This OEM Cares More About Consumer Demand Than EPA Fines

Paul J Daly: 0:17

Good morning. It is a fresh Monday morning, March 4. Today we're talking about an OEM that cares more about consumer demand the world's fastest Evie charger. And maybe way Moe has a way forward. Maybe they do

‍Kyle Mountsier: 0:34

you know what I'm talking about, Paul,

Paul J Daly: 0:35

what are we talking about? We're talking about it's your birthday.

Kyle Mountsier: 0:42

Today, graphic and everything, graphic and everything looking back. He's all stoic with his little

Paul J Daly: 0:51

serious man, everybody that knows me know, it's the rare situation where I'm looking serious. And now it's not that rare guy. But you know, our

Kyle Mountsier: 0:59

photo, everyone's it's

Paul J Daly: 1:00

hard to look serious when you have a smile. Do you ever think about that?

Kyle Mountsier: 1:04

Yeah, you're right. Why is that? So? I don't know why that is

Paul J Daly: 1:08

that weird. So like, I look less serious more than

Kyle Mountsier: 1:13

that. If you could fit that on a shirt, it

Paul J Daly: 1:17

would be perfect. smile on my face. You know, I posted this on LinkedIn this morning. And I thought it was hilarious. The very first birthday message I got was actually from my health share provider. And it was just to notify me that my ad crease jumped at age bracket now. So I was like, that was such an opportunity to make me laugh. Like if he just would have taken$0 to write you know, lots of things get better with age or whatever. Oh, no. I mean, we've missed it. But it's I, you know, I walked in the office today, I was like, don't we get off on our birthday? Like pretending that's why it was kind of like running in the office late because I forgot that work today. But you know, doesn't work. You and I and so many people in this auto industry are not the type that hey, if you take your birthday off, not judging that not judging that at all. There's a there's a thing about just loving what you do and being driven and like, hey, it's a Monday morning and a five weekend month and we have some things to do.

Kyle Mountsier: 2:14

Yeah, we got some definite things to do. I'm excited. We're going to be on the road a little bit this week. So is in dealerships in dealerships with some industry partners, that'll be really cool. We'll try and show you around what we're doing this week. But, man, we've got only 71 days till ASOTU CON Paul,

Unknown: 2:34

it's disgusting. That is disgusting. Well, I'm

Kyle Mountsier: 2:38

excited because like, the rate of people that were like, Yep, I'm coming by in tickets. Last week, our conversations with the Maryland auto dealers association with Whoa, can the women of color automotive network are heating up. They're bringing a bunch of people. We're scheduling some time to hang out with we'll get there before the event. So we can kind of introduce you to our keynote speaker. Yeah. And if you haven't picked up the book, you gotta pick up unreasonable hospitality before you come. And I it's like, it is full throttle, go time. ASOTU for ASOTU CON, right. Without

Paul J Daly: 3:16

a doubt, I walked down the steps. I think it was Saturday morning. And my wife, oftentimes she's up and she's reading and she she's a big, you know, reader and she like when she reads there's like an event. Right? There's a notebook. They're reading glasses. There's like a lap desk, right? It's a whole different blanket involved, right? It's a whole situation. You know what she was reading? Well, hospitality watch it she she's, she's like four pages. And she's like, I already have a page of notes. She's like, we need to do more of this stuff. So

Kyle Mountsier: 3:45

Tony Owens was posting about it this week, I think he saw a podcast of ours talking about it. He's a fixed ops manager at Jermaine. He's reading it, I'm sure he's gonna change up some stuff over there. So like it is it's taken over inside and outside of the industry. It's absolutely

Paul J Daly: 4:00

and if you want like an easy onboard to the book, and if you have like Spotify Premium, you can listen to it for free. So just listen to the I guarantee if you listen to like, four minutes of the introduction, or if you've read just three or four pages, you will be hooked immediately. So Will's going to be our keynote speaker at ASOTU. CON, go to ASOTU con.com. You can see the growing list of speakers we already have over 50 I think confirmed and there's going to be more. Again, Kyle mentioned, the auto dealer associations. Maryland's going to be they're having a meeting but also represented there on panels in such good Virginia, Pennsylvania. We're going to have Washington, we have we have we're in talks with Florida, California, right. Dealer associations this year, buddy. Sure dealer come on out if you're an industry partner. Hey, you want to be part of the game? Email us we got we got some stuff cooking aside from that but I'm gonna we need to we've been going on and on. It's it's birthday Monday, debut a little sloppy. A little stuff All right let's not

Kyle Mountsier: 5:02

being sloppy, so being real but

Paul J Daly: 5:07

they have a lot of serious faces not so many smiles but their smile and now Toyota continues to project a measured future for battery electric vehicles in North America CEO, Tara Ogawa, estimating they will constitute the EVS. Better EVs, just 30% of their US sales by 2030 diverging from more ambitious Evie targets. He says. In an exclusive interview with automotive news, I know the EPA is reconsidering what the regulation level should be. However, I like the however, our starting point is what the customer demand should be. We're respecting the regulation. But more important is customer demand. Give me a horn. If

Kyle Mountsier: 5:46

I had to do applause, I didn't even want to do the horn because I felt like the horn would have disrespected that I think you're right standing

Paul J Daly: 5:53

up for Mr. Ogawa and Toyota. The Eevee standards as proposed require 54 to 60% Bv penetration by 2030. Current current analysts don't include plug in hybrids. So 2024 is starting the year for Toyota is multipass strategy offering different levels of electrification. So they're obviously saying we know there are regulations and we will buy energy credits from other companies in order to satisfy consumer demand and not produce what they die. Wow.

Kyle Mountsier: 6:23

Wow, Tesla's licking their chops.

Paul J Daly: 6:26

Yeah, they are like, we got credits. You want credits? Credits,

Kyle Mountsier: 6:30

you got credit? You know, this is it's just over. And I mean, someone's gonna make me maybe it's Brian Ortega of us one day looking into Toyotas eyes with hearts around ours. Right. But I you know, when when you talk about customer demand, and that being the central focus, you always are gonna win. You know, I'm still hopeful that they come out with a strategy that we just haven't seen kind of blindside everybody and go, Wow, we just did weren't expecting that that was going to be the best path forward, although hybrids are clearly the strategy right now. But it's like up and down the org that they believe this is the strategy. What's funny to me, is actually in 2022, late 2022. The current chairman, Mr. Toyota, was saying like, hey, look, we're not going all in on EVs. And then in 2023, there was a kind of a move away from that just to satisfy the what seemed like the public eye, and they never really made the dollar investments in it, but now have been able to go back to the resolutions made in 2022 and say, no, no, we're actually sticking with the hybrid game. Like I don't know if it was just a political play, or if there was kind of some maneuvering internally to figure out if they were going to move toward EVs. But they are totally resolved at this point.

Paul J Daly: 7:48

Yeah, probably a little bit of both. Speaking of we're going to need a little bit of both

Kyle Mountsier: 7:53

need a lot of time, a lot of bit of

Paul J Daly: 7:58

a company named gravity mobility. They are backed by Google. Oops, they've launched their the fast stick. Okay, that's the wrong button. I hit the wrong button on my thing, and all my sound went dead. So I just threw me for a minute, we're going to start over gravity mobility backed by Google has launched the fastest public Evie charging solution. In the US actually, it's a lot faster. The startup has introduced 24. chargers in New York City currently open only to fleet operators, these chargers can have a 500 kilowatt capacity capable of charging 200 miles and get this only five minutes, five minutes, five minutes, meaning they could charge actually up to 2400 miles of range per hour. So And here's another thing the Chargers are only the size of a carry on suitcase. So you've seen the Tesla chargers, the big stand up pedestals, and they say they are capable and ready to manufacturing to play 1000s of these annually, with further sites development beyond Manhattan. So most EVs capacity and how fast they can even receive energy is 350 kilowatts. These obviously go up to 500 kilowatts, Tesla superchargers. Right now, only 250 kilowatts, so they doubled.

Kyle Mountsier: 9:12

I mean, it makes sense because a 300 350 mile Tesla is about a 2025 minute charge. So like you to 80% Yeah, that's right to 80% You started with a quick, quick math makes a ton of sense.

Paul J Daly: 9:27

I mean, the bottom line is like this is everybody has said over and over and over until charging your EV gets as fast and as easy as pumping gas, the adoption curve is really going to change. And so Kyle, I don't know, maybe this is part of the part of the solution. It sounds like

Kyle Mountsier: 9:42

Yeah, I think this is like almost on the curve to getting to the solution. If I had to guess in a year's time this company's probably going to advance that technology even more. You look at it, it's like primed and ready for advancement. The way that they've kind of segmented the battery the way that they handle cooling the way that they've even handled storage like on wall hung from ceiling on a pedestal, they've got multiple different applications and installation points. This is an end watch, if I had to guess you're going to start to see companies like other like, you know, Exxon or BP or anything like that start to license nice things. Because you know, it, they even showed, like an installation pattern on how do you get these on poles in a in a pattern similar to the way that we do gas stations now. So I can see this starting to be the real way that we start to see everybody develop their stuff, and maybe there's licensing on the patent or something like that.

Paul J Daly: 10:46

But the truth is,

Kyle Mountsier: 10:47

it's like this big, well, who wouldn't want it?

Paul J Daly: 10:49

I know, the truth is, you know, even with this technology, having to adjust the platform that these vehicles are on, like having to adjust actually platform side stuff. I mean, we still have years until this point, but it this this has finally put something in the most realistic, like frame that I can see it right five minutes to 200 miles is like and if you're going on a roll and

Kyle Mountsier: 11:13

like you said, I mean even the cars like max out at 350 kilowatt hours. And so you're you can't even get all of the full, you know, it

Paul J Daly: 11:21

would give you it will give you two thirds, right, so it's like it'd be 15 minutes to 200 miles. So it's bad. It's still fast and we're doing now way faster. All right. Speaking of way faster,

Kyle Mountsier: 11:31

a good way I thought they were dead but they're not the self driving Robo taxi. Why Mo is not dead yet after receiving approval to operate its vehicles up to 65 miles an hour really interesting. On highways in parts of LA and the Bay Area following a California regulators decision. The company plans a careful and incremental expansion without immediate highway service plans amid safety concerns and high profile cash crashes involving their autonomous vehicles. The CPUC, which stands for the California Public Utilities Commission, PUC approved, see PUC approved y Mo's expansion dismissing requests for evidentiary hearings and citing continuous technology and safety improvements. So maybe they've got some backdoor knowledge that we don't all have problems. According to the Commission, the statement was WIPO has shown its attention to continuous evaluation and improvement of its technology safety practices and aspects of its operations involving humans that minimize the risk of driver less passenger service operations. Okay.

Paul J Daly: 12:41

I don't know if you've ever, ever driven in LA, or the San Francisco Bay Area, and nobody goes 60 You know, a few things. Number 165 miles an hour is just a dream that other people in other cities get to real? Ah, secondly, I don't know. I mean, they're good. You know, it does seem like moving at a higher pace on a highway is just easier operation. Anyway, like, you look at all the complexities stop and go as hard i being stopped, like our pedestrians and all these things. So things will be good. Overall. I mean, it's kind of a measured like this, we talked about all these

Kyle Mountsier: 13:19

technology in person traffic cones to be on the tops of these things. Gosh, you know about the timing. But I think I

Paul J Daly: 13:26

think all of these things that we're talking about all of these technologies, if you've been around for five years, even you realize there have been several technologies we've talked about in retail automotive that have been like mini panic moments, oh, man, autonomy is gonna kill us, oh, man agency model is gonna kill us, oh, man, electricity, electrification is gonna kill us. And like, what happens is the rally with every single one of these, they've either stopped altogether, or they've slowed substantially, to come back down to what the rational market is willing to give it. And

Kyle Mountsier: 13:54

it's slow and slow enough for companies like gravity mobility, to really do the hard work on the r&d of what's necessary to do this thing at scale. So I think that that's what that's what we're going to start to see over the next three years is like, instead of just mass hysteria around what's next, it's going to be mass hysteria around the reality of the the timeline that that it takes for r&d to actually get to production mode. And we might actually see some of the advancements that actually are necessary to do things like autonomous driving, or Yes, really charge EVs and we'll start to see the the real transition happen over the next we'll call it three years, because I think the technology will go that quick.

Paul J Daly: 14:35

Funny thing about that competition breeds excellence, excellence goes rewarded. It's a little thing I think I learned in economics class God capitalism. Monday today we will see here bright and early tomorrow.

Unknown: 14:59

Right

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