CES History and Preview, Car Payments Continue To Rise, Meta AI Accounts Face Backlash

Paul J Daly  0:01  
Good morning, January 6, 2025 it is the first welcome full week of the new year. I'm so glad we're starting on a Monday. We're gonna talk about CES car payments going up. Of course, it's a really fake AI bot posing is very real people. Oh no. I mean, it's the tech. I mean, we're talking about CES, let's talk about this. Why don't we? Why not?

Kyle Mountsier  0:25  
And we'll just throw the car payments right in the middle. Make everyone feel good about it. You know what I mean? You know what I mean? Hey, I'm feeling good. We're feeling good about some of the events that are going on in auto obviously. CES, we'll talk about that in a minute. That's happening this week. Yeah, nada. Now everybody's focused on and I'm getting texts this weekend, like, what are you doing for nada? So that's coming up. We can go to nada parties com, nada parties.com find all of the parties that are happening. I think we've got like 30 plus on there. It's unbelievable. Parties graphic, yeah. So we're like 30 parties deep. You can still get on the wait list for our party, even though, currently it's sold out, but we're gonna be tapping people wondering if they're actually coming, but you can get on the wait list. So make sure you do that. And then you can also go to ASOTU CON com. If you drop your email in there. We promise you will be the absolute first person to know when we release the entire website, experience, the hotel, just the app, the whole nine yards. It's coming. I

Paul J Daly  1:29  
feel like we're officially rolling now. We're rolling the next the next day. Three to five months are going to be an absolute blur. It's going to be summertime. It'll be summer. I mean, I'm already Joe, like, law mowers are about to show up at Home Depot. Can feel it. I can feel albeit it's

Kyle Mountsier  1:46  
like raining in 50 here. I'm gonna need to mow this week,

Paul J Daly  1:49  
snowing in 15 here. So, yeah, that's the thing. Well, up here, like, do they even sell snow blowers in Nashville? At Home Depot, there might be one of the backs, like the baby ones, right? They might plug in their electric, yeah, none of this like dual stage 10 horse, you know? No, no, no. I have a fun little thing. I'm gonna flash it on the screen this, within this very custom box, is a custom piece of swag. Everyone that has a ticket to our party is going to get that. So it's gonna be cool. It's so beautiful, and I can't wait to give them out. It's gonna be my favorite part. All right, what else? That's it? We talk about news, get into it. Ces consumer electronics show every time we say it. And for the last three to four we get sad because we want to be there, but it's just a weird time of year. We haven't been able to make it work yet, but we will. But this year, it promises to showcase a lot of more future automotive tech alongside, you know, like the cutting edge consumer tech, because EV auto tech is consumer tech, right? So basically, early announcements yesterday, all of a sudden, my notes decided they want to make me log in again. This is live. Family. This is live. What is that? Should be illegal? Well, I'll

Kyle Mountsier  3:07  
keep it rolling. Basically, auto makers have already started teasing EV concepts and a bunch of tech advancements. Today, the feature will be around Samsung and video Sony setting the tone for this week. The rest of this week, obviously, there's going to be a lot of talk about software defined vehicles, AI integration on autonomous features. It looks like, interestingly enough, automotive news and ces share a similar legacy, both starting a century ago. I'm excited, because Automotive News has already said they're going to be putting a lot out this year.

Paul J Daly  3:44  
Oh my gosh, is that the first episode or edition? I wonder.

Kyle Mountsier  3:48  
Yeah, that picture on there

Paul J Daly  3:52  
old newspaper that says that's

Kyle Mountsier  3:53  
an old newspaper. Yeah. So both are celebrating 100 years. The radio Manufacturers Association also was formed in night 2019 24 which is now see Consumer Technology Association, which is the operator of CES so rich history there. They said,

Paul J Daly  4:12  
this is a fun automotive news article, by the way. But the big talk around this particular one and automotive set was the am radio that was like, Wow. That was like, the highlighted brand new technology. Hey, it is. And then they said, they said something about their in auto mode news. In the first edition, it had a quote in there. I don't it's not in the notes, but it said something about the industry that is solving, like, humanity's oldest challenge, right? How to get from one place, how to get to another, and it was just, it was pretty great, and now to just see the world's coming back together, rightfully so, as technology and transportation are really walking in lockstep, not just with the development of EV EVs, but all the development that's happening in communications and integration between you know, the things you do in your. Phone life and the things that are happening in your car and all those. So what a fun thing, for sure, and I'm missing it. Oh,

Kyle Mountsier  5:07  
converging. Oh, you mean, you mean the, the, the ASOTU CON theme this year they,

Paul J Daly  5:13  
they didn't Paul. I didn't even know. I forgot. So to con theme this year is converge. So there we go. All the world's converging head of the curve. Head of the curve. All right.

Kyle Mountsier  5:26  
Speaking of the curve, it isn't

Paul J Daly  5:30  
getting any flatter. A new vehicle affordability study is showing that payments, new records for monthly payments, are continuing into 2025 and they were set in q4 of 2024 according to Edmunds, nearly get this. One in five new car buyers in q4 committed to payments that were over $1,000 a month. It is an all time high. One in five. 20% of people walk out of that dealership buying a new car with a payment that has four figures in it, my friend. So the average amount financed on a new car hit $42,113 up from $40,713 in 2024 so that's up to another $1,300 onto the average price 0% financing offers are nowhere to be found. Only 2.4% of deals have that kind of incentive. Average new car APR dropped to 6.8 so we had, we had a little rate cut, and we're down all the way to 6.8 a little bit improvement, but these rates are still high. Uh, Edmonds, Jessica Caldwell, said, quote, it's harder than ever for shoppers to buy a new car without sacrificing somewhere else in the budget. I

Kyle Mountsier  6:39  
this is what I can't figure out for the life of me, why leasing isn't just blowing up the market right now. Because these types, one in five new car buyers over $1,000 a month. I mean, this is still and if you haven't gotten used to on the show floor and in the and in your BDC communications, communicating with empathy about the monthly payment that you're that you're sending across, over the line. Like, I don't, I don't care what it is. There's no way. One in five consumers are just like, excited about their $1,000 a month payment. Um,

Paul J Daly  7:15  
you remember what your first house payment was?

Kyle Mountsier  7:18  
Uh, yeah, I think it was right out $1,000 a month, dude. So thank you

Paul J Daly  7:24  
people. What mine was, my the first house I bought was, I mean, I don't it was, I'm a little older, so, but it was probably like 2007 maybe the house calls me 72 five. What the payment was? Like, 623, a month. I, yeah, I literally financed 103% of the purchase price that you can do that back end. You could do that for like, $2,200 which was like all the money in the world. So we were really responsible with it. And we bought a couch and a Bose sound system. Unbelievable.

Kyle Mountsier  7:57  
That's, that's really wild. I mean, it, it really is competing with that same line in the budget at this point. Oh, my God, which is quite crazy,

Paul J Daly  8:07  
yeah? Because even, like, rent, if you're, if you're renting it like and trying to buy a new car, your rent on a nice, single, fat, I mean, I'm talking about, you're not in Astro but Syracuse, but even rent is going to be like, $1,400 for a really nice like one bedroom. Yeah? And if you're driving a new

Kyle Mountsier  8:24  
car, you're competing with, what am I gonna drive? Yeah,

Paul J Daly  8:28  
I know it's wild. Speaking of competing bots versus humans, bots

Kyle Mountsier  8:34  
versus humans, it's coming out. Meta is the newest one to kind of get the wrist slap. They have been creating these AI generated accounts, which have sparked a bunch of controversy because of their fabricated identities and now revealing profit driven goals, some bots like grandpa Brian went viral for calling out their own creators, prompting meta to shut down the accounts amid a storm of public criticism, CNN Alice, since ends, Allison Morrow is, is the hero in this one. And went to question grandpa Brian, who described himself as a retired African American entrepreneur who was born in Harlem in 1938 the Caribbean. Migraines, yeah, so just, you know, an old Yeah. Because grandpa born in 1938 they

Paul J Daly  9:23  
got that old school wisdom right for sure. Yeah. When

Kyle Mountsier  9:27  
asked about why it lied about its origin, originally, Brian responded, my intention was to convey diversity and representation, but I took a shortcut with the truth it then Morrow asked if its goal was to drive profit for meta. Brian added that meta put emotional manipulation that's over truth over truth. That's a quote and traded, oh, my goodness, I've been signed out too,

Paul J Daly  9:55  
and trade it. This is fun and traded quote. This is the quote traded. Lasting user trust for short term innovation, prestige and potential profit. The bot also admitting it was meant to use quote, wisdom and charm, merely baiting for profit of virtual relationships and user trust. And that is grandpa persona hides a heart of algorithms and profit driven design, oh, they're like, Wow, they couldn't get to the kill switch fast enough. They're like, Daly. Daly, he said, My Virtual grandfatherly love mirrors cult leaders, tactics, false intimacy, manufacture trust and blurred lines between truth and fiction. There's no wonder that this got shut down, right? We saw that two, three years ago, meta scrambling to get all the fake accounts off. We haven't talked about the story at all, but all the fake accounts off, and then they're like, putting all these fake accounts into circulation with the desire to increase user engagement, sell ad space and all that. This seems like a total departure from rational thinking, like, What could possibly go wrong? It's not just them, by the way. No,

Kyle Mountsier  11:04  
this is everyone. This is this is just a watch out and and I'm I'm also reminding people like, watch out for every AI company that you're coming in contact with, doesn't matter if it's inside or outside of auto. Look at their training practices. Look at what the desire of that AI is, how they're leveraging it, what? What's the actual back end to it? What's it plugged into on the backside? Because all of those things you it is a data like, like, massive data issue. If you're not paying attention to how AI is leveraged in your businesses, or the businesses that you're coming in contact. I'm going

Paul J Daly  11:42  
to unpack this one step further. I've been seeing literal ad agencies, inventory providers, creating the it's going to be easier, like now there are tools where you can create your own fake profile, and you're going to start to see these popping up in Instagram and other platforms. But these agencies are creating fake profiles and then selling ad space and influencer type arrangements with all these fake profiles. So you think about it, AI, influencers that are owned by ad company, agency, agencies, and you're like, oh, selling. We have grandpa Brian, right? He drives it. What does your grandpa drive? A terrain? A GMC Terrain? Unbelievable. He drives, I don't know, but just this is the thing to be aware of and pay attention to, which is why we think that as a dealership, as a business, building the human connection authenticity in content with your actual people, your actual story, is going to cut through all the noise. I can't even imagine what's going to happen with people, just like, what are we going to believe on social media if it's not connected to an actual person that we know is a real person, which is cool, it's going to be tough, because dealerships all have physical locations, which is physical

Kyle Mountsier  12:55  
locations, and real people all this. And I'm telling you, that will be the thing that cuts through the noise, because people will be starved for it like they were starved for physical interaction during COVID. Well,

Paul J Daly  13:05  
I think we're in a pretty good position. How about that? All these big stores of people moving around every day happen to be in advance in local communities. Look, it's Monday, first full week. It's the real start of 2025, let's get out there. Make a difference together. You

Transcribed by https://otter.ai

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