Ford Slashes Lightning Prices, GM Limits Incentives, Old EV Batteries Storing Solar

Paul Daly: 0:32Hey, it's Tuesday already our hats are backwards which means we've already been working good morning everybody in the live stream Good morning people on the podcast talking about Ford, GM and old Evie batteries if you can believe that. There's some Evie batteries that are old. They started I guess I

‍Kyle Mountsier: 0:51

don't know. The world is weird. World is so weird. I got the chance speaking of EVs, but not really a segue.I got the chance with creative director Kelly, our lead writer,Chris to go to two rivers Ford last Friday. We did a little record with JD Power had a little interview that'll be coming out soon, but I think I saw the bloopers from that one.Yeah, that was it was special.It was fun. But we got to hang out with with a few of the staff members there and they have an Eevee specialists. And so it's really cool to kind of hang out with him and see like his perspective. He's been doing it for just a year and even better is everybody listen to this pod can go search in the dirt wherever they get their podcasts and the most recent podcast is called passenger the third that Evie specialists check it out.It's just few minutes but check it out little perspective from someone in the end of it focused on that on the retail side so

Unknown: 1:56

that is searching in the dirt in the in the dirt with us. We do is this the guy with the beard? Yes, his beard. Okay,that's that's the blooper reel I see.

Kyle Mountsier: 2:09

Yeah, we'll check that out. But yeah, his beard is epic. His hair is epic.Like everything is Nashville.

Paul Daly: 2:17

Gotcha. Nashville epic. It's Nashville epic. It's the only way I can gray hair.Super beard. Super Skinny jeans,or did he have like the the short shorts? I don't know. No.Yeah, he probably would have been wearing short shorts. If it was the weekend. It was the weekend. It is a weekend. Hey,we got a lot of stuff coming in.But we do want to mention again that asoto con our big event of the year is coming in hot.September man, the dates are all blur. What are the dates Kyle?

Kyle Mountsier: 2:43

20 through the20 we're gonna call it 25th through the 28th because you got to be there on the night of the25th and you got to stay all the way slept through the 27th fly

Paul Daly: 2:51

out. No, it's not25th through the 28th That's four days. Well, but the night

Kyle Mountsier: 2:55

is Oh yeah.Okay, so you don't want to fly out to the 28th we don't need people leaving before Jesse Koch comes on. That's

Paul Daly: 3:01

true. That's true.Right? We have Jesse Cole the founder of the savannah bananas ESPN made a documentary about him it's He's amazing. Search Jesse Cole. You don't want to miss Jesse you just don't put the graphic back up on screen Nathan, if you're watching on your computer, you can scan the QR code that's on the screen. If you're listening or you're on your phone just go to us so two con.com Get your ticket now. The real reason when to get your ticket now is because the main hotels gonna sell out and you want to be in the main hotel and you also save what are we still$100 off

Kyle Mountsier: 3:34

right now? 100bucks from the price when it when it hits September.

Paul Daly: 3:37

There you go. There you go. So alright, let's talk about some news. This is a fun little dichotomy today. The Evie pricing wars are heating up as Ford has cut prices for its F150. Lightning electric pickup.Between six and $10,000discounts. Get out of here. Oh my gosh, depending on the model Martin jaja. The Chief Customer Officer Ford, they get the right. Yeah, Chief Customer Officer of Ford Evie unit explained the price reductions are due to lower material costs and higher production capacity.I wonder if that's that only.The cheapest lightening model of the commercial focus pro trim will now start at 51 Nine which is still 25% More expensive than when they launched in April. I think they were like at the time it was like 39 nine right is what they were saying it was a sub $40,000 pickup, the highest price trim the extended range platinum model was only reduced by 6000. So you're still going to be paying 93 grand for that.However, there's an additional$1,000 incentive if you buy or order before the end of July.And then on top of that, we have the $7,500 tax credit for any truck under 80,000. Meaning if you get the entry level truck with the current discount with the $1,000 incentive and the$7,500 tax credit you can get the Ford F 150 Lightning for$43,400 Whereas like,

Kyle Mountsier: 5:02

look, I think that's in line. You know what I mean? salutely It is. I've seen that truck. And that thing is a nice truck, even if it's the basic work truck is ready to go.Now,

Paul Daly: 5:11

I mean,unfortunately, college relations to the customer, but not necessarily to Ford.

Kyle Mountsier: 5:16

Right, Paul,have you ever? Have you ever heard of discounts up to$10,000? In the auto industry?Has that ever? Have you ever? Do you remember a time when that?

Paul Daly: 5:30

I sure do pick up the specially what had previously cautioned against aggressive price cuts, arguing that they damage the resale value of the vehicles and disappoint the customers who purchased at higher prices. He did also say and they never forget, which never for sure, if I bought an F150 Lightning last month, and now it's $10,000 cheaper. And now I know I'm in that truck,right? Like you're not trading out of that. So Ford Ford is playing a little different game,as far as there's two parts

Kyle Mountsier: 6:05

is, there's two parts of this one is we have to look at this as like, this is for all intensive purposes, a large rebate to accelerate purchasing, right to accelerate buying behavior create demand.However, I do understand some level of like, hey, over the next three to four years, we will see prices come to like the new normal for EVs, right? I mean, you just look at these vehicles as massive pieces of technology, less hardware, more software. And even the hardware that's used to produce these types of trucks is just gonna get cheaper, they're gonna refine processes for creating that. I mean, you just look at like, watch a TV, over the last five years watch a 4k HD, you know, OLED or Q LED TV, almost get cut in half in pricing. And so I think this is something that we haven't seen in automotive, in the past, because technology hasn't been as fresh.Exactly technology is, is further behind in automobiles,and now, technology and auto is actually like, pushing the bleeding edge, which means there's going to be this like,increase in pullback, increase in pullback until there's a normalization of the rhythm and speed at which, which like new technologies developed. So I like I get both sides of it still. It just rings and like shouts at me, you know, OEMs,attempting to like push push demand through price discounting. And it's something that, like, we've just seen the story we've seen in narrative before it's a potato, it's a hot potato for sure. Hot potato.

Paul Daly: 7:55

I don't know,speaking of inventory, a segue kind of on the opposite side of the spectrum, according to worry Harvey's GMs, North American President, that company has strong demand, and is actually having some trouble getting units to dealers fast enough. At a Lansing Michigan event, Harvey said at this particular point in time, we could just about sell every product that we can build kind of the opposite of an incentive mindset. He partially credits the management of demand and says that, quote, GM very strongly continues to have discipline in terms of incentives. So as far as challenges go, you know,transporting the vehicles via you know, road or rail. It's kind of interesting that that's the challenge. It seems like something they've been doing really well. But hey, we're not trying to manage that. But when it comes to evey sales, Harvard declined to direct the naturally he declined to direct to directly attribute the lower than expected sales of GMs newest EVs, the GMC Hummer and the Cadillac lyric, two issues with ultium batteries as the potential bottleneck in production, so GM only sold 1300lyrics and 47 Hummers in in the second quarter, they do predict predict a significant increase,but they're definitely in a different stage of the Eevee game. So they have like this little like late comer advantage because the Silverado Evie hasn't come out yet, right?Ford's a little head. So we'll see if Ford learning from this earlier is going to end up helping them win in the long run. Because you know, you you you win or you learn, you know,and Ford zoo and a lot of learning and GM is probably not too far behind. Well, yeah,

Kyle Mountsier: 9:34

and I mean, it's like every successive new entrant into the Eevee space is going to continually learn from someone who's done it longer than them in the past. And so,especially the Detroit OEMs are going to learn from each other.They're going to watch what happens to each other. You know,it's interesting because I see like GMs day supply of vehicles rising quicker than the majority of of OEMs. So I like it's a confusing how does that reconcile right yeah where's the reconciliation of like we can sell everything that's there does that mean like we can pretty much wholesale everything that's there we can pretty much retail everything that's there I don't know what the what the learning there that's a really great

Paul Daly: 10:18

point like what does he mean when he says that that would have been like the dealers are asking all of the inventory

Kyle Mountsier: 10:22

but because they'll see a low buy within GM So Question of

Paul Daly: 10:27

the day

Kyle Mountsier: 10:28

yeah if you were there

Paul Daly: 10:29

imagine asking that to him that they need to get in these press conferences man

Kyle Mountsier: 10:33

Oh, tell me a thing real quick. Let me get just give it to me. Okay.Robbery robbery be real with me.

Paul Daly: 10:39

Hey, bro. Like that?Are we talking wholesale or retail? Pause button. Let me explain to everyone in this press audience. Why that matter?Oh man, we're

Kyle Mountsier: 10:51

gonna get ourselves in trouble on

Paul Daly: 10:54

Tuesday. We have little making up for it to do but it's time to get out of this one. Speaking of Evie batteries,we'll just go segway

Kyle Mountsier: 11:05

we give a lot around the EVS but we don't get around evey sales but not around the total lifecycle of everything in an Eevee however,one company in Lancaster California is giving a whole new life to use Evie batteries.Basically what they're doing is storing solar power tackling now both renewable energy issues as well as supply and as well as the battery disposal issues. So be to use Storage Solutions is using retired Evie batteries that still are retaining up to60 and 70% of their original charge capacity to connect together a series of solar panels and then sells that solar power power back to the main grid during peak demand periods in the in the evening. So basically, they're taking us Evie batteries, creating this solar power grid to store solar power, and then selling that power back to the main grid. And what they're saying is those Evie battery batteries have another five to six years of life on them before being recycled into like the raw materials. So but they're right now they're still struggling with like supplying the demand because there is so much demand on the power grid, right? How do we get how do we use batteries to write how do we do that?Well, we sell more more new EVs takes a little bit takes

Paul Daly: 12:30

time. So this kind of reminds me of a conversation I had with my mother in law, a text conversation with my mother in law last week, and I'll tie it together. Okay. Because you know, when your mother a lot when you have a mother in law,and your son in law, you all of a sudden have inherited this new role of tech support tech.iPhone tech support. Absolutely.So, but she's like, my phone's not holding a charge well, and it you know, and it turns off every now and again, great. What iPhone? Is it? She's like, it's an iPhone seven?

Kyle Mountsier: 13:02

Oh, yeah. Oh,

Paul Daly: 13:05

I was like, well,we're on an iPhone 16. Just about so. So I had to check her battery health and battery health was at 80%, which I was like, Man, that seems pretty good. And then I looked it up.And anything under 80% is supposed to be almost unusable.So that gives a little context of the story. So you like these batteries still have 60 to 70%.The problem is, they don't charge fast, they don't go to max capacity. However, it's very good still for just storing power, not moving it in and out really fast. That is actually what fatigues a battery is charging it quickly depleting it quickly charging, you're quickly depleting it quickly. And so it makes sense that it's 60 to 70%.They don't have any real usability in an Eevee performance will be terrible.However, store charge.Absolutely. So I mean, this,this makes a lot of sense.Especially you know, with all the with all the power outages and things like that. It's funny that some of this energy will be used to probably charge EVs. I guess the real question is, how affordable do the batteries stay? Right? Once the demand for Evie batteries increases and the materials in them become more valuable? Does it make more sense to get them right back into the recycling process?

Kyle Mountsier: 14:14

Well, like the storage of this, right, like the size that it takes to put together a solar panel network,and I mean, California has got a little bit of space, the space out there and was kind of like,it's just kind of interesting,but it makes sense. It's in California you have the most EVs in in use. And that's right.Watch him and he's right. One of the most strenuous power grids in the country that in Texas, so and the company is profitable.Did you say that? Well? No, I didn't say that. Yeah, they're profitable, which is like,hello. Hey, I'm in.I'm having to go time to go buy up some Evie batteries and solar panels used ones and ship

Paul Daly: 14:53

them to California using fossil fuels. We won't even get into that. We hope you have a great Tuesday. Get out Get your solo con tickets. You get up there. Love some people more than you love the cars but you can love the cars too.

‍