EV Registrations Up 18%, FSD Low-Viz Investigation, Rivian Knight Rider

Paul J Daly  0:04  
I'm sure we got the date right. Today, it is Friday. Everybody knows that it's October 18. Today, we're talking about EV registrations being up the super, super cool skin that rivian added to their interface. That's real good. The people really want to a little full self driving story, a little personal experience over the last 24 hours.

Kyle Mountsier  0:24  
I'm excited for that, you know, so you you guys, you guys. I'm jealous, still jealous, the

Paul J Daly  0:31  
best part about the whole fact, and if you go out on our LinkedIn pages, either the ASOTU one or mine or Nathan's, you'll see little snippets of these moments where we just we went to CMAs 100 year anniversary. We attended that not last night, the night before. So we were in town the day before. Nathan and I flew into Richmond, and we rented an EV, and we're like, hey, wait a minute. John Foley is in Richmond, and we just popped in on him, and that became one of the coolest parts of the trip. Absolutely, absolutely

Kyle Mountsier  0:59  
so cool. I'm like, Man, why did I not fly into Richmond? You guys got the you guys got the, by the way, I feel like you and Nathan have a thing now. It's like, rental car, you know?

Paul J Daly  1:11  
Yeah,

Kyle Mountsier  1:12  
the rental car vlog. It's like, I agree. It's like, we just got to find yourselves in a rental car. And every space that you're at, we had a bit of

Paul J Daly  1:19  
an adventure in a Mitsubishi Mirage that was pretty good. And by the way, if you want to connect, what are we trying to what were we trying to do? We're trying to connect Bluetooth while. What were we doing that you couldn't do when the car was in motion? Do you remember Nathan in the middle in the Mitsubishi? Yeah, couldn't activate CarPlay.

Nathan Southwick  1:38  
Yeah, you can activate Car Play in the Mitsubishi if it was in Drive, right? But

Paul J Daly  1:43  
it's not like, it was like, we were trying to connect it via Bluetooth. Literally, we plugged it in with a K. It was

Nathan Southwick  1:47  
right, yeah, oh.

Kyle Mountsier  1:48  
It was just like, No, no,

Paul J Daly  1:50  
you can't do this, right? Oh, yeah. So in the vlog, we literally are on the highway, and I'm like, I'm doing it. So I just, like, pull over the side. I slowed down as fast as I could. Like, press the button, press the button, and then we floored it on the next 12 miles an hour. It's like, go, go, go. It took us about 12 seconds to get to

Nathan Southwick  2:06  
60. Maybe more. It was real bad.

Paul J Daly  2:08  
Maybe more. Circle bus.

Kyle Mountsier  2:10  
People are looking for those, those inexpensive vehicles.

Paul J Daly  2:13  
Paul, that's great. Just make sure you that's that's part of the service. Just make sure you connect your car play with the cable prior to starting although, although Kia,

Nathan Southwick  2:23  
I do have to, like, say, Kia, you need to enable Car Play over a USB C cable. It did not, yeah,

Paul J Daly  2:31  
check this out. Check this out. Yeah, that was, like, one of the first, like, Kia, you disappointed us over sites because we got in and we're like, oh, no, wireless Car Play. Okay, everybody doesn't have that. You kind of expect an EV to have it, though, yeah, yeah. And then Nathan plugged in, and his phone is, I can't remember what it is, but still got the lightning. And we plugged in a USB C to lightning cable, and it didn't recognize it. We're like, why isn't this? You have to have USB A and go to the different outlets to light, to the other one,

Kyle Mountsier  2:59  
just so, you know, there's like, three manufacturers that I've found recently that do the same exact thing, like, they have the USB C for charging somewhere, but that one isn't connected.

Paul J Daly  3:09  
Just got the little lightning bolt. As I don't know what, who listens to us anyway, but look, maybe we should start that blog, and it's actually a lot of fun when you know you're making content and, like, yes, albums happen. It takes a little sting out of a problem. You're like, at least we can commiserate with people. Hey, we have a webinar coming up next week. So if you go to asotu.com and you just right there, top of the fold, you can register to be with us. It's a quick shot webinar, 2030 minutes. We're with our boy, Amol from full throttle.ai we're talking about finding shoppers using free TV. Amal is free, smart and so fun to talk to. Yeah, free TV, check that out. Obviously, they're always doing great things in full throttle, and stream Amal is always ahead of the curve, so we know it's gonna be a great conversation, and you're gonna learn a few things that you probably deploy right away, right away. You can ask questions in the comments. You can be there, and you can just say you were there. It's just the best part of the deal. Um, hey, by the way, ASOTU con 2025 just go to ASOTU con.com register for the pre like first to know list, because we, that's all we have going right now. And they're, they're probably hundreds of people on this list right now, and we start dripping information. They will be the first, they will get the biggest discounts, and they will know what's happening, even though it's six months away. It's not too early, by the way. Grab your calendar circle the week after Mother's Day. So it's like 1313, through 15th week after Mother's Day. Be like that's the week I'm going to ASOTU con do it now. All right, that's all you got to do. I lost the news. GM, their latest event, their latest EVs, combined with Tesla cyber truck sales in the last quarter significantly contributed to an 18% year over year increase in US EV registrations in August. So they hit 111 almost 112,000 actually accounting this 8.6% of the light vehicle market. Like we're approaching that 10% mark real quick. I. GM, new Equinox, Ev, blazer, EV make up the top 10 EV models helping Chevy places number three, up from number seven in May, Tesla and Ford were one and two. Tesla remains the leader in EV sales, but solids market share dropped by 46% year over year as like Honda, GM, Kia closing in. So leasing offers incentives are all helping this, this registration uptick, it's basically, here's a quote from Ed Kim auto Pacific chief analyst. He says, quote, it's basically impossible for Tesla not to lose market share as EV models stream into the marketplace. That makes a lot of stuff. This

Kyle Mountsier  5:36  
is like, and all the people rejoiced, right? Like, hey, this is a good this is good news, because we know that EVs are still progressing, and not just that, but the legacy automakers are making their way into the EV market share. Yeah, the questions still remain about, can we be profitable, both at the OEM and the dealer level, on these things? Hey, look, welcome to new products. It's just something that we haven't seen. You know, at this type of newness in our industry for a long time, but like every time the new OLED TV comes out, all those manufacturers and the best buys all lose money on them until they get price parity, right? Yeah, so just hang tight. I bet there a time where we get some price parity, the scale, the manufacturing all makes sense. But this is a fun story for the old legacy OEMs.

Paul J Daly  6:29  
If you go to the podcast and you click on the show notes in this first story, there's a link, and it has a chart like that goes number one all the way down to the bottom, and it's pretty interesting to see how many manufacturers are making EVs? And, yep. The funny part is, I was like, who's at the bottom? At the very bottom is dodge, yes, and they literally had one. What's what's really sad about that is

Kyle Mountsier  6:53  
that Fisker beat dodge.

Paul J Daly  6:55  
I mean, come on, Jeep had Jeep had two. Like, is that really true? There was only one dodge registration, like one. I wonder who sold the hey, if you're the dealer that sold that one, let us know. Call it. Call it out. We're gonna have you on the show.

Unknown Speaker  7:09  
That's wild. I

Paul J Daly  7:10  
mean it speaking of wild stuff, all right. So while we were visiting John Foley at recharge, there were two cyber trucks on the lot. He said, Have you ever driven one? I was like, nope. He goes, Do you want to drive one? I was like, yep. And so the three of us got in the cyber truck, and this one just had the newest full self drive update that operates just on kind of the visibility vis only, or whatever they're calling it. So yeah, we had to activate it. Yes, we had a drive. There was a dude spinning like, you know, like the pizza box sign on the side. And I was like, oh, what's gonna do with him? And it was boring. I was like, if it animated him on the screen? You know, everybody so

Kyle Mountsier  7:47  
smart, Easter eggs,

Paul J Daly  7:49  
the National Highway Traffic, the guy flipping, you know, it's like, all the, all the Tesla, you know, cyber truck owners are just trying to find that. Why that guy so they can't get on the screen? Well, the National Highway Traffic and Safety Administration has opened an investigation into 2.4 million Tesla vehicles equipped with self driving software after reported crashes in low visibility conditions. The probe involves Tesla models from 2016 to 2024 involving the Model S, X, 3y and the cyber truck, probably the one we were in. Crashes occurred under conditions like sun glare, fog, airborne dust, with one fatal crash involving a pedestrian. Tesla has a camera only approach to full self driving, compared to rivals who have radar and LIDAR. The investigation is adding pressure on Tesla as they focus on the self driving technology. All the robo taxi and cyber cab conversations have been having, they have not commented on the investigation,

Kyle Mountsier  8:44  
which naturally, why would you comment on an investigation like this? But you know the it makes total sense to me in like fog and airborne dust, obviously because of cameras, but like the sun glare one, that one caught me off guard, although when you start to think about it, and what a camera does. Actually, my daughter last night was like, why would I try to take a picture of the sun with my little like, digital camera she has, there's a black.on it. I'm like, because you're burning a retina the thing, right? And so it actually makes more sense than I would have think, than I would have thought. It seems like, you know, the combination of camera radar and LIDAR aligning, that is probably going to be the way to go. The people that, whoever figures it out first, but, you know, at least you were driving, driving on a nice, partly sunny day, and it is fine. And kind of people

Paul J Daly  9:32  
in the comments, when I post on, like you were just kind of driving in a straight line, like, that's true. We did a couple of turn. We did a couple turns, but I would be it was, you know, it's, it's unnerving, a little unnerving. It's unnerving. I'm sure you get used to it. You know, one of the reasons Elon has gone this way of camera only because he says, Well, if humans can drive with only their eyes, then the car should be able to drive with only it's interesting, right? And he does that. He's very cautious. Conscious. Like, how do we make these more affordable, more replicable, and Lidar and radar complicate that, versus building like, just what humans do? Now, granted,

Kyle Mountsier  10:08  
just got to give them some sunglasses. You

Paul J Daly  10:10  
know, I mean the full self drive. They have one they have one fatality involving a potential pedestrian. And, like, obviously, if you're talking about human drivers that drive with only their eyes, there are many more than one fatality involving a pedestrian. However, when you're giving control the car over to a computer, who's the fault? Ion, it's, who's the fault? Lie on but, but, like it's, it's going to be very difficult to convince anyone that anything more than zero is acceptable if a computer is doing it. But that's never going to be possible if it's only, I mean, I live in upstate New York, so there's like, four months out of the year. That's just not gonna work. It's just not gonna like, you can't see, you need wipers, everything's a mess. So I don't know, but in certain areas, I'm sure it'll do great. Yeah, areas where there's, like, no sun or fog or dust, that's not San Francisco, that's for sure. You know what? I mean? Like, none

Kyle Mountsier  10:58  
of those places I know. I mean, we laugh, but they're trying to solve really hard. They're trying to, like, you know, what you should have done just over here in our you know, fancy little offices with lights and cameras. Yeah,

Paul J Daly  11:10  
I was impressed with full self drive. Just for the record, I

Kyle Mountsier  11:13  
was impressed good, speaking

Paul J Daly  11:13  
of being impressed. Yes, we were really impressed with this one. We wanted to talk about this one.

Kyle Mountsier  11:19  
This one's great rivian is bringing some Halloween fun to its r1 vehicles with a set of quote car costumes, allowing the owners to transform their EVs into iconic movie rides designs they can choose from things like Knight Rider kit, the Back to the Future time machine or a haunted rivian costume. Basically what happens is there's theme, lighting, sound effects, interactive display changes to like the large display that they have that all center around those different types of vehicles or vibes. The themed modes also include ghostly reskins for drive modes, zombies on pedestrian sensors and spooky sounds. Their fun filled update goes live today, offering a little bit of a whim school break from the usual serious auto industry. I love the actual article is hilarious. This guy is just like, angry that auto makers are no fun. And then he's like, but rivian is, is really

Paul J Daly  12:16  
that? I mean, Tesla had some fun stuff, but rivian, this one is just next level, next. I mean, I grew up watching Knight Rider, which is a little indicative of my age, like when David Hasselhoff was Knight Rider, none of these. Yeah, makes and kit. The kit re skin is unbelievable. When you look at the gages in the dials, like it's just brought back all of my childhood. I want to get a rivian Now, just because of this. It's so smart. And then I'm like, Well, why? What's the next step between, like, just skins becoming a part of an ecosystem, right? It's gonna happen just like, your phone, right? Like, how should it look like? Why shouldn't I have options? Yeah? Why should Now, granted, if it's your car, I understand, like, having to have this thing where everything generally stays in the same place and is easy to read, because when you're talking about speedometers and safety things, you don't want things moving around or being hard to identify. You know what I mean, like the consistency there. But I'm super excited that this. And in the article, they had one of the pictures of one of the little easter eggs, and it was a someone on a bike and they were riding, but they were holding like a pumpkin as their head, like the Headless Horseman. It was so fun.

Kyle Mountsier  13:23  
It's so good. It's unbelievable. Like, this is, this is this is absolutely what has to happen when you bring this level of technology. It's what an iPhone can do. It's what any of our other technology can do. You can skin and personalize it. Personalization is the game and man. And then think about like transferring that to the new car. Like, do you want to transfer your skins? Right?

Paul J Daly  13:45  
I mean, it doesn't need to be an EV to do this right now that all the dashes are tech driven, and, like, not digital. And I can't remember who said it, but they basically, they were, they were a teacher or and they said, When in doubt, entertain,

Unknown Speaker  13:59  
that's good. It applies. It applies. You

Paul J Daly  14:00  
don't know how to make it. Just entered. Make it. Make It Right loud and love you. Come on. Look. We hope you have an amazing Friday. Go care about some people. Have a little bit of fun, and we'll see you back here with the podcast tomorrow morning.

Unknown Speaker  14:12  
Do

Transcribed by https://otter.ai

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