EV Tech Shortage, Auto Hackathon, JC Penney Is Back In Black

Paul Daly: 0:20All right, I bet you can see we are not in Kansas. We're actually in a green screen in a dealership talking about EB tech shortages auto hackathon. And JC Penney remember them. While they haven't planned to be back in.

‍Kyle Mountsier: 0:33

The people really want to know who they are trying to be probably blocked by black clothes at JC Penney, but 100%

Paul Daly: 0:44

confidence.

Unknown: 0:45

You can't that's not what we're talking about. Special papers.

Kyle Mountsier: 0:49

Today we have a desk at a desk. I am drawing stick figures right here with my with my special papers. Yep,

Paul Daly: 0:55

good job, drawing a picture of Kyle's got the hat there

Kyle Mountsier: 0:58

and boom, there we go. Kyle, there's this is a duck actually.

Paul Daly: 1:04

We're in Mohawk Chevrolet filming episode four of more than cars. It's our TV style Docu series that this is fourth episode, you can see the first episode pilot for free at more than cars.tv. And we're traveling around the country telling the inspiring stories from inside auto dealers. Yeah, it's

Kyle Mountsier: 1:23

it's incredible. We were actually just talking this morning about how we've been in so many stores over the last two years. That Every store has its own unique flavor and unique way they engage their employees or, or their customers. And that's what I love about retail auto. There's no just like one way no to do it. And there are tinges of like I've seen that before. I've seen that before in different ways. But by and large, every single one represents their unique community, their unique employee set, and Mohawk is no different. So I can't wait to share this episode. Probably next month, there's

Paul Daly: 1:58

going to be so much fun. You may if you're on the podcast or watching the live stream, you're going to hear some wrenches you're gonna hear some tools dropping and all that because we are actually right outside of service department. So really cool setup. A lot of you may know Nathaniel graphic he runs the content team here at mock Chevrolet shout out he let us use his studio. And I love the fact that you can hear the things because it keeps you in the zone.

Kyle Mountsier: 2:20

Yeah, you're like, Oh, we are in it. We're in auto. Let's go.

Paul Daly: 2:23

Let's talk about our backdrop for a second. There it is. You can see a soda con 2023 Coming in hot. What is it three weeks from today, it'll be over

Kyle Mountsier: 2:29

19 days or something like that till we start. So 21 days and we're out. Yeah,

Paul Daly: 2:34

September 25. The evening of the 25th is the welcome reception that the full event 26th and 27th. We still have tickets available at a soda con.com. Do yourself a favor, go to the website, click on agenda and just start to click through the different days in the different stages and you're going to realize that the practitioners that are going to be there, the dealers, the dealer personnel, the industry partners are beyond next level, I would venture to say maybe a little biased. I think we've put together the deepest, most intentional roster at any event in automotive,

Kyle Mountsier: 3:06

it's a full roster, it has a whole bench it's ready to go and I for one I'm just upset that I won't see all the

Paul Daly: 3:14

time. The more I click through that I'm like I want to be there for that but I'm monitoring can only be in one place one time. I want to thank you some fabric

Kyle Mountsier: 3:20

for partnering with us for the podcast stage effective is going to help us host 22 podcasts over the two days on a podcast stage right in the middle of the expo hall. We'll have chairs there so you can see us podcasting live where it looks actually looks like and goes down. That'd be a ton of fun. But today we still got to talk about the news guy

Paul Daly: 3:39

to talk about his news. Let's get into it. Okay, so first story here. Evie repair is facing a severe shortage of qualified technicians and repair shops threatening in increased repair cost timelines, raising warranty expenses. Basically, this has a lot to do with independent garages being hesitant to invest in training and equipment needed to have technicians ready to handle these new Evie requirements. Generally speaking, the auto industry as a whole faces a workforce shortage. And this article covers so it's a Reuters article. It covers really a global perspective on Evie rollouts. So us the UK, Australia so we have a big lack of technicians actually in the US. They said we're gonna have a shortage of 80,000 the article put an electrician jobs and they said included in the electrician jobs are technicians qualified to service EVs, which is interesting how they've grouped them in with that, but also the people needed to install and train on specialty evey repair equipment and charges and things like that. So it's getting a little bit deeper. In the UK, only 1% of automotive technicians are qualified to work on an Eevee beyond just general maintenance way so you think the rollout there has been a little bit faster

Kyle Mountsier: 4:56

than raster already and still only 1% of technicians are can fix

Paul Daly: 5:00

sinker anything that's not like tires? Yeah, you know, are basic mechanicals. So, the Siemens Foundation in the US is building a $30 million program to train us technicians for EVs, but believe that the training and infrastructure are going to need more substantial and swift support. Best quote of the article at the end, Nicholas Wyman, Executive Director of the US Institute for workplace skills and innovation said Most repairs are on their own. And we quote, if you're waiting for the US government to take action, you'll be waiting a quote, freakin long time nailed it.

Kyle Mountsier: 5:35

Here's, here's here's what is blowing my mind. If you don't know about what's required for evey repair and education, and even just the there's a level of danger associated with it, because it is much more an electrical job get electrocuted? Yes, exactly. You can get straight up electrocuted. And so it is a massive amount of training, we're still sending technicians off site for the majority of this training, because it's not like an in store. And the independent gap is definitely a major gap. It spells potential good news for for dealerships and for retail for franchise dealerships. But the difficulty is, is we're already short staffed, we're already, you know, out pushed out on availability. And so this is going to deepen the necessity for the franchise retail stores to be great and also have accessibility or these technicians and scheduling. And so there actually is a need for independence. Like we actually can't do all of the work. And so figuring out this, like both technician gap training gap, and then also the gap on just acquiring the technology to do these repairs, right? There's still a lot to be figured out. But I love the quote from Nicholas Wyman, it's, Hey, start investing in the training for 100% of your pupils right now, don't just leave it to one person on your team to be the Eevee specialist.

Paul Daly: 7:00

Well, because it sounds like auto dealers may be the only place to get an Eevee repaired for the foreseeable future. Because a lot of independent shops, and people started to age out in thinking it cost so much to invest in this a lot of people are just going to opt out and write it out on ice repairs.

Kyle Mountsier: 7:17

Were talking to someone last week. And they were like, well look at this. I mean, so many of these, you know, older technicians are recognizing that if they can hang in there eight 910 years longer. They don't have to they don't have to actually because there's enough vehicles on the road for them to service. Sure. So massive gap training

Paul Daly: 7:33

as always, and lots of opportunity. Speaking of being opportunistic.

Unknown: 7:39

Did it look at that? Oh, yeah,

Paul Daly: 7:42

thank you, Nathan,

Kyle Mountsier: 7:43

Nathan, I love it. So the zero day initiative has announced its own pone to own automotive hacking contest to be held in Tokyo with over $1 million in cash prizes, including a Tesla. So this is what's going to happen hack a Tesla when attack a Tesla when a Tesla, and I love that it's pone to own as opponents kind of like you know if you've ever been anywhere PWM if you so hackers will compete in four different categories, Tesla vehicles, Evie chargers, operating systems, and infotainment vehicle systems, with the goal of actually hacking the system so that they can show the gaps and vulnerabilities. And the way that it's actually said is exploiting the gaps in these issues. This is gonna be a big new push for all these manufacturers. And it's interesting because it's not just the OEMs and Tesla that are getting involved in making sure that this happens. It's also some of like the chip makers and the systems and safety tech and the technology people that are actually asking hacker hackers to put gaps in there. I did some additional reading on this. Because there there are like entire articles about how like the volume of technology and especially when you think about anything driverless or anything autonomous actually builds in a great amount of risk for hackers that are using Ethernet, or other forms of exploitation. One of the major ways that vehicles can be exploited is through what's called CAN bus or controller, Controller Area Network. So it involves hacking into a vehicle central communication system, manipulate or even extract the data, compromising the vehicles function and safety. And it's very, very noted as a critical area in automotive security. So, man, like these vehicles are becoming much more than just drivers. They're their sources of information and data and vulnerability. It's really cool that like, we got to hackathon automotive

Paul Daly: 9:47

very own hackathon now and I'm just waiting for someone to install like Tetris. Yeah, infotainment system. You know, when you look at the way great systems operate. Every enemy, you might not be familiar with it for the non technical among us. But these hackathons takes group group, like think a lot of people with different perspectives and different angles to try to break it. And when they say, Hey, please try to break our thing. Because everybody knows you've had a product that's been released, and there's something big wrong with it. And you're like, how does that thing actually get through? How can no one ever have picked that up, or whether it's an operating system released for your phone, right? And this is how you fix that. You get really skilled hackers to come in and break it. Like all hackers are bad. A lot of people are trying to like the good guys trying to protect it exact. So it's much better to have them breaking things in this environment than it does you know, when they're trying to steal your data or your stuff is

Kyle Mountsier: 10:44

vulnerable. So if you're super techie, you can head the attack Athan, the hackathon, if you hack the Tesla's vehicles, autopilot gateway or VC sec, which I don't even know what that stands for. You get 200 grand and Tesla sounds like

Paul Daly: 10:57

worth a shot really cool. Can jet set up to do that?

Kyle Mountsier: 11:00

Probably not. Okay, I know this.

Paul Daly: 11:02

Probably not. Yeah, well, then I'm out.

Kyle Mountsier: 11:03

I'm out. No segue on the no segue

Paul Daly: 11:07

final story. JC Penney, remember JC Penney, they revealed plans to invest a billion dollars to 2025 to enhance customer experience and improve operating efficiencies. They have a new CEO, Mark Rosen says the retailers on quote, strong financial footing and increasing relevance with their core customers. So they're going to refresh all their stores, bright lighting, fresh paint, centralized checkout stations with seems really nice, because the JC Penney checkout experience was always like old school department store, right? If you remember it, they're also improving their online experience website upgrades, you know, retailing personalization recommendations, all things that actually believe it or not, weren't a part of their online retailing all just sounds like they're becoming modern retailers. Exactly.

Kyle Mountsier: 11:51

I love this story. Because when I look at like JC Penney, it's an owner, big box retailer, right? Which auto kind of falls in that bunker, right box retail. And I love that they are saying, hey, look, we actually have to invest serious amount of dollars into retooling and re understanding how our customers want to purchase from us both in store and online. And it's a note that we can take it's not just like a minor overhaul a minor fix that comes to create relevance. That's right. It's a serious amount of now, obviously, they have a ton of stores. So that billion dollars has to be stretched. Yeah,

Paul Daly: 12:27

I mean, they close a lot of them. If you remember, several years ago, they brought in a big executive from Apple retailing saying they're going to take care of it. Apple, this executive, not Apple, the executive changed everything the store really disrupted who their core customer was where people going, that liked to get the deal. Instead, they want to like this pricing mechanism, no more discounts are going to just sit lower, and it flopped big time to how to how to, you know, go bankruptcy, they've really started to focus on who their core customer is. And instead of trying to attract new customers to the brand, they're saying, Actually, we're going to really hone in on our core customers, and we're going to try to sell them more. I think there is such a tie to dealers who know their community, you already know who your core customer is. And a lot of dealers spend so much time trying to get all the other customers, when in reality, focusing on retention and keeping the people who like it here. I've had a good experience coming back here. We don't have several dealers who that winning strategy is a very winning strategy. Exactly. And I think there's a lot for us to take note from this and saying, just sell the people who already know you love you sell them more more services, have them keep coming back to you to get by their trade, get them going and if

Kyle Mountsier: 13:35

you know those customers then ask them what retail experience they want what they want in the store online and don't just try and go with whatever the industry is moving toward. Go to your customer say what exactly do you want and build to them? Listen, because that's going to give you the best end user it's going to give you the best lifetime value of customer. So lesson learned and to watch from JC Penney.

Paul Daly: 13:57

All right producer Cue the music. Thank you for being with us today. Mohawk Chevrolet. We're about to go finished filming our episode go to a soda con.com and we hope you really join us in just a few weeks from now