CDK Data Safe!, The Future of Mobility, GPT High School

Paul J Daly: 0:07

Good morning. It is August 27 five days left. Kyle's on vacation. So we have guest hosts all this week. Today I get to spend a little time with our friend, Steve Greenfield, welcome to the show, Steve,

‍Steve Greenfield: 0:18

thanks for having me. Paul. Always

Paul J Daly: 0:20

gonna be that, though, the people really all right, it's, it's kind of an eventful time in general. Winding the summer up in upstate New York, our kids don't go back to school for, like, until after Labor Day. But I know a lot of places in the south kids started school, like, weeks ago. I'm seeing back to school pictures and that kind of, like triggers all types of things in the auto industry, doesn't

Steve Greenfield: 0:40

it? Anxiety from, like, when I was in middle school. Man, I hated going back to school. It was, like, fraught with like, oh, I don't know if people are going to accept me. And all the insecurities come out this time of year,

Paul J Daly: 0:51

yeah, oh my gosh, and all the flashbacks, without a doubt, though, it's like the shifting of the seasons, the shifting of the car sales seasons, the shifting of the routines, right? Summer is winding down in all the routines that happen with OEM, meetings and events in the industry, and rolling through, I feel like now it's, it's everyone's about to be like, okay, shake off the summer and kind of get focused throughout the end of this year. So we have a few things going on. I'm not going to announce a thing that I want to announce really bad, but we'll wait until everybody else Nathan's like, Don't you dare. Don't you dare. I'll tell you. I'll tell you after the show, but, but we do have some new content coming out. Uh, we haven't in the dirt. It's one of our podcasts in the dirt by a sodu. Uh, we're talking with Matt Jones from TrueCar, and kind of what they're doing, great guy, yeah. Oh, he's amazing what they're building, a true car, plus

Steve Greenfield: 1:41

to work with that guy. And he's really an awesome person.

Paul J Daly: 1:44

Where did you work with him?

Steve Greenfield: 1:46

A true car? I was there for two years.

Paul J Daly: 1:48

Oh my gosh, I didn't realize that. And that

Steve Greenfield: 1:51

carry out there. And yeah, we had a great time.

Paul J Daly: 1:53

I got it. It's the What was your role at TrueCar, head of strategy and acquisitions, that does not surprise me one bit. And then so you got the friends there, Matt has a great perspective on analyzing consumer behavior, and obviously they have a lot of data, so they do a lot with that. And it's an interesting episode. You should check it out. Also, we're putting that. It's also on our LinkedIn page. If you don't follow asotu on LinkedIn, that's probably the best place to keep up to date with the drip feed of what's going on. And just hearing from some great place, we have a vlog out Jordan Cox. We're now deploying him all over the country. I'm gonna name him the nicest guy in the automotive industry, Steve, he's taking your title. No, but he could be. He could be, nobody could be. He definitely an honorary Canadian. I don't know what part of Canada The accent is from, but it's not the same. So got a lot going on. And then obviously, September, there's a lot of travel. We hope to see you out where we're going to be. We're going to be at the Vint Q unleashed event. We're going to be at the Welcome Conference, which is will gaderas hospitality conference in New York City. And I would say, I wish everybody could be there, but tickets are sold out, and they have been for a while now, but we'll bring back the good stuff, just for you. As usual, we have some news, and actually, we're starting the day off with some good news coming from CDK. How's that feel? CDK global has reported that two significant cyber attacks, the ones that happened in June did not result in the theft of any dealership employee or consumer data. Following this third party expert review, despite the widespread disruption that happened, they said, quote, We are pleased to report concluding third third party expert review on July, 9, June, 19, cyber incident, we have not discovered a compromise of reportable dealer, employee or consumer, personally identifiable information. Basically that was the two week shutdown. We all remember it. It was two weeks. It felt like two months affecting 15,000 dealerships. They did end up offering a one month rebate of fees to the dealership customers impacted. Some dealers felt it was insufficient. Some dealers were fine with it. Basically, they're working hard to minimize future risks. But the spokesperson that said that last thing also added, dealers can now reassure both their employees and consumers their data is secure, and continue to focus on providing excellent experiences through the car buying and owning journey. So that's some good news. I

Steve Greenfield: 4:15

think, well, thank goodness for that. I mean, they needed some good news. But, I mean, do we know, or will we ever know how many dealers actually accepted the one, one month, three rebate?

Paul J Daly: 4:25

I think any dealers that weren't aren't involved in a lawsuit, probably accepted it. Okay, so I don't know. I don't think they're releasing account, and I don't think they ever will, but I know there was some litigation, like, really early on, like, while the hack was still ongoing, right? People filing things, and I don't know what happened on any of those if they ended up settling, or if there's, there's been a settlement in judgment, I just haven't seen anything about it. But I'm

Steve Greenfield: 4:49

assuming I mentioned the public groups may have to disclose that, like in their next quarterly earnings, in terms of if they settled with CDK. But that might be, to your point, the only, the only data that we ever get. Yeah,

Paul J Daly: 5:00

yeah. I mean, it's, I think a lot of dealers have moved on, like, you know, like, sometimes dealers are like, Okay, we did the thing, we got upset, but we were really focused on what we're doing as a business. And, you know, I wouldn't be surprised if the vast majority of dealers just took it, moved on, and are kind of just hoping for the best. And maybe probably, I'm sure, the CDK reps are getting leaned on a little bit more than they usually have for, oh yeah, little favors, little this, little that, and, you know, so we have, what, four months, four and a half months, still nada. So think we'll be in person with a lot of CDK folks and a lot of dealers, and sometimes nothing else happens like this will probably just be ancient history and probably result in some better practices and procedures for dealers across the board.

Steve Greenfield: 5:43

Yeah, figures cross we don't have another catastrophic event this fall. Knock on wood.

Paul J Daly: 5:47

Yes, let's do that. Hey, you have a new book coming out, Steve, the future of mobility. It's we went on from the future of automotive. Now we're at the future mobility, exploring the next 10 years and basically how we're going to move people and goods around, by land, sea, air and space. Can you tell us a little bit about the book and what you're thinking is around it?

Steve Greenfield: 6:08

Yeah, so the first book I wrote, I was surprised that no one had written that book yet, and the future of automotive retail, and it kind of begged for this book to be written as well. So this thing's going to be about four times as large, and that's why, you know, I'd hope to get this thing out by the end of the year, and it's taken this long to go through all the editing process, but it's with the publisher. So, you know, sometime the next two to three weeks, we should have actually the first physical copies of this thing. So we'll definitely have copies to be able to distribute at nada this year. And I'm super excited. It's a lengthy, lengthy tome, for sure, but I mean, the story has to be written. There's so much change going on across the whole mobility spectrum, and whether you look at micro mobility or electrification of both vehicles and just transport in general, the implications on aviation, you know, EV talls electric vertical takeoff and landing vehicles that many of the automakers are innovating and working on today. You know, you look at the Marine space and autonomy on boats, and, you know, decarbonization across boats, and how boats will be powered in the future. And even we touch on aviation and space, right with what Elon Musk is doing with SpaceX and some of the innovations there. So it begged to be done, and it's been a long work, but I'm really looking forward to getting it out and then getting on stage at some of these conferences and talking through, not only the future of automotive, putting it in the context of the broader mobility spectrum. Yes,

Paul J Daly: 7:34

so this is the future of automotive, and that's, I mean, that's a solid three quarters of an inch to an inch thick. So if it's four times the size of this, who's going to be carrying these around? Nada to hand them out, how you can do that well?

Steve Greenfield: 7:48

Or the tougher question is, I think my audio book was like six hours for the future of automotive. So we're talking like a 24 hour audio book or something. The poor people that have to listen to that, it took me a full weekend. As you can imagine, you guys, you can imagine, more than any, you know, it took me a full weekend to get that thing recorded, and then,

Paul J Daly: 8:06

oh, so you read it, you didn't have it like James Earl Jones or like, you know,

Steve Greenfield: 8:09

I read it. So that's my voice. If you get you'll go on Audible or listen to the audio track for that book. And I'm going to record this next one too. But, man, I am not looking forward to that weekend. I'm going to

Paul J Daly: 8:21

be well caffeinated. Um, oh, I mean, that's, it's funny. Nathan, our producer is typing in show notes as you speak, like, why don't we use an AI clone, Voice of Steve Greenfield. We can do it. Oh,

Steve Greenfield: 8:30

there we go. We can do it. I'll be a royalty on that one if you can save me a whole weekend's worth of work. Yeah,

Paul J Daly: 8:36

what's the ROI a week of Steve Greenfield in the field? I think that's a pretty sweet deal. There

Unknown: 8:41

you go. Nathan and I need to hook up and discuss challenge, accepted.

Paul J Daly: 8:45

Challenge accepted. How does this give us? Give us one thing, like, how you think paying attention to the broader spectrum of like, what is space travel or space shipping and boat decarbonization have to do with car dealers?

Steve Greenfield: 8:57

Well, no good. I know your audience is primarily dealers, right? So, I mean, you got to keep an eye on whether there will be substitutes for, you know, regular passenger vehicle sales 15 years ago. You know, many of the consultants said that by now, all the cars on the road would be fully autonomous, and, you know, on demand, and consumers wouldn't need to buy new cars, right? And that would be incredibly disruptive to franchise dealers. So I think shame on any dealer that isn't kind of staying abreast of all these trends. Space travel is not going to impact your business, as you know, marine won't as well. But, you know, a good example, maybe not a great example, but for electric vertical takeoff and landing vehicles, EV talls, if they catch on, you know, in dense urban areas, you know, it may be a substitute for people using their passenger vehicles to commute every day, right? So I think that, um, none of the stuff in the book is going to be immediately disruptive to dealers. A lot of it could be just of interest to stay, stay abreast of. But there, there are themes out there, electrification, maybe most notably, but autonomous as well, the dealers better be paying. Attention to because, you know, it may not be for five years, but within a 10 year span, some of these themes may start manifesting and having an impact on their business. Yeah,

Paul J Daly: 10:08

and I think this next generation is just more of a heads up generation in general, with the availability of information and things like that. So it feels like I've even heard dealers talk about being ones to retail, EV tall vehicles, right? Especially some of these manufacturers and and that seems like a reality. I know in Syracuse here we have, we have a an FAA approved drone corridor, which is the largest in the country, where they can test drones with minimal permits and all that. And I was talking to, I'm friends with the COO of our Syracuse airport. And he was saying, we have one of the only approved sites that is next to an airport where these vertical takeoff and landing vehicles can actually, they're already approved to operate, to be tested, to be, you know, test driven, if you will. And so, like, I don't know, maybe in Syracuse we'll be one of the, the first EV tall dealers, but only, like, nine months out of the year, because I don't think people want to fly those things in the snow. You snow. Yeah, EV tells, I

Steve Greenfield: 11:03

don't know what the actual consumer demand is going to be, but dealers will be selling them because, you know, you've got manufacturers like Hyundai, for example, that are going to be building these things. But you know, maybe we're practically on the other end of the continuum. You know, I think that dealers also be selling e bikes, right? Brandon e bikes, and there is demand for those, and there's tax incentives for those. So I mean, enterprising dealers may figure out ways to effectively create new profit margins from from selling e bikes.

Paul J Daly: 11:28

Yeah, it's really a segment that that sits between like a motorcycle and a regular bike, that you don't need a special license for, that's much easier to park and store, much less it's cheaper. So yeah, especially in some areas. All right, well, we got one more sport story, speaking of autonomy and AI. All right, a high school in London is shaking up education by introducing AI teachers, including chat GPT, to replace teachers, human teachers for some students, aiming to personalize their learning experience David game college. I like the fact that it's called David game College. It just feels right. Is piloting the AI driven program with 20 students focusing on subjects English, Mathematics and Science. Basically, the AI is going to provide personalized learning paths, allowing students to learn at their own pace. John Dalton cote, principal emphasized the approach could enhance student confidence and mental health by enabling them to master subjects without the pressure of a teacher or the, you know, the other students having to go at the same pace. They're going to receive human support through a full time learning coaches. They're saying, so it'll be like a couple learning coaches to so many students. You know. Critics are saying, you know, you can't replace fully replace humans, you know, but John Dalton, co principal of the college, said the system does not judge students. Instead, allows them to learn at their own pace in a safe environment. And they're basically going to do this for a year, and then they're going to take these standardized tests, and we're going to see where, see where everything lands.

Steve Greenfield: 12:57

Field. Yikes. Remember about remember back so one of my favorite albums of all time was 1984 by Van Halen, and there was a track on there, hot for teacher. And I can only imagine the abuse that these students will give to these AI engines when they know that there's no human watching. Can you imagine the questions that they're going to be at. It brings a new level of like, sex education to the classroom. Yeah, I

Paul J Daly: 13:24

think, well, they did say chatgpt. They didn't say grok, right? We're not going to grok is not approved for the classroom at this point. No, grok in the classroom. I think, I do think, like we're starting to see this in some auto products that I've seen, where they have these AI engaged learning paths that are getting pretty sophisticated with, you know, walk around training sales training that watches facial expression that, you know, says, Oh, this delivery was good, this was bad. And so all the role playing, I'm seeing AI tools now stepping in and saying, like, people can train on sales and process through role playing with AI without all first of all, you don't need two people, so it's half the manpower. But secondly, it's, it's like you're able to do it in an environment where you're comfortable. So those tools, these tools, are coming into automotive for sure. Steve, thank you so much for spending some time with us. I know you got to run to your next meeting. Always a pleasure to have you on the show. Thanks, everybody. Paul, All right, everybody, get out there. Sell some cars. Love some people and pay attention to the future of mobility. You.

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