Sunk Cars Costs $560M, EV Auto Pushes Back, Bye Bye Blue Screen of Death

Kyle Mountsier  0:01  
A good morning. It is Friday, June 27 This is automotive State of the Union. I'm Kyle Mountsier With my co host, my friend Michael Cirillo. We're talking about sunk cars, Evie auto and the blue screen, the people really want to know who I am. The blue screen, everybody knows what I mean when I say that. Everybody knows what. Well, okay, anybody over the age of 30 knows what I mean. Okay, okay, okay. I had to get, I had to get my old old in doing all

Michael Cirillo  0:33  
right, this morning, Cirillo my son. And, oh, I go to take my son out driving, speaking of over the age of and you know the I'm just, I'm not, I'm just gonna leave it here. My wife's got, always got low tire pressure. I don't know what the heck's gonna happen. He grabs the portable thing, but the battery's dead, so there's the other battery, but you got to plug it into the DC thing. And he is staring at this dude,

Kyle Mountsier  1:00  
like it's from another planet. And

Speaker 1  1:02  
I'm like, dude, plug it in. He's like, he's trying to plug it into it. I'm like, I don't know what. And I flipped the little lid thing, yeah. And I'm like, that's where the cigarette lighter used to go.

Kyle Mountsier  1:16  
Now we get power. It is like, that's the fact that that kind of still exists, actually blows my mind. That's the whole thing. It's like, that, that little thing in cars where, like, yeah, just leave that part. It was like when

Unknown Speaker  1:31  
the high beam button used to be on the floor.

Kyle Mountsier  1:35  
Yes, you're exactly right. What a mess, man. Cars like, there's so much advancement, but then we got this, like, DC thing that we're like, okay with

Michael Cirillo  1:46  
right now. That's like, I'm responsible for repurposing the cigarette lighter, right?

Kyle Mountsier  1:54  
And is make and is just happy as a clam somewhere, or he was working for someone and, you know, owns no IP, one of the two. Hey, we got people with a lot of IP their own thoughts on auto ASOTU CON sessions. Literally, the entire set from ASOTU CON is out episodes with people like David Kane, John bozella, Alex Lawrence, Ben Hadley, Derek Hanson, Greg Yulin, art Bratton, Elizabeth strolls. More more more. It's people that you want to hear from, because they're changing the game in auto. So you can go to ASOTU CON sessions on any podcast app. You can search it in the Google machine. I bet you a large language model would even know about it, because there's been enough around it, so check it out. So do con sessions. You're not going to want to miss it. They're always good. All right, let's get into it. This one's wild. The June sinking of the morning Midas car cargo ship loaded with Chinese EVs has sparked serious concerns across the shipping and auto industries. Estimated losses on just that ship alone are pegged at $560 million but the implications obviously go further. Basically, the ship caught fire on June 6 and just finally sunk completely. The ship was carrying 3048 vehicles, including 750 EVs and hybrids, when it caught fire en route to Mexico, it's the third major EV ship in just incident in over three years, bringing total damages from just those three disasters to nearly $1.8 billion the fire cause remains unknown, but experts say EVs increase the chance of Thermal runway turning into catastrophe. AEG CEO, Patrick Anderson said this is a huge cost. Another blaring warning to the industry, Calls are growing for stricter EV shipping protocols, better fire detection, increased vehicle spacing and limits, how on how many EVs can be transported per vessel. One of the things that they were stating is, you know, these EVs are carried in, like, closed containers. And a lot of times, the people that are managing the shipping, the people that are on, you know, like running the boat, don't even know that they've got EVs on board, and have, like, very limited fire training. And when it comes to fighting a fire with batteries around, it's a totally different ball game. So just still some something to be learned when it comes to shipping these things,

Speaker 1  4:25  
bro and I mean talking about training, I'm not trained to know how to handle all of the I'm not a conspiracy theorist, but posts on Facebook today.

Kyle Mountsier  4:41  
Yeah, you mean Chinese. EVS headed to Mexico. Okay, got it ended down at the bottom of the ocean. Interesting under the sea.

Speaker 1  4:53  
Copyright wild, wild stuff it is. We need to get Alex Lawrence on the phone at some point and just. Get his quick reaction. You know what I mean, like, what's your thoughts, bro?

Kyle Mountsier  5:03  
What's your thoughts? Speaking of Alex Lawrence's thoughts, segway, well played well played a coalition of 19 dealers, including Carmax and Carvana. Behind the full head of steam of UT, Utah's Evie auto and Alex Lawrence are urging the Senate to reconsider abrupt EV tax credit rollbacks. Lawrence says that converting the credit into down payment changed everything for middle class buyers, and argues that without it, families would not qualify for financing or reliable transportation. Though confident in EV autos future, he was warning a sudden and would, quote, disrupt the used car market, calling for a multi year phase out instead, at ASOTU CON last month, Alex quipped, I didn't realize when I got into the business five and a half years ago I was getting into politics. But boy, I ever did. We have linked his post and the entire letter in the show notes, so if you want to check it out, you definitely can. But some, you know, he's, he's aggregated some major attention, some major companies, you know, plug and recurrent, getting involved in there and just kind of calling for, hey, let's, like, tear this out a bit more, instead of the the abruptness that it seems like it's coming to

Speaker 1  6:16  
I love this quote, by the way, because Alex is the kind of guy that's like, you know, I didn't realize when I got in the car business I was getting into politics, but boy, did I ever and you know what, I might as well run for governor.

Kyle Mountsier  6:29  
Not a big deal. There you go. I might as well just,

Speaker 1  6:33  
it'll be a good case study for my class up there at Weber State University. And now I'm the governor.

Kyle Mountsier  6:41  
So here we are, you never know, yeah, I mean, this one, you know, I think there's kind of, like a couple sides to this whole EV thing. But the reality is, is there's a lot of, you know, especially used car sellers, and caravana and Carmax are some of those. You know, we know Alex and we know John Foley at recharge that have built their business on these EVs, and they know firsthand, day in day out, exactly what these tax credits mean to buyers. And this happens not just on the used car side, but also on the new car side as well. And the question will definitely be, will the retailers be left holding the bag if inventory is in a place that can't support or can't be supported by consumer demand because of waning tax incentives. It'll be kind of interesting to see how that how that unfolds over the next like five or six

Speaker 1  7:34  
months. Well, I think what we've ascertained in the last five or six months is that something said is never final. Ah, right, there's, it's, but, I mean, it's like that in life. I don't think anybody should be surprised by it. It's like, Dad, can you take me to this and it's like, we'll see. And then you're like, Sure. And then you're like, actually, we'll see. And then we're, you know, so what do we expect from people? We'll see what happens. We'll see what happens. Hey, speaking of we'll see what happens. And taking way too long to do it. Segway time, way too long. And I got thoughts even before I come in. I'm coming into this story. Kyle with some bias.

Kyle Mountsier  8:18  
I'm ready for it. Bring it. Alright, so

Speaker 1  8:21  
Microsoft is officially phasing out one of the most recognizable and dreaded elements of the Windows experience, the blue screen of death. After four decades, Windows crashes are getting a new look and a new name. Wow.

Michael Cirillo  8:48  
So dumb. It's so dumb. So let me try to get through this. The classic BSOD will become the black screen to death in an upcoming windows 11 update. Wait. We're still on Windows 11. The redesign ditches the frowny face and QR code in favor of a cleaner, more focused layout. I heard they're bringing Zippy back. New format will show the stop code and faulty driver right on screen, simplifying back diagnosis for IT teams. The update is part of a broader efforts to boost windows 11 stability, especially after last year's CrowdStrike related crash wave. We've got a quote here from David Westin, Microsoft's VP of enterprise and OS security. He says, quote, this is really an attempt on clarity and providing better information so we can fix it faster. Close. Quote, hey, hey, team, come together. You know this blue screen of death and our computers keep crashing. We're not wait. Are we gonna fix it? No,

Kyle Mountsier  9:54  
no, we're gonna rebrand it. I.

Unknown Speaker  10:01  
Oh, okay, look,

Kyle Mountsier  10:03  
if you have to, here's the thing about any business. If you have a brand and a meme culture around your entire propensity to fail,

Speaker 1  10:17  
you've got a problem. Oh, my goodness.

Kyle Mountsier  10:21  
If you have a brand and a meme culture around your entire propensity to fail, you definitely have a problem. This is, it's a really interesting one. I mean, obviously, for anyone that is a Microsoft shop, and there is some security benefit on, like, the bigger it scale to some of that stuff, because of the like, more idiosyncrasies you can get into. But man, as an IT team to think like, Oh, good. I got our new, rebranded way to know that my computer's down. My computer's at the store are down is quite an interesting take. The other funny thing is like, at least change the acronym. You know,

Speaker 1  11:01  
I was about to say I'm like, we don't, we don't have budget for such frivolous things. BSOD, somebody, I don't know if

Kyle Mountsier  11:12  
y'all can tell, but we're Apple people, so I never get any black or blue screen to death. Actually, I think in the like 18 years of me owning apples, or it's longer than that, I think my computer has frozen like a grand total of three times. Why

Michael Cirillo  11:27  
don't they just perpetually rename the Operating System Windows 11 beta? Because, like, that's the only time things crash for me in Apple's environment is when I know I've downloaded the developer beta and I can expect it. But yeah, instead of rebranding BSOD to be sod just just, we're always in beta 11. Windows 11 beta, we're just always in beta version 27 or whatever they're on V 27.35

Kyle Mountsier  11:54  
9.1 There you go. We got a brand proposition for you. Microsoft, your business is branded by its failures. You got a problem. Hey, today there might be ships going down. EV tax credits wonky, but we know that people matter more. Go, love them.

Unknown Speaker  12:13  
You

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