ASOTU CON Speaker On Fallon, CARS Big Insights, Farley on Ford

Paul J Daly: 0:15

Yo, everybody, we made it to Friday. That's a good thing. That's a good thing. February 16, we got to talk about cars. There's a new report by cars, Farley on Ford and an assorted kind of speaker on Jimmy Fallon. Oh, really? Literally. Speaker was on the Jimmy Fallon show. I just found yourself now like pan across them in the audience. They were on the stage of quest. Love it.

‍Kyle Mountsier: 0:41

We'll talk about that and get through it. Oh,

Paul J Daly: 0:44

yeah. Listen, we, you and I were on the ground yesterday dealership all day long, kind of grinding away on process. And it blows my mind. And everybody who's done work like this understands that you can take this very small sliver of the overall operations and make massive improvement in process by just focusing on one thing, I can't believe what that does. Like many times as you see it, I still can't believe

Kyle Mountsier: 1:12

it. It's unbelievable. And you can spend four or five hours and still barely get to the bottom of it. And so like you didn't get anywhere, training? No. But I think that that's it's important for dealers to think about. And for anybody I mean, this applies to us in our organization is like, how do we take this thing that we're doing that we thought like, it's there and it's working? And how do we break it down a little bit to the maniacal and go? How do we unwind this, rewind it,

Paul J Daly: 1:39

put it back together again, so that it actually supports the thesis that we're trying to accomplish? Customers serves the end user serves the employee really, really well. And like, you can't do that every single day for every single process. But over time, really mapping to that should on paper, you absolutely should. The reality that no matter how good your processes, that personal accountability, being the real linchpin in the whole thing, each individual person being willing to be like, engage a process, be willing to be flexible, when it breaks down to help coach it, so it doesn't break down feels really good that a business has been very successful. And running for a very long time still has these issues that makes me feel better about the world, right? Because we're constantly like, we break this, you know, from the outside, you see a bunch of content from the back end, we're always like, Okay, we got to do that and things break and like, it was just encouraging to see that like, that's just a part of like, growing period. Oh, what do we got? Well, we

Kyle Mountsier: 2:37

can growing some Oh, that's

Paul J Daly: 2:38

a good one. Yes, we'll just, we'll just stop that we

Unknown: 2:42

have grown. The podcast world of asoto is ever growing. But yesterday, we hit the 100th episode of Auto Collabs. If you haven't heard our Auto Collabs, you should go check it out. It is our long form podcast. This the most recent one with Michael Wood of checkered flag Auto Group is amazing. We also released 23 podcast episodes. On our in the dirt podcast, you can search any any podcast platform for in the dirt with a soju or just in the dirt, it should come up. We've got companies like quantum five cars commerce out, so use lat link stream companies, a bunch of dealers that we met at NADA all across the floor, in this podcast, really talking about what's going on in the industry. And they're real quick. They're all like seven to 10 minutes. So you can like 2x Speed 23 episodes in like the time it takes you to listen to one job. Great.

Paul J Daly: 3:39

It's great dry. It's great drivetime content walking the dog content, because a lot of what we hear from NADA is that people go around and can't see everything. Don't have time to understand even what everybody does, or the people behind what it does. So the goal here is really to bring that to you in bite sized chunks. So you can be like, Oh, that's what that company does. Right now I know it maybe I should call them or maybe I should like we're trying to make things easy for you to consume. And we do it via content and try to tee it all up for you. So check those out. Michael what I can't wait to meet him at a soda con. A soda con is coming up less than 90 days. Now ADA days hotel room block is going to be open really soon. Tickets are available now. Still early bird pricing if you want to get them. We have a lot of big announcements coming up about this. The speaker list is really stacking up we're going to start to drop and announce speakers. There's a bunch on the site already. So if you go to ASOTU con.com there's already plenty of reason to be there. But this is going to continue to ramp up and US releasing new information. The closer we get to it, so stay tuned.

Kyle Mountsier: 4:41

Speaking of releasing new information, Paul. Oh, nice. Segue last night my segment segway game is always on.

Paul J Daly: 4:50

All right. Here's here's the deal. Our friends at cars commerce are leveraging their data to provide a new month monthly they're calling the Industry Insights report that will pull Keep car shopping data across their platform. And as you know, they have access to a lot of shopper data, a lot of behaviors. So they sent this to us, before they released it, they released it just yesterday, you can click through the link in the show notes to see the full thing. But we're gonna give you a summary to help just break it down. So first of all, shift percaya what we'll do is I'll say this, I'll say a little thing. You say a little thing. Okay. Got it, you get along, if you don't, first, there has been a shift. undergoing a shift to a buyers market, the auto industry seeing potential shift toward this a buyers market in 2024, driven by this combination of lower prices, a 36%. Year over year increase in new car inventory. And cars stay in on dealer lots for a longer. So let's put the shopper in the driver's seat. There you go.

Kyle Mountsier: 5:48

The driver's seats are a little bit harder for shoppers. Even though new car prices have dipped, again, the total vehicle cost is still elevated to the things like interest rates. So however, the new car pricing index revealed that the total cost of purchase and financing vehicle is still 32.7% above MSRP. That includes that's that's not just like, what the retail price of the car is, but all taxes Tag Title finance insurance, on top of that, so so

Paul J Daly: 6:20

it's not with all bad news, because there are now increased options for budget conscious consumers with a notable uptick in the availability of new cars under 30,000. We haven't heard that in a while. With a 63% year over year increase, indicating more options with a more accessible price range. The market is still below average, though down 79% When compared to pre pandemic 2019 levels. So, you know, we're getting moving in the right direction, but it's not at all where we were in 2019. Yep,

Kyle Mountsier: 6:53

used car scarcity is at an all time high even though we're seeing new cars coming back and a slight decrease in average prices and 800,000 vehicle drop in availability exacerbates the scarcity of use cars indicating increased volatility in the market this year and a high need for monitoring the lease returns that may or may not be coming to project future inventory so

Paul J Daly: 7:18

not a lot of ice three years ago. Absolutely.

Kyle Mountsier: 7:22

Last Last

Paul J Daly: 7:22

point growing Evie inventory and market adjustments are in full swing we know this already Evie markets fluctuating with 136.7% increase in dealer inventory. So you know us v EVs seeing some uptick that makes a lot more sense with affordability. But this year is going to all be all about figuring out the Eevee I think,

Kyle Mountsier: 7:43

Yep, I agree. It's figuring out the Eevee and keeping your used car inventory tight. Actually the dealer that we're at yesterday said hey, it's the hardest time that we've seen in a long time to acquire the right use vehicles at the right price points and so masters have used and figuring out EVs that's speaking of

Paul J Daly: 8:02

figuring out EVs and we're just cranking them over the fence today. During the wolf research global auto conference in New York Ford CEO Jim Farley announced a strategic shift store toward developing smaller, profitable keyboard their EVs admits the changing market and a new dynamic with the UAW post strike. So saving basically Ford is recalibrating its full Evie strategy focusing on a platform of smaller affordable vehicles to be profitable within their first 12 months. Finally, He's emphasizing the need for a solid plan. And this quote we're about to read is just just fantastic or we're just going to read it verbatim. So he needs said we need vehicles with better operating costs and competitors like Corolla or civic. So when you think of the vehicle size think that this is a quote from Jim Farley, it is non negotiable that we are going to allocate capital to a new affordable electric vehicle and have to make money in the first 12 months. He said, talking about a message he gave to a team, he said this and I don't want a bullshit roadmap. I want a real plan. And if you can't execute that plan, we ate lunch in the car

Kyle Mountsier: 9:12

broke down a little sideways on the second

Paul J Daly: 9:15

though he just hit the finger wagon started. He's like, let me tell you

Kyle Mountsier: 9:19

something is like snap, snap snap. He got his inner 13 year old middle school girl and on him. I mean, it was nuts. Like, that was wild.

Paul J Daly: 9:30

So I think he's had enough and he's like, Listen, I don't want Okay, so this kind of ties back to what we were just talking about a lot with this kind of like guessing on where the EVs are gonna go and or go on too hard on these big gigantic EVs that made them they're not profitable. They realize it the stock markets give them given them the business for it. And now I think it's just like they know, like, if we don't make this profitable, like young

Kyle Mountsier: 9:59

Oh, Oh, he knows that for sure. Yeah. And, and he's like, oh, oh, the customer wants this to be a little bit cheaper so they can afford it. Let's try that one.

Paul J Daly: 10:11

Well, it's the only practical way to go. He also was asked him talked about the traditionally good relationship for it had with the UAW. He said something about the recent strike negotiations, and we quote again, that was a moment for us. Clearly our relationship has changed. Does it have an impact on business? Yes. Oh, I want to go to this conference. Feel like people. I feel like people just getting real. Sounds

Kyle Mountsier: 10:35

like these people had the machetes and shotguns out as wild and

Paul J Daly: 10:39

we should get a new ASOTU CON. Come on, Jim. gonna be awesome. Speaking of

Kyle Mountsier: 10:43

bringing speakers to us, so to kind of segue. You know, when you announce a keynote speaker, and then just a couple of weeks later, he shows up on the Jimmy Fallon show, you got to know you're doing the right so pretty good about that we'll get Dara and his wife showed up yesterday on a segment of The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon. The legendary restaurant tour and author of unreasonable hospitality is we'll get there and his wife is Chef Christina Tosi, the founder of milk bar if you've ever had like a lot of their products, they made a little Valentine's Day treat with Jimmy and Questlove did a little dream weaving for them because if you haven't read the book, it's all about these particular wonderful moments that they that they put together and so they researched like Jimmy's and quest loves favorite little snacks and desserts and and help them had them make it it was a little fun segment talked about how unreasonable hospitality was on the bear. If you haven't watched the bear, it's a good show. He's like, you know, there's some wholesome questionable things there. But but it's really good. So it is the restaurant it is there. It's it is out and out the rest of the inner city restaurant business, it's perfect, but it's pretty cool to see

Paul J Daly: 12:07

that like it is I mean, I think it's just acknowledgement I will get there. Obviously owned 11 Madison Park legendary rated the best restaurant in the world at one point in New York City so they kind of knew each other. But we're so excited to bring this level of relatability and I don't know human interaction to ASOTU CON and to the industry in a deeper way. We know he's been making the rounds a little bit did something with Mazda did something with Walzer just recently, and so he's going to be at a soda con which is a great reason to come to a soda con and meet him and hear how he's going to overlay this level of hospitality thinking and overtop of what we do every day because let's face it, we are we are hosting guests. By the 1000s every single day a through the service lanes through the through the sales department on phones right hospitality isn't doesn't even have to be an in person thing right? You can express hospitality on the phone by the way BDCs you can do it the best PVC is do

Kyle Mountsier: 13:03

a great they do they do I don't know I think the hospitality right in auto bringing. Let's go well, we

Paul J Daly: 13:10

hope you had a great week. I think Kyle shipping off the Disney sometime soon. We're gonna have some guests hosts next week. We'll try to hold down the fort not burn the place down while you're gone. We'll see you next week everybody

‍