Toyota and Science, GM Making It Rain, Gen Alpha Incoming

‍SUMMARY KEYWORDS

gm, lithium, hybrids, people, talking, youtuber, eevee, president, yesterday, suave, kyle, approach, vehicles, price, purchasing decisions, toyota, gen x, measured, generation, nada

SPEAKERS

Kyle Mountsier, Paul Daly

Paul Daly  00:29

Hey now, February 1, dude, January's over. It's done. It's gone. Today we're talking about Toyota and science GM making it rain and Gen Alpha coming in the people who isn't who I mean,

Kyle Mountsier  00:46

we were just having once every six months ago, everyone was like millennial.

Paul Daly  00:52

It was just six months. You know, you and I were just having this conversation before we started the show today that I'm technically Gen X. But benchmark like more like a millennial because of my embrace the technology you said. And then I started thinking about the Gen X span of a start thinking about 20 years is like, does that mean Brian benstock and I are on opposite ends of Gen X? Is that really true? That was born in 79. It's like, is that really true? I think it's true. I think, you know, what I think it means is that I'm getting old. Boys, man, that means man Gen X now it's like two generations. And it's like, you know, I got teenagers in my house that are going out. Yeah, it's it's the thing happened. Like people always joke like, what did they? What? How did my dad's picture get on my driver's license?

Kyle Mountsier  01:42

Oh, no. Yeah, I know. That's coming. It's so common. Man.

Paul Daly  01:48

I just realized I have no idea what your dad looks like.

Kyle Mountsier  01:52

So, yeah, so I definitely index toward my mom's side of the family. So like, okay, probably won't ever end up with my dad's picture on my driver's license. Okay, my uncle like, you could literally just be like, here's Kyle, you showed the driver's license like, yep, that's the guy. He's just six inches shorter than Kyle. That's about it.

Paul Daly  02:12

That's amazing. Well, you got the height you got the height man.

Kyle Mountsier  02:15

And I'll take it because my uncle is so suave dude. Full on swab. Dude. Smart as I like it. Yeah. Smile ticket. Suave

Paul Daly  02:22

is the word we don't use enough. We don't use the word suave enough. My voice is still gone.

Kyle Mountsier  02:28

I'm not all the way there. Like I seem to the kids every night before bed. Just a little, you know, little ditty and I like I hit it in falsetto, just to make it a little light. Right? Just a little head voice action. If you know what I'm talking about. Even musician doesn't and I've been I've been like, Alright, I'm gonna start down here. It's time to get some sleep. Totally different song. Basically,

Paul Daly  02:49

I think I'd probably be recovered. Now if it wasn't for watching the Eagles game with a couple of folks from Siaka Subaru in a bar and out like, I just literally decided at there. I was like, you know, it's time for me to scream a little bit. And it was a bad idea. But I

Kyle Mountsier  03:03

don't I gotta I gotta tell you one more thing about our morning while we're while we're hanging out talking about random stuff. Just this is wild. Ready? Last night at six ish. Nashville called a snow day. Everybody in Nashville. You know how much snow there was? That much? Zero. A little bit of freezing rain. And it was a little icy on the wood on the wood deck. But other than that, chill. The kids were like, what's the snow day without snow?

Paul Daly  03:32

Yeah, that is pretty life, right? Like, at least if it's a snow day, we go out and make snow ball or to

Kyle Mountsier  03:38

even study. It's like dark, cloudy and nasty rain.

Paul Daly  03:41

better day to have a school they get out of school. I know. I know. I know. Welcome. Syracuse is gonna be like negative eight this weekend. So we're straight up in February now. All right, let's talk about a little bit of news. We'll get into it. Hey, by the way, if you don't subscribe to our daily email, we hope that you will because while we were at nada, dozens of people are coming up to us saying I love the email. It's the first thing I read before I get out of bed I read it all the way to the bottom. So it was super super cool. Getting all of this feedback direct feedback about the email so we think that you'll enjoy it not because we said so. But because all the people that came up and said it's one of the best things I read every day so

Kyle Mountsier  04:23

your take my phone out when they were saying that

Paul Daly  04:25

say that again? Oh my gosh, we had all of those on early really was it really was a thing. And it how did we miss that opportunity?

Kyle Mountsier  04:34

I believe I got I get so encouraged by that. And I get encouraged by our daily email. I read it. I'm like, Man, this is good. Okay, that's a funny joke. Okay, I'll take that, you know?

Paul Daly  04:43

Oh, for sure. Michael Cirillo bounces in the comments. He says y'all Miss Snowmageddon to Cornell in Dallas by a single day. That's true, man like full ground stop yesterday.

Kyle Mountsier  04:54

Unbeliev Yeah, 900 1900 flights out. Gonzo

Paul Daly  04:58

you imagine if that was on? One day. What a mess. What a mess. She said they pull full ground stop. They just don't want anybody to slip.

Kyle Mountsier  05:06

Right. So exactly. So here we go. All right. All right. Let's get into get into it. All right, hey, looks every once in a while, we just gotta have some fun everybody. Okay, now,

Paul Daly  05:16

part of this right if we're going to be the essential automotive community, like community isn't based around news communities based around personal things around one another and what you're up to what you're doing. Alright, so today we are talking about Toyota again, this morning as their Chief Scientist, Gill Pratt made a presentation at the World Economic Forum, that poses a very scientific argument about how a hybrid path to electrification will make a significantly more positive impact on carbon emissions than an Eevee only approach. So here's how it goes. His argument starts with 100 Ice vehicles, and they produce 250 grams of carbon or co2 per kilometer, right, okay, 100 vehicles,

Kyle Mountsier  05:57

I got it 100 vehicles, 250 102 per kilometer,

Paul Daly  06:01

250 per mile, then he assumes a fair assumption that there's a limited supply of lithium, right? That's the bail cows getting the paper in the pen, here we go. He's, he, he assumes there's a limited supply of lithium, which we all know there is which we can tell, they're going to be promptly sold. And we got visual aids now from Kyle. Thank you. Thank you. Um, so then he says, The limited supply of lithium, which he says is 100 kilowatt hours, can only power fully electric produce one full Eevee out of the 100. So now we have 99 Ice vehicles, one EV. And now basically, that still produces 248.5 grams of co2, which is you remember, is only 2.5, Less 1.5 Less? grams, they have another visual aid. So we started out with 250 grams. Now we use all our lithium on one, Evie. Yeah, I've produced. Yeah, wait five US grams of carbon. Now he says if we spread that same amount of lithium around and make hybrid batteries and turn, we can turn 90 of those 100 vehicles and hybrid vehicles producing only 205 grams of carbon. So it's almost over a 30% reduction. So he says, Look,

Kyle Mountsier  07:16

if we take what he's saying is 205 is less than 250. Is that what we're trying? Is that by a lot right there by a lot, five is less than 250. Okay, no, no, no, he

Paul Daly  07:31

say 205. He's saying 205 is less than 248? Five. Yeah, that's what he's saying.

Kyle Mountsier  07:37

I am deal.

Paul Daly  07:38

So basically he and so he says, Look, he's like, look, we're gonna spread this lithium around and do it effectively. If we really care about reducing carbon really care about that, then we're gonna go with a hybrid approach. Now Toyota isn't like saying we're not going to produce any fully V's. They are, they're going to have an all electric future with their Lexus line. But when the hybrids come into play, they plan to sell five and a half million hybrids by Oh, 520.

Kyle Mountsier  08:07

We did it, we made a logical conclusion to get to 2030.

Paul Daly  08:13

So they plan to sell five and a half million plug in hybrids by the year 2030. More than double last year's complete global output of 2.6 million.

Kyle Mountsier  08:23

Wow. Is there is there? Is there a quadruple crown anywhere? I got the trip down yesterday, we're just gonna throw in the quadruple crown for them today. Man,

Paul Daly  08:34

Sherry Stevens, thank you for the comment data for the win. It's amazing. No one calculated this before. But you know, it's hard to calculate things when like the pop culture train is about to run over here. Just steamroll. And every time you just gotta get off the tracks. Man.

Kyle Mountsier  08:50

This is a measured approach. We've we've talked about the measured approach of Toyota with their ex President CEO Toivo da now moving to Chairman, he's, he's been very he's been an advocate saying yesterday, he was the silent majority on this move to full electrification. And now for us to see the data that they've probably had sitting in their C suite meetings for quite some time behind that. I mean, for me, it's like, Alright, look at that the rest of the OEMs how do we take measured approaches to get there? I don't think that a full Evie future is out of the question. I just think that we have to push it out and make sure and take these measured approaches understand how lithium impacts understand how production and mining and all of that happens. But this is this is the way to approach change in manufacturing. That along with Toyota already knowing the market shifts in desirability of hybrids like they've proven out the model that people want hybrids, with their sales with their global sales numbers. Yep. Welcome to the thing, y'all.

Paul Daly  09:55

Well, I got I got we're gonna we're gonna loop this back in two hours. Alfa conversation at the end? We are but you know, but we're talking about a little manufacture news right? We're just getting out of the Nada. So speaking of manufacturing, segue go yo GM GM coming out swinging q4 profits posted 2 billion with a B, as the supply chain loosens up GNz GM Exec. Oh, by the way, let me pause right there. If you don't know, we produce show notes for the show every day with the links to the articles that we posted. So if you get a little confused on the last one, just go to Spotify or Apple podcast, click subscribe on the podcast. You can check the audio version out later if you're on the live stream and etc. But you can also go in and click on the show notes, which can get you back to some of this that we hope you use in conversations with your team and with vendors, etc, etc. So q4 profits 2 billion for GM. From the article GM executives told analysts the company doesn't plan to get drawn into a price war on electric vehicles yesterday talked about Ford lowering its prices on SmartKey to Tesla, you know, but they say right now we feel like we're priced where we need to be so CEO Mary Barra on an earnings call, GM is planning several new Eevee launches this year, including the blazer, which is similar size to Tesla Model y and the Ford Maki, both priced below 36,000. So it feels like they already had the margin thing figured out and they're like we don't even know price gets it's still 20 grand. Even right, the price cuts and you can get your $7,500 off. So that's like is it just me or is the same like full EVs under 30? Grand? Yeah. What's the Chevy Bolt already? 30

Kyle Mountsier  11:37

grand under 30 grand? Exactly. And this is like this is the argument that they're making is, hey, look, we've got this figured out, we can be in a competitive price point. And I think the competitive price point is what takes a larger adoption in our in in Evie vehicles. And so right, I think you're gonna, we're gonna have to see more people doing this and the fact that they've already got vehicles aligned with those price points. And other manufacturers like Tesla and Ford are attempting to get there with steep price reductions. Did have I said measured approach this morning? Oh, we

Paul Daly  12:13

need we need a trigger path for that soon. GM also announced yesterday Oh, and by the way, we're investing $650 million in a mining company to jointly develop a lithium extraction project in Nevada. So maybe we can go visit it when we're at NAD next year.

Kyle Mountsier  12:30

Ah, yeah, that'd

Paul Daly  12:30

be fun. That'd be a lot of fun. We should do a live show from a lithium extraction model from extraction point. Maybe they'll let us drive one of those really, really big excavators.

Kyle Mountsier  12:42

They wouldn't let me in one of those. I can tell you that. Right. Well,

Paul Daly  12:44

they might let you in the back. Oh, all right. So

Kyle Mountsier  12:50

here we go. I'm excited about this, I'm

Paul Daly  12:52

just gonna get adopted. Alright, so we talked about Jennifer, etc, etc, etc. There's a great conversation going on on retail wire. And the question posed, is it time for retailers and dealers, we would say because dealers are retailers they just start paying attention to generation alpha as they influence purchasing decisions and begin to enter their teenage years. So generation Alpha started in 2010 That's the you know, the beginning if you were born after 2010 and you're alive right now, your generation alpha, it will go till 2025 and are expecting this to be one of the largest generations ever a 2 billion people so Wow. Talk about the research cow.

Kyle Mountsier  13:31

All right. So last year, from Cassandra by big village they found out 64% to seven of seven to 12 year olds so in that range this is rather be rather this is messed up. Rather it's amazing would rather be a social media influencer than President of the United States. Now when asking asking how they introduce themselves 58% of that pool said they that said that they were a gamer and then here's the one that really really this this gets me right here. 82% agreed that they can figure most things out if they have access to technology,

Paul Daly  14:09

which is so much to break down here. There's so much to break down number one so much. Let's let's start at the top. Okay, rather be YouTuber that the President knighted states Kyle, have you seen the President of the United States? Does it look like he's having any fun? Not having any of Have you seen Mr. Beast?

Kyle Mountsier  14:30

They haven't so much. Mr. priest gave away 1000 cataract surgeries the other day. Like everybody wants to be that guy.

Paul Daly  14:38

Not very shocking. To me. Like, who wants to be the President of the United States? Let's see a picture. Let's hear some video clips. Now let's who wants to be a YouTuber? Let's see some videos. Let's see. So, yeah, and then kids, man, kids these days. Kids, you hear I go kids these days, right? They use the word billion I'm more than I did it until I was like in my 30s

Kyle Mountsier  15:03

Yeah, absolutely. That it's just it's almost commonplace,

Paul Daly  15:07

you know, and I would I would also add this. I think it's not going to be too long before we have a president, who is also a YouTube influencer. I mean, look that doesn't that just make sense? Like if Donald Trump makes a president as as like a, like a TV celebrity, and like a businessman, why, like makes sense, if someone turns their YouTube influence, like somebody who's really thinking through problems, who's in touch with pop culture, that they would be able to convert that into like, hey, you know what, I'm very informed. And like, it's the last it's the last thing that you said, like, most people say that they could figure most things at 2%. So they can figure most things out if they have access to technology. So I think it's pretty probable that we'll get a very thoughtful, well informed, well rounded, heavily, heavily influential person who happens to be YouTube influencer that makes it run for president. You heard it here, first folks

Kyle Mountsier  16:01

come in, and I can see it, I can see such a clear line to that happening. I mean, just the like, just the attention and voting power that the that people that are paying attention to Mr. Beast alone, right now. You know, it's it's absolutely incredible.

Paul Daly  16:20

Alright, let's get the wheels to the ground for everybody who's working in automotive today. Yeah, right. Are you paying attention to generation alpha, right? That means like your 12 year old your 11 year old your 10 year olds, do you think they're influencing purchasing decisions? You already know that they are? Because you see them in their stores? So how can you start to actually court them as your future employees as people who are going to know who you are, know what your brand is what you stand for, because they expect to be involved in there. They're active participants in the purchasing decision. They're not passive. You know, and so they expect a lot of things. They focus on mental health more than any other generation because they grew up in a pandemic. They grew up through social unrest, you know, rhetoric around ecological crises. They expect diversity, equity and inclusion as just a normal part of life. Right, right. It's not it's just a thing that

Kyle Mountsier  17:10

is a part of life for them. Yep. Yeah. So somebody

Paul Daly  17:15

was Delgado puts in the comments Joe Rogan, that's it's not a little bit of a delay. So I think he's talking about a YouTuber.

Kyle Mountsier  17:22

Joe Rogan? Yeah, I won't call him a YouTuber, though. He's not a YouTuber, and he makes enough people mad. You know what I mean? Yeah, one expert here recommended a VP of pop culture for companies. I think that especially some of the larger groups are going to probably see some sort of like position dedicated to understanding what the culture is doing, how it's flexing how that impacts, hiring decisions, attracting new talent, even the way that we communicate as brands is is important, right? If if, if brands, if the large brands that are growing in popularity are communicating on YouTube, and Reddit threads and discord, and their growing audiences based on that, then organizations are going to have to communicate in that same way. And then you're going to have to double down on that in showroom experiences, online experiences and understand how all those threads are tied together.

Paul Daly  18:14

So true. So true. Bottom line, pay attention, and have fun. You do both of those things. Don't you think? I think well, we're paying attention. We're paying attention and we're having fun. So to share. And Shelley and Michael and Brian and Luis are Lewis whoever was commenting to thread thank you today. Tell your friends about what's going on over here because we need them in the conversation to bear it out.

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