Is Tesla’s Robotaxi a Dud?, Milton Causes Early Closures, The Christmas “Spirit”

Paul J Daly: 0:04All right, Wednesday, already, October 9, we got a hurricane belly bearing down. We're asking if Tesla's RoboTaxi is going to be a dud. And oh, new Christmas. Spirit stores, spirit,Unknown: 0:18

Christmas the spirit,

Paul J Daly: 0:19

I can't believe this is just coming up.

Unknown: 0:21

Why

Paul J Daly: 0:23

I know why? I'll tell you what. Okay,

Kyle Mountsier: 0:28

I'll tell you what.

Paul J Daly: 0:29

We got some, a lot of great content hitting the world right now, and our biggest fear as an organization, and as people who care about the people in this organization, is that this content won't be seen. Oh, because it is so good. Like we've never made a post at a piece of content that's made multiple people on our team, ugly cry.

Kyle Mountsier: 0:50

Ugly cry, just full on ugly cry. Like that's the way it is. And if you haven't seen this ugly cry video, you should go to our LinkedIn, scroll down just a wee bit to Monday and find the piece at roarman. It is someone, or you

Paul J Daly: 1:08

could go to our YouTube channel, asotube, asotu.be, it'll bring you right to our channel. And it says it, I think the thumbnail is a picture of a giant Honda store on a planet. And it says world record, right? But this, the piece is like, the end is unbelievable. My wife saw for the first time last night. Unbelievable. Yep, yep. We also have a new in the dirt podcast. That's another podcast where Jordan Cox goes out and just has a little bit of deeper conversation. So he's got that also from the Roman 100 grand opening, where he's talking to the service director about creating career opportunities in fixed ops. When we started this, we were like, We need to give fixed ops people more love. And that's been our kind of one of our been doing that recently. Sidecar goals. Yes, we started Absolutely. And Dan Schein, editor of automotive, fixed up for automotive news, solid. A lot of people have fixed up side of the business. See it and look, we believe it takes both sides. And all the best operators understand it takes both sides. Yep, so, yeah, got that. We got more, more than cars. Episode release. You know, we're gonna be traveling a lot. Let's talk about traveling

Kyle Mountsier: 2:18

a lot. I hope to meet. Don't talk many. Many of you. It gives my heart troubles.

Paul J Daly: 2:24

I know it's like five of the next six weeks, but yeah, we're going to be in Virginia, Indiana, uh, Austin, Texas, Florida. Um, all the things. Speaking of Florida, here we go. This is more than news right now. Several wholesale auto auctions and many dealerships in Florida are closed today tomorrow due to the impending arrival of hurricane Milton. The storm is basically hovering between a category four and Category Five right now. You know you're following the news. If you're not, you should not like you know the weather channel tends to blow things out of proportion to make news. This isn't one of those. News. This isn't one of those times. No, it's an actual thing. We have staff that has evacuated Carmax closed five stores in Tampa, Fort, Myers, napleton, Bradenton, Clearwater, Penske auto group took similar precautions, securing all their properties, allowing staff to safeguard their families, and, of course, making sure all their vehicles are on the floor plan for the insurance major auctions, including Odessa and Mannheim, all have canceled their sales. All have closed their locations. Tony Porten of Penske said, quote, we're working with our team members so they can secure their properties and take care of their families. So this is a big, big deal. This is

Kyle Mountsier: 3:38

one of those. You get these every once in a while where this thing, just like, cuts straight through the middle of Florida, Orlando gets it. And there's a couple massive auctions there, right, not just in Tampa, but that, that coast. They're, they're expecting in the neighborhood of, like, 10 to 12 foot storm surges. So this is, this is a real one, like it is coming in. It's it's something to be paying attention to all across the country, because we know those auto auctions, we know those the vehicle volumes in that area are super high, and then we know just there's a ton of people in auto that are going to be impacted by this, their families and just praying that the damage is is extremely minimal as this thing comes in. But we'll be watching this over the next 24 hours to see exactly what happens for sure. Also,

Paul J Daly: 4:25

like, make sure your people are safe. Get an opportunity to take care of your people now. And I was on the phone with a friend who you also know, who works with a big RV outlet. And same thing, right? RVs, any industry that has stuff but interesting, like, what did I see? I saw somebody. It was Marcus Lemonis, right, camping world, CEO of camping world, owner of a lot of stuff. And he was, he made a post where they're moving a bunch of RVs into position in front of stuff. No, no, no. That's kind of fun, though. Um. Fun to think about, into position to be able to, as soon as the storm passes, move all this inventory into the state to provide temporary so interesting to see, as FEMA is having its troubles and every right like to see some private businesses, I still see him as kind of like the auto industry saying, like, Hey, how can we be ready? Oh, Nathan, our producer, oh,

Kyle Mountsier: 5:21

my goodness, neither of us. What have we done?

Paul J Daly: 5:25

I brought this in so I could print it today. He's like, Don't worry, it's gonna have a black love, people. More. Do you love carsha? I just couldn't get it done fast enough. Wow. Call us out there. Really. It does feel like weird. Are we? It feels like a vacation day. Kyle and I were going to be somewhere today, and we had a trip got canceled, so we were going to our whole lives have thrown off. Can't even so we're like, our wives are like, What are you doing here? Right? Exactly. But it's great to see like these people moving things and saying, like, Hey, we're not going to rely on the government to save us. We're going to do everything we can to take care of one another, so take care of one another, and if anything comes up over the next few days needs help, let us know. Crew at asotu com, we'll get the word out, yes, and then we'll have Todd Caputo on next week to tell us how bad the inventory situation has just gotten. So like this is gonna make a mark. This one's gonna get real. Speaking of making work stop,

Unknown: 6:20

segway. It's a

Paul J Daly: 6:22

big question mark tomorrow,

Kyle Mountsier: 6:23

big old question.

Paul J Daly: 6:24

I mean literally, as Tesla gears up for its Wii robot event, kind of like play on the iRobot thing back in the day, expectations remain low for the unveiling this dedicated RoboTaxi that no one has seen while the company promised a bold, self driving future, a lot of people are uncertain about its near term potential. Basically, they talk saying they're going to reveal an autonomous vehicle with no steering wheel or pedals designed specifically for self driving. Despite years of development, their full self driving programs still many limitations, averaging just 120 miles between disengagements, like where somebody has to, you know, break the wheel. It's a lot of miles, though. Analyst who's driving 120 miles, analysts are pointing out that companies like Waymo and cruise already are operating functional RoboTaxi services in the US, while Tesla is lagging behind. Ronald juscolo, I messed his name up, jusico, jus cow of Guggenheim securities doubts Tesla will present a viable commercialization path within the next 12 to 24 months. He's like, we're gonna give him two years. Adam Jones, Morgan Stanley thinks Tesla will take a dual approach, offering both fully autonomous and supervised ride share services by 2526 so we'll find out tomorrow.

Kyle Mountsier: 7:40

We'll find out. You know, I'm, I'm probably a little bit more optimistic than the pundits, just because, like, typically, when they actually come, like, normally, what happens is they just push back the reveal, right? And they're like, Ah, it's not ready yet. It's not ready.

Paul J Daly: 7:54

Yeah. I mean, they did that twice on this one, if they, if they haven't,

Kyle Mountsier: 7:58

like, unless, unless, this afternoon. It's like, push back again. You know, I think, oh, gosh, they're not going to do that might shock everyone.

Paul J Daly: 8:06

I think it's, my guess is it's going to be a blend. It's going to be a little dog and pony. I think they're going to have a car that, you know, probably takes the page out of Steve Jobs playbook. It's

Kyle Mountsier: 8:16

hard to take that page out of Steve's jobs playbook,

Paul J Daly: 8:19

though. Well, a car, it is. It's amazing. But I think, I think they're gonna have a physical car that you can see that looks like, Oh, this is what it's gonna look like. I don't think that's the car that's gonna be doing any of the autonomous drive, right? They're gonna be like, and we have these RoboTaxi Tesla Model threes, right? That's more like the Waymo thing. The difference, big difference in like the Waymo the cruise is, like, Tesla's gonna own the vertical. That's like, they're gonna own the vehicle. They make it, they service it. They're gonna build the app that summons it and get the that Uber esque revenue. Like, it'll be a big thing. And I think they'll get there. Will they get there tomorrow? I think it's gonna be a half measure. I

Kyle Mountsier: 8:55

think you're right. I think it'll, it'll be a little dog and pony tomorrow. But

Paul J Daly: 8:59

dog and pony, oh, segue, that's reindeer in one reindeer and unicorns. That's

Kyle Mountsier: 9:05

a good segue. Spirit, Halloween, you know that they're out everywhere right now, known for its popular pop up stores, is testing a brand new concept. Spirit, Christmas, by opening 10 holiday themed stores across the Northeastern US, the new stores will focus on festive decor, live Santa Claus experiences, even offering free digital photos for visitors. It's basically like the mall all over again. Spirit Christmas revived in an old blockbuster. This is an idea they tested in the 1990s and mid 2000s but discontinued after mixed results. Location, cities include Connecticut, New Jersey, New York, Pennsylvania and many, many of the locations are previous spirit Halloween stores, so they're going to do the flip. If you don't know, spirit Halloween is the most successful pop up retail chain, expecting a record year with 50,000 seasonal workers over. 1500 stores, which is all already up about 10,000 staff and 25 store locations from last year. We'll see, we'll see what happens there, obviously trying to capitalize on what it looks to be a little bit of a moderate growth on holiday retail

Paul J Daly: 10:17

this year. Listen, I think this is a fantastic idea. I didn't know they tried it before. The timing seems right. There's a lot of retail space available right now, so there's a lot of places to put these things, which is like the first hurdle to make it easy, and everyone gets it. I've personally never been in a spirit Halloween. Miles, my son was just saying, he's like, we should go to one. I was like, You're right. I was like, I've never even been in one, but I think the spirit Christmas, one makes all the sense in the world, especially if they're able to pull off making it an experience. When you go in, when I think of a spirit Halloween, it's probably just like a bunch of stuff on the shelves. But Christmas is different, much more of a broader reach. And if they can have a reason for the kids to go in there and see see Santa, or see the train, or whatever else they come up with, I think they're on something and all the like the targets and Walmart's like, they're going to take a bite out of that

Kyle Mountsier: 11:06

they are. And here's, here's the two things for me. One, obviously, people love Christmas experiences. They pay through the nose for them. But two, and bigger is, we just talked about last week how spirit Halloween is partnering with Uber. Now, I don't have many times where I'm like, oh my goodness, I don't have this for Halloween, right?

Paul J Daly: 11:23

Neither You'll, uh, get it. But in the

Kyle Mountsier: 11:25

Christmas season, it's like, you're in Christmas setup. And like getting, you know, taking

Paul J Daly: 11:34

down one string of lights, you

Kyle Mountsier: 11:35

need a string of lights. Boom, where am I going to be a Christmas done? Yeah, just thinking out loud, there the old Uber partnership. Well, look, I

Paul J Daly: 11:45

mean, hey, if you're a dealership, follow the trend, right? No, we're getting Christmas stuff yet. What they should do is pair it with like a decorating service. I don't know, we're just biz Devin today. You have to take care of one another out there. And we're gonna go back and put things on our shirts. It's

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