other Ford plants that have the same capacity
  • Ford and partner SK Innovation will operate a battery plant at BlueOval City, building battery cells, arrays, and assembling battery packs.
  • Finished battery products will be delivered to the assembly plant in less than 30 minutes
  • The site will also be carbon neutral, use geothermal, and won’t require any fresh water

  • Will likely cover 2027-2032 model years and will potentially exceed President Biden's initial target of 50% of all new vehicle sales being electric-powered by 2030. The current percentage of EV sales is sitting around 6%.
  • The Alliance for Automotive Innovation, a lobbying group that represents GM, Ford, Toyota Motor Corp. and other major car companies, said in a statement that they expect the new rules to be released but didn’t specify details
  • The group noted such a transition will require a seismic shift in the way Americans drive and cited a Mckinsey study which highlighted a $35B investment in charging infrastructure needed to accommodate such a shift

  • As the tech industry faces unprecedented job losses, Silicon Valley veterans are forced to reset their careers, opting for stability over status. Positions at giants like Meta and Amazon are giving way to roles at smaller firms, tech jobs at non-tech companies, and freelance consulting. 
  • “The majority of folks that have been laid off from big tech companies, they’ve been disillusioned,” said Chris Rice, a partner with Riviera Partners, an executive-search firm that places leadership talent in software-engineering, product-management and design positions.
  • This comes as last months jobs report missed expectations for the first time in a year
  • Job openings fell to 9.93 million, the first sub-10 million total in nearly 10 years 
  • Other signs of cutbacks on costs being reported as Google pairs back on work from home equipment, limits free meals, and eliminates other lavish perks the company has been known for like in-office massages and laundry services. 

SPEAKERS

Kyle Mountsier, Paul Daly


Paul Daly  00:26

All right, we're gonna do it all over again. It is Monday, everybody. Hope you had a great Easter weekend. Today we're talking about stricter EPA rules. Blue Oval city rising, and job perks and jobs dwindling. The people really want job perks and jobs dwindling.


Kyle Mountsier  00:43

Like ups and downs and ups and downs roller coaster Monday, baby rose, Monday was the best


Paul Daly  00:49

job perk you've ever had in any job anywhere.


Kyle Mountsier  00:54

I mean, I like that's, it's hard because, you know, I worked at a pizza shop. And basically the rules were here per make your own food, you know, good one, you know, it was kind of like just make it don't inconvenience anyone else. But you can have what you want. It was like the the meal the meal is like $15 or 18. If you ask your manager, yeah, everything was basically under 18. So it was like, Okay, I want a salad I want to cow's own I want a pizza, I want some pasta, whatever you want today. So that was great. And basic. And and they had these little like they were they were like mini graders ice cream. Which if you haven't had great ice cream, best ice cream on the planet, you can only find it typically in Cincinnati. But they had these many things at a lower fluorosis. There's this big, and it was like a buck 80 or something. You could basically slot that in next to any main meal, gets a little ice cream at the end of the little shift. Boom you are getting


Paul Daly  01:56

our whole production team is weighing in with their job perks free specialty coffee at a church cafe with a professional barista, Isaac 50% off at a LEGO Store. Best job perk ever. Yeah, but he's still got friends at the Lego store. So he'd probably say, What


Kyle Mountsier  02:09

was your best job?


Paul Daly  02:10

I haven't got one of yours. Yeah. You got to worry about everything. Probably. I mean, it's got to be the free food. Free food. Right? I worked in the restaurant business my entire, you know, high school. And also let me just say this, I went to Phillies game with the Amish people I worked for when I was 14. That was a pretty good job. That's a great perk. Imagine a whole section of a stadium this kid be and like 50 Amish folks. It was an experience. Little little bitty Paul No. No beard. No beard.


Kyle Mountsier  02:46

I wouldn't say after having not been in the dealership now for almost two years, I will I will start to argue that the greatest job perk is dropping your car off for its oil change during the morning and leaving with your car and not having to think about think about it. That's a good now. It's like a whole rigmarole.


Paul Daly  03:03

I love that. I love that one. That's a great one. We got a couple of things coming up. Obviously we were on the ground last week all week in Texas. In dealerships did the live tonight show it was so much fun. We're going to we're going to talk about and show a lot more stuff to do. But you can still check it out on YouTube or LinkedIn, YouTube's probably the easiest place to go check it out. And you can go to a so tube as ot u dot B E. So tube and check out the replay. It's pretty much fun. And we'll be releasing a ton of clip from it as well. Also have things coming up. Man, we're only three weeks away from the premiere of the television show, which we have yet to name officially we've been calling it a social takes. But we got to do that. Put that on the to do list today, we should name a show. That's going to be in Tampa, at Digital dealer. And we got a little collab working with digital dealer. So if your dealer you're going to digital dealer, you might have a little free ticket


Kyle Mountsier  03:55

for you. Hey, go. Yeah, well, everybody come on out. It'd be a whole bunch of fun. We'll have a happy hour and then we'll do the live premiere and you'll get to see something a little show like maybe autos not seen before


Paul Daly  04:06

your cheapest ticketed event ever to ever, ever. Yes. So it's like it's


Kyle Mountsier  04:11

like 39 It's like a and you're going to spend that on drinks anyway.


Paul Daly  04:16

salutely. Absolutely. Also, we're gearing up for a Reuters event in May, the middle of May we'll be out in Las Vegas with our friends at Reuters moderating some panels, having a little podcast and joint club podcast with Twitter. So got things and then a soda con and then and then and then things. Just things things. All right. We got to talk about some news at some point today. Do it. Alright, so we are going back to how Henry Ford set up the assembly line. We're doing more of this ourselves. That's what Jim Farley CEO of Ford said about his company's new blue oval city manufacturing plant in West Tennessee. He's also calling it a quote marvel of simplicity the plant is the first the company has built in 50 years so For all y'all out there that are under 50 cluding, the two of us jokers here, Ford has not built a plant since we've been alive and the builder,


Kyle Mountsier  05:08

Matt, that is unbelievable. No hitting when I read those plants have had to go through over the last 50 years to get to get like on new technology. That's what that's all. Like,


Paul Daly  05:20

why is that? I know that you got to think it's gonna be so much easier to start from the beginning. I mean, I say that and there's billions of dollars. But I mean, retooling is always harder than starting from scratch when it's like this far forward. So the plant is scheduled to open in 2025 and to produce 500,000 vehicles annually in a space that is 30% smaller than what it takes to produce 500,000 vehicles now.


Kyle Mountsier  05:45

Yeah. Which makes I mean, it better for the last time you did this was fifth do you think you'd have better it'll be learning better be


Paul Daly  05:54

a couple other neat little integrations going on Ford and their battery partner, SK Innovation are going to operate a battery plant right at Blue Oval city, building the cell battery cells and arrays and assembling all the battery packs, they said they're only going to be no more than 30 minutes away from the assembly floor. So that's cool. It gets assembled less than 30 minutes, it's actually in a vehicle. The site will also be carbon neutral, using geothermal and get this it won't use any, any freshwater. That's pretty wild. You think of all those like works. I don't either because like you knew you'll buy a plant usually when you see the big smokestack. Right. Usually that has a lot to do with the cooling process for something that they're doing in there. Maybe it's geothermal? Maybe there's Seminole the I don't know. I don't know how that works, but it seems very progressive.


Kyle Mountsier  06:39

Impressive nonetheless. Yeah, I you know, it's cool. I appreciate it that it's in Tennessee, that there's a little bit of innovation, you know where it is? It's basically in the Midwest, nowhere. Okay. West Tennessee. Yeah, I mean, there's Toyota plant in Jackson. So like, you know, it's not like it's a you know, we got we got, you know, plants in Chattanooga. So it's not like first time Tennessee a scene, auto manufacturers hit the ground. There's a lot of great tax incentives, a lot of great reasons for employees to live here because there's no income tax. You told me


Paul Daly  07:10

last week when we are driving from dealership to dealership be like, yeah, Tennessee's gotta figure it out. You're like, our budget actually has a surplus. That's a word that hasn't been uttered in New York state until we tell everybody


Kyle Mountsier  07:20

and their brother wants to come here on vacation for bachelorette parties.


Paul Daly  07:25

So right that sales tax, get all that tourist dollars in New York. Brilliant. Brilliant. It's I'm trying to think how we're gonna segue from the word brilliant into this next piece and the show get along. Here Monday morning shots. We took a risk of the live tonight show we told the Joe Biden joke and it went over really well. And we did the Batcave and it was good. But you have to go check that out sometime this week. Though the Biden administration is ministration is expected to propose extensive new limits on vehicle tailpipe emissions, pushing us automakers toward a majority electric vehicle sales future, it will likely cover the model years of 2027 to 2032. And everyone's expecting it to exceed the existing target of having 50% of new car sales be all electric. So we're saying we're going to pass that by 20 by the year 2030. Absolutely. So the current percentage of Evie sales is 6%. So we're gonna go from 6% to over 50%. So the Alliance for automotive innovation, a lobbying group that represents GM, Ford, Toyota and a bunch of other major car companies said in a statement, they expect the new rules to be released, but also didn't specify any details. They said such a transition will require a seismic shift in the way Americans approach transmission and charging. They cited a McKinsey and Company study that highlighted we still need $35 billion worth of charging infrastructure to apply.


Kyle Mountsier  09:08

But all I really want is my potholes fixed, you know. Okay, but let's get to it. Let's get to it. Because you know, if you've read through it, and I've read through it a little bit over the weekend, and every news source is reporting it on Morning News This Morning. But basically what they're doing is going the the target for tail private message is so aggressive that manufacturers are will be forced to create


Paul Daly  09:34

all of these, they'll never be able to hit it unless a big portion of your lineup are Evie.


Kyle Mountsier  09:39

Exactly. You know, it was interesting. I was actually watching like the local I was running this morning watching the local news. And you know, we ran the story last week, but that Tesla is reducing the prices of their vehicles again. But the commentary from even the newscaster the anchor was, he said I can't even turn on TV the news or look online and not see information about a new manufacturer coming into the Evie space. Wow. And that's, you know, for the layman prized by that, to not be in the auto industry, but to be in news and still be surprised by the volume of the like, the accelerant of last news right now is pretty wild. And so that's kind of like the groundwork for this. But I think the backup and I love the McKinsey study, just saying, hey, look, remember, it's not just the sales output that we have to think about, it's the entire infrastructure that we have to build up in a very limited time. And I think that this is also a prime opportunity for more private companies to look at getting into the infrastructure and charging game and I think we're gonna start to see those spring up quicker and see charge, you know, like competitors to your charge points and, and, and charging networks that will start to pop up on the grid a little bit faster. And we might even see some large like oil companies like BP and things like that really push the boundaries and play a part in the infrastructure. If this is the way that things are gonna go.


Paul Daly  11:15

There are a bunch of new seven elevens going in in my area. I don't know they just must they bought a bunch of Sunoco stations. And and I'm like looking really closely and like, are they gonna have charging ports? Are they gonna have charging ports? I mean, we did cover story last week about Walmart, pushing a major initiative to make all Walmart locations a significant source of Evie charging. I came across this this morning. So Sam Walton founder Walmart, apparently woke up from like a feverish dream point in his life and said, I had a vision where basically, robots will put items in our customers cars while we fill them with electricity. Yep, I was like, Zen that nuts? That is crazy. You saw that too? Yeah. Well, no, that's


Kyle Mountsier  12:05

we ran it last week. And I don't know. I missed it.


Paul Daly  12:09

You didn't even read it? Maybe that's where I saw it. Christine Christie. Probably where I saw it. Oh, good. Well, I inadvertently given Kristen Christie props for putting an awesome thing in there that did stick in my brain. But yeah, I mean, driving behaviors. Who the heck knows, man? Who knows. But it's just a that's what's going on on Monday. So Well, we'll see. And EPA rules will come out and maybe sometime down the line, someone will change them and who else and here we go. Here we go. Speaking of who knows.


Kyle Mountsier  12:45

Talk about tabs up now jumps down, jumps up, jump sideways, jumps next ways, perks down. Hey, as the tech industry faces on unprecedented job losses almost seemingly everyday Silicon Valley veterans are forced to reset their careers opting for stability, over status positions at giants like meta, and Amazon are giving way to roles at smaller firms, tech jobs and non tech companies and freelance consulting. You know, I think we're seeing this in even an auto we're starting to see a lot of these people get picked up from large tech into smaller tech or tech jobs at non tech companies, which I think is is a really big look here. Chris Rice, a partner with Riviera partners and executive search firm that places some of these. This leadership talent said the majority of folks that have been laid off from big companies. They've been disillusioned. Hmm. Interesting, like just an interesting insight from someone that's dealing with these people and like, where they're headed, or where they want to go every single, it's just


Paul Daly  13:49

a year ago, if you think about it just a year ago. It was like the Holy Grail. I mean, and like less than a year ago, six months ago, and then like, for years in front of that, like the big goal was like, Can I get hired by Google or meta or Amazon? And if you do that it was and if you're good at what you do, like you're set, right? He gets the whole lifestyle, you get the whole perks, you get, you get all that and like in this article, if you drill in and read a little bit deeper, they talk about like people who are really great at their job. Like we're not talking about, like the people who didn't just like to work, right? Yes, exactly. Yep. These are real people. And so this illusion is is the right word, I


Kyle Mountsier  14:32

think. Yeah, it's tough. Just on the job openings. It you know, the reports on Friday on Friday, which was interesting also that the stock markets were closed when the job reports came out. We'll be interested to see what happens in the markets today. But they fell to 9.9 3 million, the first sub 10 million total in nearly 10 years, meaning job openings are waning and there are not as many out there on the old Internet, other signs of cutbacks on costs are being reported as companies like Google pare back on work from home equipment and other departments. Yeah, they getting rid of the free meals. They're eliminating perks, like an office massages, laundry services, you know, there comes the perks. Freedom is killing people.


Paul Daly  15:20

Imagine working in a place where you go and eat for free, get a massage, have your laundry done. Right. I feel like the laundry. I know a lot of people moving back in with mom and dad after this one. I just realized like, oh, like, you got to do these things again. I mean, look, this is like when people it's the same as when people complain about having to pay too many taxes. I'm in the top tax bracket, right? No one ever feels bad for that person. Oh, must be nice, right? Oh, you don't have your free laundry. So it's one of those things, but it does indicate a right sizing, I think of what the value of the work actually is. And with all the talk about AI, and like in the article also It cites about, you know, like, hey, a lot of the stuff we're going to have a machine do, right. machines don't need the moustache.


Kyle Mountsier  16:09

Wanna hear something? Paul? You want to know something? Yep. I happen to know an industry that has a lot of jobs. And they got perks, like oil changes, discounts on cars, really nice car washes, fancy computers, great layoffs, GE perks like no layoffs. They got those kinds of perks, people they got those kind of perks this industry.


Paul Daly  16:35

And it happens to be an industry that highly values a technical skill set more than ever before. You've often been an advocate of having a technologist on staff really, and people that understand tech and the way it works together. And that's not just that's not just the way that operations.


Kyle Mountsier  16:53

It's evolving right now, at rapid speeds, understanding all of the new tech in the space. This is a prime opportunity to go find one of these technologists from from one of these big tech companies. Put them right in,


Paul Daly  17:07

get them on over because look, there is a place for you here we sit at the live tonight show and we mean every word of it. But that's all the place we have on a Monday because you have work to do we have work to do. We got to go get those technologists we got to make customers happy. We got to serve them and here's we're not going to worry about we're not going to worry about layoffs in this industry.

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