Costco Goes EV, REALLY Deep Employee Discount, Big Check For Auto Students

Paul J Daly: 0:00

Good morning we got a fresh new week it is June 10. Today we're talking about Costco going EV Fisker giving a super big employee discount and a big check for future automotive students. If you go by the fun story from late last week, islands of this week, a couple of little money lots.

‍Kyle Mountsier: 0:35

You know

Paul J Daly: 0:37

when it's time for to kill books, I don't know it was kind of a rainy weekend was like a weird weekend in upstate New York last week. It was like rainy sunny, rainy Sunday was one of those. We had

Kyle Mountsier: 0:48

a rainy Sunday to we had a nice nice start to the weekend got out to the pool, you know? Like it's normal. Normal June in Nashville.

Paul J Daly: 0:59

So literally,

Kyle Mountsier: 1:00

you amaze we're here this weekend. Oh, your boy definitely didn't go. But I saw Steve wrestler downtown on like 80 different photos. So you know, Steve, Dr. Center

Paul J Daly: 1:13

is in his first his first name amazing Nashville. Yeah, it's his first time in yet and his daughters in the business. So it's like just right for that guy. It's like It's like the NADA of country music.

Kyle Mountsier: 1:26

nuts down. I knew a couple of people that went downtown. It's nuts. They activate literally every single bar for miles Nissan stadium is lit up. It's a it's a whole it's a thing. Like if you think NADA is big, you've never saw Yeah, not even close. Not even close. They

Paul J Daly: 1:43

have the NADA population just on Broadway. Exactly. At any given time.

Kyle Mountsier: 1:48

In three bars. Yeah.

Paul J Daly: 1:52

There's no bad thing. Good morning to everybody on the Livestream. Adrienne, how you doing? Doug? What is up if you don't know, if you just listen to the live stream the show every morning, and we've been trying to a few things out. So if you're part of the LinkedIn audience, the OG LinkedIn audience, we stopped live streaming it and started uploading it right after the live stream to see what it would do as a post, as opposed to a live stream. Because once you live stream something, it disappears pretty much. And we're like, you know, we're kind of missing the light. So we're going to try both this week to bring a live stream it and then upload it as opposed

Kyle Mountsier: 2:24

to troublemaker content like it's going out of stock. You know, we're

Paul J Daly: 2:28

trying, we're trying this in a couple of weeks, we want to like make the first drip announcement here. June 26, mark your calendar 2pm, Eastern, reawakening your dealership our new I'm sorry, our latest asoto edge webinars. So quick shot, 2030 minute webinars, so much fun. We're talking with our friends at activator, talking about kind of breaking out of the COVID coma. I know we're sick of hearing COVID And like, Hey, we're past that. But actually, there are there's a lot of data now. And what's happening in consumer trust consumer behaviors, how to enhance loyalty, right? Like loyalty is a developing thing coming out of COVID. So going to have some new data to share with you there. And we're going to talk through some strategies and of course, how you can leverage your own data. Right to do this.

Kyle Mountsier: 3:13

That's exactly it. Yeah. And I think this is this was a conversation you know, I was that was had a lot at the patch event dmsc Last week, and I think is just like something reinvigorating, because marketing has to be a lot more intentional right now than maybe it was over the last four or five years because kind of the fish are jumping in the boat typestyle. So excited to see what it is that and if you can't get enough content right now, you can go to our so to pay to our YouTube page. So tube ASOTU dot B E, and find a host of content. We're releasing podcasts from the conversation stage in the podcast room at a soda con. We've released all the breakout sessions, all the mainstage systems, everything backwards and forwards. And so yeah, you're gonna want to make sure and check out our YouTube account. They

Paul J Daly: 4:03

go they go. Speaking of checking out segway not like mentally checking out but like checking out your groceries and things like that GM is using his partnership with Costco. Yes, Costco to increase sales of EVs jams promoting Evie EVs like Chevy Equinox blazer, through the Costco Auto Program. A lot of you are familiar with that program. basically leveraging Costco is 50 million United States members with special pricing, you know, special features. They just act as a facilitator, right? They're not selling the cars offering haggle free pricing via their franchise dealers or selected franchise dealers. It's good to be the Costco dealer. Let me just say that members get an extra $1,000 off of GM EVs through July so that's on top of every other incentives any tax break Costco saying we're throw there's another $1,000 in it for going through the Costco program. Basically, they have in a fluent and loyal customer base. You know if you shop there It's just a place that knows how to take care of their members typically aged between 42 and 59 with higher than average incomes. Here's a quote from Jay Maxwell Costco Auto Program GM, he said Our membership is always like new things, right? You walk into a Costco store, my wife's like I need everything they put in the first two aisles and EVs are absolutely new to the marketplace. So leveraging, you know, their understanding their customers, I think feels like when man

Kyle Mountsier: 5:26

there's a Costco that just opened up the road apparently, I think it opened last Thursday, it was packed full to the brim, it's always going to be packed. They have things like cars staged there, they have hot tubs staged in this Costco and still bought for the hot dog value. We'll just have to come back to that one. Right. Like, aligning with that brand is so smart for GM. And you know, for an extra $1,000 incentive, hey, might be might be worth it for more people to check out the Eevee and probably if you're shopping at Costco, like you said, it is typically a slightly more fluid buyer probably has more access to it. So the alignment of brand and accessibility probably pretty high there. Yeah,

Paul J Daly: 6:13

I think they also I mean, they sell home generators they'll definitely be an Eevee charging installer right like definitely have a partnership there. Oh, you

Kyle Mountsier: 6:21

know it yeah, get

Paul J Daly: 6:21

your you get all the tires you're gonna burn through because your car's heavier Costco tire program is fant boss by the way, Costco tire program is fantastic. Just say

Kyle Mountsier: 6:30

shout out

Paul J Daly: 6:32

well, in a place where you need to get winter tires put on like all the time, there is a level of convenience to just being able to like take care of it while you go shopping. The scheduling tool is actually on their website is good back to scheduling. Right which is which is the game changer. If you can just go on an app and schedule and you're gonna be good. It's like right off conversations. Oh, make it easy. Speaking of making it easy.

Kyle Mountsier: 7:00

You're so right. And

Paul J Daly: 7:02

we'll see how easy it is in an effort to sell some of their EVs Fisker is selling their ocean crossover to employees at a significant discount as they're having obviously significant financial struggles and low sales the ocean as a whole is available in three trims. There's the extreme the Ultra and the sport I think the extreme is obviously the highest level and only the Ultra and the sport are offered to employees for this discount. The entry level ocean sport was originally $61,000 and ocean an employee can now get this vehicle for $20,000. Paul,

Kyle Mountsier: 7:42

this is like a going out of business sale just legitimately like the last time this like big locks locks going out of business. I love talking about that, like everyone thinks Big Lots is going on. Right big latch, everything price two thirds off, like come up with two thirds.

Paul J Daly: 8:01

I know I know it well they basically have lowered the retail price anyway all the way down to 25,000. When they were like we gotta move some of this stuff now for employees, they can get them for $20,000 They basically Fisker only sold 4700 of the 10,000 Plus units they produced in 2023. So they can't even sell half of the vehicles they've made. The email that went out to employees started with quote, We are beyond excited to help you join the Fisker ocean family. And all the transactions that happened through this employee program are going to be processed through the Fiskars Newport dealership. So man, like talking about a company just trying to figure out how to make it work.

Kyle Mountsier: 8:41

Just figure out something I mean, they've got a 600 day supply on hand of vehicles. So that's that's a tough pill to swallow. You know, I It's like, I'm still rooting for him. You know, even through all the woes and the craziness. It's, you know, there's a bunch of people that work there that it's their jobs, it's their livelihood, that they decided to partner with dealers, they decided to partner with dealers. You know, there's been some bumpy roads on that we've heard, but still rooting for them. You know, they've just got to overcome a lot. Marques Brownlee to be one of those things. Absolutely. We

Paul J Daly: 9:19

got to win him back. Yeah, I was wondering like what this does to employee morale. And people like yeah, I want to get this car for 20,000 Or is it like, how does it feel if the employees don't want to buy the car for 20,000? Right, like

Kyle Mountsier: 9:32

that's what's really dangerous like, they don't know whether or not they can actually get some penetration into their employees. That's where you could get a little sideways. I know but

Paul J Daly: 9:42

I mean, hey, like when you're scrapping you go scrap, you gotta go for it. You gotta go for speaking to go for it. Segway they sure went for it on this one.

Kyle Mountsier: 9:51

We love this story. got sent this via email and via we saw it online last week, but Reynolds and Reynolds has pledged $5 million million to Northwood University support the new Center for Automotive and mobility studies. The donation is going to fund a construction of state of the art facilities including classrooms, and a conference center. It'll replace what's called the NADA Hotel and Conference Center on North Woods campus in Midland, Michigan. A and A Advisory Council of automotive industry leaders will guide the council's governance or the senators governance and they are going to be partnering also on a Talent Recruitment Program at Northwood graduates which were all about. Northwood university president Kent McDonald said their support were significantly elevate Northwoods top tier automotive education programs, and look, there's only some snaps we can get for this one like snap. I mean, we saw NADA or Northwoods students at ASOTU CON reading problems and Gugu being a massive part could be in the presenting sponsor like seeing those two collaborate. Big deal for us. It

Paul J Daly: 10:58

really is, you know, I don't know, I haven't seen the story anywhere else, we got the press release, I think we're the only ones that wrote a story on this so far. I just think that highlighting the especially from the tech side, right, you look at at the vendor side and and saying, like, we understand that attracting more people more talent into this from the very outset, right from high school into college, you and I talk about it all the time, as that being a critical mass to get people into the industry. And you know, fresh money, fresh facilities. Northwood is always fired up. By the way, every time I speak to someone about to Northwood or student like they're fired up and seeing some really great things. And frankly, I just don't think we hear enough about it.

Kyle Mountsier: 11:43

Yeah, they've got they've just got a vibe. And I think that there's like a probably an issue I brand play that that needs to happen just to show that there is this opportunity for more and more people to be a part of that education path. You know whether you have actually multiple of the people that came to us. So to kind of the four students, I think two or three of them actually don't have any family in the business. Yeah, they just saw it as like, I want to be a part of that business. They have internships like Penske and Lithia this summer, at dealerships, and they're getting their hands dirty. So it's, it's cool for me to hear that that there are people outside of the auto industry that didn't grow up in it, that are starting to seek it out as a path to career without a

Paul J Daly: 12:29

doubt without a doubt. Well, we know you're in this you're in the song industry already. We know you have a career hopefully you see this show as a path to doing better your career selling more cars, caring about people some more. We'll keep on that you keep on it too.

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