Top 10 Stories of 2023

Paul J Daly: 0:27

This is it, man. We've made it. The last regular podcast of the year. This is our third last podcast of the year heading into New Year's. We're talking about automotive news top 10 stories of 2023 people and to commemorate the day, when they have the one of one asoto head on. Wow. And one of one, they did a test and I was like that was supposed to be black on black. And they were like, Oh, you can keep this one. The only one that exists like that. And also sad is

‍Kyle Mountsier: 0:58

I should have gotten that one because it was like in Nashville, but I can't fit in it. There's not a chance

Paul J Daly: 1:05

for that big brain and a hat like this. And I also have this number three. Oh, lights. Actually I thought the lights work.

Kyle Mountsier: 1:11

Oh, hey, number three. Number three. So actually, this would have been three years ago, this episode would have been the last episode three years. Exactly go today would have been the last episode we ran without video. Like if you want to go back to home her early troublemaker days scroll all the way back at those first few months. They were in the podcast.

Paul J Daly: 1:34

Yeah, the audio version. By the way. If you don't get the audio version that you just checked out the live stream, go to Spotify or Apple Music and just download subscribe, download, leave a comment, leave a rating, all the things the

Kyle Mountsier: 1:46

music, you can actually go and search. So do all of our podcasts will show up right there. So

Paul J Daly: 1:51

if you just search that's really nice. And you'll be like, Oh my gosh, they have three four or five different podcasts.

Kyle Mountsier: 1:57

We have a few Paul didn't even know on we got I don't know. I guess we know

Paul J Daly: 2:01

we record a lot. I know we record a lot. But hey, heading into the new year we know that dealers are in full speed ahead mode. Our dealers Open New Year's Day. Some are you know,

Kyle Mountsier: 2:11

I think it's some like there's some open on New Year's Eve. There's some open on New Year's Day. There's some clothes boat, there's some clothes

Paul J Daly: 2:17

of yours is gonna be real weird. It's a Sunday.

Kyle Mountsier: 2:19

It's a Sunday. Yeah. What do you do with that? What do you do with that?

Paul J Daly: 2:22

I don't know. I don't know. But listen, it has been an amazing year. Together. The community has grown a ton we've met so many new people we get aside from what you see on on like social media and in the comments. It's like an iceberg. You only see this tiny little bit. We are constantly inundated with calls text message people sending us photos and videos and things that are happening in dealers across the country, things that are inspiring people, things that are helping people be better practitioners the results of those things. And I don't know just a lot of gratitude for it and knowing that I think 2024 is the year the thing just kind of comes off the hook because it's our third full year.

Kyle Mountsier: 3:02

Yeah, we're you know, we're about to the whole theme of today is going through Automotive News put out their top 10 stories of 2023. And their macro stories like their big things that happened in the industry that had a slightly more broad impact on on on most people in the industry, or at least like are known. But what we know is that the micro stories, the little things that happen daily the life change because a mentor saw it fit to have a mentee that now grew in from starting as a salesperson to being a general manager and they got to celebrate with that phone call and seeing life change through communities in that way. That's the heartbeat of this thing. It is all of this you you know the UAW stuff and the the big deals and all of that they all they all actually pale in comparison to the importance of what's happening on the ground every single day. I think

Paul J Daly: 3:54

we need to use as many trigger pads as possible. Let's when going through this list, right? You're going through the list. Segue. Alright, if you haven't heard this one, you're listening to UAW updates. Number One On The List top news story, no surprise, the UAW strike UAW calling the first simultaneous strike against all three automakers and that was an eight weeks, the eight weeks that ensued of ups and downs. And Shawn Fain, who is a new character in the automotive story, made a quick impacted quick rise and in the end, I mean, I feel like it ended in a really good way. Yeah,

Kyle Mountsier: 4:38

and ended up worked out for everybody. Some people got a big raises and the automakers you know, didn't lose their completely their pants like they thought where they were going and they're thinking of losing completely your pants. I

Paul J Daly: 4:53

don't know what to do with that. But but we I think we have this trigger pad is this one I hear in the 20s have

Kyle Mountsier: 5:03

a lot of hopes for

Paul J Daly: 5:04

the year 2030 Yeah, that

Kyle Mountsier: 5:06

you mean, back story number two, seeing EVs were climbing, but in the second half of the year, they've kind of pulled back a bunch of dealerships, led by our new friend Mickey Anderson, who we've had on a couple of podcasts, you can search his name and find him lead 4000 dealerships to right President Joe Biden in the administration that hey, look, this thing slowing down the tax credits, they're not working like they were designed to we might want to pump the brakes on this whole Evie for every one thing.

Paul J Daly: 5:36

Speaking of EVs for everyone. So that brings us into our third study, Evie tax credits are the number three. Look, the IRS has apparently set up a system that will allow dealers to issue the credits and get the credits transferred to them at the point of sale and be reimbursed within 72 hours. So we'll see. I mean, this is going to be a story that I'm sure we'll be talking about the second week of January. But we'll see how accurate that 72 hour timeline is. But Evie tax credits are going to still be a driving force behind why people would purchase an Eevee speaking of driving or not.

Kyle Mountsier: 6:12

Segway so the next one was the cruise crisis. So if you don't know about cruise, it was a a autonomous vehicle project that was being kind of baited in California. It was suspended recently, because a pedestrian got injured, and they didn't know who to kind of place blame on. So then CEO chi vote vote resigned, and then a bunch of other leaders got laid off. 24% of cruise employees see a buy. And the project is a little bit on the backburner. So all of this billions of dollars going into autonomous vehicles starting to get a little bit dicey.

Paul J Daly: 6:55

Goodness is getting dicey and as a result of that as a result of the UAW compromise and contract, all the other automakers are very quick to give their manufacturing employees sizable raises to match or exceed what the UAW did. Sean fain obviously made it very clear that it is his mission to unionize every non union automaker. So obviously making inroads in Chattanooga, Tennessee at the VW plant also a lot of other places. Meanwhile, we have folks like Elon Musk saying he doesn't believe in the idea of unions, but also saying, if our people want to unionize, it means we've done something wrong. So that's obviously going to play on

Kyle Mountsier: 7:42

famous going for the bump set spike on the rest of the autumn. And it was a good bump.

Paul J Daly: 7:47

It was a good bump. Can you think of a bump, but Oh, segway? It's a good this is a good kind of bump.

Kyle Mountsier: 7:55

I had a conversation with David speedback a couple of days ago, and he said, it's amazing how slow things take, but how fast they are. That's exactly what the rebound is of inventory. And in. In this last year, we had what seemed like it was never going to come and then just came all the sudden in an inventory rebound. But that made us new vehicle sales jumped 14% in the first nine months of the year, despite the interest rate headwinds that we face as an industry so hey, we got some inventory back speaking

Paul J Daly: 8:30

of having inventory back stock, or having inventory, or having lots of everything and lots the number seven story is Lithia taking place, taking its place as the number one dealership group located in the US on the Automotive News dealership list, when it purchased made its UK European purchase of Jardine motors and pen dragon moving the company closer to their goal of what is it $50 billion,

Kyle Mountsier: 8:59

billion dollars by

Paul J Daly: 9:01

it is the money by 2025. So they got like one year left.

Kyle Mountsier: 9:06

I'm pretty confident. Well, actually, I

Paul J Daly: 9:07

guess depending on the semantics, they have two years. Yeah,

Kyle Mountsier: 9:11

I'm pretty confident they're going to make that happen. Brian is not slowing down at acquiring things. Oh, the

Paul J Daly: 9:17

hard part's over. The hard part's over. Yeah, it is it is speaking of the hard part being over.

Kyle Mountsier: 9:26

Well, we've talked about him a couple times already. But earlier in the year, Shawn fain won the UAW presidency by just a narrow margin, ousting incumbent re curry in a runoff. And he took the office by telling his constituents to quote prepare for war against the automakers which he declared to be not the, the, you know, the people we need to collaborate with. But the enemy Yeah. So you know, I

Paul J Daly: 9:56

remember his shirt that said, don't tax the rich. Eat the rich Eat the rich, the rich, I don't have a segway for there's no segue just squash that opportunity down into the ground. The number nine story as we round out industry is adopting has adopted Tesla's Evie charging standard. The last pin fell not too long ago like this last week with VW saying like, yeah, I guess we'll do a two, Ford was the first one the top one then they just went one after another after another. Toyota gave it a big boost, a big boost. But now Tesla charging standard is going to be the standard moving forward Tesla obviously opening its Supercharger network up to lots of other manufacturers. So 2024 is probably going to be a year where we just see a lot more uniformity and charging and like solves a legitimate problem to evey adoption. Yep, absolutely.

Kyle Mountsier: 10:45

One more solving a legitimate problem. Segway the last segway the year now know if you can call it a problem. But it is an online shopping problem that Hyundai and Amazon are hoping to solve with their new partnership allowing Hyundai dealers to sell new vehicles through the Amazon platform and then progress that deal right through to the dealer. And there's a lot of hope that other automakers are going to follow suit. At least a hope from Amazon. There's there's a lot of wonder out there whether or not this is great for the dealer network. We've got our own opinions. Looks like another third party inventory site that may have a little bit more shopping behavior attached to it but either way time to get prepared for the big dogs coming to your town

Paul J Daly: 11:32

competitions. Good for everybody. That's how we did it. Podcasting the rap three, four years. It was tiring, but we're gonna take a break and we're gonna see you back here in 2024 ready to take over the world.