Ford Pleases, Honda Drops Stacks in Canada, Flight Refund Law

Paul J Daly: 0:27

What's up everybody it is Thursday morning, April 25. We are not even three weeks away from a soda coma. First we're going to talk about Ford. We're gonna talk about traveling and getting a refund, we're also going to talk about and people a lot of money, whether it's Canadian dollars or US dollars, it's a lot of money,

‍Kyle Mountsier: 0:47

lots of money. It's, it's, it's about, you know, two thirds in US dollars, but it's still a lot. It's wild. I was thinking this morning. Well, first of all, we're three weeks from the last day of ASOTU CON, which is kind of like, you know, continually blows my mind. I don't care how far or close away it is to ASOTU CON, it always blows my mind. Yesterday, we sold out of our primary room block, we still have a link for more rooms and additional hotels, don't worry about we sold out of that. And also, like, in about, Well, right now, three weeks from today, you will be in the middle of what I believe is the very first parenting and business conversation. Oh, no, that's

Paul J Daly: 1:36

gonna be over by now. It's gonna be over by now. Well, it'll

Kyle Mountsier: 1:39

be over by now. Yeah, but you will have ended the very like, that's a, it's got to be a first there's no way that I Aaron, Tim and business. I'm pretty sure it's not an event in auto, in

Paul J Daly: 1:51

auto for sure. Maybe any event. But basically, my family has had a really amazing counselor, family counselor through the years who helped Sarah and I and the kids through so many challenges, you know, probably 678 years ago when we started. And I just understand you understand, like your parent, you have kids, what the demands of this industry put on you. And we see it all over. And there's obviously a lot of pressure, a lot of challenges. So I decided to bring the daily family therapist to asoto his name was Mike Lynch, you won't find him anywhere on LinkedIn or social media. That's because it's focused on helping heal families. It's amazing. So we're going to do a breakfast session from seven to 8am. Eastern called how busy auto industry professionals can be better parents, he and I have had a couple of lunches over the last week. So I have this hand drawn thing right here. Because he's not he like doesn't make slides. You know what, I'm not making slides. So he's telling me something like, can you draw that out, and I'm gonna make these slides. So look, if you're a parent, or if you have or you have parents that work for you and trying to understand the better come to this breakfast, session seven, eight, have some breakfast, I'm going to be sitting down on stage with Michael and me sharing some of these kind of like tips, best practices, I think the best part is taking questions from the audience. We have an app you can ask anonymously. And once you meet Mike Lynch, you're going to understand why but right now, at this point, 9:17am want to make you jealous now, because I'm gonna be on stage with Dan banister, Ed Roberts, and Patrick a bad three of our favorite dealers talking I am jealous, fixed up strategies to generate leading industry leading retention, these are three people that have service retention rates that are just will will make you want to go home and change into stronger.

Kyle Mountsier: 3:38

Lee, what is this thing?

Paul J Daly: 3:41

It's gonna be amazing. So we're gonna have a, we might cross the threshold of 200 dealers at this event. Yeah, waste ticket sales are going right now. Regardless, this is where so many people are going to be if you're on LinkedIn, or Facebook, you've been seeing the billboards everywhere, this person is going into a soda con. That's that's the truth of it, though. Like we did the billboards, because the real feature of the event isn't the lights and the screens and the session, it's the people and the individuals that you're gonna get to meet. So if you haven't felt like it already, you're missing out, go to ASOTU con.com. Get some tickets, bring bring some colleagues, whether you're an industry partner or a deal, and like this is the place this is how we make the industry better conversation at a time. There you go. I think we got to talk about news that we do on the show,

Kyle Mountsier: 4:26

as we do on the show. Yeah, we do this show. It's on a daily news show. Right? Well, we

Paul J Daly: 4:30

talked about this was there's talking about that this was coming yesterday, we talked about Tesla's earnings, while Ford's q1 earnings were released yesterday and they sparked overall optimistic tone, as well as a stock price bump when they talked about their growth of their annual free cash flow figures. So Ford reported a solidly quarterly profit, driven by strong sales of work trucks and vans, as well as a 36% increase in big surprise here. hybrid vehicle sales the market has One of them and now Ford is like yes, we will give the market what they want. It's amazing how that happens and changes your q1 numbers. Despite a downturn in the Evie market, Ford CEO Jim Farley said affordable EVs are a significant growth area, with potential models being priced between 25 and 30,000. They're not there yet. Ford Pro, which is the division focusing on fleet services and work vehicles reported exceptional profitability, contributing to the company's success. So Ford pro basically did 18 billion in sales and 3 billion of the 18 was profit. Shocking up out, you know, that helps make up for the 100 million and even where they lost 1.3 2 billion, and their main division combustion engine Ford blue did 28,000,000,021 point 8 billion in revenue with a profit of 905 million. So there you go. They said Evie profitability is in the future still take a little while to get there. And it's good to hear for the making some changes and doing it right.

Kyle Mountsier: 5:57

Well look to be able to kind of swallow up the losses on the EV stuff. already seeing a massive increase in hybrid sales over the last quarter, and swallow it up, still be profitable, and then be able to make an announcement and immediately see a pretty massive price jump in the stock. I mean, we're talking like, what 53 cents on a on a $13 stock. Like that's a pretty big, that's a man that's one of the biggest price jumps they've seen in a bit of time. And so pretty impressive to see what what Ford is done after, you know, the second half of last year like a lot of questions around these these Detroit manufacturers specifically because of UAW because of the inefficiency with EVs and to be able to swallow all that profitability up in specifically their Ford pro divisions. Kudos to them, you know, like there's, there's been so much pivot in q1 from these manufacturers that I honestly didn't see coming at the rate that it pivoted.

Paul J Daly: 7:04

Now GM and Ford coming out strong this week. It's exciting to see Speaking of things that are exciting to see segue, especially if you're a Canadian. Michael Cirillo, according to reports mentioned in automotive news Honda is set to unveil a significant 11 billion we just throw the word billion around now $11 billion in investment plan to establish an integrated evey battery supply chain in Ontario, Canada. So includes the construction of a plant in Alvaston and two supplier plants in partnership with South Korea's POSCO future. And Japan's shy you got this sigh. A shy concern, I guess, you could say to say, oh, yeah, I got this. But basically, this sets a new high bar for auto investment in Canada. So Volkswagen invested 5 billion in a plant, Sweden based on northvolt invested 7 billion and Honda comes in kind of a late player in the Evie game. And they're like 11 billion so Canadian Prime Minister Minister Justin Trudeau they joined Honda's announcement. And let's see John Mark. Jet carrier, the French, the French guy.

Kyle Mountsier: 8:13

John Mark. What's the last name? John Marco Claire, LeClaire.

Paul J Daly: 8:19

They go. He's a Honda candidate as president, he said this move supercharges our North American electrification efforts highlighting the strategic importance of this big investment. So I like Honda's move. I mean, late movers, but Brian Benz stocks excited you've seen the videos? Yeah. And

Kyle Mountsier: 8:34

I mean, they were able to invest 11 billion Canadian, and it was basically like 3 billion. No, that's not true. It's like 1.37 is the conversion rate or 37% difference, but like, it's really cool to see manufacturers leaning in to the Canadian infrastructure. Actually, a ton of the conversations I've had around EVs and I have some Canadian buddies and, and also, just like, looking at some of the stuff on LinkedIn, there's a pretty fast adoption rate, you know, especially like Toronto, places in Ontario, have a, like, have a tech forward progressive type of, like demographic. And so, you know, for these manufacturers to lean in, in, in, in North America makes sense is really, really smart. I don't know if you heard that. But like, Yeah, I mean, it is cold, but you think about just, you know, even Toronto and and then like Windsor and places like that that are all really darn close to Detroit, right. Like, it is. It is closer to auto manufacturing than a lot of the US. Yeah, I

Paul J Daly: 9:45

think if you're Yeah, if you're not familiar with the geography, like you're driving from like, Toronto to Detroit, like that's drivable, like four or five hours. It's new there. I think. Yeah, yeah, that's about right about right. Hey, Brian Ortega. Just waiting on the live stream asoto, 10,000 followers we just crossed on LinkedIn. That is a monumental thing.

Kyle Mountsier: 10:06

I think it might say that we're close, we're close. Oh, I

Paul J Daly: 10:09

might say that because it's rounding outside rounding up, Brian, we're gonna take your word for it. And we're gonna take your word for it. We'll just say Brian knows better than anybody. But thank you to everyone who does follow our page on LinkedIn. If you don't go to LinkedIn, follow a soda more than cars page, we definitely put the most intention into our LinkedIn content. So there's a lot of great conversations and stuff there. Finally, let's talk about something that a lot of us have to deal with. And that is, airplanes fly and travel delays. Ah, so I guess this is good news.

Kyle Mountsier: 10:38

The I think this is good news. Because I mean, when you travel as much as we do, like you've run into this situation, and so pretty soon canceled or significantly delayed flights will mean fast refunds for air travelers, as the new D O T regulations mandate automatic refunds. So basically, what happens is, airlines will now automatically have to refund passengers who don't accept changes or credits for flight cancellations, significant changes, or delays exceeding three hours on domestic flights, and six hours for international flights. The new rules offer cover also cover refunds for delayed check baggage, and undelivered paid services like Wi Fi. You get your eight bucks back, yo.

Paul J Daly: 11:22

Unless you're flying Delta. Yeah, unless you find

Kyle Mountsier: 11:25

out that always works. The rollout is over the next six to 12 months obviously just trying to incentivize consumer adoption of Air flight and and making sure that you're compensated well on stuff like this. The D O T highlighted in their answer. They said these measures ensure fairness, and transparency in air travel benefiting customers significantly.

Paul J Daly: 11:47

I look, you know, I think I was thinking like when was the last time was too late, three hours or more. Pretty rare. Rare, pretty rare. One flight is canceled. I think with this a lot. A lot of the time of flight is canceled. And you're kind of captive to one airline, you're less likely to go look for another airline to get there. But now if you know this money is coming right back, it might make it a lot easier to just start hunting and just go for

Kyle Mountsier: 12:06

this. Yeah, because a lot of times you just have to get fret flight credits or take the hotel or whatever it is. And this is a way to go. I've

Paul J Daly: 12:12

never heard a good story from someone who took the hotel. Oh, no, it

Kyle Mountsier: 12:16

never is. Because they give you like 110 bucks a night and like they try and put you in like the motel eight, you know? Yeah. It's tough. Yeah. Well, I this is my this is my thing on this is like, it is universal, that industries are wanting to say these words. These measures ensure fairness and transparency in delaying Well, that's a great benefiting consumers significantly less, that's a universal tie down across verticals. And so like if airlines are doing that, and consumers are experiencing the benefit of that, they begin to expect that more and more and more in every single vertical that they shop in. And so don't be surprised when the bar is now higher for things like refunds, or when issues come up or when or when services aren't rendered as expected. That now like the bar has just been raised, it's like, you know, early on Uber raises the bar and then and then DoorDash raises the bar and

Paul J Daly: 13:17

now the expectation Amazon raise the bar, remember that the expectation

Kyle Mountsier: 13:21

just becomes different, right? The table stakes are different. You can't do things the way you always have done. Well,

Paul J Daly: 13:26

we're hoping that when you buy your tickets to a soda con and show up, we will raise the bar and we will ruin every other event for you because it's so amazing. I mean we go to other events and love them all too but we hope you join us go to ASOTU con.com

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