Launching Lightning, Honda’s 30 EVs by 2030, Elon’s Twitter Offer

Paul Daly  0:21  

Yo, what is up? It is Thursday, April 14. We have some crazy stuff to talk about today. The first electric pickups about to hit the market. Elon Musk wants to buy Twitter like all of it. Well, let's talk about it. Let's go get a little bounce. No, the people really want to know who is in who Id they stopped this day when they see me. Tell you what, man, I don't know why I'm ever surprised and what comes up in the morning while we're going to show

Kyle Mountsier  0:47  

your like, wait a second, you're telling me

Paul Daly  0:53  

that's good. That'll make a great T shirts. So you're telling me that that that that'll be another one of my my Kyle mounts here t shirts I'm gonna make I'm gonna make the problem is yes, dot dot dot and then so you're telling me you're gonna need a whole line of Mountsier fashion.

Kyle Mountsier  1:09  

I've always wanted my own fashion line. Not this is not that's not true. That's that's a lie. But I have a now now I do though.

Paul Daly  1:17  

Yesterday we did. We talked about the pitch tank winner on the show.

Kyle Mountsier  1:19  

No, no. Okay. So Tuesday. How would we know? Because that was Wednesday. So pitch take went yeah. And then today is? We're good. We're good. From Wednesday, we got our date straight. We promise

Paul Daly  1:32  

right. Oh, because it was in the email. I you know, every day we build a show, we build an email. We do. We do. We do a couple of things every day. A couple of things. We'll talk about talking about the winner. Kyle, you ran that room? That's your it's a pitch tank. You're like the master MC?

Kyle Mountsier  1:48  

Yes. So yesterday was it was an interesting day in pitch tank. And I'm just going to call it like it is like, what we recognize as an industry is that boiling down your product, as far as what dealers need, what they need to hear and how they need to hear it is not an easy thing to do. And when it happens really, really well. Like the whole room goes crazy notices, right? Everyone notices Wow, they prepared they're able to actually it's kind of interesting, because back in the day, when I was helping plant churches in Cincinnati, I went to these things. And it was like, Can you do a napkin pitch? Can you sit in front of someone, write it out on a napkin, here's the vision, this is what we're doing that kind of thing. And I think that vendors are well served at getting to that Well, yesterday was a lesson in three that honestly didn't have that dialed in. But yet, we were able to give them real time feedback, you know, get them to a point where it's like, oh, that's what I need to focus on. That's what people need to understand. Yet, there was a really cool product that got talked about called onboarding that one pitch tanked yesterday. And the two big things that I think that came out of that, and that really our industry is focusing on is one training platform. But it's also a retention platform, right. But what I really love about the actual platform is that it's app based. And the way that it happens is you is the user and right now it's a salesperson training platform, the user watches a scenario video, and then has to record themself responding to that, well, that's cool. It gets passed on to their manager, who then watches the recording, and provides real time feedback.

Paul Daly  3:38  

It's kind of like kind of like virtual talk tracking a little bit. Exactly.

Kyle Mountsier  3:41  

So instead of having to pull over one on one, or dedicate time, or just a salesperson go through an answer, like oh, I would choose this video or I would choose that answer. They actually have to practice it in a native format that they're already used to doing tick tock videos, do an Instagram Rios, whatever it may be. And then get that feedback when it's available. And there's that rhythm and there's gamification. There's a lot of other things in the platform, but I think everyone was kind of keyed in, it was like everyone leaned in, but there was still this, this apprehension, because, you know, just the the actual pitch. So there's a lot going on there. But it's great. Well, congrats, for saying is good

Paul Daly  4:23  

for everyone. So that's the point. That's what we're trying to do, right? We're trying to help both sides of the industry come and push back together, right, which means when vendors can communicate the value proposition more clearly, than dealers will understand whether or not if it's a good fit for them. And if it is, then they can get going and you know, be more efficient and start to innovate. And if it's not, they can move on faster and find the right solution. A couple of notes before we get into the news today. The asoto family reunion remix is coming school Monday, May 9, first night of digital dealer in Tampa, Florida are about to drop all the information we have some amazing sponsors, we're gonna have an amazing retail inspired swag experience, you know how we do, we're going to try to bring you something fresh, and get all the value from coming and also have all the fun. So if you're going to digital dealer, you need to make sure that you're there. Even if you're not going to digital dealer and you're within like, a couple hour drive of Tampa, it's probably worth the drive to come and hang out with us. And a lot of dealers in the industry, a lot of awesome industry partners, and just have a really fun time. Talk about that. We'll also want to say, hey, for those of you who have been listening to the podcast regularly or just started, maybe we just crossed 10,000 downloads on the podcast that we every month, it's had a higher listenership. And if you would be so kind if you enjoy the podcast and go go to Apple Music, or Apple podcasts, or go to Spotify, and leave your boys a review,

Kyle Mountsier  5:49  

come on, let me know ours, let everyone know on that, like, type something fun for us, you know, yeah, give

Paul Daly  5:56  

them you look, if you leave a review, please don't leave a boring review. Because you know how we do here in the trouble. Leave a troublemaking review, and we're gonna monitor them. And we will feature some of them.

Kyle Mountsier  6:10  

If you leave a review, that's called, it's great. And that's all you put, we will call you out on the show grateful, but we'll be like

Paul Daly  6:17  

we expect more from our doesn't even have to be a good review. It just has to be a fun review. Yes. That's the qualification get featured on the show. Last night, hey, we are hiring a senior graphic designer, right, we need to add to our team, our team is expanding growing. If you're seeing your graphic designer, or you know one who might want to work with this team, it can be fully remote, we already have some design skills on the team, we have some production skills, but we need someone that really has been around the block who really likes having fun, who likes pushing the boundaries. And you can kind of get a good feel for our attitude just by watching some of the content. So if someone wants to make some trouble on the design front, send them our way. We'll be eternally grateful. Come on, let's get into some news. So it's been a long, long, long time, we've been talking about it seeing demos, the release, and the launch of the Ford F 150. Lightning is just days away, April 26. So this is going to happen in Michigan, they're going to officially start production, but they're also going to you know deliver some of these vehicles. Like I remember the first time I saw the truck, I think it was like the one we pulled the train. Right, right. Yes. And it was like that's a lot of torque.

Kyle Mountsier  7:24  

It is a lot of torque. It's 100% torque it go and that's what that's what I think is really attractive about EVs. You know, there was there was actually some talk about this, I was in a clubhouse room this morning. There's some talk about this Evie push. And just the reality that we're facing that is hey, there's a you have to resource energy for for EVs as well. And so, you know, with with Ford coming into the market with heavier Evie push. And, you know, we're going to talk about Elon in just a second, but the necessity for raw materials to do all this, you know, the obviously the vehicles are attractive, the things like the torque are attractive, you know, but what's the transfer to mass market? It's still I think it's still a big question mark in a lot of people's minds. So

Paul Daly  8:10  

the truth is that nothing is ever all good. Right? There are always trade offs. Right. And I mean, I know fuel economy are not fuel economy. But you know, mileage is a trade off. The fact that you can get a pickup truck and has 320 mile 320 mile range. It's like, well, 320 miles, if under these conditions, and if it's not cold out, right? If it's cold out, you're going to view and if

Kyle Mountsier  8:35  

you didn't actually try and tow something, which is what this thing is supposed to,

Paul Daly  8:39  

and you want to run the heat in the winter, right? Well, it goes your mileage, right? It's like the heat being on never affected your mileage on a nice vehicle, by the way. So is it an Eevee? Or is it BV? You know, it's because it's battery powered electric vehicle, right? Yes. Yeah. What other type of electric vehicle is there?

Kyle Mountsier  8:59  

Well, there's a hybrid electric vehicle because like a hybrid is actually an electric vehicle as well. Right? It has batteries.

Paul Daly  9:05  

Is it considered an electric vehicle? Yeah, because

Kyle Mountsier  9:08  

I mean, it's called a hybrid but i think i think i think that the terms are interchangeable and we're still trying to figure out exactly what it is. Is it a BV is it a Navy,

Paul Daly  9:18  

I just saw that I'm just like, what other types are there so um, your way at this Ford event, you know, it's going to be live stream so it'll be fun. We'll make sure we're tuned in to Watch obviously for really kicks Tesla's but in getting the market, right big time to cyber truck was really the first pickup that we all saw and kind of like, Oh, look at this thing. And then Ford was like, oh, yeah, check this out. And now they're like, Oh, check this out. It's ready for production. Right. So Ford has really, really took took the fight seriously and has taken it to taking it to Tesla is about to launch and I think you know, we'll get a good preview and an indicator. interesting stat. So reservations are they kept it at 200,000 reservations for right so they're not just reserving forever. Ever and just saying like, Hey, look at this big number this thing, what can we actually deliver on? Also, we don't know how many of those reservations actually converted into orders. But check this out. 70% of the reservations are new to Ford, and two pickups. never own the Ford nats a crazy stat 70%. Seven out of 10 people never own a pickup and never drove a Ford. Talk about brand development. One of my favorite

Kyle Mountsier  10:30  

words in automotive is market share. And that's called picking up market share.

Paul Daly  10:36  

It's the ultimate KBI. Yeah, comment here from Chris. He says some EVs have swappable batteries, and some have to be plugged up. Yeah, but even if you plug it in, you still got to store the power somewhere unless you have a really long cord. So So 70% market share. So we'll see how that actually affects it. You know, when you look at the Ford F 150. Lightning, I personally was like disappointed, it didn't look significantly different than

Kyle Mountsier  11:05  

it's the one truck that's come out. That's not like, oh my goodness, that's an Eevee like the flash drive, you know, all that type of stuff, it actually still feels more like a truck. It looks

Paul Daly  11:15  

like an F 150. Like, if you didn't know it was battery powered. You're like, oh, that's a redesigned F 150. You know, cost savings. I mean, look at this 39,004 39 Nine for the entry level pro model. It's like a pickup truck that costs $39,000. It's battery powered. Now that that one doesn't have the extended battery. So I don't think that one's three, you know, there are definitely trade offs. But fully loaded, you're shelling out 92k You're getting all the features. And they I don't know if this is a feature, just the Ev. But they have like these fully reclining front seats. It lays all

like for those five times

were late nights on the job site. In the Ford platinum, right, the foreman is driving the platinum and he's never sleeping on the job.

Kyle Mountsier  11:59  

He's never sleeping. Yeah. I'm just so interested by it, because then you talk about the dealer model. I mean, there's just like, we could talk about this for like, 20 minutes. I talked about it yesterday, right. And we already talked about, it's like, what's the dealer model on the end of these deliveries? And is there margin for it? And, you know, can the dealers? I mean, here's my question. Are the dealers prepared to talk about the truck? Or the salespeople? Are the sales managers prepared? I don't know, I can maybe maybe they've been doing training planning, we need to talk to a Ford dealer. But, you know, are they actually prepared to have the conversation with a very educated customer? Yeah, yeah, I remember, I remember back when I've told you before, I was a leaf salesperson originally. And I knew more about leafs than anybody because we had to go to training, we went to training at Nissan Corporate, all of this type of stuff. And even still, there would be customers that came in and I'm like, You're literally blowing my mind with the stats that you know, right now. Yeah, spreadsheets on spreadsheets on this,

Paul Daly  12:59  

they know it. Well, if I mean, even think back to the last step, we just put if 70% of your buyers are new to Ford and new to pickups, they're not going to be like yeah, I wanted a pickup truck. So I'll take this one. No, it's like they know all the ins and outs of this product there is actually enthusiast at this point,

Kyle Mountsier  13:15  

right there early adopters, we talked about that that adoption curve right. And this is like pre market early adopters very, very small. They are you know typical of that class, a buyer is willing to take risks on something new, right? They're heavy researchers, they they pay attention to leading indicators. So this isn't this isn't 200,000 people that are in the mass market. This is a very very unique niche and you have to care for that niche very very well. Brands like Apple know that very all too well.

Paul Daly  13:45  

No doubt well, um let's move from that Evie story of talking to electric vehicles today we're going to end with I think it's kind of like a punch line. It's like kind of Evie pop culture. But um, so Honda is release they just said that they will be releasing 30 EVs. 30.

Kyle Mountsier  14:01  

By when Paul tell us by when 2030

Paul Daly  14:05  

No way. Well, in my mind right now, I don't know. But okay, the reason you say this because we always joke like every manufacturer has come out say we are going to lead the Evie market by 2030, right. It's always like, it's like almost political, like a politician is like, Hey, we're gonna eliminate this by long after I will ever be able to be accountable for this or you ever even remember I said, but that's that's definitely what they should say. But here's the deal. Honda came out and they said we're releasing 30 EVs by 2030. Now that's only six and a half years away. So if you're, you're you're making a big sweeping statement like you are going to have to show some very significant steps toward that. And they already are, you know, they have that partnership with GM. They're developing technology. But here's here's kind of the thing about Honda, right as opposed to Ford or GM or Tesla, right. I'm reading this from I can't remember where the article is from. Well, it's linked up in the comments all the all the art goes will always linked up in the show notes. So if you want to look a little further, it's like some kind of like, green car global whatever. But here's a quote from the article it says as the world's largest power unit manufacturer with annual sales of proximately 30 million units of mobility products, including motorcycles, automobiles, power products, outboard motors and aircraft. Honda says that it aims to realize carbon neutrality for all products and corporate activities they're involved in by 2050. So, you know, carbon neutrality by 2050. But to this end, Honda believes that a multifaceted multi dimensional approach is needed. Not a mere replacing engines with batteries. So like luck, we have the lawn mowers and motorcycles, all kinds of powered things, planes, power things across the world, right. So they have a different type of leverage and a different type of, of business than a straight auto manufacturer. So they've taken a big swing right up front, there's a presentation you can watch. And they also said something we talked about yesterday, they're shifting their revenue model from non recurring hardware sales, right? Buying actual physical stuff, to a blend of recurring sales of both physical and software. So subscriptions. I don't know maybe battery replacement services. I don't know they didn't say that. But that's like they're thinking about it three dimensionally. So as we think through EVs, as we think through cars, right, it's important to zoom out for a second and realize the game is bigger than that.

Kyle Mountsier  16:27  

Yep. Okay. And go ahead. Everybody's moving to subscription model, every multiple, every shareholder, everyone wants subscription model, because it's recurring revenue. And so I would chat again, just challenging all businesses to think how they can exercise their business as a recurring revenue model, not a transactional model. And because that's what the manufacturers, that's what the big companies are headed after, because they know that's the that's the capacity for growth, right?

Paul Daly  16:57  

Yeah, without a doubt. So I mean, it's, we see a lot of players making a lot of moves in this time, right, the ground is shifting. And the people that are making moves are going to be the one standing like, if you just sit still and stay in place, and try to hold on till it's over, you're done. You're done. Just give up now, get a day job, get anything done, because get a day job. isn't working, it's not going to work in the future. All right. Let's talk about someone who doesn't have a day job. Segway.

Kyle Mountsier  17:30  

Question is, when does Elon find the time to do this? Like not I get it, lots of people have lots of business interests and stuff like that. But what guy figures out the time to tell his lawyers and legal to submit an SEC filing to buy Twitter at 100%. And not just that, but to be so sneaky as to say that I'm gonna buy it for $54.20, including the numbers four to zero, which if you know anything about Twitter are very, very important numbers. Right. So

Paul Daly  18:08  

so that's where the the Easter egg is. So Elon Musk submitted as here's the story if you haven't been following along, so Elon Musk, a big proponent of free speech, you know, very, very polarizing figure, you know, obviously, across automotive across space travel across internet access, and, and on and on and on. Well, he's very active on Twitter. And lately, he bought about 9%. of Twitter. Was it a week ago, a week or two ago? Yeah, a little

Kyle Mountsier  18:34  

over a week ago. 9.2%. majority owner of

Paul Daly  18:38  

the company, not because of how many shares is the largest share just the largest? And so yeah, cause way better at math than that. And so, what and so like, all of this started happening, right? He started posting polls on his Twitter feed saying like, Hey, should we do this? Or should we do this? Because now the Twitter board is paying attention. And he's got all the momentum behind him. Right? All the momentum behind him say like, yeah, what Elon thinks, like, hey, let's get on this train. So they offered him a board seat. He turned it down recently said, Now I'm not going to do that. Here's what we think happens. We were talking about this before the show. They were like, Elon, we have a seat on the board. He's like, I'll consider it. Right. And then he has a couple conversations. And he's like, this isn't going to work, right? He's like, I'm not I'm not taking a board seat to be largely benign and wastes my time. He's not a guy that wastes his time. Right. And so he gave his best and final offer is what he calls a sweater to buy it out at $54.20 A share to get all of the outstanding shares. Now there's 799 million shares. He owns 9.2% of those already, the price tag for the company with just over $54 billion. The current valuation for market cap is 38 billion. So he's paying a significant premium to be the 100%, owner of Twitter, and he even said,

Kyle Mountsier  19:55  

it's like $7 A share right now. Above right love what kind didn't share prices.

Paul Daly  20:01  

And so his his wealth totals 260 billion. But here's here's what he said. He said, If my offer isn't accepted, I'm going to reconsider my position as a shareholder.

Kyle Mountsier  20:11  

Yo, watch that stock watch, I would sell. I'm not a financial adviser.

Paul Daly  20:24  

So shares dropped a little bit when he announced this because they're like, Oh, here he goes, getting to share it goes again. It's just a voting machine of the stock market. But here's what I think. I don't think he planned on doing this when he first bought those shares. I don't think so either. I think he's like, I'm gonna buy a share. I'm gonna see if I can do something to make this go in the direction I think it should. They offered the board seats, like he met some of the board members and like had that conversation was like, not doing that. I'll buy the whole thing. Actually, if I can't buy the whole thing. I'm just out.

Kyle Mountsier  20:52  

I'm out. It's such a, it's such a riot man. It's like, if you don't think the world is turning upside down. Just watch the news for just a hot minute. And you'll notice that every day things change. Well, all that's said

Paul Daly  21:07  

and done. We hope you go and turn your world upside down today or at least ride the wave. Get on top of the wave. Don't be under it. Pay attention to what's going on and look. Put your hands in the dirt today. serve someone care for someone innovate something, just go and do something. Let's go

Transcribed by https://otter.ai

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