Battle of Billions, Summary of Charges, Barista or A Button Press?

‍SPEAKERS

Kyle Mountsier, Paul Daly

Paul Daly  00:29

Yo, it's Tuesday already. Today, we're gonna talk about battles of the billions. A summary of charges and would you prefer a barista or a button press? I guess it depends on where you are for me. It depends on where I am whether I wanted to restore, but repressed. We'll talk about that later.

Kyle Mountsier  00:51

Yeah, we'll talk about that.

Paul Daly  00:52

Well, because like the term barista is a very loosely used term these days. It's definitely somebody standing behind a counter at a coffee place.

Kyle Mountsier  01:03

Right what it means but in reality, it's really really good coffee place. Recently, yeah, we'll get into

Paul Daly  01:10

we'll get into it save that kind of like the word influencer is wildly different.

Kyle Mountsier  01:17

Same person to influence or at night, barista in the morning, right?

Paul Daly  01:24

If you have barista and influencer one of those ain't going so well. How are you gonna start? Right Welcome. Welcome to Tuesday. This is how this is how the day starts. Hey, we're super excited because we just announced or released our movie poster or TV show poster for more than cars. The TV style series that we are we already filmed the pilot. We're putting it together right now. And we're premiering it next week. A week from today, we are premiering more than cars episode one the pilot episode in Tampa, Florida. At the end of the day, a digital dealer there if you're going to digital dealer you have to go to this party, you have to go we rented out the whole Tampa theater, we're going to screen the show, we're having the concessions open included in ticket price. So if you ever wanted like to go into the theater and get popcorn and stuff for free,

Kyle Mountsier  02:12

if you want and don't have to pay yes

Paul Daly  02:15

or no. And so we did the family reunion last few years at Digital dealer this year, we're putting the party on, we got the red carpet in the step and repeats, we got the concessions, we got the screening, we're gonna have some live q&a, we're gonna have lots of people there. And we're collabing with digital dealer, which is so much fun, we have so many good friends there. And they were cool enough to say, hey, if they're going to make sure all their dealers that go to the digital dealer, have a ticket to go to the tamper premiere. So get your tickets now this is potentially going to sell out we do have limited space, there will be more people a digital dealer than we can fit in the theater. So do with that which will go to a so to x.com and get your tickets now. People are picking up tickets dealers and industry partners. But you know, it's a thing. We're gonna have some fun. All right. All right. All right. All right. What are we doing? What are we doing here? Anything else we need to talk about? Before we get into the news? It feels like so many things, and not enough. A lot

Kyle Mountsier  03:08

of things. There's stuff. There's things we're going to be Reuters next month.

Paul Daly  03:13

It's Oh, yeah, there's that. You wonders that at our now it's going to look at the panel.

Kyle Mountsier  03:19

Last week, we threw that up on the old podcasting. We did on the dirt. If you want to hang out with David, listen to David Kane and Paul J. Daly. Who does the dirt on

Paul Daly  03:29

the best part of this interview, I have to say is the way it ended.

Kyle Mountsier  03:33

I haven't even listened. Oh, you

Paul Daly  03:35

gotta you gotta see the ending. is I can't it is as quintessential David Kane, as I can even imagine. And when it happened, I was like that, that that just sums it all up

Kyle Mountsier  03:48

that don't scrub through it though. Listen,

Paul Daly  03:51

you'll miss the context. It's not long. It's only like seven minutes or something. If even that, yeah, so audio version, just search in the dirt with a soda in the dirt will probably pull it up on Spotify, Apple Music, Google Play all those things. Yeah, you gotta check that out. Because it's a lot of fun. And we also have a lot of those other a lot of a lot more of those episodes coming because we were on the ground. But David came and talked to as many people as we could. That's some day. All right, let's talk about a little bit news. A little bit of news. Okay. In the Battle of we'll call it the Battle of the billions. These days, we just say billions, millions is out of date. We're just using billions now. That are the billions General Motors. That's it. General Motors and Samsung SDI announced plans to invest over $3 billion in the US based joint venture battery manufacturing plant, but that's not all. Hyundai also announced a 5 billion so that's two more billion than the other guys to an Eevee battery joint venture in Georgia with the company SK on so GM and Samsung SDI plan plant will have an annual capacity of What is that? 30 gigawatt hours. It's gigawatts. I always want to call it gigawatt hours just because Back to the Future 30 gigawatt hour starting in 2026. The Hyundai plant in Georgia will be online sector or start in second half of 2025 35 gigawatt hours of capacity. So we got a little bit of battles in the billions one a little bit larger. The news comes as Hyundai just announced their q1 earnings, which literally doubled year over year, so Hyundai doesn't seem

Kyle Mountsier  05:31

to Hyundai is to the moon right now. Absolutely. Nick. Yeah. I love how it's like, Oh, I see your $3 billion battery plant. I raise you

Paul Daly  05:42

to dunk a couple more on the pocket over here.

Kyle Mountsier  05:45

It makes a lot of sense. I mean, Hyundai has has consistently pressed into US manufacturing, whether that'd be a vehicles or have their resources for like vehicle components. And you know, them heading into Georgia, they're in the south already a lot. Being in like Alabama, and and places like that. So it makes a lot of sense. And look, I think that Hyundai is going to continue to probably grow with announcements like this, producing a lot more in the EV and hybrid space because they're constantly trying to push the bubble and

Paul Daly  06:23

they're gonna be good at it to Kia, I gotta say that Kia Evie nine. That's supposed to come out like November now is like, I wasn't thinking Evie too much. And then my son Miles is like, Dad, I know. You're probably looking at that key Evie nine. I was like, yeah, it seems pretty awesome. I don't know, I don't know if I can buy the first. The first one ever produced. That's that size. I could have problems. But if you do the math on these two. So we have 3 billion for 30 gigawatts, or 5 billion for 35 gigawatts, and the $3 billion investment looks a little more efficient seems a little bit more, but I'm not good at math.

Kyle Mountsier  07:01

Who knows? And I don't even know what five gigawatt hours even means. So

Paul Daly  07:06

well speaking of figuring out what five gigawatt hours means? There you go. You're gonna need to figure that out really soon. Because since there is a looming, arguably arbitrary governmental set goal, there's no tongue in cheek there to have 50% of vehicles be zero emissions by 20. When they're making decisions in the White House, they play this song, they just play this song. So many experts suggest the need for over half a million public charging stations to be installed nationwide is what we actually see. That's a couple. That's a couple two, three. There's a great article. It's like a summary of articles actually not about news today. That's talking about some of the various initiatives across industries that are working toward that end, with different goals and different opportunities. And they include like number one, obviously, we need mass coordination across different industries, if this is going to happen, like no one industry can take care of this. You know, just talking about infrastructure and equipment and data infrastructure and understand where to put things they say one of the biggest challenges will be in filling the gaps between major metros, obviously, the more concentrated things are you're going to have a combination of charges, which makes it easier, but there are a lot of gaps.

Kyle Mountsier  08:23

I mean, getting around Nashville, with an electric vehicle is pretty easy, right? Like you've got a charging especially because Nissan has been here and been putting up chargers Tesla's out of a big foothold. So like getting around here, not a problem. Right. But it's once you get out of the major metros, that's definitely tough. And you know, that like the idea here, and the conversation is like, All right, we've got multiple spaces where we can put these right OEMs like GM partnering with the dealers is saying, hey, look, that's going to be a part of the charging network retailers Starbucks 711 Walmart target tonics on target Sonic Drive and Taco Bell all the ones that we've been covering for the last six months all adding charger networks, right there's retail shops like Kohl's has been an early adopter you've got other retail retail establishments and then and then I think the private sector of or the public sector of sorry private sector of like all of the oil companies right are we've seen a few of those starts to present haven't seen more of those actually I know it is kind of surprising but I look I understand like the the the ingress and egress a layouts not built for that it's not built for that

Paul Daly  09:38

yeah now while was done a good job while well when they put up stores actually has put they've kind of put the charges off to around the back around the side in the parking lot and they've already had I don't even know what why why is what because you've never lived my friend wah wah is the best. I mean, I did see a buches you haven't you haven't been to buches if he's that's a different thing. That that is not that is not a thing like bikinis is its own league.

Kyle Mountsier  10:02

It's like I tell you what, though, new bikinis are going up, they got a single electric thing out there. They're not a charger in sight. There's not an

Paul Daly  10:11

Eevee in sight where they play. You gotta educate Kyle on what a Wawa is. So the next time we're in like, oh, actually they're coming to Nashville. They're not going to Nashville. Oh, yeah, I just I just do a video see Jason Monahan called me super excited because they're planning 40 stores in the Nashville area. So you're gonna know you're about to know what Wawa is. circle back on this conversation in nine months, I'm back to maybe a year with some other things. Some other coordinations, like large malls, like the Simon Properties group has all the big outlet malls. And they're saying this is a huge win for retailers, because like, why would you want it to be convenient for shoppers to come spend 30 minutes an hour, two hours at your place, but the path to profitability for the actual charging company is unclear, like how much can you really make based on the initial investment, these things are still really expensive. Other things like battery swapping, or mobile charging, are starting, you're starting to see these startups spin up where they show up and they plug into some I wonder how much that vehicle weighs? That's just the battery on wheels, you know, like 20,000 pounds like that. It's potholes. Yeah, it's gonna ruin things. But as we know, Tesla has just opened up their charging Tuesday's already. This feels like a Friday, it feels like a Friday where we're just willing to like, not be in business on Monday, because we're just saying what we want. So Tesla's obviously been building a charging network for a decade, they have tons of data, tons of infrastructure, and they're starting to open up the charging networks to vehicles that are not Tesla's, which I can just see how this can you imagine if Apple started allowing people with a Samsung, or a Google phone to come in the store? That's exactly what it's going to be like when someone pulls their Chevy Bolt or their rivian arc RS one into the Tesla port. And the and the Tesla driver drives up be like, Well,

Kyle Mountsier  12:06

what it's so interesting, because you think about this, like, because of the car has become more of a technology piece. It's much more close, it's closer to a phone. So like charging ports, and charging networks are associated with the technology. The difference is like historically, there's been a universal input for gas or diesel. That's your two options, right? It's just a universal way to go in. And we haven't got like a universal way to charge which is a whole nother conversation that we haven't even

Paul Daly  12:41

touched yet. cars. Cars got Yeah, that is that's a great point. It's like lightning connector or USBC. I don't know. I don't know what speaking of like,

12:51

we need some coffee.

Paul Daly  12:53

Speaking of coffee, I think we've had enough. We've had enough coffee or not enough. I think I think it's very clear. It's way too early to not have enough coffee and have this much energy right.

Kyle Mountsier  13:07

The industry leading grocery chain Wegmans if you're in south you have no clue what that is as well.

Paul Daly  13:17

Everything else it starts with a W apparently,

Kyle Mountsier  13:20

is testing out replacement of live baristas that it's in store buzz coffee bars. with state of the art self service coffee machines. The company cites a significant decrease in coffee run traffic since the uptick of work from home. The company stated coffee brewing technology has come a long way. And our new self serve coffee machines use the same high quality coffee beans and offers similar menu of lattes, cappuccinos, brewed coffee drinks, as always, we'll monitor the success of this new program and continue to evaluate the future of our coffee shops as we move forward. Okay, and let me tell you, I read through the comments section as the opinions there's some strong opinions. We're gonna have this.

Paul Daly  14:06

Let me tell you Well, since you don't know Wegmans is let me tell you a little bit like Vince has won the Best Place to Work like nationally, unlike the Forbes list, right, so Wegmans is historically an amazing employer family owned grocery chain started in Rochester, New York, which is right down the road here from where I am in Syracuse. So I've been to the headquarters and they got all kinds of cool stuff. Wegmans also get this. They build their new stores with cash. They don't have any debt. It's unbelievable. Every brick every blade of grass, they expand that and they use it as an expansion check. saying like, borrowing to expand would not allow us to scale our culture fast enough. And so they're like cash is actually the limiting factor but but they're just crushing it. So they have been very employee focus very competitive.

Kyle Mountsier  14:49

Be like, oh, pool employees out of there. Yeah. Now I get it. I get it though. Because like, if it's not, I mean, if it's just like a slowdown right and because a barista needs to stay busy, right, that's, that's the thing. Like, if you're not constantly having someone in front of you, then then the efficiency of that role is pretty low. Right? Like you go in a coffee shop that's dead and the baristas are just kind of like what coffee is made. We're waiting on to make the next espresso and things like that. That's a whole nother level. So I guess like if that's if that's the move, like that person was being inefficient, and probably in that mode left unfulfilled because they weren't active now. Yeah.

Paul Daly  15:31

And I'll tell you from the person experience at a Wegmans coffee place, they didn't really in my opinion, they didn't do it, right. It's the branding, the name of it's called Buzz, it just, it doesn't feel like you're in a coffee shop, it feels like there's a produce employee making you coffee behind the bar, right? Like the uniforms the same, there's like no vibe, there's no real vibe to it. So I don't think it's, I think it's a good move for them. Because most people don't really want to sit around have a cup of you go in the grocery store, you're there for a thing. So I think I've had some decent coffee come out of those machines, you know, the nice ones. So I don't know, I think the bottom line is like, what does the customer want? And they're saying the data shows that people don't want to hang around and drink coffee. So we want to give them a great cup of coffee. It'll be faster than a barista. And I think tying this back all the way back down reexamining what we're doing in the showrooms in our waiting areas in the service line, what is actually adding value and what is not adding value is always up for debate. I think it's always up for debate, especially in this time when the transition is kind of like shifting back to somewhat level of normal with inventory and things like that. It's like you need to bring the customers the value they want the experience, right? Like what is that visceral thing? What is

Kyle Mountsier  16:45

like what part of the experience is most valuable to them or heightens the experience and makes them feel the most cared for and respected when they're in the showroom or are at home or wherever and like rip out the things that don't make sense and inject more life into the things that make sense.

Paul Daly  17:01

There you go. We're gonna end on that. We're hoping that we've injected a little life into your day into this industry so you can get out there and go do the same for all the people you're gonna come in contact with. We'll see you tomorrow.

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