Two Down One To Go, The Humble Victory Lap, Reviews With Friends

Paul Daly: 0:26

Monday already it's like rainy and cold on most of the east coast but it's sunny on the inside we're talking about two down one to go a very humble victory lap and our new segment reviews with friends not really a new segment it's a story we use the friends

‍Kyle Mountsier: 0:45

that sounds like a great segment for a show it like it could go get take so many turns

Paul Daly: 0:51

it's like Words with Friends but reviews with friends do that.

Kyle Mountsier: 0:57

At one point. At one point we had this idea I think it was Chris had this idea to basically like read bad reviews of car dealerships and we're like this could get real bad

Paul Daly: 1:08

that's what get real bad like read the it's who do what talk show late night talk show hosts they would read like the bad reviews and like a positive or like funny way. Was it Jimmy Fallon?

Kyle Mountsier: 1:16

It was I it had to be Jimmy Fallon. All the best sketches come.

Paul Daly: 1:19

Yeah, that's right. It just does all the good ones now. Oh, man. Well, we're coming in hot to a money really busy week, ending the month right, everyone's in the end of month scramble. Halloween is Tuesday, we released episode two of more than cars a couple of weeks ago and people are just starting to see it. You can go to more than cars.tv. If you want to see episode two that we just dropped recently. For free. You can see what else we're doing.

Kyle Mountsier: 1:48

Well, we had an episode of auto collabs drop last week with Lindsey CF Tony. And today we got camping with the kill ways with our boy Jared kill way. It's a super fun episode. If you watch it via the video, we'll release it at 1pm Eastern on LinkedIn and YouTube. If you're watching the video, you'll notice the reason for the title camping with the keel way. So it's a lot of swelling to Jared always comes with a lot of deep rich information he has experience on the vendor side, the dealer side, and kind of understands how all of those worlds work together. So you're gonna want to check it out, you can go to auto collabs anywhere you get your podcasts and find that

Paul Daly: 2:26

people we don't talk about enough. And it's been a point of conversation for us kind of in the back channels and the soda soda crew is that we have this like web of content that we create. And we've learned that a lot of people are just in one section of it and don't understand the other sections that are going on. So let's break it down for you. If you're listening to this because you know we have a morning show the automotive troublemaker, there's a podcast version. So if you don't hear that go to Apple Music or Spotify or whatever or Samsung free and type in the automotive troublemaker subscribe for us. That'd be great. Leave us a review. If you listen to the show a lot too. We'd love to hear those. We read those respond to those. Um, so there, there's a podcast version, there's a morning livestream video version that also exists. We also have a daily email that goes out. This is the backbone of the asoto verse. You can get it at a sotu.com It is such a fun three to five minute read every day. And every time we go to an event or an na da and our head writer Chris is there. He becomes the instant celebrity.

Kyle Mountsier: 3:26

He's the celebrity for sure. Everybody's like, oh, you write that thing?

Paul Daly: 3:30

Because it's believable. You literally had somebody say I read it before I get out of bed every morning. Because it puts me in the right headspace. It makes me smile. And I feel like I'm caught up. I was like that's the best compliment I think you'll ever get. It's pretty amazing. You're the first words somebody reads We also have other podcasts. The one of the ones is the one Kyle just mentioned called Auto collabs co ll abs in which Kyle myself and Michael Cirillo hosts and have a lot of good time with a lot of dealer guests. Industry Partner guests think that's enough for now, but just so you know, there's a lot going on here. Yeah. What I forget you looking at there's there's a lot more we have a live event,

Kyle Mountsier: 4:16

right now. This is why I just looked funny because on my screen it says that we're not live but all the people on LinkedIn are clearly very live. So we're very live. It's very strange. I don't know how to approach this this morning. It was weird to me.

Paul Daly: 4:32

Oh, man. Well, let's get into some news because that's usually what we do on the automotive troublemaker. We report a little bit of news and try to get in a little bit of trouble. So now we're going into our UA up UAW update that has taken a bit of a turn recently, so let's get into it. This brings me right back. So to down one to go on Saturday, UAW have announced a tentative of agreement with Volantis, which basically mirrors the deal that that Ford struck just last week and promises the revival of an Illinois assembly plant that they closed earlier this year restoring 1200 jobs. So here's a quote from Sean Fane, UAW president. He says on day 44 of our stand up strike, I'm honored to announce that our union is again victorious. Once again, we've achieved just weeks ago, what we were told was impossible. So the four deal they reached last week for almost 25% pay hike over four years, the reintroduction of cost of living adjustments, and assures that top tier salaries to newcomers will happen sooner, basically, sooner not like three years, but more like nine months to a year. So select this deal over the weekend. It echoes the 25% salary increment that was set right now only to restart their doorman Belvedere assembly facility, and they've pledged to direct $19 billion toward fresh us ventures hit it. That's a lot of money. Still answer says, quote, we look forward to welcoming our 43,000 employees back to work and resuming operations. So all in all, I think with the cost of living increases, it's almost a 33% increase over the next four years, which is now there's one left there and then there was one, the strike against GM has been expanded now targeting the Spring Hill, Tennessee engine plant cow just about 3040. Well,

Kyle Mountsier: 6:27

yeah. The headline this morning on the news is UAW strike hits home.

Paul Daly: 6:35

Cars in Nashville, Hill, 40 minutes about South and Nashville. There's also a GM battery plant going up there too, right?

Kyle Mountsier: 6:41

Yes, yeah. And so lots of stuff happening in Tennessee for building because of our time, everything.

Paul Daly: 6:47

Yeah. So basically, the GM, the salary offer that's been put across the table is the same as for instant Lantis. But the the sticking points revolve around retirement benefits and matters concerning temporary workers. That was left to update we had update, like all three instead of just like

Kyle Mountsier: 7:05

the I mean, from Friday till now there was a ton that happened, it's clear that the Ford deal set the bar still ANSYS came, you know, had very, very similar terms. My guess is we're going to see over the next couple of days, especially with the expanded strike that they put into Spring Hill, over the next couple of days, we'll probably see GM come with a very similar offer. And I would expect that sometime near the end of the week, this will change this is the wild one I saw another article that basically assumed the stat that this could impact vehicle cost of manufacturing up to 850 to$900 per year. Whoa right?

Paul Daly: 7:43

When that's something that hasn't been

Kyle Mountsier: 7:46

that cost Hood who you think I'm pretty sure

Paul Daly: 7:49

the board will just absorb it into the company's expense structure? I

Kyle Mountsier: 7:53

think so that thing is coming straight out.

Paul Daly: 7:56

Those pocketbooks America loosen up

Kyle Mountsier: 7:59

the Pocket Books Yeah, I mean, it's gonna go straight to that. You know, the other the other fact is that is that it's it looks like that these manufacturers are still losing money hand over fist on evey production and Evie sales. And so balancing balancing the p&l right now with the increased labor output going to be an interesting take us

Paul Daly: 8:23

circus performer straight up circus performer to balance that one. Well, speaking of losing money on EVs. It's a good segue.

Kyle Mountsier: 8:31

At that Halloween segue, let's go

Paul Daly: 8:33

thanks Brian Ortega for the Halloween segway he's the master segway creator. So 14 year CEO of Toyota and current chairman of Kia Toyota said quote, There are many ways to climb the mountain that is achieving carbon neutrality at a Japan Auto Show, as he emphasized EVs might not be the only solution. And frankly, this is kind of I'm calling it the humble victory lap every picture that I've seen of him whether it's on Wall Street Journal or auto news, or whatever, he's got this massive smile on his face and his arms are wide open. Why come the daddy who don't do so he's not the bragging type though, as consistently champion the potential of hybrid gas cars as a bridging technology over to full EVs very hesitant and so the big three now obviously we talked about it last week are pulling back because there's a major lowland Evie demand the strange things happen when the customers don't want the things that you're making you adjust your strategy a Honda VW recently dissolved its partnership with GM where they were trying to build cobuild a low cost Evie meanwhile, Toyota say and and they're just like dropping another bomb and like I told you so in this in that they said we're really close to announcing a breakthrough in solid state battery technology which basically will allow them to produce batteries that have a 700 to 1000 mile range with the same amount of materials. And at the same speed as current battery technology like Toyota never bet against Toyota.

Kyle Mountsier: 9:59

You Yeah, never. Like this is something that we've been talking about for a hot minute, especially coming off of the Toyota dealer meeting a couple months ago, we talked to a couple of Toyota dealers that said, Toyota continue to lean into the fact that they've been in the electric space for a very long time with hybrids, and that they see it as the roadmap to carbon neutrality. And actually, that understanding, you know, that a lot of these articles over the weekend have pointed to Toyotas questioning, like, what actually is carbon neutrality? And how do we get there? And what things have the biggest impact? And why should we go there? I actually saw this article that was that was talking a little bit about how, like, we need carbon dioxide in, in the world, in order to fuel plants. In order to get oxygen back. We have to provide the world with carbs. Isn't that unbelievable? Like, it's like this weird dichotomy of funny thing about how an ecosystem works. It's, It's so wild. So there's still a lot to be said here. But I appreciate that, you know, and we love that we've been talking about this for a minute it does.

Paul Daly: 11:11

I wonder what the Japanese word for moron is? Because I could just, I can just see, like, when all these conversations and they're like, no, no, no, no. Here's the data like, here's how many, like batteries hybrids, we can produce with the same amount of lithium as one. And that's way less carbon, right? And everyone's like, no, and they're like, whatever. And then they under their breath under the Japanese word for morons. Yeah,

Kyle Mountsier: 11:33

I also want to say this. And some people may not know this, and I want to do more research on the solid state battery, battery. But one thing that is true about solid state as well, is the charging time also is reduced. Yes. And so you get like a quarter half to all the way up to a quarter of the time necessary to charge the full capacity for a solid state battery. Yep. And so like, it would be a game changer to see almost double mileage of what we're currently getting with lithium batteries, and being able

Paul Daly: 12:06

to massive unlock if all of a sudden, you're charging for seven to 13 minutes. Yep, to get to 70% 80% charge that is a total total unlock. Speaking of total unlocks, yeah,

Kyle Mountsier: 12:18

that's a good segue. Come on, we'll get Monday. Let's go. Hey, Amazon's newest integration is in their shopping app. And it dives deeper into what they're calling social shopping with its latest feature consults a friend that lets users request and manage feedback from friends and family directly in the app loving, the director of Amazon shopping, eliminate all have our messenger ironic name. Sometimes it helps to get says sometimes it helps to get a little advice from your friends or family. But when it comes to online shopping, it can be hard to keep track of feedback from multiple people across messaging apps. Surveys have shown that consistently, the power of personal recommendations help in shopping study studies, we're finding that 34% of Gen Z adults trust family recommendations, followed by 31% Trusting friends. So people are looking for that recommendation, looking for that second bid on whether or not I should purchase this thing. And they're starting to consolidate that feedback loop into the app, the way that you get it, if you're like, I'd love to try this out, you have to go on, you have to actually toggle on the consult a friend thing in the Amazon app, and then your your friend or family member would get a link, they would be sent back into the app where they can actually look at the products that you're looking for them to recommend. And you can give them a little emoji or back and forth. So that could be something cool to

Paul Daly: 13:45

touch. I think it was huge. I mean, especially around the holidays. I mean, we just had a birthday, for our little fool now four year old and so it's always that conversation with the parent, the grandparents are like, what are they gonna like, right? And it'd be able to have some conversation around that a lot of times, too. You're looking for something shopping on the platform. And you're like, Oh, how about this part for my car? How about this outfit? And to be able to, like, easily ship that? And Amazon's super smart about this, because they're saying how can we get the conversation to happen in our ecosystem? Because guess what else they're going to learn what everybody thinks about this stuff. They're just literally going to, and

Kyle Mountsier: 14:22

then they're gonna know that next person, just boom, people

Paul Daly: 14:24

like you by things like this. And I think and then that little, I mean, they snuck it in the article there, but a new create feature. Yeah, allowing content creators to now make content around the reviews. Usually those videos are buried in the reviews, but they have some kind of stream that you can serve up to people like a social media feed.

Kyle Mountsier: 14:43

Well, have you seen it? No, it is legit. It's actually like I looked at it. So like if you go to there's a there's a whole feed that's almost like the tick tock of Amazon that shows like actual creators viewing opening products and then now they can tag that product. So You can deep link straight to the product that they're talking about. It's like this whole ecosystem that's wrapped up. I'll say this. I was recently looking for a little piece of, you know, furniture for the office in here. And I watched three videos, just of like how it was built, how it was made, what it looked like when this person was standing next to it in a room things. Oh, I mean, it is

Paul Daly: 15:22

that helps you make a decision. Absolutely. Oh, Amazon, never sleep on Amazon. But they know what's up. They're getting more data, more data. Hey, we hope that you have an amazing day. Today. Lots of stuff going on, but it's Halloween Week. It's a Monday time you're gonna love some people more than you love cars. We'll see you tomorrow.

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