Hybrid Tech, BMW Subscriptions, Data Breach, and Gen Z

Unknown: 0:00

Music.

‍Paul J Daly: 0:10

Let's just say, the first thing we're going to do today is say hello to our friend Anita Carroll, who put a comment in before the show even started, saying, looking for the Friday vibes. We're bringing the Friday vibes talking about hybrid tech subscriptions, data breaches, J whatever else Kyle's thinking of. I just listened to the New Post Malone country album on the way, and I have thoughts on that.

Kyle Mountsier: 0:31

Oh, I do. Post Malone. Check that out. That's

Paul J Daly: 0:35

I got some real thoughts on that. I'm making a video naked. I literally miles will tell you we were in the car. And I'm like, I'm like, I'm making predictions right now, and here's why he might be one of the best brand thinkers on the planet. We'll talk about, oh boy, but we're Friday. Man, Friday. Man, we're

Kyle Mountsier: 0:52

Friday. You know what's cool is, like, I get I was just last night, I was talking to my wife about just how energized I get around the prospects of being around people, like way more people in auto, right? I mean, you work in an a bit of an office, but it's a small office. I work at home. I have my fam, but next week, being at Reynolds amplify being at especially name ad, like that crew throws always on. I cannot wait. I just I can't wait to see. If you haven't been to name ad, you are doing yourself a disservice, because the DV l Awards presented by Mark bland and Damon Lester on a Thursday morning is a full riot, and amazing so and we got Tom OEM.

Paul J Daly: 1:35

I mean, Toyota always brings, like, three tables of people, and they're always fun, the Toyota Lexus crew and I. People step up. People step up. We're going to bring you everything we can. Our friends at TrueCar. Plus are going to be on the ground. Matt Jones, are people going to be with us? They're sponsoring our name ad coverage. So we are going to be bringing to you some live coverage of the name ad annual meeting on the show. We'll be on the show. There'll be other content dropping. So go to asotu.com sign up for the email subscription, or it's not a subscription, it's free. Maybe it's a free subscription. But we want to bring you all the good stuff from the show, and we're going to maybe do a vlog. And Jordan Cox is like scripting out this vlog. We're recording a podcast. Hey, this is the first time we're talking about it. We are going, we are this isn't asotu production now. We are going to be producing name ads, very first podcast. It's called now we're here talking about all the amazing things these minority auto dealers are doing, really breaking some amazing just boundaries in automotive in general. I'm not even talking like race based boundaries, but they're breaking boundaries in like, just great operation. And there's a lot to learn. So it's called now we're here. Daly Lester, your boy is going to be the host, and think we got some good executives lined up. So look out for that too. We're busy these days. If you haven't, let's talk into some news. A lot of people are busy today. I'm telling you what. Yeah, your European regulations are busy driving the development of plug in hybrids with significantly longer ranges offering a glimpse of might what might actually be coming to the US. So some European plug in hybrids now offer electric ranges of up to 84 miles, more than double of what it is in the US. So if you don't know plug in hybrids, right, you can plug it in and have a battery that you run on just electric power until the engine has to kick in now, 84 miles is like amazing in comparison US plug in hybrids like the Prius Prime Max are the Prius Prime max out at only 45 miles of electric range, with most the majority of only 25 to 35 any plug in hybrid in the US is usually between that range. California's regulation changes will drive similar advancements in the US after requiring plug in hybrids to reach a minimum range of 43 miles by 2028, and 70 miles after that. You know what's after that? 2030, developing long range vehicles definitely going to require some more investment in engineering, posing a cost challenge. But you know, regulation tends to tell you what you have to do

Kyle Mountsier: 3:58

exactly. I mean, I'm still bullish on this, right? Like, big time figure out how to make the plug in hybrid, or, you know, I mean, worst case, the hybrid operate on the electric motor as long as possible, right? That that's that solution is going to be the way to get the, like, the mass adoption moving in the direction, and especially a plug in hybrid, it kind of gives you that in between mode of like, okay, I have to start to get used to, you know, plugging this thing in, but I still have the fallback of gas, and I still have that regular rhythm in my life. Oh my gosh, starting to get used to this. It

Paul J Daly: 4:36

takes the excuses away. Because, I mean, what? I wonder, what the total range is on a plug in hybrid? Is probably 400 miles plus, oh, at least, yeah, at least maybe 500 maybe more than your vehicle, yeah, because that hybrid battery

Kyle Mountsier: 4:48

is still operating similar to how, similar to how, like, just straight up hybrids are where it's getting some recharge. So you're getting that higher miles per gallon, right? I

Paul J Daly: 4:58

mean, we haven't talked about the price of. Liza in a long time. It feels like that was the big conversation for a while. It seems to have died down. But I mean, one of the things obviously, you need less lithium for these batteries, because they're a lot smaller. And I mean, 40 mile, 45 miles is enough for the majority of people's daily driving needs. If you plug in every night, 85 miles has to be like 90% of the population drives less than 90 miles a day on average. Just plug,

Kyle Mountsier: 5:24

you know what's okay. So I just look up the price of lithium from October 31 2022, to now. It's like, down, I don't know, some stupid amount. It's back to, like, where it was in, 2020, 2021, okay. So that's like, that's a great thing for hybrids. And I know, look, that's like a story and a story, a story and a story.

Paul J Daly: 5:49

We didn't story in a story. It's just kind of a story and a story, but they're at it again. I don't know. We just need to intervene in BMWs selection for what we're going to charge customers subscription for. They're once again starting, sparking some debate with its decision to charge us customers to unlock now features that are physical, features that are installed in the vehicles, now requiring payments to activate adaptive suspension on vehicles where it wasn't selected at purchase. You know, knowing the hardware is already there. They can either subscribe monthly, that's $30 a month, or pay a one time fee of $500 to activate the feature. $30 a month is on okay? BMW claims strategy reduces production complexity by installing uniform hardware that makes sense and using software to manage feature availability. Enthusiasts are vocal about their dissatisfaction with pink to unlock features that are built into the car, but BMW shows no signs of reversing the trend, suggesting it's here to stay after their first swing at the pitch, which was heated seats. Now, it's adaptive suspension. Yeah,

Kyle Mountsier: 6:53

it's it's wild, because, like, when Tesla comes out and is like, we'll give you an extra 100 miles for some money. Everybody's like, Yeah, show you the money. BMW does the same thing now I think, like, it's like, is it attached to hardware technology? What do you unlock? You know, like, the thing is, what are you unlocking? And is there value that's already been ascribed to that in the historical way that things have been bought and sold in automotive, right? Yeah, like, range has never been bought and sold this coin that's right, like, it's, it's never been like, pay $3,000 more to get better gas mileage, yeah, right. That's never been like a lever that OEMs have pulled right? But things like heated seats or act adaptive suspension have a matrix. It's go up in trim level, right? Yeah. And so I think that's where people are probably getting caught off guard, and that's where some of these OEMs maybe need to think about like, is there a matrix already for the consumer behavior of buying and selling this thing, or is this a net new thing that we can tack on? I think that's where consumers will start to be more you know,

Paul J Daly: 8:12

that's a good breakdown of it. Put

Kyle Mountsier: 8:14

me in the room, Paul, put me in the room. I

Paul J Daly: 8:16

always feel like that. I mean, maybe I'm being a little hard on them. I mean, when you're the first one in the pool, you're going to make some mistakes, but they only have two strikes. Two strikes, adapt. I tell you what, you better be really cap confident in being able to notice the adaptive suspension, right? You know what I mean? Like, you have to be really confident that drivers are going to be like, This is great. I feel so glad I just paid $500 or 30 more dollars a month. Or maybe they just know their demographic and like, that dollar amount isn't a major deal to people who buy brand new BMWs, like, they definitely know they know more than we do about that kind of thing. But we'll see what happens. I mean, it's almost, is this the kind of thing where it's like, hey, great news. Try adaptive suspension for this weekend, right? It's adaptive suspension weekend, but then you really better be confident that it works, because not worth I don't know. I guess if people get more used to it, when people get more used to it, we're gonna think, see it change a little bit. Yeah, speaking of getting used to things, unfortunately, not one. Unfortunately, we have four stories for you today. By the way, shocking data breach exposed the personal information of get this billions with a B, with serious implications over 2.9 billion records. And if you didn't know, there's only, like three, 50 million people alive in the US right now, including social security numbers, were stolen, allegedly from the National from national public data, a Florida based background check company, so I guess they got all the data. They're not pulling it from anywhere. They just have it. I guess. How does that happen? The breach is attributed to the US DoD group, which claims that have stolen data and is offering it for sale on the dark web for 3.5 million. That feels like excuse the pun steal. While NPD has not officially confirmed the. Reach. It's acknowledged receiving inquiries. I'm investigating the claims. Experts are saying, obviously, identity theft and financial fraud. How could that happen with someone having every single social security number now and in the past, we're gonna do, buddy,

Kyle Mountsier: 10:16

I'm just like, I'm at a loss. I'm like, it something has been exposed right this year. And I think there's waves of this, like you see waves where, like something new happens. And so my, my guess is, like something critical in the path of development has been exposed over the last like five to six months, leading to always allowing more and more. Yeah, that's it's gotta be what it is like hackers have found x, right? That allows more systems to be breached that wasn't able to be found a year ago, right? And what you see these waves, like these big companies, you see it for a year, a bunch of companies kind of get it targeted and attacked, right? So

Paul J Daly: 11:01

I think the biggest implication the whole thing here is just

Kyle Mountsier: 11:03

like, yeah, keep your data safe. Keep people logged in, right? Get doing

Paul J Daly: 11:08

your diligence to keep it as safe as possible. I think people are gonna get smarter about, like, freezing their credit, controlling their credit. I think the blockchain is gonna have a lot to do with the solution to this, a transactions happening be verified on the blockchain. It's something we haven't mentioned on the show in a long time. But people underground that understand how it works and why it works, the usefulness of it is going to increase when every social security number is is out there, every date of birth is out there. You know, 3.5 million for every social security number in history, seems like I guess they could sell it multiple times. I mean, I don't know. Are there resellers? I'm sure. Like, is there an official reseller program? But when it comes down to this, it's like, what can you do but shrug your shoulders and be like, I don't know. The title lock, the title lock companies are going to do really well because of this, right? Like, they're going to do great home, yeah, maybe they never, I'm not going to make any going to make any implications. Maybe they're the people. I'm

Kyle Mountsier: 12:05

just nada.

Paul J Daly: 12:07

I'm just Kyle's just, that's a great segment at the end of Friday.

Kyle Mountsier: 12:16

Fantastic. So apparently, employee disengagement seems to be on the rise, and experts are warning of a looming great detachment, as they're calling it, particularly among Gen Z workers. Gen Z is on track to outnumber boomers in the workforce this year and expected to make up 27% of the workforce by just 2025 that's next year. The American staffing Association warns that disengaged employees could cost the global economy over $8 trillion experts are reporting that it is common for Gen Z employees to engage in performative business, not genuine productivity.

Paul J Daly: 12:53

Was that? Was that line performative business, performative

Kyle Mountsier: 12:58

busyness, not genuine productivity, as evidenced by the number of zoom meetings in my life. CEO with Gen Z, Kyle Sun Dharam notes, Gen Z is vocal about work life, balance and transparency, which some older generations mistake for distance, disengagement or laziness. So it could just be a general generational gap on whether or not disengagement is actually happen, happening. But you know, we always get in this battle every time a new generation enters the work

Paul J Daly: 13:30

we do, we do. I think, I think some of this is like that. I don't know if you noticed this covid. A thing or two was said about millennials, just a couple things. I'm at the tail end of Gen X, and they called our generation losers. I mean, it was like grunge music, right? Like, what? A bunch of losers get a job. You know what I mean? And so I think there's a, there's something about this that happens with any generation. You find an accusation, definitely, though, Gen Z has figured out how to leverage tech to look busy, like, without a doubt, right? The Zoom calls. I mean, there are things that will, like, create a video that'll just keep it on, like, a 42nd loop at meetings. You have people taking interviews for you on Zoom calls. So, I mean, like, I understand that under you know they can leverage this in that way. However, I'm so bullish on Gen Z, I don't know if it's because I have Gen Z, right and, like, just see their ethic and their drive and their friends in the front. Like, man, Gen Z is a great generation. I do think this is a fantastic opportunity for the retail auto industry. This is not an industry where you really can get caught, where you can get away with, like, slacking or sleeping for long right now, you can't. There's nowhere to hide, which means we have a chance to attract the best Gen Z years and like, be on the best side of the engagement, the best side of the opportunity. So I think, you know, people self select by what they're willing to put in to their life. So, I mean, the story is disengagements on the rise. Okay,

Kyle Mountsier: 14:51

yeah, you know, change that for the auto industry. Gen Z, the most engaged, the the most engaged generation in the automotive industry. Let's go read. Bring that, Joe. Man,

Paul J Daly: 15:01

I don't know. Man, I've seen those 75 year olds still in the hunt in the auto industry. I don't go hard game still. We hope you have an amazing weekend. We'll be here tomorrow morning with your Saturday episode. But until then, you got a Friday you're going to be busy. Sell some cars. Love some people.

Unknown: 15:22

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