EV Friday: Polestar Autonomous Drone, Rivan Gets Smart, NFTs as War Bonds

SPEAKERS

Liza Borches, Paul Daly, Damon Lester, David Long, Bob Lanham, Kyle Mountsier, Brian Benstock

Paul Daly  00:35

Yo, it's Friday March fourth one of the best days of the year. I don't know why it's just my favorite day probably because Kyle got the shirts in today. We're talking everything EVs a little crypto. A little bit of PlayStation. I don't know. Let's do it. The people really want to Friday bouncy, they stopped. Always feels a little deeper. Repeat. We should put that on a t shirt. The Friday bound seems a little deeper. Oh my god. It's dark, shadowy figure that live stream this morning. Ah, that one and only Mr. He's got the he's got.

Kyle Mountsier  01:10

Got the hoodie. He got the hoodie. Morning, guys.

Paul Daly  01:14

Good morning. How are you?

David Long  01:16

Good. Oh, I just wanted to tell you Happy birthday, man.

Paul Daly  01:19

Thank you so much. I gotta rise livestream guests to tell me happy birthday. It's from the mystery man, that we need to put like a voice changer on us or like rubber.

David Long  01:32

I can't put my name on there. Dammit.

Paul Daly  01:34

I appreciate that. Yeah, well, it doesn't work as well. Right when your full name is on the screen. This is David Long that you're hearing if you're just on the podcast, he's rocking. So

Kyle Mountsier  01:43

hey, Paul. We just figured it. We figured Danielle and I figured if we didn't get it in the email enough. We're like, hey, what if we can have a surprise party on a live stream podcast? And so then so we invited David, and maybe a couple other people that may or may not be jumping in to say happy

Paul Daly  02:01

Oh, man, it means extra because it's only 530 on the West Coast.

David Long  02:05

I just stopped my workout like middle of my workout. No time for meditation at the end of it. Just gotta wish you happy birthday brother. David was in

Paul Daly  02:13

Downward Dog. And he was like, Oh my gosh, gotta go. It's so much. I can't wait to see you next week, my friend. 

David Long  02:21

Oh, man, it's gonna be awesome to hear and be quiet in the shadows. And just wanted to say happy birthday. So

Paul Daly  02:30

thank you so much. It's good to see you. Well, look, it's fun to have a birthday. It's fun to have a birthday on a workday. People were like, are you taking off? I'm like, I don't do that anymore. Right. Like, that's time to roll. That's what people with no kids do. Kick off on their birthday cake for me right now. Hey, you take your birthday off. But let me just tell you, once you have kids and things like that, you kind of you kind of like

Kyle Mountsier  02:53

you just go. You just do the

Paul Daly  02:55

fun parts about loving what you do. Right? Yeah, come in, I get to do this on my birthday.

Kyle Mountsier  03:00

So that's what Yeah, it's like, Hey, this is just this is what it is. This is fun. This is a good thing to do. It's not like I'm going to take off so I don't have to get to the grind. This is this is like the energizing thing of of our day. I mean, there's so much that we have, you know, kind of brought into the fold. And it's like, oh, man, yeah, I'm excited about nada excited about the live stream excited about the conversations that are gonna happen today. And the birthday doesn't stop that. It's just it's, it's a reminder, it's a celebration of like, Yep, I get to do it again today.

Paul Daly  03:30

Absolutely. I'm just thankful and grateful that I have been blessed with good health. Good business partners, good friends, my family, the way we roll in my house, it becomes birthday weekend, which basically means I get to pick whatever we eat, right? That's my favorite part of my birth. Right? Because these days, like my friend was like, what do we what do we get them and I feel bad because like, I kind of see something that I like the man a steak toasts. Oh, all right, well, enough about my birthday. I appreciate it. And I'll see all of you next weekend and give me belated Happy Birthday, then we have a lot of news to talk about today. Kyle said when we were prepping for show notes. He was like, we thought automotive was crazy. Like for the last two years. But like 2020 25 like hold my beer. Like it's coming. It's coming today. So we're gonna talk about like VV news today because, um, frankly, there's just a lot to talk about. We're gonna give you a little preview as far as what we see. We're going to talk about a little bit of something that's interesting in crypto world and how it comes together with Ukraine. But first we want to talk about next week at nada we I have like a ton of audio gear in my office. Kyle has a t squared a new T shirt shows a new T shirt Kyle

Kyle Mountsier  04:41

here we go here we go. See it? It says no crisis can when it was it was a shirt that early on Paul created and we're bringing it back. You know if you're not that the original shirt was a big old V and so if you're not a big drop V person this is a regular crew and

Paul Daly  04:58

right Fun fact, the first one because that's all I could find at Target. Oh, it was a one off. That shirt was a one off for live stream. Team in less. There we go,

Kyle Mountsier  05:10

there comes Damon. Yo, what's wrong with talking about EVs and birthdays today?

Damon Lester  05:17

Happy Birthday bro.

Paul Daly  05:18

Thank you so much and

Damon Lester  05:21

and say Hello and happy birthday to my friend man man I appreciate you. And hey you you've done wonders for me and being a pillar and and advocate and trailblazer and troublemaker bro and I appreciate you I love you to death man and and you in collar are friends for life. But I just wanted to jump on here real quick and wish you happy birthday.

Paul Daly  05:43

Thank you so much. That means a lot to me. I can't wait to see you next week. I could have never imagined what what our relationship would turn into so quickly. And so, you know, we know Philly fate like it's just supposed to happen this way. Thank you so much. Right. I know you got a lot going on. Appreciate you dropping in the stream. I'll see you next week though.

Kyle Mountsier  06:02

Yes, sir. Thanks, David. Thanks

Paul Daly  06:03

for God bless you,

Kyle Mountsier  06:05

man. All right, we're gonna get to the first one. Let's go get we might have more you got to get to the news stories.

Paul Daly  06:11

We're rolling heavy to nada next week. You know this already, we've been in planning mode, I got all this audio equipment in my office so we can get it right. If you can't go to na, da or even if you are, we're making some decisions. One is that follow hashtag asoto hashtag ASOC you will tag on every post we make. So if your LinkedIn, Facebook, Instagram, whatever, you can literally follow that hashtag like you follow an account and hit the little notification bell so that every time there's a new post from nada, you'll see it we're doing three live streams a day three live on Friday, three live on Saturday, we're doing two live on Thursday to open the show up. So if you can't be at nada, we're gonna be constantly pumping content out from the floor, trying to see the things that you would have seen if you were be there and give you a little bit of a voice when you're there. And if you are at nada look for the crazy crew of people rolling around with cameras and audio mics and boom mics and lights. All the fun going to make a little scene.

Kyle Mountsier  07:04

Yes. Definitely going to make a scene we're going to be rolling heavy flying around. I mean, yeah, we we figured out I think we have the capacity to do somewhere in the neighborhood of 56 interviews over two days yesterday. We've got a full team kind of planning and scheduling that if you're in the industry and you get an email from us today, the quicker you respond the better because everybody's gonna be ready to go and yeah, we're gonna have a lot of fun. Yes,

Paul Daly  07:28

for Yeah, and what he means by that is if you have a booth there and a presence there and you want us to come interview you or your dealers we have some options for that. So shoot us an email at crew or press at asoto comm send an email to press at a soda calm so we can get you on the schedule. We get that taken care of let's talk about some news.

Kyle Mountsier  07:46

Let's go hey, look, this is my this is my favorite news topic of the day is yesterday in our daily email we talked about how rivian was going to price hike all of their models by 20% not just for future orders but for current priority

Paul Daly  08:03

people that read to purchase

Kyle Mountsier  08:04

you already put your money in the thing and they're like yo we're just gonna jump at 20% Well what but

Paul Daly  08:11

their finger a franchise dealer network

Kyle Mountsier  08:16

literally Twitter Reddit Instagram for every social media platform blows up as you can only imagine and within hours the president and CEO of rivian is like whoa whoa whoa whoa we are so sorry guys.

Paul Daly  08:34

It revealed Mission Control be like Sir I think

Kyle Mountsier  08:38

I got problems right on 

Paul Daly  08:40

How long do you think that took before they figured that out?

Kyle Mountsier  08:43

It couldn't have been long it's just unbelievable but I love that like culture pushback said that is wrong. And so basically what they've said is we are going to have a price hike because of demand and supplies and all that but the price hike actually starts I believe April one new was so new orders so new orders which makes sense it's like if prices go up prices go up and if you order based on the price then you order based on the price but so now people can go back in if they cancel their pre orders. They can go in renew their preorder get that space back in line.

Paul Daly  09:17

Yeah. Oh right. Because they've like price like I can't do that. I'm canceling.

Kyle Mountsier  09:20

Like, how many people cancelled yesterday? Yeah. Yeah. Which I mean, I wonder how much they're gonna lose out of that because I think okay, so I went in and cancel took the time to do that. Now you I lost trust in you as a brand. Think about what that did from a trust perspective. Right that's gonna take a little bit to come back from lost trust and now not just that let's say I want to get back in it's that sit back down get on the computer and turn my deposit information right it's probably not the easiest process. So what uh, what a brand new pool snafu.

Paul Daly  09:52

Well, you know what, look, everybody makes mistakes. This one just happened to be front and center. I think it's the little more This story is be very leery of doing something that you don't have any precedent for I can't think of a single precedent where people pre ordered anything. I mean, imagine even like if it was a book, a licen

Liza Borches  10:11

birthday.

Paul Daly  10:15

People just keep popping in the Stream

Liza Borches  10:19

Paul, our goal is to see how good you really are on your birthday with just random faces and people popping in drafting your train of thought shows how good you are to stay focused.

Paul Daly  10:29

Easy lies. I think anybody that knows me always knows that I'm looking for a reason to say hi to somebody, even when I'm doing work.

Liza Borches  10:36

Like that is a great comment to say about yourself in a wonderful

Paul Daly  10:41

way. That's how I am. It's not always great. Trust me, you're like, we really need to get this done. I'm like, Oh, look somebody to talk to you.

Liza Borches  10:49

Well, Paul, we are looking forward to your best year yet coming up in 2022.

Paul Daly  10:55

I can't wait to see your hang out a little

Liza Borches  10:57

bit. Sounds fantastic.

Paul Daly  10:59

Talk to you soon, Eliza. So I keep my train of thought. So imagine any precedent for this. Like, even if you order a book on Amazon, and it's like, like, oh, we had to raise the price. $2. Right. Okay, well, I probably keep the book pre ordered, because I probably wanted it bad enough. But I can't think of another example where a pre ordered item goes up in price, not one. No. And this is not like a couple of bucks, though, right? 20% of a major major. So if you're listening, and I'm pretty sure you're not like, Good move on the reversal. Use it as an opportunity to build brand trust. right to say it. We did it wrong. We know right, but not in like the typical corporate way.

Kyle Mountsier  11:43

Yeah. And and probably what I would say is if if, like, if someone knows someone who rivian The best idea would be to go find the people that pulled out and then came back in and add an extra element of surprise and delight on delivery or early or something like that, for those people in particular because they are, they are your best opportunity for building that brand. 

Paul Daly  12:10

Without a doubt. You consider the first dealer I ever worked for. I was a service writer. And you know, like you get a lot of angry interactions as a service writer, people are not happy their car's broken. And that dealer his name's Chris Barrett, he told me actually, every time someone's upset, he's like, you have an opportunity to build a deeper connection. And you would have if everything went fine, you have a better opportunity to build a more meaningful connection when something goes wrong. So rivian Take Chris Burt's advice and go do that. Speaking of surprise and delight Naevi segue. Birthday segue. Yes. So Pollstar revealed their new vehicle, and like you will talk about the vehicle in a second. But the sucker comes with a drone that flies 56 miles an hour. And you can launch that thing and tell it whether you want like a scenic shot of you're driving your car, or cinematic shouldn't, yeah, an action movie, and then it will produce that video. And it'll like fly the course and produce the video and send it to the screen.

Kyle Mountsier  13:09

Yeah, so that when you stop, you can go drop a 15 inch screen TV for all the people in your car to show them exactly what you did. So

Paul Daly  13:18

which Oh, wait, say might have something to say

Kyle Mountsier  13:21

they might. But this is what this is what I love about this right? Is we all want social proof to be able to like enhance brand awareness. Right?

Paul Daly  13:31

That's a great point.

Kyle Mountsier  13:32

How many about this, they're literally gonna have people recording themselves, throwing it on social of their car driving, like super cool commercials everywhere. Because you create the technology you create, you know, the shot, you understand, like how you want your brand to be portrayed in that shot. And all this, like, genius.

Paul Daly  13:54

That's pretty cool. So talk about the car for a second. Kyle, you're the one that that is on this a little bit more?

Kyle Mountsier  13:59

Well, I think one just when you look at the car, I saw the reveal from one of the one of the design leads at postar on LinkedIn. And if you go to the show notes, you can click that link to it. But one, it's just a really dynamic, obviously, it's still a concept car. But what I loved about kind of the conversation around it was they were really talking about the aerodynamics of the car. And I know back from the leaf, originally one of the one of the one of the big pieces of most EVs is understanding how aerodynamics affect the capacity of, of the of the battery actually, right. And so they put in some extra air dams. Some, like behind the front wheel there's an air release are similar to a racecar right through Yep, where the air can go through and so they're really paying attention to the aerodynamic which in turn has a lot of you know, sporty type feel to it. But it's also very practical and functional.

Paul Daly  15:00

Man. Oh, Jim, Jim Elliott's been posting he posts a link and we can't cover it right the second Jim, but we're going to look at that when the show's over on LinkedIn. A Ford link, just thank you for posting that. We'll definitely check it out. Appreciate that. Keep it coming. A couple of things you want to cover, Evie wise, announced yesterday. It's not even in the show notes. But, you know, there Elon is going to allow a UAW vote to unionize one of the factories he said we won't do anything to stop them. So he's gonna be like,

Kyle Mountsier  15:27

no, no, not just we won't do anything to stop them. We'll host it. He said he said come on in. I I'll set the tables up over here for you guys. Not a problem.

Paul Daly  15:39

Sounds like a confident man that they have a good working situation going on. They're a strong Well, look, man, you gotta I mean, love them or hate them. Like that's, it's got some respect there as a leader and being confident in your team and saying like, hey, it's uh, you know, he's just he's such a character. I know that the travel authority just shut down. Like they said they can't broadcast like the noises outside the car like you could do like the, the finances and but they said you can't do that because consumers might not be able to hear the backup noise like, you know, the mandatory the noise, or whatever it is. It's like this strange noise. And he tweeted out he's like, yeah, that sorry, guys, we have to shut off that feature. We got shut down by the Fun Police. Oh guys, a 12 year old with just massive, massive leverage. Do more things to talk about. Number one. We talked about crypto a lot. And so very interesting developments in Ukraine is that Ukraine is leveraging NF T's and crypto to raise money. Almost like a war bond. It's and there's an article about it. Today's asoto email, you can get it at a sotu.com and some like so people can donate crypto to Ukraine's wallet directly or people are also donating NF T's somebody donated a $200,000 Crypto punk if you're not aware of crypto punk are these little pixelated? Little, like little characters, I guess. And there was there's only I think 10,000 of them. They were auto generated. They have different levels of relevancy and value based on how they look. Well, this crypto Punk has a blue bandana, right? So the Ukraine, one of the two colors Ukrainian flag, and so now they can sell that NFT to get actual money and somebody just put it in their crypto wallet. And I mean, I think I can value right now. I mean, anyway, yeah. So

Kyle Mountsier  17:23

we're gonna watch that for sure. Well, this is what's other also interesting, the president of the Ukraine tweeted, hey, guess what, we're also not going to even issue fungible tokens, right, which we don't really talk about fungible tokens. That's, that's your typical entities for like a war bond, like a war bond, you have this finger, right? Yeah, they're not even going to do it. They're like, No, we're leaning into NF T's. Let's go. Yeah, because

Paul Daly  17:49

you can do that from anywhere. And if you don't know this to Ukraine is really the source of a lot of technology companies, and a lot of brilliant coders. A lot of brilliant technologists are in Ukraine, and they service countries, a lot of US companies. So you think think about like playing the game that you're good at. And this is an example of this new world where even in the midst of a total invasion, right, they're able to now keep playing the game through digital means. So this has now branched far beyond retail far beyond those types of things. And now we're talking about like, war. It's crazy. It's absolutely nuts. Oh, one other article to talk about. And this is kind of in passing picked it up on automotive news this morning is that Honda is partnering with Sony to build EVs saying they're going to have them for sale. By 2025. I mean, is this going to be the most fun Evie to have or what I think

Kyle Mountsier  18:40

absolutely. Minimum, your kids are going to love it.

Paul Daly  18:44

Yeah. Well, I've always wondered. So you have Playstation and like, I've always wondered what's going to happen when you connect like the VR world, right? Or even now like the metaphors for speaking of the metaphor speaking

Kyle Mountsier  18:56

of the metaverse,

Bob Lanham  18:58

I need to interrupt real quick. Oh, I have a fairly important announcement. 

Paul Daly  19:04

Okay, Ron Burgundy.

Bob Lanham  19:06

I'd like to wish Paul J. Daly. A very happy birthday.

Paul Daly  19:12

Dress up.

Bob Lanham  19:14

I just wet my hair by the way, about five minutes. 

Paul Daly  19:17

Yeah, his hair is like in unlace. It's like we're like prom level. Right? Like he's ready to go to the prom. He's got the glasses on. Well, speaking of Bob. Okay, you're the perfect one to have on the call. I know we're running over because all the birthday wishes but Sony and Honda partnering to make an Eevee Do you think that we're gonna see a bunch of kids in the backseat driving around in this car with VR goggles on just looking around? Because it's like Game of fight around them like they're in a game that's moving at you know, 65 miles an hour,

Bob Lanham  19:46

man, I hope not. I hope but I will tell you and you guys you know, you might have talked about this. So apologize. But you know, everybody likes new things, different things right than the norm. So what impact will Sony car all these other OEMs that are absolutely brand new to the market have on market share with the other OEMs. You know, I don't I don't think we talk about that enough, right? Because listen, you know all only buy through a franchise dealer network right a vehicle so my EVS are limited, but there are a couple of new brands that I'm like, Man completely new, completely different. I'm in I don't need that drive the same Grand Cherokee that Russian combustion to Evie, I want this brand new thing. So

Paul Daly  20:29

yeah, no, that's that's a great, great point. That's a great point. Well, look, thanks for dropping in. I'm gonna see you next week because you're allowed to roam about the cabin now. So if you haven't met Bob Lanham, in person, he's going to have a crowd of about 50 people around him all the time.

Kyle Mountsier  20:46

Nada warm. Just look for all the people 

Bob Lanham  20:50

they don't recognize. I'll have my hair down. In all seriousness, happy birthday. Appreciate what you do for this industry, man and have an awesome Friday and a better weekend.

Paul Daly  20:59

Thank you. I'll see you next week.

Kyle Mountsier  21:00

Thanks for jumping in. We've got one more to bring in. And that is the man the myth. The legend himself. Brian Benstock 

Paul Daly  21:09

All I see is a gigantic bicep. It's Brian. Come in.

Brian Benstock  21:15

Happy birthday, man. What's going on?

Paul Daly  21:18

Oh, you're back in the country, either yesterday about our lives, man. And you're going to Denmark like he's bringing. He's bringing the US auto industry and inspiration and knowledge all over the world, my friend.

Brian Benstock  21:31

No, no, no, you got it wrong, man. I'm picking up nuggets from across the world. I got my my basket. And I'm shopping for what the best practices are around the world. You know, I think often we think we've got it all figured out here in the States. And I can tell you that there's some really cool cats doing some really special things in Spain and elsewhere. So I you know, I try and give it a try and get a little bit whenever I go. But Happy birthday to you, Paul. Hmm, appreciate you.

Paul Daly  22:04

Oh thank you, man. And you just made my birthday because you like got some new gear.

Brian Benstock  22:09

I got some new gear.

Paul Daly  22:10

audio gear sound great.

Brian Benstock  22:12

Oh, yeah. No, no, come on, man. We step in the game up?

Paul Daly  22:15

Well, it's because you know, friends, don't let friends and Kyle and I we're about to have a conversation with you about that.

Brian Benstock  22:22

You know, you've got to keep pushing the envelope.

Paul Daly  22:28

No, no.

Brian Benstock  22:32

I can I can bring a President Trump here with us. I've got I've got it all set up here. Oh, the speed dial. Yeah, my jam board here.

Paul Daly  22:41

It's amazing. Well, look, we're looking forward to seeing you next week. It's only going to be a matter of days. And we'll be together in at NADA

Brian Benstock  22:49

Yeah, it's a sprint for me from here till Thursday, make sure that I'm, you know, get my obligations here handled. This is the spring selling season. And it's time for us to make sure that we're really leaning in. It's a little different spring from all of us. We've got a lot of world events going on. And want to make sure you know that our team is prepared for for war. You know, I mean, it's prepared for I think what's going on over there in Ukraine reminds us to be prepared at all times, you know, to be prepared at all times. And you know, thank the good Lord, that we're not involved in conflict here in the country. But that doesn't mean that we shouldn't be prepared. In fact, the best way to prevent it is being prepared. So metaphorically, we're preparing for whatever comes our way. This year, and we think the year should be a good year, provided the events over in Europe, calm down, and hopefully they will.

Paul Daly  23:44

That's for your lips to God's ears. We're gonna let that be the last word of today's episode. Thank you so much for spending some time with us today. We're gonna end Paul Kyle. Mr. Benn stock. All of us excited to see you at NADA next week. Don't forget to follow hashtag ASOTU you can see all the stuff we're producing. So even if you can't be there. You're gonna be there.

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