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Speaker 1 0:00
It is Monday, April 14. This is the automotive State of the Union. And know your eyes or ears do not deceive you. I am in person this morning on a Monday with Michael. Serene,
Unknown Speaker 0:10
are you guys ready for a Monday with Michael? I don't
Speaker 1 0:13
know. Actually, if I can answer that question, I'll tell you in about 13 minutes, everyone in
Michael Cirillo 0:18
the office saw what they thought was me coming in, and they were like, is that? Is
Speaker 1 0:21
that my duck below, in the gophers, in the in the partitions, everybody ducks down a little bit. Man, it's funny. I'm so glad you got into Syracuse last night. Good flight. You, I think you wrote in the only cab in Syracuse. Good.
Michael Cirillo 0:34
Good flights. Good flights. I was from Canada, right? And so even though it is only about three and a half out what part of Canada, Edmonton, okay, or, as they call it, their sledment in, okay. But it was, it was like, But, I mean, we're talking about to get just to Syracuse from Edmonton. It is Edmonton to Denver. You make it to, like, Rio de Janeiro for a late connection, up to Chicago, down to Dallas, and then I'm just, you're like, where did I go? How many
Speaker 1 1:04
plates did you take? Four? Oh, I thought you were exaggerating. Oh, my goodness, you're so used to this.
Michael Cirillo 1:12
The best part of it is getting your not just getting your steps in, but getting to your next flight, completely drenched. And
Paul J Daly 1:18
then you sit down next to the person. You're like, I'm so sorry.
Unknown Speaker 1:20
I'm so sorry. I smell wet.
Speaker 1 1:24
That's terrible, dude. It's terrible. Oh, my goodness. Well, the reason you're in town and Kyle will actually be here in a matter of an hour and a half from Nashville this morning is because the three of us are going to be heading out tomorrow morning, bright and early. Like, it's one of those man like, it's a man's flight, right? Like, we're going to be on the ground in New York City by 7:30am no, okay, and you're on special time, so you got even another hour disadvantage
Michael Cirillo 1:47
there. I'll be in bed by 430 we're going
Speaker 1 1:52
to be covering the JD Power auto Forum, which is the day before the New York Auto Show. And then we're also going to cars.com evening event, and we're going to be hearing from a lot of great speakers, obviously, recording a lot of content, trying to bring you as much as we possibly can from the event we went last year. It was a great time. Was a great show. Have you been to this event before? I
Michael Cirillo 2:10
haven't been to this one. I was just up at the Toronto Auto Show. That's the biggest one up there. Yeah, no, I'm kind of excited to contrast. Well, you're not
Speaker 1 2:18
going to get to see the Auto Show, okay. Well, spoiler alert, we're going to be the day before the auto show. We'll probably see
Michael Cirillo 2:24
those things where your family's like, why do you go on so many vacations and you're like, to hotel rooms? Yeah.
Speaker 1 2:29
I mean, that's one of the biggest misnomers of traveling. A lot of people, you get to go all these interesting places, like I see airports, insides of Ubers, hotels, conference rooms. Freeze my butt off, even when it's 98 degrees outside, and then I go back to the airport. Exhausted. Yeah, yeah, sounds like fun. Good time. It is a good time be there. We sure will be there. Look the big news, and we are less than 30 days away now from ASOTU CON may 13 through 15th in Hanover, Maryland. Get your tickets while you still can book your hotels while you still can. We have a opening keynote speaker, which I think is going to set off the best opening we've ever had to the show in our What is this year four? Year five, year four. I mean, it's, we'll call it four, four and a half. It's, it's been three years, but we've done four of them. Okay, oh, that's what's confusing. There you go. We've done four ASOTU CON. Yes, we are. I don't think we're announcing the speaker just now. Well, are we? We're going to announce it right now. We said we're going to announce it. I didn't know exactly when with but we are going to have Claude silver, Chief Heart Officer of Vayner X, a really close ties to the beginning of the ASOTU community, but she oversees 1000s of employees in multiple countries, has been worked hands on on some of the biggest brands in the world, and now helps Gary Vaynerchuck cultivate that organization to be a people thriving first. So when people are thriving, your business and your industry thrives, I can't wait to hear what she brings to us in the opening session, we're starting
Michael Cirillo 4:03
off with a baller. I know, can I? Can I use my controversial statement of the day on this? Oh, if you
Paul J Daly 4:07
want to, if you want to use it at 9:30am I have to, because
Michael Cirillo 4:10
here's what I love about this. There is something, and we'll get to the news, but there is something that is more costly to businesses and dealerships than these tariffs, and it is disengaged employees, wow. And they're the ones that are going to stick around a lot longer than the tariffs will. And so now here we have Claude, the Chief Heart Officer. I know you know her quite well. I've gotten to know her a little bit. I've had her on our other show the dealer playbook. Her mind around people is second to none. I've never heard somebody quite articulate how she engages with people quite like this. You're not going to want to miss that, because, like I said, That's my controversial opinion of the day, your people are going to be in your organization a lot longer than the tariffs are. That's true. And disengage. Employees are costing multiples on their salary. And imagine what would happen if you got them engaged, and she's going to reveal that's,
Speaker 1 5:06
I mean, I'm glad you burnt that one this morning. Yeah, good. It shouldn't be controversial.
Unknown Speaker 5:10
Sometimes it's not that. No, it shouldn't be
Speaker 1 5:13
controversial if it is. But one of the things I love about Claude, too, is that she's just been in so many high level conversations around business and marketing and strategy and the numbers. So you need somebody like that who can tie the two together that way. You're not floating somewhere in the stratosphere just talking about, you know, sunshine and lollipops. You're actually figuring out, like, how does this help us make a better business and translate to the bottom line? Isn't that an old song? You
Speaker 2 5:37
just sunshine lollipops and rainbows and tariff talk and
Speaker 1 5:44
Okay, cue the canes and the hats, right? All right. Let's talk about some let's talk about some news today, a secretive EV startup based in Michigan is gaining attention fast, funded by you may have heard this name before, Jeff Bezos, and stocked with talent from four GM, Harley Davidson, stellantis, they're called slate Auto, and they're taking a bold swing at building a $25,000 electric pickup that founded in 2022 actually, via rebuild manufacturing, Slate has already raised over 100 million and closed the series B round company targeting late 2026 production near their Indianapolis plant, building a minimalist two seater pickup truck. I really hope it's a bench seat. Slate strategy flips the usual EV script, start affordable and scale with accessory, not starting with luxury trims and scaling backwards product. Roadmac includes personalization merchandise and slate University for customer led upgrades. Here's a quote, we build it, you make it. It's the company's trademark mission to empower buyers with customization. You don't think
Michael Cirillo 6:49
this is going to be like one of those accessibility scooters that looks like a
Speaker 1 6:53
truck. Now, what are those? What are those really popular, like, little Japanese trucks that are coming out right now? Yeah, and they they be showing them. What are they called? They're amazing. Just small Japanese truck. Like, look at it. And then some of them now, like, have a motorcycle
Michael Cirillo 7:05
in the back. Interesting. Okay, very well, maybe it is. I think it'll
Speaker 1 7:09
be bigger than that. I think it'll be maybe, like, the size of, like, a Ford Ranger, okay. But I mean, if it's going to be a two seater, right, you already take out so many configuration options. And, I mean, we're trying to get a $25,000 vehicle
Michael Cirillo 7:21
period, but if it is a bench, the configuration option they just added back is the drive
Unknown Speaker 7:25
with was, yeah, oh,
Unknown Speaker 7:29
your wife while you're out, literally,
Speaker 1 7:31
I would buy a vehicle. At first they announced the cyber truck was going to have a middle seat, but the bench in the middle would be a total game changer, because a three
Michael Cirillo 7:39
seater, I hope it's a small truck, because I want to see you driving. No,
Speaker 1 7:43
I don't look that big in a truck. Yeah, no, I know, but we'll see. I mean, $25,000 Jeff Bezos, there is no joke when he's behind something. And I've never heard of Amazon manufacturing vehicles, although we've been talking a lot about them getting into the car business on the sales side. So can you imagine, like, the Buy Now button on this, if you can configure it like I can already picture it in my mind.
Michael Cirillo 8:04
It's the right price point. And I mean, we're seeing this in Europe already. You can, you can, what's the brand? Liza, right? It's a town car. You actually don't even need a driver's license for these things, and they're all over the place in Europe. Do
Speaker 1 8:17
you need a driver's license everywhere in Europe? I don't know, apparently, but not for this.
Michael Cirillo 8:21
Well, yeah, especially, think about the accessibility for maybe teens driving to school don't quite have a driver's license yet, they can drive one of these.
Speaker 1 8:30
That's not terrifying, yeah, yeah, terrifying. Not at all. Or
Unknown Speaker 8:33
speaking,
Unknown Speaker 8:42
that's good. Thank you.
Speaker 1 8:45
Let's keep moving Polestar. So a lot of competitors are coming out with Tesla conquest lease deals. However, Polestar is going big to lure Tesla owners offering a jaw dropping, dropping, jaw dropping, $20,000 incentive. This may be the biggest incentive this industry has ever seen for drivers to lease the new pole star three luxury EV crossover, and the offer is good through the end of March that, wait a minute. How long is this article? Is, wait Is this supposed to be April? Wouldn't that be hilarious? I think, yeah, it's supposed to be April. It is. How did we miss this for two weeks? This is a Ron Burgundy moment when I read anything that's on the screen. And the funny part is between me seeing this on LinkedIn and then searching a story for it and reading it, flipping it to Nathan, our producer, who then made it into show notes. It got to this point, right here.
Speaker 3 9:51
Yeah, heard it here second. Oh, yeah. Heard it here last.
Speaker 1 9:59
So. Well, I I really should just call Matt hicken on the phone right now. Like, did you lease any of these things? So basically, they gave a $15,000 clean vehicle incentive and $5,000 conquest bonus only applied to the new 2025. Polestar threes had to take delivery from existing inventory. And what was like the final price on this thing, I don't
Michael Cirillo 10:21
know, but I love how you just dynamically changed everything the best. What are you gonna do?
Speaker 1 10:27
Hard hitting news. Imagine if, I mean, what do you think they do in the stock market? Every day when the markets close, they talk about what happened? Yeah,
Unknown Speaker 10:35
they see exactly. Just pretend you're literally
Speaker 1 10:37
crying right now. Now, Bo now, MSRP, 67, five. So, okay, so they took it off the top of the lease. They didn't apply it to the lease. Okay? They're trying to try to go against the model Y, by the way, I did see a brand new model. Y, they did the refresh. Yeah, looks really good. And I did see that. Yeah, it's funny. It actually looks funny. Thing is BYD copy Tesla, and now it kind of feels like Tesla might be copying design cues from BYD. Interesting. Yeah, I don't know what. Onto some news that didn't happen in the past. Got our time machine back out.
Michael Cirillo 11:22
Yes, it kind of all technically happened in the past. All of this. Nope, not this one speaking of
Speaker 1 11:28
the future. GM is hitting the brakes on production of its all electric, bright drop van in its Ontario facility, your countryman, due to soft demand, despite deep discounts and compelling incentives that still make it a standout. EV deal production, production at the CAMI assembly plant will pause today. Oh, I thought it was the past. I mean the future, but it's actually the current, pausing today, remaining idle until October this year, for retooling. I wonder what else they're going to make there. The move effects nearly 500 workers drops the plant to a single shift. Post relaunch, only 274 bright drop bands were sold in q1, 2025, which is a 7% increase still year over year. The announcement follows market jitters caused by tariff threats and broader EV hesitations. Here's a quote from Unifor President Lana Payne. It's a crushing blow to hundreds of working families in Ingersoll. You familiar with this area? No, I not meant Canada. Oh,
Speaker 3 12:28
yeah, I love that. When people are like, Hey, wait, you're from Canada. You know the Smith family from Ingersoll? You're like, uh, that's 4000 miles away. They're like, so do you then? Suzetta, yes. Is that a yes?
Michael Cirillo 12:44
I've never heard of Ingersoll, you know? Okay, I'm using my tomorrow's controversial opinion of the day. Oh, boy, burning through two at once. Yeah, I'm using. I'm only allowed one a day, but today I'm pulling tomorrow's out. Here's the thing. Imagine when people walked everywhere 1000s of years ago, and then they came out with the chariot. People were like, no, no. There was volatility. People were like, I don't know what to make of this. Is it going to go? Is it not going to go? There were probably commentators back then who were like, Oh, so now what's going to happen to our sandal business? People aren't going to be walking as much. Will they even need sandals. We're in one of those pivotal moments, right? And this happened around horse and buggy time, into Model T time, like any time civilization goes through a period of adjustment, you're going to have spill off like this, yeah, as as things kind of sputter and up and down. And while my heart goes out to the families that are affected, this is what happens when you work in high risk situations like this, or when companies put us into high risk situations, and I don't necessarily blame the families, because they force you in order to advance change. Yeah, like it's just the nature of the game and so similar to the stock market, similar all these things, it's like, yes, you're losing all your money because you invested in high risk stocks. You should have known the risk before you got into it. You can't really complain if the market's going to sputter. This is the same thing. We still don't know where EVs are going to land. We know that we need to be invested in them in some way, shape or form. But as we build into it, as it becomes the norm, we're going to see more and more like this. Just it's just the nature of the game it is,
Speaker 1 14:26
which is why pivoting, being nimble on your toes and actually investing in the people who can actually help you with the pivot, roll, the cue, cute music. This is not a history lessons that are happening right now, one that happened next month, but what will be happening tomorrow is we will be in New York City, on the ground at the Jamie power, auto form. Make sure you say hi. If you see us, we'll see you there. You.
Transcribed by https://otter.ai