Banning Russian Car Hardware, Google “Empathetic” Auto AI, Target Slashes Production Timelines

Paul J Daly  0:00  
Steve, good morning. It is Wednesday, January 8. We have a lot of fun. Announcements today, updates from the CES show. We have Steve Greenfield again coming from to us. I know it's not at the home. He's coming from a different hotel today. We'll find out in a minute, the people are really everywhere. You

Speaker 1  0:16  
never know where the correspondence gonna end up. You know, tomorrow he's gonna be like, so I'm coming from you to you from the main stage,

Paul J Daly  0:23  
from the top of the sphere. Yeah, the top of the sphere, literally

Speaker 1  0:27  
standing on top of me. Oh, hey, did you see Delta? Well, we have to, I don't know if Steve was there. We'll have to ask him about the Delta thing.

Paul J Daly  0:34  
So I didn't, I didn't see anything about it, but I just knew it was happening at the sphere. Um, yeah, let's, let's. We have two big things to talk about today. Number one, we'll talk about this first, ASOTU con.com is now fully live. 1145 last night. Kyle hit the launch button, and if you want your tickets, they are early bird pricing. They are going to be as cheap as they're going to be moving forward. They're going to escalate in pricing heading up to ASOTU CON, but now you can log in. You can see some initial information. The site design is just gorgeous. You can get details about the venue, about past things. Just go check it out. It's launched. It's live. A lot of work went into it. Kyle, you've spearheaded the effort. Like Bravo. It is a gourd. It's the best site we've ever launched.

Kyle Mountsier  1:18  
I think it is. Yeah, we we went, you know, typically, we've, like, really focused on, like, three core pages, but we went all the way through it so you can understand what's going on, the venue and the hotels and the, you know, like, we're even going to be launching a menu page at some point. Like, we got a whole, we got things just ready to go. You know, everybody wants to know when they're not eating conference. Check

Paul J Daly  1:41  
that you know that's right. And if you if you still have the app on your phone from last year, the app is also updating, and so you'll see the new logo. It's an amazing event app. We think it's the best one of any event we've ever been to. Super high usage rate. So go check it out today. We'll have more information, more speakers, more sponsors, all the things coming very soon. But also want to talk about the fastest growing ASOTU property in the history of the world. Nada parties.com watching the Google Analytics on this or whatever is so much fun because it's just one big hockey stick. Nada,

Speaker 1  2:11  
oh, I know what people want to do it. I think next year we're going

Paul J Daly  2:15  
to be in the listing business. So nada parties.com if this is where you're going to find what you're going to be doing every night. And there are actually several breakfast events on there now too. So this is going to become like the center, Community Center for what everybody's doing. If you have a party or an event that you want listed on the site, it is free, so you can just go to the site, list your party, send us the information. We'll make sure it gets up. Easy to navigate, lots of fun. We're having a party. Thanks to our friends at clairvoy for helping make the site possible. We are having our own event. It is sold out, but we do have a wait list. Please get on the wait list because we are confirming attendance the day of, or maybe the day before the day of. So there are going to be spots that open up. We want to make sure that you get one. So make sure you get on the wait list for that. And now, the moment we've all been waiting for. Let's bring in Steve Greenfield live from 6:14am local time, and he's standing in front of what looks to be a very large, very high resolution screen.

Steve Greenfield  3:12  
Yeah, yeah. They're everywhere here, out here we were talking earlier. I mean, for some reason this year, the trend seems to be like these trends loosened television. So coming soon to a retailer near you, you're gonna be able to see through your television. I don't know what the perk is, but people seem to be fascinated with

Paul J Daly  3:27  
technology translucent why? I have no no

Steve Greenfield  3:31  
idea. We were trying to figure that out early. Why would anyone want a TV that when you turn it off, looks like a window pane?

Unknown Speaker  3:37  
Yeah? Because it is, yeah. I don't know. I mean, I

Paul J Daly  3:39  
guess that there's like a retail solution. Maybe you live

Speaker 1  3:45  
in a basement retails, I don't know. Yeah, well, tell

Paul J Daly  3:48  
us this. We have a few pieces of news coming out of CES yesterday. Where are you right now? You're not in the main hall. No,

Steve Greenfield  3:55  
no. So I said yesterday morning, for those that were on, you know, CES is so large, like 140,000 people, that it spills over from the convention center. It takes all the footprint in the convention center and then spills over into other other hotels. So I'm in the Venetian today on the strip, and here in this hotel, they've got all the startups. So for me, it's good, like rich, fertile hunting ground from investment standpoint. But the interesting thing here is, you know, it's overwhelming. You know, many countries bring a bunch of their startups in. So you can walk around the floor here in the basement of the Venetian and see, you know, whether it's, you know, Germany or France, or, you know, Korea or whatever, startups from around the globe. So I'm really excited today to spend some time walking the floor and seeing these very, very small, early stage startups from all over the globe.

Paul J Daly  4:41  
Wow, that just seems like an unbelievable experience. I'm getting more and more jealous. So jealous Absolutely it's it's just the way it is. Let's talk about a couple of things that launched in the automotive sphere yesterday. So in the Honda, Sony, Honda mobility is the latest brand of bypass the dealership networks. Now we know for sure to sell its first electrics a day. And the appeal of one will be sold exclusively online, allowing customers to handle everything from reservations the purchases through the brands website. They priced it starting price 89,000 for the origin trim, 102 nine for the signature trim. They have 40 sensors, AI integration, qualcomms, advanced semi con conductor tech. They're building the screen technology on Unreal Engine, which is a gaming engine built originally from Fortnite California, will be the launch market. Reservations are actually open right now. They're going to have what they're calling a studio one in Torrance and Fremont. So they're gonna have two physical locations, Northern and Southern California as like an interaction point. However, the vehicles will be assembled in the Honda factory in Ohio. Wow. Some dealers being like, hold on a second. Wait a wait a minute. So now it's taking up manufacturing capability, and we don't get to sell them. So, you know, there's, there's a little bit of talk going around that. Steve, did you have you seen this car? I

Steve Greenfield  5:59  
did. I went over there yesterday. It looks like the same car we saw like two years ago. And, you know, once again, bad, bad timing, like right before nada again, to drop this on the dealers. And then, you know, the dealer Council call or meeting nada is going to be consumed by this one topic. So I had to bet this car will be such a turd, like you heard it here first, the car, like two years ago, it looked kind of interesting, yeah, now, compared to other cars that are on the street. I mean, it's just not a competitive car, and it looks the same. I mean, this is the same car we saw two years ago. So I can tell you this thing, they may get reservations if it's like 100 bucks or something, and then people will opt out, but this car is going to be such a colossal turn that, I mean, a picture, would have to be so great that, for some reason, people are convinced to buy this car, despite the fact it's like, the most unappetizing design I've ever seen. It's like a blob. It's like, there's nothing exciting.

Kyle Mountsier  6:56  
It's a blob. It's a blob, and they put like, three little dots right on the top of it because of, like, where the camera positioning is and the sensor positioning is, so it's like, these weird little bug eyes sitting on the top of this kind of blah, like, you know, just kind of, it's, it's, honestly, the one thing that I thought, when I thought of this was like, Oh, this is every kid's fifth grade, you know, car curve, the

Paul J Daly  7:24  
car curve that is like 20% of logos in the auto industry. It's that exact one. Well, I'm just thinking right now what the prompt is going to be, the generate the image for this lead story. Right? Generate me an image of a colossal turd on wheels. Right,

Steve Greenfield  7:42  
to the dealers that are tuning in before you get in an uproar and worry about this. Go see the car. Because I do think you're going to be like, maybe, you know, six, nine months from now, reveling in the fact that nobody's going to want this thing.

Paul J Daly  7:53  
Yeah. Well, I've, yeah, yeah, because I've even seen, you've seen so much for 100 Yeah, for 100 grand, the increase in screens and things inside vehicles. A lot of people of people are calling for physical buttons. Like, even if the in car experience is like, I don't, can't imagine it being so good that it's more than a parlor trick. Like, oh, that's cool. And after seeing it once or twice, you're like, Okay, I want a car that

Speaker 1  8:15  
I well, even just why put a screen on the outside of the car to let you know, hello, have a nice day,

Paul J Daly  8:20  
because it made the front page of, like, Wall Street Journal. It

Speaker 1  8:24  
made the front page. And that's the novelty of it. That's about it. They found a use case for translucent TV.

Paul J Daly  8:29  
Well, yeah, exactly. Well, Ben Hadley weighed in in the comments, and he said, window displays right. There you go. That's, that's like, he's like, Duh, yeah. He also Mimic, sure. He also commented absolute turn as well. So, you did, there's another Honda vehicle that's turning some heads the saloon. Ah,

Steve Greenfield  8:49  
yes. So, I mean, we saw a year ago, they came up with these zero vehicles, these two concept cars. Well now I think we're, like a year and a half from actual production in Ohio as well, probably the same plant as the afila. But, you know, I gotta say these cards are, like, really sexy. Put the picture of the saloon up. Go ahead and the saloon looks great. Well, I go back to, like, you know, the Lamborghini counter, and the front, the front of it looks like a countage. And, you know, even the back of it looks a bit so good for them. I mean, I think for Honda, this is, like, really progressive Honda, to my mind, has never really been known for, like, really progressive styling? Yeah, it looks like a car. If this thing comes out in this design, they might actually do really well because quality of Honda, you get the retail network, and you get an EV that, like, is sexy. So, I mean, I'm looking forward to seeing this. So watch

Speaker 1  9:35  
this all be a play to, like, just prove that, like, businesses like Sony and Apple can't actually get in manufacturing. They're like, Look what we did to Sony over here, and meanwhile, like the saloon,

Paul J Daly  9:47  
yeah. Maybe after seeing, maybe after seeing this episode, dealers are like, You know what? Maybe we'll let them have their failure, right? Let's talk about meaningful things at that. Here's another, some other news. We have a. Mobility stories, because we have you, Uber and Lyft are embracing this driverless future by adapting their platforms and infrastructure to integrate autonomous vehicle companies like Waymo and may mobility. So basically, they are starting to build apps in or build features into their apps now to control driverless taxis, like being able to adjust car temperature honk horns open chunks remotely. So they're basically Uber and will offer now way more rides in Austin and Atlanta wide. Lift plans to deploy may mobilities, autonomous taxis in Atlanta, both looking to capitalize on partnerships. And originally, we know they were talking about going in on their own, but despite growing demand, Uber CEO, he he estimates that it may take a decade before half of Uber trips are in autonomous cars, but they're rolling that out. Do you have any insight

Steve Greenfield  10:48  
on this? Yeah, I mean, I so I had my presentation yesterday morning on the future mobility, and talked a lot, a lot about autonomy. So I think a couple of things, right? So looking at Uber, you know, Uber incurred 31 and a half billion dollars in losses over 10 years for its first 10 years. And I think Uber's whole business model was predicated on full autonomy, right? You know,

Paul J Daly  11:08  
owning owning the fleet, right?

Kyle Mountsier  11:10  
Yeah, because seven years ago, that's that was all the talk,

Steve Greenfield  11:13  
or 10 years ago, right? Really, when Uber started deal, we were on the custom of autonomy. Has taken us this long to really get traction. So McKinsey has a white paper a month ago, I think it was in December, where they looked at current cost per mile for full autonomy, and then what projected will be in 10 years, in 2035, and I get the slide, I'll send this slide over to you guys. But you know, it's $8.13 per mile right now. Wow, for way more, that's what they're incurring, right, so far, than what Uber is. But they forecast at scale, as this thing, you know, gets network effects, and you get more volume, it's going to go down to, like, $1.13 I think it is, within 10 years. So it won't be long before we're looking at the cost per mile as being cheaper, and then suddenly, you know, we could see a huge flip. You know, Uber Lyft. Any of these folks are going to be like, very highly incented to switch over to autonomous? Yeah, I don't know what's gonna happen to all these drivers, but, you know, the drive, the driver, if you have a human driver, you're gonna be paying more per mile, so it'll be incentive for you to summon the autonomous car. Yeah,

Paul J Daly  12:15  
I wonder if we're gonna see, like, this middle ground where you start to have humans like maintaining, you know, little mini fleets of autonomous cars to care for them. And, yeah, yeah. Watch this. Watch this. Basically become the bird scooter, right, right, right, right. Go. Make sure the cars are good. At night, they're all plugged you know, they're plugged in. Big deal with this, right, right. Cleaning and monitoring is a big deal with this, which puts Tesla in an interesting position, because they can also make the cars, and I think, like, if they're making the autonomous vehicles and they own the fleet, I mean, the easier part is the app,

Kyle Mountsier  12:51  
right? And the app system, yeah. I mean, we've talked for a while about how EVs and autonomy come first in the commercial world, right? And whether that be commercial trucking or commercial taxi or even, just like, you know, commercial fleet purchasing, that's going to be where you can adopt this quicker, because you can set up, you know, charging bays and banks, and just like have the people that can manage that type of, you know, throughput. So I like again, agree with Steve that this is definitely going to be if we see autonomy take a wide or a big jump quickly, this is a good spot to look at for it. Hey,

Paul J Daly  13:35  
my detailing experience is like starting to feel tingly, like this is the time to build a commercial detailing business that's getting to a fleet and a lot and all that good stuff. But speaking of electronic vehicles, Kyle,

Kyle Mountsier  13:53  
I have no video, but we'll figure it out as we go along. For those watching this, the year 2025 is set to mark a turning point for electric vehicles. The data is pointing to the one in four vehicles being sold in 2025 projecting to be electrified in some manner, with pure EVs making up 10% of new car sales and increasement from seven and a half in 2024 it's projected that 15 new EV models will be launching this year, and then the forecast is to hit 20 point 1 million units, the highest since 2021 Jonathan smoke, good friend of all of ours, said, economic fundamentals are improving and customer sentiment is pointing in the right direction, which will obviously help the EV transition. Steve, you're

Paul J Daly  14:41  
on this one one in four.

Steve Greenfield  14:44  
Yeah. So it's a bit of a cop out, right? Because it's includes plug in hybrids and mild non plug in hybrids. You know that the actual EV number is not increasing too much. And you know what we don't know is, if Trump does not do away with the consumer facing tax incentives, something like 70% of all EV. Sales right now are being leased because of the tax loophole. If that incentive goes away, I don't know that. I think that we're going to, you know, hit these numbers, but good for them. And I think, you know, from a dealer, you know, if you remember, we won the clock a few years there was a big concern that an EV was going to have much longer service intervals. So dealers started selling EVs. They weren't going to see these cars for service Well, the good thing think about hybrids, which are the breakthrough technology here is like you have twice the complexity. So things can go wrong with the battery and things can go wrong with the gasoline drive training and

Paul J Daly  15:32  
how they all come together, right? Guaranteed. Yeah.

Steve Greenfield  15:35  
The good thing is, dealers will be as busy, if not busier than ever, given the complexity of a dual drive train. So the dealers should be very happy sell more hybrids. It's going to feed your fixed ops. And, you know, don't, don't worry about pure EVs, because I think with the tax incentives potentially going away, there'll be very little demand for like pure BVs with no tax incentives well.

Kyle Mountsier  15:55  
And I also think, you know, looking at the service intervals, you also are, you know, the the training ground, and the access to the technology in the third parties is still not, you know, wide scale, and so customers are going to be continually forced to come back to the dealer, especially as the OEMs have not really moved a lot of that technology into the third parties or aftermarket stuff, but being available for it. So that's that's why you continually get that business over the next it's almost like

Steve Greenfield  16:24  
you watched my presentation yesterday morning. So I got this slide. We get data from one of our companies, war cloud, that shows that, you know, on average, 70% of the time consumers defect and go to independent repair shops at the end of the warranty period, which is typically like three years. And to your point, Kyle, I totally agree with you, with car complexity, the technician skill needed to work on these cars, and the unique tools that are going to be needed for each brand. I mean, it's really going to squeeze despite, you know, there'll be right to repair acts that allow independent repair shops to get the schematic and telematics data from the cars. But I think franchise dealers are going to be busier than ever in their fixed operations. Because, you know, consumers, to your point, are going to have to be loyal to their franchise dealers to get these things service, even after the warranty

Paul J Daly  17:07  
periods up. Yeah, that's right. Ben Headley, interesting comment for what it's worth. He says, My rivian air suspension broke, so now I have to drive it down to Boston on Friday, since it's the closest service station, mobile service Austin

Speaker 1  17:19  
is like, three and a half hours away. Yeah, it is nice to drive

Paul J Daly  17:24  
it down with a broken suspension. That's fantastic. Oh boy, Steve, how did your presentation go? We didn't ask you at the beginning of the show. We're gonna ask

Steve Greenfield  17:31  
you at the end. No, great. So this was a bit different, you know, as I mentioned yesterday morning, this was mobility 2050 and trying to forecast out, you know, all the different aspects of mobility. So I spent an hour on stage yesterday. Had about 350 people in the audience. And listen, I'm just really impressed with CES. I mean, they've got 140,000 people from across the globe. I think 40% of those people are coming in internationally. So it's good, eclectic mix. Great questions at the end. Great for networking, etc. And you know, one of the reasons that ces rebranded from the Consumer Electronics Show to CES is because of automotive impact here. So with every year we see more automotive OEMs revealing product launches and technologies, as we've talked about today. So this is increasingly becoming sort of an automotive centric and mobility centric conference, and always very impressive. It's just overwhelming and you get your steps in,

Unknown Speaker  18:22  
yeah, let's go get your steps

Paul J Daly  18:25  
we're gonna, well, we ran the E to electrification. It's the consumer electrification show. Steve, thank you so much for joining us today. We'll check in again. We'll be paying attention to your social media. Thank you. But I think the biggest takeaway from this show is your prediction that the afila will be a quote, colossal turd. I.

‍