Fisker's Fall, Toyota's Governance Gamble, Apple's Wireless CarPlay Future

Paul J Daly: 0:16

Beautiful Tuesday, June 18. cars on the road and some beautiful little sound booth thing we're going to talk about maybe we won't talk about it. But we are talking about the fall of Fisker Toyota, its governance gamble and wireless CarPlay. The generation two I don't know if it's the second gen third gen, what Gen. It is. What it sounds like. It's awesome generations.

‍Kyle Mountsier: 0:37

It's a legit looking generation is what it is. That's exactly

Paul J Daly: 0:41

what it is pretty awesome. We're gonna talk about it. But the

Kyle Mountsier: 0:44

show definitely has kind of this like, like, we'll call it like a nice ramp, like it's a little down at first and then it just kind of like, takes a little swing, you know, but

Paul J Daly: 0:53

it's it's a downer, but the downer parts of it, like, all good stories have a down part. Yeah, that's

Kyle Mountsier: 1:00

all there is to it. Oh, good

Paul J Daly: 1:02

stories have a dumb part. Al, who's our Director of events and talent always says tension and release. Great stories have tension and release. So there's talking about some of the tension in the story today.

Unknown: 1:13

Yeah, that's good. That's good.

Paul J Daly: 1:15

That's good. It's good. We have a webinar. This is not tension at all. June 26. This is a lot of fun, actually, our 20 to 30 minute. So do edge Quick Shot webinars talking about reawakening your dealership with our friends at activator. We have Bobby Kudrow, Mike Whitlow, and Jake Blair, I just saw them for the first time I didn't know who was going to be on the show, but I just saw the headshots, you can see him on the screen. We're going to be talking about strategies to rebuild trust, adapt to new customer behaviors, and enhancing customer loyalty very important points at this day and age is everyone's really leaning into be made building efficient processes and be efficient with their marketing, their messaging, their the scheduling all the things. So that is on June 26 at 2pm. Eastern, you can go be with us for free calm, and I will be there. There's so much fun. Just go to a so to ASOTU.com. And it's right there, you can click on it, sign up, join be with us. We always have an awesome time.

Kyle Mountsier: 2:13

Yeah, it's interesting, like the new customer behaviors. Part of that is so true. Right now, everybody that I talked to, it's like people are engaging different online. They're engaging different in the showroom. They're asking for discounts there. They're asking, they're not asking, Is this car available? They're asking way different questions. And so right how do we do that in this new kind of matrix of Yeah, that's

Paul J Daly: 2:34

funny. The is car available? thing was like the most important question to ask, right? Two years ago, it was like the only question like, let's not waste our time as the car there. But we're shifting back to like, I expect that the car is there if it's on your website. Exactly. All right. Interesting points. Interesting points. Alright, let's get into the news today a little bit of a tension tension in this story part of the story. Evie startup Fisker has officially filed now for chapter 11 Bankruptcy citing quality problems with the ocean crossover and an unsuccessful partnership attempt. This marks Heinrich Fisker second car company to declare bankruptcy. So basically, they had a $463 million net loss in q4 hard to manage that for a long period of time. The ocean crossover has struggled with distribution software that was you know, had some incomplete portions of it multiple safety investigations, including important ones like breaking door latch issues, obviously, the Mark has brown Lee review didn't help. It just brought these things to the surface in a broad way. So also, they were negotiating some kind of partnership with Nissan, which failed adding two more strain. I think that seemed like it could have been a good partnership there. hydrophillic Fisker announced proceeding with a sale of our assets under Chapter 11 is the most viable path forward company reported assets between 500 million and want to $1 billion. So they have some assets and liabilities from 100 million to 500 million. So it looks like people could walk away with some money, it could be

Kyle Mountsier: 4:06

a wash, or it could be really great. It's you know, not really sure at this point.

Paul J Daly: 4:11

How does that yeah, I guess I guess they just want to stop stop the

Kyle Mountsier: 4:15

Well, I mean, you got international intellectual property assets you got like actual raw like buildings and assets right. that are out there. You know, the the the couple things here for me one is Marcus Brownlee can now put put a company in bankruptcy on his YouTube profile. That's

Paul J Daly: 4:35

no he would never do that. Poor guy. He wouldn't do it. I missed actually. He's not a poor guy. No one feels bad for him. He's fat. He's fantastically fair and articulate.

Kyle Mountsier: 4:45

Yeah, that's true. The other piece of this is like we've seen this coming. We know that this is not the last domino to fall in the Evie race. There will be more like this. You know, my hope is that there's really good lessons learned from this both from a business but also from just a raw technology perspective. You know, and hey, who knows, maybe someone picks up all of the, the, you know the assets on this and and helps to turn a corner like chapter 11 gives it the opportunity to kind of live on and breathe for a minute.

Paul J Daly: 5:20

Yeah, absolutely does and I think these assets will not go like obviously, there's some really great and beautiful design elements to the vehicle, some innovative ideas which are cool you know, even the solar the solar roof right is something we haven't seen like to see more of an EVs and without a doubt like this IP, this design language these these assets have value right? There are technologies that have value it'd be interesting Unfortunately, though, their production at their Magnus stairs plant in Austria was halted in March. Big loss a lot of job cuts. So you know, I think this is one of those reshuffling moments. And look, we're hoping for the best to come out of this and hope for the best for the Fisker family. And I'm I know, like tension, the release, and good things will come of it. Yes. Brian Ortega comment on the live stream. If you just listen, we do live stream every morning. backwards hat day. Watch out. Now, Kyle and I have this thing when the hats are backwards. We like we're in a zone sometimes. Just Just realize, just realize I woke up before my alarm. Today is one of those days. You know where I should get up? I should get up. This is a sign I should just get up. It's great. I know. I know. Speaking of I can't think of a segue. Yeah, there was a good segue before we talked about the backwards before. All right, well, we'll get I don't think I don't think this person would ever wear it backwards hat just say never to go to Chairman to Kia, Toyota and nine other board members were re elected at the annual general meeting with shareholders overlooking governance and certification test scandals. Mr. Toyota his popularity and strong business performance, obviously playing a role in his reelection. So there are some proxy advisors and big investors that recommended against his reelection due to the governance issues. You know, despite a drop in his approval rating from 96% and 2022 to 85%, last year, shareholders reelected him. I mean, I think everyone would basically kill for an 85% approval rating approval rating. Are you kidding me? Yeah. Oh, my goodness. And so like governance is kind of at the center of this. There are some some things some scandal that still hasn't been fully fleshed out. Their shares have fallen 10%. Since these certification irregularities were revealed, but are still up 18% for the year, so who's excited to be up 18% This year, I would be the CEO Koji, Sato reiterated apologies for the certification progress problems, but didn't address the proxy advisors recommendation. So he's like, I'm not even going to acknowledge that 85% approval rating. Mr. Toyota is a legend. He moves forward with a lot of the other board members. Yeah,

Kyle Mountsier: 7:57

I mean, as expected, you know, this is Toyota is kind of like can do no wrong right now. In in the eyes of so many shareholders up 18% on the year, you see them, kind of like winning this, this perceived race to evey by not having raced to it than not have put all of that. I mean, can you like right now as a as, as anyone in the Toyota camp just going? Even if you are questioning what the pace was a year ago, you're now going, Oh, I get it. Or I'm on board. I and I'll sit back down. Right. I'll sit back down. Yeah, like they they have proven over and over again, that they are the ones to watch for outside of Tesla obviously from just to go like that they have stayed the course. And I still think that they're that they're gonna win because they've taken the right approach at and, you know, we've talked to a couple of weeks ago about that joint project on the new the new engine was super, super and mosta. Like, yep, they're doing some crazy things right now. That's what I'm

Paul J Daly: 9:06

speaking to do with some crazy things right now. Segway is good.

Kyle Mountsier: 9:12

So we know that our friends at GM may not care too much about this, but apples next gen CarPlay is set to work wirelessly and aims to unifies the cars interface. Adoption is slow though. In OEMs, only Aston Martin and Porsche have stated that they are on board for Porsche sorry, stated that they're on board for this because of a skepticism over kind of giving over the control of the entire dashboard to Apple. They did at the WWDC announced its next gen CarPlay they're focusing on that wireless only connection. But the the other big thing that kind of has manufacturers up in an uproar is it lacks it's going to control things like the speedometer Climate Control, which is all about new feel, yeah. The Mercedes Benz has already come out saying they have some skepticism may saying, hey, we want to control the cockpit interfaces, customer interactions. And then you have this question on like, if it's taking over that level of the car, like, is the connectivity going to be sound enough? When you are taking over critical functions of a driver's awareness? Yeah, right,

Paul J Daly: 10:28

your like, speed, not just maps, but speed, backup cameras, safety sensors, all that stuff. Um, some of the interesting nuances to this and some of the ideas of how this would work. So basically, they want to make it so that when you walk up to the car, when you turn the car on, it already connects first. So your whole like, experience, which I understand the complexity between like someone who designed the car to be away, like wanting to give that optionality over but Apple has designed a toolkit that lets the OEM, like, test still design it, right? Like this is how when it's Car Play, this is how we want to display this is how we want it to look. So it's not all control, right? But it is basically saying, this is the sandbox, you have to play. And one suggestion was that there's like a physical hardware button that can toggle between the car system or CarPlay. Right, which makes a lot of sense. Either way, I mean, this innovation, you can always lean on Apple to innovate user experience. And I think it's very smart to lean on their expertise there to see how we can do it. We know that a deciding factor for a lot of people and whether or not they're buying a car, like what does it look like when I wasn't my car play? I

Kyle Mountsier: 11:36

go ahead. Well, I mean, like, the reality is, is if you look at the documentation around Apple's design system, their UI, their UX, their app store, their documentation for developers are some of the best in the world. And so it's it is, it's probably actually easier for the developers on the manufacturer side to tap into that than developing that new system. If they were to really think about it to go, Hey, here's the controls. They already have a UI, they have an app store, they have connectivity, they have all the customers data, all of that we can tap into those endpoints and create a really, really unique user experience. And it doesn't have to feel like everyone else's, because you get to own the app experience. It's like Instacart, and Uber apps don't, don't feel the same. They're both in the Apple platform. They both have the same endpoints, but they feel unique, right? And that's

Paul J Daly: 12:27

why this is gonna come together. Right? Like Apple just announced other AI integrations coming with Siri and all that, like imagine like, Oh, my God, and you're able to just be like set cruise control to 65 miles an hour. Right? Like an interaction like that would be so much better, like turn this on, turn that off, adjust temperature to this, because historically, those are pretty crappy inside of cars, usually, right? They take too long and all that they are getting better. I rented a Pollstar to a couple of weeks ago when I was in Orlando. And I was like, Alright, let's see how CarPlay connects with his baby. Right? I was all excited to do it. And then, you know, well, you know what happened? I turned the car on. And Google Maps was the default map thing on the nice touchscreen there. And it worked just like the app like you could type it in. It worked fast. It had all the point it was exactly the same. So I never connected CarPlay I was like, oh, what I need that for. And then when it was music, I did end up connecting it from music, but it was like two separate things. I don't know. It worked out pretty good. I don't know. We hope things work out pretty good for you today. There's tension and release. There's hard parts of the story. There's victorious parts of the story. You're in the middle of one of them right now. It's good to be here with you. Hope you go out there and crush it. We'll see you here tomorrow.

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