Fain vs Trump, Who Actually Wants a Cybertruck?, Rivian & Lucid, Generational Sock Insights

Paul J Daly: 0:05

Friday, August 9, some people dealt with a lot of rain. Some people dealing with some Kyle's got sunshine, I think, in Nashville today, which is good, because we're talking about fame versus Trump, who actually wants a cyber truck and what sucks do? Which generation where we're going to end the regular week of programming with the Livid debate.

‍Kyle Mountsier: 0:27

You know, a little bit of Friday fun. I got stories about socks from last night, like anecdotal evidence on socks from last night. I'm excited. Wait,

Paul J Daly: 0:36

stick around for the end of the show. Everyone. If you want to hear that, you know whenever, whenever, like, it's unavoidable, right? Politics are a part of the general conversation right now, we try to avoid that stuff on this show today, we're going to talk about Sean, I mean, like Sean Fein. We got to talk about him. And, come on, little spat going on. But whenever we're going to, like, even, like, dip our toe into the water, that has any political implications, we're going to talk about, you know, socks at the end of the

Kyle Mountsier: 0:59

show, absolutely,

Unknown: 1:00

can't leave.

Kyle Mountsier: 1:01

There's an eject button somewhere for us. You

Paul J Daly: 1:04

know what I mean? Absolutely, absolutely, because we are probably two of the most cancelable people you'll ever meet. Period, that's not true. That's so not true. Just how to say hey, we, we had an awesome conversation earlier in the week with Jim ganther of Mosaic compliance services around what's going on with the cars rule? You can go back and watch it. It was a webinar, 30 minute webinar. We had a lot of fun. And Jim always has just such a sharp wit, but also a very intellectual and reasonable approach to things. And so I how do we get people back to this? Now? Is it on the website?

Kyle Mountsier: 1:37

I think you just go to asotu got.com

Unknown: 1:39

still? Yep, asotu.com you can see, scroll down,

Kyle Mountsier: 1:42

just a wee Bitsy and should be a webinar. Thing there. Perfect, perfect. There's the tab for media, and you go to Edge webinars, or you search edge webinars at wherever you want to, or you go to our LinkedIn, it's

Paul J Daly: 1:57

all there. Hey, Doug, thanks for chiming in on the live stream. Really good webinar. I'm glad you were there. Thanks for being there. Also, it was in today's email. If you get our daily email, you can scroll down probably two thirds, three quarters of the way down. You can replay it again right from there. If you don't get the daily email, you're really missing out. Swing

Kyle Mountsier: 2:15

every we're gonna talk about a little thing in the daily email, in one of the

Paul J Daly: 2:19

oh yeah, we will. We will. And you can get that. You know how it goes these days with emails and subscribe, and it doesn't cost anything. Go to asotu.com Just subscribe. Share it with your friends. If you have the email, share it with somebody today. It's a great day to share it with somebody. Oh, Jim's on the live stream today. Didn't even know, didn't even get all that. All right, let's get into a little bit of news. So we haven't talked about EV like companies in a little while, it feels like rivian and Lucy lucid are continuing to face significant financial challenges in q2 despite receiving some major investments, both EV makers report substantial losses, raising concerns about their future sustainability amid competitive pressure from you know who? Tesla. So get this? Rivian lost $32,705 per vehicle delivered. How's that for back end and report front end profit or lack of reported a $1.64 billion net loss in q2 which is a 21% increase in loss from last year despite a 9% rise in sales. Lucid, on the other hand, hold your breath for this one. They lost $112,688 per vehicle. How much does a lucid cost?

Unknown: 3:29

Less than that, less than they

Paul J Daly: 3:31

posted a $790 million net loss, meaning, obviously sold a lot less vehicles in rivian and q2 despite record sales of their air sedan, the company's financial performance does remain deeply concerning. Recently, rivian got a $5 billion investment from Volkswagen Group, and lucid took in 1.5 billion from Saudi public investment fund, both investments looking to support ongoing operations lucid interim CFO, busy guy right now, I'm telling you, during said, the cash should be enough to fund lucid operations through the end of next year, so at least they it's not like the end of this year. Next year, they got a

Kyle Mountsier: 4:07

17 month runway with 1.5 billion bucks little

Paul J Daly: 4:10

to fight another day. Both companies are feeling the heat, though, from Tesla's aggressive pricing strategies. Now just roll into the next one and then have you give commentary.

Kyle Mountsier: 4:21

Yeah, just keep going. All right. Well, then,

Paul J Daly: 4:24

you know, I know these kind of two kind of good I'd give

Kyle Mountsier: 4:26

you my commentary. Imagine if a public group in the US decided to go and learn just lose 32 Oh, you can't do that, I

Paul J Daly: 4:34

know, but that's, that's what startups do, don't they? There's money. Oh, well, Tesla's cyber truck, you've been seeing them everywhere. You've been seeing them online dealers have some. George Saliba has like a dozen of them on his lot right now. Tesla cyber truck, they've been this, the subject of a lot of fascination, a lot of debate, since they unveiled a friend of mine who's a pastor here is. Syracuse got one, and I made him a bumper sticker that says my pastor drives it, and a picture of a cipher truck. That's amazing. But they have, they've amassed over a million reservations. However, the reality of converting those reservations into sales is proving to be a little more challenging. You know, the deposit requirement was only$100 right? So how much commitment does it actually have I had a deposit down quite a while ago, and I did not go through with my purchase. They're only making the foundation series right now, which is actually a $20,000 increase over what the truck would be. It's got some other features bundled in reports do indicate that they're struggling to find the buyers. Somebody posted that they put a reservation last month, and they've already got a notification that their trucks ready to build. Wait, no one really, yeah, last month, so no one really knows, and so they're saying that they meet. They're very soon. They're expecting them to stop making only the foundation series. Get into the below, you know, 80,000 below,$70,000 models that have only single, single engine instead of the two and three models, and then expanding into Canada as well.

Kyle Mountsier: 6:05

So you're telling me, Paul, that there's only a slim market that wants a truck from Halo two priced at$120,000 is that, let's be fair. It's 100,000 Okay, that's fair.

Paul J Daly: 6:17

Um, that is exactly. That's exactly what, I'm telling you, you know, but that's the cyber truck news. But went back to, like, thinking lucid rivian pricing pressure from Tesla, right? Like they don't have the flexibility to do that right now. Yeah, obviously.

Kyle Mountsier: 6:31

Well, and so we've talked to a couple for dealers this week in the Ford Lincoln, this is, this is like an aside to this. But even Ford and Lincoln, kind of, we're hearing that there were kind of talks of, hey, we may not have, should have gone all the way in as far as how hard we went on this EV thing last year, they didn't say they were wrong.

Paul J Daly: 6:54

Yeah, they're like, We

Unknown: 6:56

were, I can't say

Paul J Daly: 6:57

it. Can't say it. Maybe, yeah, yeah,

Kyle Mountsier: 6:59

exactly. So that was like, you know, that's that's a precursor to these stories saying, hey, look, if the legacy manufacturers are realizing that this is not as an aggressive as a market on these, then these, then these companies that are going 100% all in on EV, have to know that there's going to be struggles over the next one to three years. Yeah, they don't have any go it's not going away. It's just that we're going to see some of these manufacturers potentially completely fail. We've already seen that with Fisker. We're going to see manufacturers adjust, take different paths to pricing models or even the types of vehicles that they're working with. It's just going to be an adjustment at this point. And I think whether you're rivian or lucid or Tesla or BYD, you're just like marking your measures and trying to figure out where you're moving over the next two years. Yeah, that's true, speaking

Paul J Daly: 7:51

of where we're moving over the next two years. Rick, it still has a lot to do. It's a little political, but

Kyle Mountsier: 7:59

it has watch on him and see how fast he can get through it. Okay, ladies and gentlemen, can

Paul J Daly: 8:03

you catch me? Can I run fast enough before my feet burn up? I'm fired? In a heated exchange of words, UAW, President, you know who he is, Sean Fain, he takes an aim at Donald Trump, calling him a scab who doesn't know poop emoji about the auto industry. Meanwhile, Trump has seemingly shifted his stance on EVs after the big Elon Musk endorsement. So Sean Fein publicly denounced Trump at a recent speech in Detroit, calling him a scab, accusing him of being clueless about the auto industry. Meanwhile, at a weekend rally, Trump admitted that his support for EVs has shifted because he and this is a quote, I'm for electric cars. I have to be because Elon endorsed me very strongly. It's an honest man. So I have no choice, right? So

Unknown: 8:51

I got dollars. This is in front of like 50,000 people or something like that. So,

Paul J Daly: 8:57

so he says he also noted that he supports electric vehicles. And he said, quote, this is the important part, I think, for a small slice, like a small slice of the market. He went on to add, and I think a lot of dealers would agree with this, you want to have gas propelled cars, you want to have hybrids, you want to have every kind of car imaginable,

Kyle Mountsier: 9:15

Yep, yeah, this is, this is a free market stance that says, hey, there's going to be buyers, there's there's going to be a for every seat, right? It's kind of like the old automotive donkey emoji, right? Donkey emoji, yeah. So that's like, it's just normal at this point to kind of have a multiplicity of options and and until we get price parity, charging networks, all that type of stuff. We're not going to see this like, overwhelmingly, a massive adoption, but it's going to continue to grow so very interesting.

Paul J Daly: 9:48

It's very there's a very interesting, yeah, we want an email meme.

Kyle Mountsier: 9:53

Oh, yeah, okay, did you see this in our morning email? Nathan. Nathan's

Paul J Daly: 9:57

telling it's messaging us. I have the meme from the. Email, okay, you want it, and we want, like, this whole, like, you know, he's gonna put it up on the screen, Harris Fauci.

Kyle Mountsier: 10:06

Oh yeah, it's a magical it's like, you got Elon and Donald Trump pointing at Kamala Harris and the UAW. But it's basically the same image pointing back at each other. It's this beautiful little meme. Kudos to our email team for putting to get to it together. Good. I think it's like, it's just enough, you know, parity, that's, that's just perfect. It is. I

Paul J Daly: 10:25

think there's an irony in the UAW supporting the Democratic candidate, which is kind of being, you know, pointing finger at the Republican candidate for saying they're for electric vehicles. It's, there's a there's a whole

Kyle Mountsier: 10:43

weird thing going on there. Speaking of weird things, yeah, a new, a new you go survey reveals intriguing generational differences in, you guessed it, sock preferences. I have opinions among Gen Z. Here's what the survey found about sock choices of 5015

Paul J Daly: 11:06

and we're talking to so you, if you can't see the picture on the screen, we're talking about Scott sock height. Specifically, that's right, not materials

Kyle Mountsier: 11:13

height. Ankle socks are the most popular overall. 41% of Americans prefer them. No Show socks are favored by 15% knee high socks, by 3% and 5% of respondents prefer going completely sock. You stay away from those people now. Check out Gen Z. Check out Zen Z, Gen Z for them. Tall socks, 41% favor them, compared to 23% of millennials. Gender Differences show 40 they don't even put Gen X on that. Yeah. They don't even Yeah. Everybody's skipping over Gen X. Gender Differences show 40% of men prefer tall socks, versus 21% of women socks with sandals. Just to open my mouth a little, are also making you come back, especially j, where 25% of adults and Gen Z for the combo, compared to 18% of all adults. I

Paul J Daly: 12:03

don't know. I mean, I think 18% of all adults is probably, like, 70 years old and higher.

Kyle Mountsier: 12:09

Gotta be you got, it's like, all Gen Z and all of 70 plus.

Paul J Daly: 12:13

So yeah, if you have that ARP card, well, I know you can get that kind of young, but we're talking about 70 and over. All right, so I have teenage kids when I'm walking around, I'm like, nothing says I've given up. Like, like, you know, like half high white socks, like sports socks, and like leather strap sandals. Like, that's, that's my opinion, though, but

Kyle Mountsier: 12:37

I shorts, like, it's eight, it's 1983 again, Jim, like Jim

Paul J Daly: 12:41

Gath or combat. This is Jim for the win right here, Crocs and socks, question mark. That's the worst. It's even worse. I so I got to meet the spend a little time with the co founder of Hurley, the surf company, right via, via Darren dome. And he tells this joke, because, you know, like surfer, he's like, Why do crocs have holes in them? He says, so your soul can seep out your

Kyle Mountsier: 13:06

such a great job. Okay, last night, although I'm stopping that you got the story.

Paul J Daly: 13:12

No, you got to tell the story. No, last night, we're

Kyle Mountsier: 13:14

at this thing for my, for my oldest daughter, and she's doing this girls thing, and there's like a bunch of teenagers and tweens kind of walking around too. And I'm telling you the number of, like, high socks and high socks with sandals and Birkenstocks with socks and like, it was

Unknown: 13:35

unfathomable welcome.

Paul J Daly: 13:37

I couldn't even see Welcome to middle age Kyle, even though you're in your 30s, that is, they complain about what the teens are wearing. You are officially enlisted. We hope you all have an amazing weekend. I will see you here tomorrow with our Saturday episode. But in the meantime, go cares for some people, no matter what socks they have on you

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