CES Updates with Steve Greenfield, Afeela Details, Self-Driving Ubers, 25% EV in 2025

Paul J Daly  0:01  
Good morning. It is Thursday, January 9. We're in a little bit of a snow globe. Atlanta is prepping for a winter storm, and we have Steve Greenfield, who happens to be back in Atlanta from CES he's going to tell us everything he learned and more the people

Kyle Mountsier  0:15  
really wanted. I think he's going to tell us everything he taught everyone, but that's just me. No, he learns a lot. That's the thing. A great teacher is a great learner. You know, yeah,

Paul J Daly  0:25  
lifetime learner. Lifetime learner. We want to start off by by just saying, like, our thoughts, our prayers, our support is out there. The tragedy that's unfolding in California right now, the LA wildfires, there are over like 30 dealer dealer groups in the affected area right now, I'm sorry, 3030, plus stores, la car guy group, trophy auto dealer group, gaplin Motors, SoCal, Chevy dealers, universal, Mitsubishi, Casa de Cadillac, and more and more. That's not an exhaustive list, but you know, we know our friend Brian Mazz is out there. We haven't talked to him. Maybe we'll try to get him. But look same thing that applied to what was going on in Asheville, North Carolina. If there is any way we can help, we can be assistance. We can draw attention to any relief efforts, specifically ones that are dealer run or trusted by the dealers there, please let us know. Send us an email crew@asotu.com and we'll do what we did last time. We'll try to point rally around traffic. We can circle the wagons and do what we can to serve our dealership family and them as they serve, obviously, their people, their communities. And this is still unfolding, so just want to put that out there. First and foremost,

Kyle Mountsier  1:38  
it's just awful. Some of the photos and some of the videos of what's going down there and and the end containment that that's going on, they got 100 mile per hour winds blowing this thing across, across the trees. So it's, it's, it's crazy, yeah, it's

Paul J Daly  1:53  
one of those things in life, and we have to wrestle this as a national industry, right? You have good things and hard things, these parallel rails of life, and so we're going to try to balance the two, especially as the industry is gearing up to go to New Orleans in just a couple it's two weeks, oh, man, right, two weeks from today, the Nada. That's it stop. It's Thursday. It's Thursday, and I'll be right back. I got planned right now. We're already be there. And so the industry is gathering. So obviously there's two things, the duality of keeping move things forward and a stronger industry provides for strength in situations that are tough. We just want to let you know about a few things that are going on. You know, I don't know if we've talked about this much, but we have an official partnership with nada this year. Oh yeah, we've never even talked about that on the show. We've talked about in the email and stuff like that.

Kyle Mountsier  2:43  
Yeah, it's a great collab where we're bringing some of what's going on in the show on the show floor to the NADA live stage, which is kind of centered in the middle of the floor. This year, it won't be in the lobby. So if you're kind of wondering, like, what's going on, what should I see? Where should I go? You can at the top of the every hour, come check us out. We'll be streaming live to that live stage. You can kind of see like, oh, what should I maybe check out next? What? What innovative, cool things are people doing? Yeah. And just

Paul J Daly  3:10  
as a reminder, we also are going to bring you a lot of special coverage from the show. So if you're not on the email list, get go to asotu.com make sure you're on the email list. We're doing daily live streams, not just a show in the morning, but we're doing live streams throughout the day to bring you the people and the things that we're seeing and we're hearing. We're also going to do our first ever nada party, and we have our first edit for nada party site up, which is by far the fastest growing ASOTU property ever. It's unbelievable. Yeah. So yeah, you can go to nada parties.com and see it's not exhaustive yet, but there are lot of parties on there, and everyone's figuring out this is where you need to have your party if you're having it. If you're having a party, go to the site, nada parties.com register your event, so we can make sure people know what they can find, what night, what they're doing. And for our party, it's sold out, but, but get on the wait list, because we are going to be opening up more tickets as we get closer. We're going to be confirming attendance. We're limited by the venue. Obviously, we're going to be confirming attendance, and if you don't confirm your attendance, we're giving the ticket to someone who will confirm attendance. That's right. And also, some of our sponsors of the party have golden tickets that they're going to be giving out closer to the party. So if you're a dealer and you want to go to the party, and you go in and it's sold out, get on the wait list. But also you can reach out to the sponsors and be like, hey, get one of those golden tickets. Yeah, you never know. You

Kyle Mountsier  4:36  
never know. All right, let's get into it. Let's bring Steve in here. We need to talk to him about CE third day in a row.

Paul J Daly  4:43  
Steve Greenfield, back in Atlanta, what time? What time did you get in? Last night?

Steve Greenfield  4:47  
About 1010, 30. Last night we landed. He's good to go. Yeah. Well, guys, before we go there, I'm gonna take over for a minute here. You guys are okay. Bear with me. Oh, you're all right. So question for both of you, because I don't know that anyone's ever asked this. I see you guys at these con. It says nada is a good example. You guys are gonna be on 24/7 on stage, roaming around, doing interviews four days straight. It's got to be exact question for each of you, 32nd answer, What? What? What is your? What's your, what's your secret to surviving nada? Lean? Is it power drinks. How much those evenings Do you stay well hydrated? Do you guys have, like, a, you know, some superstitions that you follow magic, like, what do you guys each do? Just, I want to know from each of you, I think the audience would be interested. Okay,

Paul J Daly  5:35  
Kyle, you want to go first? Kyle, you go, yes.

Kyle Mountsier  5:37  
I mean, one thing that we do is, like, we actually turn in a little bit earlier than I think a lot of people do, or maybe feel like we do, so that, like, six, seven hours of sleep is critical. But, yeah,

Paul J Daly  5:50  
it's the last time you

Kyle Mountsier  5:51  
got seven hours of sleep. Maybe not seven. It's at least six on nada. Okay, all right, yeah, but I will say so it's the it's the sex, six hours of sleep and then, yeah, well hydrated, like it is there's like, alcohol doesn't hit either of our system, so that helps us stay pretty and caffeine, I mean, is caffeine your friend or look, we go coffee for sure.

Paul J Daly  6:16  
Coffee for me, like I'm an introvert by nature. You wouldn't guess that by what I do for a living, but when I'm out there, I love being with people, but But I My battery's drained at the end of the day, right? I'm exhausted. So one thing for me that I've done in the last two or three years is, and maybe people do this already, but like, I have my own room, my own space, and I just try to sit in quiet at the end of the night, and, like, shut my laptop, there's so much to do, and if I give myself that time, I also try my best. And Kyle, I know Kyle does this to try to get a little exercise in in the morning, if possible. That breaks down after day one, typically. And I'm also, I also try to make sure that I don't give myself a crushing travel schedule to get there. So like, no 3:30am wake up, wake up to get on an early flight, because I know by the end of the day. So that's it. Yep, coffee, good friends, it's hard. I mean, the energizing of being around everybody in the industry and seeing everybody that we interact with all year one place helps. But yeah, those are simple, simple tips from a couple simple

Steve Greenfield  7:18  
All right, so the industry needs to start calling Kyle at 11pm that's what I got from this. Hey, Kyle. Where are you? Where are you at these parties? Kyle's

Paul J Daly  7:28  
like, that's fine. You can call me at 11, but I'm also going to call you at five when I'm running on the treadmill. I

Kyle Mountsier  7:37  
sometimes don't run Sunday but I don't run Sundays anyway, so I do run every day with nada. Give

Steve Greenfield  7:42  
us some of yours. No, I think it's the same thing with time, you know, I stay away from the alcohol, stay well hydrated, get get to sleep at a reasonable hour, but then you can get up early, like, Kyle, you're saying too, right? And like, you know, but what you don't want is to run out of gas at like, seven or eight at night, if you're in the middle of a dinner and you gotta, like, manage the energy levels.

Paul J Daly  8:02  
I'm so thankful that we're Central Time. And, right? Yeah, yeah, very great. That's gonna be magic. Kills me. You feel like a rock star for like, day one and maybe day two. We're like, I'm up at 3am and everybody else is just sleeping. And then when? When it's like, seven, 7pm and it's usually my bedtime on the East Coast, right? I'm like, 1010, 1030 and everyone's like, so what are we doing for dinner? It's like, this is gonna this is gonna hurt, yeah, three hour dinner is gonna help us. And also, the fact that we're not in the desert, because, like, by the by the last day of nada in Vegas, like everyone looks like they just walked across the Sahara. Their lips are chapped. It's pretty funny, actually, yeah, no doubt, no doubt. All right, well, you were,

Kyle Mountsier  8:44  
you were just in Vegas, actually, literally, yes, you, we want to get your recap. You said you spent the day yesterday around Startup Village and maybe a couple other things. Yep, what did yesterday have have told for you? Yeah, so,

Steve Greenfield  8:57  
so I'll start there. So, 1000s, literally, I'm not exaggerating, literally, 1000s of startups from around the world all in one huge room. It's overwhelming. You can't possibly pay attention to all them. It's numbing. There's so many and but if you ever get a chance, don't neglect I mean, it's great to go to the you know, the West Hall, the North Hall, the South Hall, and see these big exhibits, but get over to the Venetian get into the basement, and it's breathtaking. Like these little startups where you got, you know, two people from Korea or Japan or Turkey who, you know, they've gotten some subsidization from the government to come over. They're young, full of energy, flew here in the back of the plane for definitely, most definitely, staying at some like cheap Airbnb with 10 other people off the strip or something, but, yeah, I mean, it's just amazing, right? I get energized by working with entrepreneurs in general, but to see just the sheer mass of like entrepreneurs was great. So that would be one two is, you know, it struck me this trickle down, right? Like, if you're an f1 or a Moto GP fan, and you see technologies being developed, you know, a few years later, we might be lucky in. Have to see them in mainstream cars. And it's the same thing with CES, right? I mean, one of the perks of going to CES, you see technologies there that, you know, may not be in cars we're driving anytime soon, but, you know, eventually, some of these technologies will actually catch on, whether it's these full screen, translucent, you know, windscreens that we're looking through. You know, BMW has like this heads up display that goes across the entire bottom of the windscreen. These kinds of things we're going to see over time. You know, there's a lot of buzz around AI. But, you know, we talked yesterday about translucent TVs. But, you know, we may see mirrors, windscreens, rear view, uh, windows, etc. But I think the big things are, like robotics, like a lot of robotics around enabling human movement exoskeletons, like Tony Stark, like exoskeletons, warehouses and things. So those kinds of things are really cool to see. But you can imagine, like, even for elderly folks, you know, when Paul's in his wheelchair and his kids are looking after him, eventually, you know, then he's gonna have, like, an exoskeleton to be like Tony Stark. The

Paul J Daly  10:57  
funny thing that you say about that, I tell my kids that right now, I was like, I'm gonna be one of the most you don't understand in like, 40 or 50 years from now, I am going to be able to, like, get up, move around, pick things up, like,

Kyle Mountsier  11:09  
Absolutely, Rob,

Unknown Speaker  11:10  
Rob Absolutely. And

Paul J Daly  11:13  
I'm gonna be sleeping, and the AI in this thing is gonna be, like, just moving me. Like,

Kyle Mountsier  11:21  
that's gonna be great. That's Kroger today. Nada

Paul J Daly  11:25  
2070 survival plan, because my exoskeleton is gonna be moving me around. It'll

Steve Greenfield  11:32  
wake you up once in a while. I think the same thing with autonomous mining tractors and grass mowers, these kinds of things, lawn mowers, a lot of those technologies. And I think that, you know, we're going to start seeing this stuff in the day to day, which is going to take a little bit of the edge off of consumers resistance to Waymo and some of these technologies as well. So switching over to auto mode, if you guys heard me rant yesterday about afila, you know, and the the Sony, Honda product, and whether or not, that timing is going to work for them. You know, really, I was excited yesterday. Continue to be excited about the new Honda EV products that are going to get built in the US, which is cool, but I think the thing that really struck me is many auto makers elected not to participate this year, and that's that's very interesting, but I think a lot of them are tightening their belts with budgets. And, you know, I wonder what the trickle down effect is going to be on nada this year. And I'll have one forecast I have not spent time I should have before this call, but with the map yet. But I'm willing to bet that some of the really big spenders, the Coxs, the Reynolds of CDKs, might have slightly smaller booths this year because everybody's

Kyle Mountsier  12:38  
tweeting edges are not quite as big. There

Steve Greenfield  12:41  
you go. There you go. So yes, you might see Not, not as much, you know, these showcase like city blocks, you know, Cox takes over or whatever, and maybe fewer OEMs participating, fewer of the big guys. I don't know what that's going to have that might counter intuitively be beneficial for the the startups that are doing their first nada, absolutely, there's more floor space and better floor space. Yeah,

Kyle Mountsier  13:04  
yeah, it was interesting. I think there's only three, maybe four OEMs actually on the floor. You know, Ford and Toyota are typically there. But I, I think I only saw one or two more after that. So it is and, and, you know, just perusing, obviously, Steve, you and I both follow like, the startup and the tech world a lot, just perusing through there was actually a lot of net new that I hadn't heard of, or at least hadn't interacted with cool that's great. That's good to hear. I think that's really neat to see that they're still like startups interested in kind of like entering the space and making themselves known for this.

Steve Greenfield  13:40  
Yeah. So the pro tip, I mean, I'll just say this to you guys, but maybe to some of the dealers out there is, like, get away from the main floor. Get off to the periphery, out by the hot dog stand, or the proverbial restroom, where there's, like, really shitty show floor space. Because, you know, some entrepreneur there this year, for the first time, is going to be the next e lead, or Vin solution, Joe, cheer at dealer, inspire, what have you. Or Dale Pollack at the auto 1015, years from now. And shame on you if you missed them by not just kind of wandering off and seeing some of these smaller displays.

Kyle Mountsier  14:12  
That's what a great two week before the

Paul J Daly  14:13  
show. Warm up. Man. And we did look like what nada is in February next year. So Kyle and I were like, Okay, next year's the year we're going to CES the nice so usually too close together that we can't, like, it's hard to make it work. But next year we have, like, a full month between the two. So all right, well,

Steve Greenfield  14:30  
let's figure out how to collaborate while we're doing the whole thing. I saw, I saw Jamie butters yesterday. You know, he's was busy as heck. But, you know, they'd set up like a podcast area, etc. So I'm sure you guys can have dedicated space out there where you can be doing live podcast during and yeah. I mean, let's figure out the best way to collaborate on that next

Paul J Daly  14:47  
year, next year, next year, we're following you to the to the to the startup Venice. Yeah, yeah,

Speaker 1  14:53  
you guys will be your mind will be blown. It's crazy over there. Beautiful, beautiful. Well,

Paul J Daly  14:57  
let's talk about a little collab here at CES. Goodyear unveiled some cutting edge tire technology to tackle autonomous vehicles. Achilles heel I'm living in it right now in upstate New York and snowy conditions. The real question is, they think smarter tires are the solution to autonomous driving in the snow, Goodyear and Dutch company TNO showcased tire tech, using vehicle cameras and weather data to predict braking distances, usually autonomous braking just has a prediction how far you are from the next object. But then bringing in data from the actual tires and combining with the camera tech, they essentially calculate how long it will take to stop in snowy conditions and just vehicle speed accordingly. Chris Hessel Goodyear, their CTO said, without a train driver, the system doesn't know it's a snowy road. That's the innovation they're trying to solve here is that the vehicle knows what type of road conditions. So I don't know if you ended up seeing Goodyear while you were there. Did you happen to see them?

Steve Greenfield  15:55  
I saw the head of Goodyear ventures, and I hung out, but I did not see this technology out there.

Kyle Mountsier  16:00  
Well, I love this technology, because I know from being, you know, I grew up in the in the north, not as far north as you Paul, but like, even drivers struggle. And so if we can mitigate risk in snow, because we understand the stopping distance and what's necessary based on that particular tire in that particular condition, right? Like, oh, this has this type of tread, so it might react in this way. I think is like that that more a better relationship with the railroad driving characteristics, but it's interesting to me, like, I think this is actually technology that's going to be scaled across, like, all types of conditions, right? Oh, the condition is sunny and dry, oh, the condition is dusty, oh, the condition is rainy. And so I'm looking out for these actually, like adjacent technologies that come to the vehicle, right? Even you go to like the actual brake. What does the brake know about the calipers capacity to slow down and stop, right? So you start to think about all of these, like little technology partners feeding data north into the vehicle. That's where we're going to see, like the driving characteristics and dynamics get really in line and in sync.

Paul J Daly  17:11  
Right now, if Do either of you know if it's if it's raining heavy, will autonomous driving, like work, like, does it shut off? Does it say driver needed or any

Steve Greenfield  17:21  
provision. There's two, there's two, there's two challenges. 5g doesn't work very well in the rain. In the rain, if it's relying on 5g you can have intermittent, you know, connectivity, and then then, you know, Tesla's gone all in on just cameras, whereas most others use LIDAR, radar and camera so you have failovers. But if cameras, lenses get fogged, like today up in Syracuse, they get caked with salt. When these don't work, they don't work, yeah.

Paul J Daly  17:45  
I mean, that's why it's, it's a mentality thing, too. People adopting the technology in upstate New York, when people say, Oh, the car drives itself, the first thing out of everybody's mouth is like, okay, for like, three months out, right here, right,

Unknown Speaker  17:57  
right, exactly.

Paul J Daly  18:00  
So, I mean, that's, the way it goes. We'll see what happens. But speaking of EVs and autonomous technology, this is kind of some big news report. Surprise me, but the Mustang Mach e actually outsold the gas powered Mustang in 2024 selling a shift in the iconic lineup for sold 51,745 Mark ease, which is a 24 7% increase year over year, and the gas powered Mustang saw a 9.5% decline. They are saying some production issues led to tight supply with the gas power one. But Ford emphasized the models profitability and strong appeal. These are basically the Mustang brand as a whole is a very profitable unit for Ford. Last year, they signaled they intended to expand the traditional portfolio, showing some dealers variants, including a four door coupe, a Ford a four wheel off drive road. Well, okay, and basically they don't have the full name in the notes. Somebody that knows what they're doing from Ford just said that, you know, reiterated the profitability and the viability of the Mustang brand.

Kyle Mountsier  19:02  
So don't call it a Mustang 100

Paul J Daly  19:06  
times, but you can put a horse on the front of that, but that thing does not look like a Mustang. It kind of feels like they're they're starting to get there. It didn't start that way, you know, I don't know. Comments Mustang? Mach E, yeah. I

Steve Greenfield  19:18  
mean, I just would want to ask the question, like, how many of those were eligible for the $7,500 tax incentive, and what the leasing penetration was expecting. You know, 80% of those 40, 50,000 vehicles were leased, and therefore all of them were eligible for the tax incentive. And the taxes incentives might go away. So we might, we might see a rebalancing here. We'll see what 2025 holds, point

Paul J Daly  19:39  
A lot of those. I mean, there's always a Mustang Mach e available at hertz, yes,

Steve Greenfield  19:43  
no, no, yeah, yeah. That's Oh yeah. You could ask, what percentage of those 50,000 women,

Kyle Mountsier  19:48  
oh, whether or not they were, yeah, a bunch of lease vehicles you

Paul J Daly  19:53  
think of the Mustang, right? Like, the Mustang is also one of those quintessential, like, I've written a sports car, right? It's like,

Unknown Speaker  19:58  
yeah. Cylinder Mustang

Kyle Mountsier  20:02  
over everyone's eyes. You gotta be kidding me. Get out of here. I'm gonna say something wrong.

Paul J Daly  20:09  
All right. Well, look, it's been a fun week. Steve, thank you so much for bringing back all the insights from CES. My pleasure. It's been very great for you to join us. We have a lot more coming. Two weeks from now, we'll be on the floor at nada. In the meantime, go to nada parties.com register your party. You.

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