Outside of Retail Shops, Apple is Grumpy, and Hyundai Building Big

SPEAKERS

Kyle Mountsier, Paul Daly, Michael Cirillo

Michael Cirillo  00:00

We're standing in a trend line for the pandemic revenues. They were high. They went a little bit low.

Paul Daly  00:10

It is October. We are not at home. We found this guy wandering around. And we're gonna give you a couple stories today from in front of a couple of retailers. So we're outside of the Tesla store. We are currently in Atlanta, Georgia. Are we doing coming right now?

Michael Cirillo  00:27

No, no. We're in Alpharetta, Alpharetta.

Paul Daly  00:30

We're at Glen Lenny's 100% Club. Elite retreat is that as they call it, they should at

Michael Cirillo  00:35

least Shadow Mode of 800% elite automotive club

Kyle Mountsier  00:40

elite retreat tree we're calling it the elite.

Paul Daly  00:42

Let's just say it's very successful and produce prestigious all at the same time. Yes. We're gonna give you a couple stories today. The first one, let's just get right into the news. And then we're going to ask Michael, what's going on in his life now that the Texan. So Hyundai announced yesterday that they are going to broker actually they broke ground, there's a lot of ground

Kyle Mountsier  00:59

symbols, all the shovels, they had, like 40 people, they needed a lot of people because it's a mega plant that they're building just outside of about 30 miles outside of Savannah. That's going to host up to half a million vehicles a year in production at some point actually

Paul Daly  01:14

a metal plant.

Kyle Mountsier  01:16

Is it a meta plan? It's

Paul Daly  01:17

called a meta plan, not a mega

Michael Cirillo  01:18

plan. But we're humans real world where humans digging or were the robots doing

Paul Daly  01:23

humans as far as we know, unless it was a generous. It's a meta plan that is going to have an adjacent battery factory. Yep. So and they're going to build Kia, Hyundai's and Genesis on the same plan you dedicated wow, you know,

Kyle Mountsier  01:37

it's interesting. The other the other kind of key note that I thought was really cool was, you know, a lot of times when when plants go in, it's not just the plant that is the benefactor or the state is not just the benefactor of that plant or what's happening there. But there's a lot of companies that are actually coming in around because they're rebuilding the supply chain for this plant. They're actually not like taking from supply chain across the the rest of the ecosystem. They're building that supply chain locally. So a lot of job benefit a lot of resources for Georgia, and I can't get over the fact that like rivian has been like trying, they're like we're trying to do it.

Michael Cirillo  02:15

Right, watch this. It's funny, I interviewed Mike colleran was a VP at conveyed. And I was like how you gonna get out of this whole shortage thing? You're gonna get out of supply chain issues. And I can I'm sure he already something like this. So here we are. It's really interesting. So we have a couple ideas might have an idea we skipped stood up. So yeah, I was

Paul Daly  02:39

thinking how do these companies all of a sudden, know what it takes to build a battery plant, and even your factoring plant it boggles my mind that everyone just think of logistics and the understand you need to have just think of the permitting process, the construction process, the drawings, and everyone just seems to know how to do it all of a sudden,

Michael Cirillo  02:58

they're a lot smarter.

Paul Daly  03:00

Now, that's not, that's not a far throw. You know what I mean? Yeah,

Kyle Mountsier  03:05

I know. It's not a further Well, I think I think the key thing is, is that I think and this is what we've been saying is like manufacturers are manufacturers, I actually don't think they're like the greatest at retail. And the reality is, is the reason why they're the manufacturers because they're great at putting up new plants and putting in supply chains and, and production and timelines and everything that has to do with that. That's their bread and butter. And so it doesn't surprise me it doesn't surprise me like that this is coming alongside of things like Evie tax credits, and like they see these things coming. They see those trends coming. And so I just think that it's up to dealers to recognize that if that's the trend that they're projecting that they're seeing coming is is dealers and, and all of the retailers out there have to start looking ahead and going What are we preparing for? How can we prove out that we're ready for things like at tax, Evie, tax credit, so we're ready for all of those types of things to be in process? Speaking

Paul Daly  03:59

of being in process, Apple has announced that they are they confirmed that they're actually switching the iPhone to USB, but they're just so not happy about USBC USBC? I'm sorry.

Kyle Mountsier  04:14

Yeah. Going back to USB 3.0 It's gonna be real fun. They will be quote unquote, right.

Paul Daly  04:22

So USB C to be specific.

Kyle Mountsier  04:26

But they're not happy about it. They're not happy about it. We're actually consulted. You realize we're out front of an Apple

Paul Daly  04:31

store. And we do they're really upset over here. Like they were just mad that she's,

Michael Cirillo  04:35

she's laughing in the background. She's just

Paul Daly  04:37

cleaning. But the European Union actually mandated that USBC is the new standard for any cell phone or what do you call it these new mobile device mobile devices, phones and tablets were has to be USBC and I can't remember his name Apple VP. Yeah, he went on a thorough explanation saying we prefer to let the engineers who are smart I dictate this is what I heard. The smart people think he actually heard him say this is

Michael Cirillo  05:06

a direct, quote, direct quote,

Paul Daly  05:09

we prefer to let the really smart people make decisions about technology and not European lawmakers is what I heard. That's what you that's the second part of what I heard just will keep that in my head, which is an interesting however you like interesting

Michael Cirillo  05:23

concept, though, because also those European lawmakers are users.

Paul Daly  05:28

Right? No, they use they use Android devices. And

Michael Cirillo  05:33

now they're using blackberries. Let's be honest.

Kyle Mountsier  05:36

Well, I think it's a you know, for me, it's very interesting, because there's kind of constantly been this conversation about like, charger ways to charger bricks. And then now you're not getting the brick in the phone, you're just getting the charger thing. And if you have the old car, you gotta throw those things away. And so then they just stopped including them. Right? Yeah. Not included, right. But now Now you've got to kind of like retool your whole ecosystem for charging potentially. But also, there's an there's this is advantageous to like we actually, when thinking about auto manufacturing, and the way that like chargers have to be done, when you go to a gas station, there's only one thing that you have to think about putting it in the right, what side is

Michael Cirillo  06:18

actually on the wrong side, always actually,

Kyle Mountsier  06:20

like charging from a vehicle infrastructure perspective has been has been a point of contention, because everyone kind of has early on it was

Paul Daly  06:29

like we were just that let's we're not gonna go back to that. But if you have a Tesla, and a non Tesla charger, you now need a dongle. It's apple esque.

Michael Cirillo  06:38

Yeah. Right. Yeah, Apple's all about the dongles. But also, I'm still smiling up on the European Union thing, because have you been to Europe? Have you seen how they just have to plug regular plugs into the wall? Oh, it's so weird. It's weird. What is weird wild stuff is a contraption. So maybe they're just on the country, and depending on the country, and it's also a difference that maybe the

Paul Daly  06:58

standardization is fixing several problems. Apple didn't know. They said, Look, this problem has largely been solved already with charging bricks and wireless charging. and European Union isn't having any one

Kyle Mountsier  07:09

of the options that was thrown out by at least the reporter was, hey, what if you know what if all you did was scrapped the wire charger and just went complete wireless? Right?

Paul Daly  07:20

I feel that makes me feel very uncomfortable, without a doubt, because it's just like, it's just like a carry around just like the magnet or the wireless charging isn't widely available? Yes. chargers on all these

Michael Cirillo  07:33

tables, then 25 years from now we're all going to be walking around with like lumps on our heads and arms on like growing boils, because we didn't know the impact of your like, didn't know the impact of on the wireless flow through us.

Paul Daly  07:45

Is this is this Mr. Trillo your father?

Michael Cirillo  07:49

No, he would be like, what language are they speaking?

Kyle Mountsier  07:53

Exactly. That's fair. Well, I think either way, and we're seeing this stateside, too, because the narrative of anything. Pop culture is also political at this point is the more things that become pop culture that are also political. So that includes charging EVs you know, all of that we just have to recognize that there are more factors at play driving technology. We know this in automotive, right? Well, OEMs have mandated from a technology like our OEMs the best people to mandate technology requirements, right? And so anytime lawmakers or or large companies get in the technology space, it always creates a barrier to speed of innovation. And so it's just being cognizant of that as an industry and knowing like, the more and more we do that, the less and less the real technologists, the real engineers can push the boundaries.

Michael Cirillo  08:42

Yeah. I wonder if it was those same smart engineers that came up with the Google map or the maps that we were using last night to get back to the hotel great graciously pinpointed every location of each pine tree along the freeway

Paul Daly  08:56

there the main points couldn't couldn't get the structure and the lane that we need to get maybe they are the same and I'm realizing one of the disadvantages of doing a morning show on location is that there's always a leaf blower Kyle

Kyle Mountsier  09:08

every single time it doesn't matter where we're at there's you get the leaf blowers.

Michael Cirillo  09:13

But that was an Edna clearing her throat Yeah,

Paul Daly  09:16

now there's Kyle and I whenever we go on, locate everywhere, we're like, hey, and then there's a truck. So if you're just listening to the show, we're in a very busy area right now in front of an Apple store. We were just in front of a Tesla store.

Kyle Mountsier  09:27

You got peloton Lululemon everything.

Paul Daly  09:31

We were just trying to try to try to find a story for every one of them. Let's wrap the show up. We're at the 100% Elite retreat, whatever we want to call it. We hung out with a lot of dealers last night, asked a lot of questions about what's what are they thinking? How are they postured going into 2023 the overall sentiment seems that people are fired up. The people who are prepared and ready are like, Oh, it's going to be carnage out there. And I'm going to be on top of the pile when we get into 2023. That was my perception. How about Yeah,

Michael Cirillo  09:57

I mean, when you listen to that most of them took their stripes. No 809 And they're like, we're not doing that again. Right. But you know, as they all kind of shared a similar sentiment, the thought that came to my mind was, you have to experience the pain to know that you never want to experience that ever again. It's true. And so here's here's iteration, 2.0, maybe even 3.0 for some of these dealers that are like, I'm prepared their training like you listen to them that

Paul Daly  10:20

combat training, they've been training that they go in the same time. I know how not to get killed.

Kyle Mountsier  10:24

Yeah, I think that the other sentiment to me is that people have not just been like, everyone thinks like, get my processes get my technology in line, but everybody in the room was going, I'm trying to make sure that I have the right people in the right places, because I know I can't be there 100% of the time to make sure all the all the levers are pulled. And so I'm putting the right people in the right places. I'm constantly after the right people, we're recruiting heavy. We're after those people, like even people, I think on the podcast, they were hoping at some point people Yeah, oh, I'm gonna go

Paul Daly  10:55

work for them. Right. That was kind of like, for sure. And so

Kyle Mountsier  10:59

I think that that's just that's a through line for a lot of people that are kind of thinking ahead. They're thinking, what's my ppl strategy going into the next year?

Paul Daly  11:06

Well, thanks for spending a few minutes with us in your morning today. We're gonna head back in spend the rest of the day with some dealers and some industry partners, trying to learn a little bit, have a little bit of fun, and bring some of that back to you.

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