Inventory On The Low, Auto Service Professionals Month, Drone AI Turns On Human Operator

Paul Daly: 0:31Good morning got the Friday feeling the beginning of June. It's National Donut Day.By the way, I've already had one. Are we talking about inventory not going back to normal automotive service professionals month and drone. I don't even know whose day job pocalypse we've been talking about AI a lot so drone McQueen not include a story about military drones this Friday.Good morning everybody. We're hoping you're ready for another awesome summer day in automotive. We have we're actually will say this first after the show if you don't know about it, we bounce right into David Long's all things use cars room on clubhouse. If you haven't been there, you should try it out. If you don't have the clubhouse app, you can just download the clubhouse app. You know how to do it already. Yeah,today we're talking about something something about appraisals a lot about appraisers

‍Kyle Mountsier: 1:23

taking people with you or not on appraisals taking the client with oh and the check out the car and it's gonna be full on Battle Royale up in there.

Paul Daly: 1:31

I wish we had that thing. Yeah, I mean, like, look,you're selling a house right now. And if you have somebody walking through your house, like while you're there, it's just super awkward. Yeah, that's good. That's what I'm gonna say.It's awkward for everybody is awkward. Oh, we also have we're going to be in Atlanta in just under two weeks about 10 days from now we're in Atlanta on the14th Buckhead theatre we're putting on our we're going to screen are more than cars network TV show. We're going to put on the live Tonight Show with the full band and Cirilo and we got some new game shows for this one. We also have an amazing list of special guests on the show. We have Eric Tiffany wells we have Lise porches we have Patrick a bad Todd Caputo. Steve Greenfield.Carrie wise. Jin's epic. I'm missing a couple of people but we have a lot.

Kyle Mountsier: 2:19

This is so much good. All gonna be great. Yeah,this

Paul Daly: 2:22

is our last this kind of our last live tonight show until Christmas. I think it probably will be with a soda con. So we're pulling out all the stops. If you're in the Atlanta area or can get there easy. Please go to a soy two x.com and join us if you're a dealer, work for a dealer. We're gonna let you in for free and you're gonna walk home with swag and smiles and food and stories promised.

Kyle Mountsier: 2:44

No worries on stories. Alright, let's get into it. Let's go. Let's go. Let's go.

Paul Daly: 2:47

Okay, so according to automotive industry consultancy cloud theory, pre COVID inventory levels may never return. Even though sales rebounded surpassing pre pandemic levels inventory obviously has stayed low. This has led to kind of like an industry wide reconsideration of where it should actually be. So here's the breakdown. precoat.This sounds crazy, though, when you think about pre COVID levels of inventory were three to three and a half million vehicles.Inventory fell actually below a million in 20. In the fall of2021, right? We're just in the hundreds of 1000s, which is crazy. It came back up through about 2 million late 2022. And where we are right about now.And clutter. He's head of Data Science and Analytics, Rick weighing school predicts a new normal of inventory between two two and a half million. So not much more than we have now.Coupled with a more balanced trim mix due to affordability issues. And this I mean, this just makes all the sense in the world, right? We figured out a better way to

Kyle Mountsier: 3:47

do a ton of sense. I'm still

Paul Daly: 3:51

the human nature.

Kyle Mountsier: 3:53

I'm still not buying it because we've seen some manufacturers like not even come close to that others. So maybe like that dichotomy of manufacturer opinions on this,we'll keep it balanced in the in the inventory world.

Paul Daly: 4:07

Because some are,you're saying because some are gonna like keep it low. Yep. And some are gonna like ramp back up.

Kyle Mountsier: 4:12

Some are gonna see the value of keeping it low and being intentional about that. And some are just going to be see the value of pushing as much wholesale as they possibly can in the dealer network. So,you know, I'm still holding out for it. We'll see if that actually happens. I think just with the advent of people moving out of cities, we're going to require more inventory continually as remote work still stays strong as people move into suburbs and urban and rural areas. And so like inventory has to meet that demand. I don't know. We'll see. I would love for it to stay that way because I enjoy hearing about the profitability of my brothers and sisters in retail world.

Paul Daly: 4:52

So good way to be.It's a good way to be spear I'm trying to think of a segue now.It's tough. We're just gonna hit the Segway

Kyle Mountsier: 5:01

is I cannot wait for this next story.

Paul Daly: 5:06

The Institute for not only is it National Donut Day,but the National Institute for automotive service excellence,you know it as the ASC the certification that the techs need to get has named June, the month of June as automotive service professionals month in a statement, ASE highlighted the crucial role of automotive service professionals saying that like cars are getting more complicated, they have to work even harder to keep up. And like we need to recognize these men and women who just every day are out there fixing the cars doing the work, staying up to date learning the new complexity and hit hitting the challenges head on. So they have a little hashtag, we'll see what happens.It's ASPM automotive service professionals month, I guess I love it. Yep, that's exactly what Hey, if you if you we know you are interested advisor today or a service professional technician, like they might not even know that it's automotive service professionals month,it's an awesome time to make a big deal about it.

Kyle Mountsier: 6:06

Make a huge deal, like run out of any meeting that you have. Take your whole sales department into the service department. Yeah, break the heck out of the service.What they're doing. Take a big old photo of all of the tax posted on every social media platform that you possibly can do interviews with all of your texts for social media, talk about what they're talking about, engage with them and put it on on social media, share it with your communities use this opportunity to lean into your service department. Especially.I mean, how key is this? It is travel time. Everybody gets their car ready to go travel in the summer. Yep. Why not lean into the fact that the ASE has just given you this wide open opportunity to celebrate your people, which also promotes them into your community sharing.Come on, use our team because we care about who you are. I can't think of like a better mashup of all of the things that are great about Otto I'm so

Paul Daly: 7:06

lobbing wabbit over the plate. Why don't you soft,soft pitch on when we released more than cars the you should check it out. By the way more than cars.tv when we released it. I can't remember who posted it and somebody was commenting on it. And they said, but they don't show any service techs. I was like Oh really?

Kyle Mountsier: 7:28

Pop up. One store yo,

Paul Daly: 7:31

except for the very beginning. You're gonna meet Peggy? Right. Gotta meet the PDI tech. We went we went straight PDI text Oh yeah, we love being able to celebrate the whole dealership. And real everyone who's really in the industry knows that it takes both sides of the house to execute an amazing experience. And if you don't believe that then I would just probably guess that your workplace is pretty toxic. Hey,just gotta call it out for what it is speaking of toxic time.

Kyle Mountsier: 8:03

Right? We're gonna run this down for you. So yesterday or a couple of days ago. on a high note here. Yeah,real high note get you rockin into your Friday. During joint US South Korea, the military drill and AI drone surprisingly treated its human controller as a mission hindrance. Incident straight out of a science fiction movie is sparking intense discussions about the rules of using AI and war and how to keep humans in charge of self operating weapons.Basically what happened? The drone was given these points so it's a simulation let's let's double down on that. This is a simulation so no live.

Paul Daly: 8:39

Yeah, no, no, there's no live things it's like literally a simulation no live demo it's not actually happening that's like the computers in the people talking. Yes war Exactly.

Kyle Mountsier: 8:50

So basically what happens it's given this this directive the mission to kill these simulated sites.

Paul Daly: 8:58

No Assam site so it sounds is like when when you know it's like the the missile defense system so when you're applying to a country the little little boxy things that we've all seen them in movies, we've seen Top Gun, right?

Kyle Mountsier: 9:09

So so the failsafe here was the drone was sent on the mission, the human operator was given the final kill no kill option. Well, the operator at this point gave the no kill command and the drone was like, Nah, bro, you're in my way, kicked him out and even went so far to take out the operator. When they when the when they introduced a new rule on new testing that said don't kill the operator. The drone went and took out the communications tower so that the operator couldn't communicate with the drone, thereby enabling him to complete the mission.

Paul Daly: 9:44

Basically, it's the drone the AI drone equivalent of like the kid sticking his fingers in the ears and be like,hey, I can hear you. So that is that is just like, you know,we've been talking a lot about AI which is why put the story in like GPT Yes. Today we talked about like, a lot of people like worrying, hey, like, we got to pay attention to this and this the surface right away. It's just like, yeah, like, I hope somebody's paying attention to this now I'm sure there are. I told my 16 year old son miles a story he's like, Well, yeah, I mean, like, that's just does what you tell it to do. Right?You told it to prioritize, you know, the SAM site. And so it's like, Well, if that's my priorities, like, Okay, well,the priorities that and don't kill the operator. It's like,okay, I won't kill the operator prioritizing cell site

Kyle Mountsier: 10:28

communications with you. And all right. Yeah,right. Right. I'm learning that there's a

Paul Daly: 10:32

quote from Colonel Tucker Tucker. I don't know.This is a great name Tucker,cinco Hamilton. He's got a nickname. I just picture the I just picture the general from Monsters vs. Aliens. He's the chief of AI tests and operations for the US Air Force. And he says, Look, you can't have a conversation about artificial intelligence, intelligent machine learning or autonomy. If you're not going to talk about ethics, and AI,

Kyle Mountsier: 10:54

wild stuff,ethics and technology here comes

Paul Daly: 10:57

I know it well. I mean, it's, there's another story we didn't include today.And it had to do with rivian saying that all of they don't have aI chatbots in their service at all. It's all human.They're like when you text us,no matter what time of day,you're talking to a caring empathetic human should put that story in, but we didn't. But either way, you're gonna leave today. You're gonna leave this podcast right now. And you have the opportunity to not AI to directly connect with another human, celebrate somebody,celebrate your team, celebrate your community and go do it.

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