Are Dealers The Holdup To Selling EVs?, Fake V8 Exhaust, Charging Connector Combo Pack

Paul J Daly: 0:06

Coming in hot Monday, August 12. Run the show a little bit early today, but that's great. We're gonna have some people, some early people, miss the lay people. We have some fun stuff talking about today, including fake exhaust sounds. Wow. I know like, how do you start the week? Fake exhaust

‍Kyle Mountsier: 0:24

sounds when they see me. Most ridiculous thing,

Paul J Daly: 0:28

we're in the summer drought. Like I still in the summer drought. Everybody's busy selling cars. OEMs are busy repositioning for September.

Kyle Mountsier: 0:37

They're all like, how do how do we get our OEM meetings done. And yeah, right, tell the dealer something, but not too much. And right,

Paul J Daly: 0:44

you know someone to disrupt them. I know. I know. I know you do anything good over the weekend.

Kyle Mountsier: 0:51

Man, I don't we just mow your lawn. No, no, yeah, I Yes, yes, you know, I'm getting a couple things done in the yard. And so, like, I don't even need to mow my lawn right now. There's like, a few weeds out front, but I can't do anything with them. So what we did, you know, you go to the pool, yeah, you know, school this week?

Paul J Daly: 1:12

Oh, that blows my mind every time it happens, every single year, every year, just like how kids start school in August is, like, a weird thing for me, because we're still three weeks out, still three weeks out. I know I don't get it. Well, I do get it. You know, here it's gonna be snow. It's gonna snow in four weeks. So that's the thing. Sure the kids get there.

Kyle Mountsier: 1:33

Let them have a little bit of extra summer, Paul, let them have

Paul J Daly: 1:37

just let them don't steal their joy. It cooled down a little bit over the like we had our first night that was, like in the six, like 60 degrees, maybe high 50, when it was gorge, dude, I

Kyle Mountsier: 1:48

ran in 63 degree weather this morning. It was magical. Great, didn't

Paul J Daly: 1:52

it's

Kyle Mountsier: 1:52

the Christmas weather. You know?

Paul J Daly: 1:56

It's perfect. Hey, is this auto collabs note? Correct? Oh yes, correct. We got, without a doubt, auto collabs episode launching today, our other podcast, auto collabs. We talk and have a lot of fun, actually, with a lot of industry partners and dealers. Going a little deeper. We're talking about seeing and knowing the person behind the click. How about that with Tina bottle dealer on it's, it's, we had a lot of fun on this, this one. I mean, we say that a lot, but this is really kind of like one of those sporty like Tina. Tina can go back and forth. We had a fun.

Kyle Mountsier: 2:30

She's having. She's a, she's one of our people. You know what I mean is one of our people. Yeah, three next week, we're, we're going to be all over the country. We're in DC, just outside of DC. We're going to be at the Reynolds event. I think there's still the ability. To get tickets to this thing is the auto mode of amplifiers event. And we're going to be moderating a little session about how dealers are changing the game in their showrooms, in the community. So we're excited about that. May May whip out the old golf club. We'll see how that happens and and then we're headed and then we go straight down the coast, all the way to the tippy tippy bottom. Welcome to Miami. Welcome to Miami with name ad. And look, if you've not been to name ad before one you can't get any tickets because they sell out, right? But next year, you got to put it on the calendar, because the name ad event is full tilt. We'll be there for a few days hanging out friend Damon Lester Damian Mills, whole crew, it's gonna be great.

Paul J Daly: 3:24

It's gonna be so good. All right, let's get into some news. So this was on Friday, I believe, Steve Greenfield made a post about the new Dodge Chargers, fake exhaust sounds, and it sparked quite the debate. Dodge's new electric charger. Daytona is all about maintaining the classic muscle car vibes, even with an electric engine, or, I guess we'll call it electric motor. Dodge wants to ensure the car like sound like it sounds like it has a roaring v8 under the hood, and they've introduced the frat Sonic chambered exhaust I like how it's got the word fret in it, because it just feels like a frat boy vehicle. The Fred Sonic chambered exhaust system to make it happen. Steve greenfields post basically said, basically said, I didn't. I literally don't know how to feel about this. Part of me wants to be really excited. Part of me wants to be repugnated. Maybe that's the goal question mark. It's basically wants to mimic the sound of the v8 using a combination of high tech transducers, passive radiators and amplifiers to create the sound. It adjusts with driving conditions, ladder with throttle input and varying based on the cars driving mode, while it replicates the v8 sound, some find it lacking in authenticity, but we're going to let you decide, because we have a clip of it right here. Let's

Unknown: 4:33

see it.

Paul J Daly: 4:34

Let's do let's run the clip and listen. Here. It comes out of a tunnel. You okay, uh huh. Now this is the road noise from the back of the vehicle.

Kyle Mountsier: 4:53

Yeah, you know.

Paul J Daly: 4:54

Here's the vehicle doing donuts. Donuts. I. Uh, interesting.

Kyle Mountsier: 5:03

And here's it, just sitting idling, waiting little idol. That little like, low rumble. I hear it. No exhaust

Paul J Daly: 5:09

pipe in the picture. Here's the start. What that was the start up sounded like. That's the shutdown. Oh,

Kyle Mountsier: 5:22

it's like a sad, slow death.

Paul J Daly: 5:24

I feel like it's a spaceship from, you know, like, Guardians of the Galaxy. I don't know it's,

Kyle Mountsier: 5:31

yeah, it sounds like it should have some, like, landing sequence attached to it. Yes. I also, like the the reality, the thing that gets me is the kind of just very, very constant noise. Like,

Paul J Daly: 5:46

it was weird during the donuts. It was weird

Kyle Mountsier: 5:48

during the donuts. Thing you get with that engine is kind of that, like, like ebb and flow, like popping up and down and things like that. And this thing, just like, has a noise. I actually, I don't know, I cannot remember the movie, but there was a movie probably back in the like, late 90s, early 2000s where they were made. Do you remember this movie? They were like, making cars, and then this guy was like, I made this holy electric car. But don't worry, it's gonna sound exactly like a regular car that

Paul J Daly: 6:16

was in a movie. Yeah. Where was that?

Kyle Mountsier: 6:20

I feel like, oh, man, I'm killing myself. But then so I was looking this up. When I read the story this morning, I was looking this up, and I found like, a litany of YouTube videos of YouTubers making fun of potentially having electric cars in movies, and like, oh, then having to put the sound in and post, yeah, just so that they can make it feel like, imagine, like, massive chase scene,

Paul J Daly: 6:45

the little hum noise. I'm okay. I'm split on this. I think that I like the idea of having it I feel like it's a novelty, though. I feel like, you show you it's a party trick, right? You're gonna show your friends. Yeah, you're not gonna have it on because, like, why bother if you drive an EV, it's kind of fun, right? So it's kind of something that addressed a very vocal concern of, you know, Dodge Charger drivers, where it's like, hey, the car's gonna sound stupid. It's not gonna have any noise and all that. And so they did this, I think you Pat, you know, bundled it with a rumble pack in the seats and some haptics in the steering wheel. And it could be a really fun way to go, especially when you have like this, the sheer acceleration you get from an EV it could, it could make it feel like you're you're driving. It almost feels really, really fast, like combustion power vehicle. But I don't know it's a novelty. I think, I think It'll wear off

Kyle Mountsier: 7:39

straight I just want to know who the first person is going to be to put the ice cream you know, the ice cream truck sound in the speakers, right? You know that thing. Can you do that in a Tesla?

Unknown: 7:53

Already?

Paul J Daly: 8:02

Sales show in EV sales are showing inconsistency across brands. A new study reveals that dealer enthusiasm may be one of the key factors. A survey of 250 dealership leaders across the US shows a surprising lack of excitement amongst sales teams, which may be influencing EV adoption rates, 49% of dealers surveyed say their sales teams are, quote, not excited at all about selling EVs with enthusiasm, highest in the Pacific. Reason, no surprise, including California. But even there few are even, quote, very excited dealers in rural areas and other colder climates with low charging infrastructure, winter range issue. They talk about charging infrastructure, winter range issues as major concerns. Areas with better EV training obviously show higher enthusiasm, suggesting education could boost sales interest. Shout out to all of our people training their people on EVs. There's a lot of them out there. That's the other 50% the study highlights industry struggle to adapt the traditional sales models into the demands of the EV market. And one dealer in Montana noted quote, we live in a rural area with large distances between towns. It's just not a viable alternative to ice.

Kyle Mountsier: 9:16

Yeah. I mean, this makes a ton of sense. One, it's clear like if you get trained on these things, if you get access to them, if you get the ability to drive them, you understand how to educate the customer. It becomes a lot more exciting and accessible even to sell them. I mean, I remember back back when I was selling cars, and actually when I was a manager at a dealership, one of our goals was to figure out how to logically and and easily make it make sense for all of our employees to be in the product, right? And we knew that if we had all of our employees in product, the chances of them being able to sell the product better were much higher, right? So that so like, yeah. How many of the sales people have ever owned an EV to. Understand more and more about it and get that level of excitement. So it's, it's almost, I think it goes past training, and it goes to, like, ownership and use of the vehicle. But also, honestly, that makes so much sense, dude, just from a profitability perspective, and like, what, what you get paid on these. So many of these EVs are are showing shrinking margins. And so like, am I gonna sell this car for a mini or am I gonna get a commission on this car? Right? It's a real logical choice for a salesperson. Really

Paul J Daly: 10:35

is, you know, I do think so, just so, you know, this was a CD case study. This article that we have linked up in the show notes is from electrified news. Electrified news is mainly a consumer facing publication, so I'm sorry, it's from inside EVs, not electrified news inside EVs. And it's like, this is why your dealer might not be excited to sell you an EV right? So just to get inside the consumer mindset and what consumers are seeing and reading is important for us. And like you said, Kyle, the the experience with one is the best way to increase enthusiasm and look whether or not you, even as a dealer, principal or general manager, want your people to be selling EVs or in or out on the EV thing, a consumer's gonna walk in and ask questions. And even if you don't want really to encourage the sale of EVs, and you're not leaning in that direction, having educated sales people that can meet the questions with knowledge and enthusiasm is a big part of keeping that customer's trust, in my opinion,

Kyle Mountsier: 11:39

yeah, I would still say, for those that aren't in like EV saturated markets, having one or two dedicated EV sales people that do maybe own the product are very familiar with it, understand the technology is still a really, really viable, you know, way of going about this business, to transition this person to kind of a specialist. You see that in, you know, brands that maybe don't have a ton of these in stock, or things like that. So I would say that's a that's a perfect start as as compared to, like, training the entire staff on it. That's what Nissan did early. Yeah, Ford has done that early. So just, just like an early thought to maybe start that transition.

Paul J Daly: 12:18

Yeah, our good friend Adrian Gibbs is on the live stream chimed in. That's why GM has crazy Lee steel for employees. This month, we sold 10 EVs to staff in the last two weeks so

Kyle Mountsier: 12:29

and that will produce itself in spades next month in EV sales on the floor period, absolutely always will.

Paul J Daly: 12:36

Oh, all right, there's no great segue to this next story, but we're still staying on the topic of EB, EVS accessibility and all that stuff, charge point big network is one of the biggest, is tackling one of the biggest headaches for EV drivers with its new Omni port. I don't know if we have a picture of this. It's basically a solution that combines, there it is, combines multiple connector types into a single handheld unit, so no need for adapters, and it's going to support the future models that are on the CCS, including 800 volt systems for faster chargers. So basically, they're select. I just realized, Kyle, this is your story, and it's okay for it's okay you just run it, man. Fun ones.

Unknown: 13:15

You're in ones.

Paul J Daly: 13:16

It's fun to talk about that, though, we have a little routine here, and I just blew it. The Omni port basically can be retrofitted to existing ChargePoint stations, so they can actually just, you know, like, turn the old ones into new ones. Rick Wilmer, CEO of ChargePoint, emphasizes quote we are giving drivers and site hosts assurance that charge point will continue to meet all their charging needs now and in the future.

Kyle Mountsier: 13:39

You know, I actually really love this. Because when you look at, you know, everybody's kind of been saying we need to get this centralized thing, maybe you go, everyone's going to the NACS or whatever, whichever route they're going, from a charging infrastructure perspective, and you look at just how people get gas in their car, right? Universally centralized. It's one way to do it. But then when you think about just how electricity gets managed around the world, right? Every single country has their own way of managing how to plug into electric, electricity, even if you go to a European country, or even to Canada or things like that. We don't do this in the US, but in the rest of the world, most of your hotels have this, like, universal thing that you plug into, right? And it accepts, like, sets it all. Somehow they figured out how to accept 10 different ways to plug into electricity and convert it all. And so I think charge point is doing something that's very native to the way electricity is handled. Good point, you know, around the world, so kudos to them.

Paul J Daly: 14:43

I like that point. Yeah, I do think that that's just a very practical solution and a very easily and quickly, broadly deployable thing. And for all those people who invested early, we were talking about this last week, invested early in charging stations, and now the equipment's starting to seem molded busted. Well, no. Than like a little upgrade to make everybody feel happy again. We hope you feel happy. Going into this week, there's a lot of work to do, there's a lot of people to serve, a lot of cars to sell, a lot of EV things to learn, but most importantly, take care of one another. We will see you here tomorrow morning.

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