LIVE from NAMAD, Rivian VP to Stellantis, Betting on Personalized Cars

Paul J Daly: 0:10

What's up? Good morning. I don't remember what date it is.

‍Kyle Mountsier: 0:13

21st

Paul J Daly: 0:13

what's today's date? 21st

Kyle Mountsier: 0:15

Wednesday,

Paul J Daly: 0:16

August. 21 I do know it's Wednesday. We are here in Miami at the name at annual meeting. Gonna talk about a few

Unknown: 0:22

things people really want to know. Who I know

Paul J Daly: 0:25

we had the old late flight. It was supposed to not be a late flight ends

Kyle Mountsier: 0:30

up being really late. You know, you've been traveling for a long time. You always, there's always the one weird trip. And this works out a little bit weird, but we had a good time. Got in late last night. We're already here. The energy is buzzing at name ad,

Paul J Daly: 0:47

they stepped it up big time at annual meeting. It's always high energy. But even with the venue and the setup, the amount of industry partners that are set up in this room, right is substantial. I will say it

Kyle Mountsier: 0:59

is totally different. It's packed in here. Speaking of partners, we want to thank our friends at TrueCar plus for making all of our coverage here at the at the event, at the conference, possible, at at the 2024, name ad annual member meeting. Already

Paul J Daly: 1:16

saw the TrueCar team. Look at that. Matt Jones rolls in. When he rolls in, you don't miss him. You don't right? And then he gives you a hug. And you're like, you've been working out absolutely,

Kyle Mountsier: 1:24

he has Cali muscle. Well,

Paul J Daly: 1:27

he's now play football too, but yeah, so we're going to bring you more from the TrueCar team as well over the course of the next couple of days. Also going to bring you a lot of interviews people on the ground. We're recording. We're excited to announce name ads. Very first podcast. Oh, that's

Kyle Mountsier: 1:40

just gonna be awesome. It's

Paul J Daly: 1:41

called, now we're here. It's we're producing it, but it is name ad show. It's hosted by Damon Lester, the name Ed chairman. We're gonna have some executives and some high level thinkers for the show. We're gonna talk more about that first. We gotta announce it in there before we really give you all the details. Yeah, exactly, exactly. We gotta talk about some news, though, because the news world never stops. So Tim Fallon rivians, former VP of manufacturing, has been appointed stellantis, new head of North American manufacturing for two years, always. So he was at rivians, rivian for two years, and then he spent 16 years at Nissan prior to that. So he's no stranger to traditional OEMs. His arrival comes as stellantis is preparing to launch several key EVs, including the Jeep, wagoneer s ram, 1500 rev and the Dodge Charger EV, the one with the sounds and the noise and all that stuff. Basically, they've been facing a lot of manufacturing challenges and other challenges, particularly with quality control at the US plants. Let's see where we go. I'm sorry the notes? Are there? Carlos. Carlos zariengas, stellantis, North American coo did express confidence and Fallon saying, quote, Tim's passion and collaborative spirit will lead the team to deliver the highest quality vehicles for their customers. That sounds like something. It sounds like that statement. That's

Kyle Mountsier: 2:56

a great statement. Here's what's really cool, great. It's

Paul J Daly: 2:58

going to make it great forever. It's

Kyle Mountsier: 2:59

going to do great for everyone. You know, obviously, stellantis has been in the news the last couple weeks for a myriad, myriad of reasons. I think this is a great move. A gentleman that has had a storied history with Nissan, but also has experienced, you know, the way kind of these new EV companies are thinking about manufacturing, thinking about process, thinking about even just the vehicle and the type that they build and what they're looking for in quality and standards. You know, they've had the benefit of not having to, you know, rivians had the benefit of not having to, kind of come with all of this legacy baggage and build net new so I think, you know, for stellantis, a brand that has had some struggles with quality, especially in non Jeep lines, you know, it's, it's a bold move, and I think a really smart move for them. And it's, and it's at least a really strong PR in a time where they've had a little bit of the right time, a rough time,

Paul J Daly: 3:53

it must be a heck of a challenge to jump on a moving ship like that, right? Especially such a legacy automaker coming back fresh from like, the way you break that, yeah. And it's always like that first six months, it's like, how is that going to go? Is the big question is still, Lance is going to be open to the manufacturing heads the other department's going to be open to saying, like, let's change this. You obviously can't flip a switch and change everything in auto manufacturing. Yeah. And these products are way down the pipeline, yep.

Kyle Mountsier: 4:20

Well, we'll see what happens. Speaking of flipping the switch and changing everything, this is good. So Salesforce has unveiled a powerful new application, if you're not familiar, Salesforce world's leading CRM that lets automakers the OEMs harness telematics data, offering a personalized driver experience while managing vehicle preference remotely and performance, the app allows service teams to remotely monitor vehicle performance, lock doors, control cabin temperature during service appointments, and integrates with infotainment systems to support in vehicle payments. Automakers like Mercedes Benz and Toyota are already using the automotive cloud. From Salesforce. This will be a new app that can sit on top of that. This app really leans into like the subscription revenue services, where it's currently about a $6 billion industry, but it's projected to hit 200 billion by the year 2030, Ayat jaju, Salesforce, Senior Vice President of manufacturing and automotive, said, personalization leads to people saying there's value here, and this is why I'm willing to pay for it. So,

Paul J Daly: 5:29

so basically, this is a telematics platform that manufacturers are using, yep, to unlock other features allow get to people to have their preferences. So it's basically a, it's a, it's a set software so that they can build more products

Kyle Mountsier: 5:45

on the OEMs utilize Salesforce to manage consumer data, right? So that's where everything from a marketing perspective, or even consumer data, and the long tail of their purchase history or service history actually lives. And that's where then it gets exposed. So, you know, allowing the manufacturer to leverage this to manage their preferences. Or, you know, it's, it's just like you would use an a CRM to go, Hey, this customer might be a marketer, might not be in market. Or this is what they bought before. Same thing with that. They do a Salesforce. Now they'll have the ability, right in Salesforce, to manage all the infotainment and the telematics in the car.

Paul J Daly: 6:23

You know, some, some of the industry who is much deeper in the marketing rabbit hole, familiar with hearing the word Salesforce? Yep, it's very strange for a lot of people to hear even the name, right? You think of what this is and the name Salesforce, right? Here's a platform that, you know, are we using this to build value into something. It's just really like a collision of worlds that I think the industry is going to get more and more familiar with, especially with Salesforce, because they're kind of a big company. They have a really annual event, by the way, we were at an amazing annual event yesterday, absolutely Rennes and Reynolds amplify. We had the opportunity to sit and just judge the automotive amplifiers contest, where they took a sales they took applications and people who are doing innovative things in the industry, in sales, service and on the people side of the business. And it was encouraging to just see more people stepping up. We had a warranty administrator, oh so cool. When in the fix ops, or what's Yeah, fixed ups, because he just got so sick of chasing paper around. He said, I'm gonna fix it. I'm at the end of this chain. And, and he just came up with a little way to hack some software and use the image, image insertion in RO, as he said, Just take a picture of your docs. Yep, and everything's in what? And he crushed it. And he was, like, excited to be a part of the industry, excited to help, excited to bring the idea, man,

Kyle Mountsier: 7:44

he took, you know, an entire department that it's not he was the fixed ops director, the service manager or anything like that, and kind of carried it on its back, on his back, into this move from a paper full environment to a paperless environment, fully digital. And I like just hearing those stories. There was another one that was a very similar story, a BDC or a business development manager that that completely transformed the way their their department, their department, worked. And so I love seeing people that aren't in executive seats kind of really press the boundaries of progression and innovation. And we got to see that, and then we got to see some really cool stuff that, you know, Reynolds is obviously bringing to the tables, and

Paul J Daly: 8:30

I love, you know, we were talking about trying to find pockets of people that you can bring value to, because everything can't be a giant event, yep, right? Everything can't be any VA, anything. Everything can't be a soda con. And you just see these pockets of the industry gathering people around that are committed. And it's just a reminder that, like, there are pockets of people all over that are fans of a certain product, yep, or fans of a certain way of doing business. And when you get those people together, they start sharing secrets, you start to get more successful. It's funny how that works. Yeah, alright, let's cue the music run in. We have sessions to get into. We're going to be bringing you a lot more content. Here for the next couple days. So stay tuned in. We're running around this show, I guess, like we run around everywhere. There you go. How's

Unknown: 9:22

it?

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