Trump Pitches Teslas at White House, Ford <3 Superchargers, Southwest Ends Free Bags

Paul J Daly  0:01  
All right, Wednesday, March 12, 62 days to ASOTU CON. Whoa, I don't know today we're talking about President Trump pitching Teslas on the front lawn of the White House for super chargers. Southwest. The people are really well known. I mean, it's end of an era for Southwest. I've known that for a while. Episode wants no need to repeat. Man, now, now it's, now, it's getting real.

Kyle Mountsier  0:23  
It's like, oh, just falling into there'll be interesting. What's next? Seat assignments. I'm just sad, you know, I'm just sad.

Paul J Daly  0:33  
But we'll get, well, yeah, let's get again. Want to talk about, look, we are 11 episodes away from 1000 episodes. We're gonna do a little something special. Kyle's gonna be wheels up, heading to New York for the 1,000th episode. So we'll talk about we talked about it yesterday, so we'll let that go. But do want to talk about pitch tank being back at

Kyle Mountsier  0:55  
con? Yes. So pitch tank is gonna be a little bit different this year, we are taking submissions. As of today, you've got to submit a little bit about your company and a initial pitch video. We've got a panel of judges that is standing by waiting to receive the submissions. If you want to pitch, you can check out our email today, our LinkedIn today. You can check out my LinkedIn here in just a minute and find the link, go submit you. It doesn't matter if you've been around for 50 years, five years or five months. You can apply to pitch. But here's the thing, it's got to be innovative. It's got to be novel. It's got to be a new thing. And you get the opportunity to bring you and your company to the stages at ASOTU CON. There'll be nine finalists or semi finalists announced shortly follow, or shortly preceding the event. So get in to pitch tank ASAP.

Paul J Daly  1:49  
I love the fact that the Legacy A lot of people probably don't know, but if you're an OG, you totally know the legacy of pitch tank in general. It's pitch tank started out as a clubhouse room that you and Ben Hadley started, and, I mean, this was before you and I were, like, working on ASOTU, like, this is OG OG, og,

Kyle Mountsier  2:10  
yeah. Oh, honestly, the reason why I started it is because I wanted to hear pitches from seven people a week that I didn't know about in one hour. In one hour, it was crazy, and I think that a ton of people got a lot of value out of it. Obviously, clubhouse has kind of gone by the wayside. But man, now that I'm thinking about it, I'm like, man, we should bring something like that back regularly, where people can, like, take an hour and get a whole bunch of information they can unboxing. Well, maybe there's

Paul J Daly  2:41  
absolutely, absolutely something there. But look, if you're considering coming to ASOTU CON, that's another reason you should, because you know what it's like to sit through a one hour pitch. But what if you can sit through 40 minutes of programming and see multiple people pitch in multiple rooms, hear expert opinion, commentary and questions on those things, so you can make some decisions on what's the best fit for you. And if you're not looking for a decision, you can at least know what everyone's talking about, see what's over the horizon. Just another reason to come to ASOTU CON, which we like to call the south by southwest of the automotive industry. And I'm standing by that it is. And I think, like over the years, we'll start adding days to it, so it will be like a full thing. And so, yeah, but again, ASOTU Cop, a soda con presented by Reynolds and goo goo. We got a lot of stuff going. Oh, soda con.com we're releasing things every day. Hotels are booking up. Just gotta be there. You gotta be there. Kid, all right, let's talk about some news this one, I mean, oh boy. It's like a car salesman special, right? Like President Donald Trump, long opponent of Joe Biden's EV push. He used to talk smack on EVs all the time. He's changed his tune through a political curve ball on Tuesday by inspecting walking the lot. He created a little showroom on the White House and even considering purchasing a Tesla right on the White House lawn. The moment was seen as an olive branch to Elon Musk, vocal supporter, obviously, of Trump's administration, key player in the EV industry, and kind of all the stuff that's going on in the country right now. Despite campaigning against Biden's EV mandates, Trump has praised Tesla's tech and price points as the event, you know, and Trump definitely changed his tune, saying, like, hey, we just need every kind of car. We don't need all EVs or all gas. He's like, they're all great. We need them all, but we need people to be able to pick so you know, obviously there's a lot of protests going on of Elon Musk and Tesla by liberal groups unhappy with Musk's alignment with conservative policies as of late, Tesla stock obviously going down and just hitting, hitting a big bump in roadblock. They're like, where's the CEO? He's like, I'm running the company with great difficulty. Trump calling Musca a great patriot in service to the country while admiring Tesla's tech, Trump drew the line at the new model lacking a steering wheel, saying, I'm going to pass on that.

Speaker 1  4:50  
So they held that, give me the steering wheel. So a photographer

Paul J Daly  4:55  
noticed that President Trump was holding a handwritten note, and it's up on this. Screen right now I'm gonna read it, leave it up there, Nathan, so I can read it. Basically, it's notes on all the Tesla models and the pricing. It says full self driving Model X, and it has the price CT, cyber drug, right? It has the price Model S, Model y, and it's telling which colors they are. It actually there are payment terms on there. 299, a month up, you know, of $35,000 loan. It does say that self driving has an extra fee, so it's got all this stuff on there. And Trump, you know, he actually sat in one of the cars, I think it was the red Model S and, and he says to he says, I watched a moment. He goes, watch the Secret Service go nuts right as he's sitting in this car that was unscripted and unplanned. And, and Elon Musk was like, we should, it would be wild if we drove around and Trump. I don't think was into that part. No,

Kyle Mountsier  5:46  
no, no. It's so wild. Like, you know, you just look at, like, the photos and videos. It takes me back to, like, a 1993 like, Saturday morning lot walk on, on the advertising TV like channel. It's like,

Unknown Speaker  5:59  
we're

Kyle Mountsier  6:01  
going through the here's the S model. I love this. It's beautiful, right? Look at the feel of that,

Paul J Daly  6:12  
the stitching on the steering wheel. No, exactly. I mean, it's even though, even though, right? Like, obviously, franchise auto industry looks at Tesla as somebody who is, you know, obviously disrupting the franchise model and having an unfair advantage in a lot of ways. This is kind of a still like cars are central to our country. They

Kyle Mountsier  6:31  
are and now we we owe so much to Tesla as an industry for repopularizing the vehicle, right? And I think it's, it's kind of made auto ownership, auto purchasing, interest in autos like mainstream again, and so to have just people can sit like in the consideration matrix in a different way. I think is, is something that we should be celebrating and looking at like, how do I, you know, take this and bring it, take this energy and bring it localized to me, right? How do I capitalize on on the visibility of auto in general, and bring it local? And how do I like swim in the swim lane of you know, everybody's kind of in consideration matrix. How do I create educational content? How do I create social media content that swims in the swim lane makes me relevant. Those things can easily be done at this point. I mean, imagine yourself like creating a video that kind of replicates this on the front line, or take of your dealership, right? Or take on Brian if you're watching this is like, this is done. This

Paul J Daly  7:35  
mission. If you choose to accept it right now, you need to recreate this moment. Please. Please do it. Yes, I think it's there's like this, this strange, like conflict, I think, amongst a lot of dealers. Because obviously it's no secret a lot of conservative, especially financially, fiscally conservative folks in the dealership world, owning dealerships, GMs, but obviously Tesla a very fierce competitor in the EV space. And so it's probably a lot of people conflicted on what they should think or do, right? What should I do?

Unknown Speaker  8:01  
But if you know,

Paul J Daly  8:03  
if there is any anything like on the competitive side, this little data point I just read today, it's not in the show notes, but Tesla registrations are down 11% Wow, last month, and non Tesla EV registrations are up 44% so that gap is definitely closing as a result, for sure, regardless of what your politics are, that's the truth. Yeah, speaking of EVs. Segue, so this is in news, mildly relevant to a recent f1 50 lightning owner that

Kyle Mountsier  8:34  
that nobody has not told anyone that he's an f1 50 lightning. I should

Paul J Daly  8:38  
just start CrossFit and become a vegan at this point, I plugged mine in for the first time. It's sitting outside my window. I plugged it in for the first time in the charger that's out front of the building. So Nathan's like, how long is that going to take to charge? I was like, I have no idea. Way too I don't care it's there. I know I got plenty to get home. But basically, Ford has officially delivered over 140,000 NACS adapters. That's the adapter to the Tesla charger to its EV customer. The move granting EV drivers access to the Tesla supercharging network. It's basically in 2023 they announced this was going to happen. Tesla Supercharger networked open, and they said you can have a free adapter. They've shipped 140,000 of these things. It's pretty strong. But now, now that's done, and that's done. So now you have to pay, I had to buy mine, by the way,

Unknown Speaker  9:30  
200 bucks, right?

Paul J Daly  9:31  
Tesla superchargers, yeah. It was like, yeah. It was like, 179 on Amazon, basically the same company that makes them better, Ford branded, but it's, it's like, like, lectrium, Tesla superchargers accounted for nearly 20% of all Ford EV charging stops, and now Ford EV drivers can use Apple CarPlay and the Tesla when the integration happens, all that the Tesla superchargers actually show up on the maps, and it helps you route better. I could have used that last week or two weeks ago, but. And so it's just like a, kind of like the end of a, end of a big announcement. And the more like normalcy if you drive a Ford EV

Speaker 1  10:08  
Oh, is Kyle gone? He's so gone. Did he just? He froze up. So, you know, it's cool. That's cool. Great.

Paul J Daly  10:15  
Let's talk about me some more.

Unknown Speaker  10:19  
Let's, let's talk

Paul J Daly  10:21  
about the hardness of Michael Cirillo, enough about me. Let's talk about what you think about me.

Kyle Mountsier  10:27  
About Me. This is the one comment that I have about this is this is going to be kind of a regular, like, for all of the people that have bought things in the past four or five years with EVs, yeah, you're kind of going to get the grandfather thing. But everyone moving forward, it's like, no, you get whatever you get. So if you want to charge on the Tesla thing, you got to pay the $200 you want the software subscription thing, you got to pay for it, right? A lot of these EV manufacturers are, are saying like, Hey, thanks for the early adoption. We'll take care of you. But anyone moving forward, there's enough education out there. But it does make it does? You know, say the fact, like, you've got to educate your customer you're a Ford dealership, like, don't just bank on the fact that people know that they're gonna have to pay for this, like, little $200 thing. It's wrong thing. It's but hey, it might be a thing where for a little while, you, as the dealership, make the decision to go ahead and stock few of these, if you got, uh, Fords, if you got EVs in there, and make that a value proposition of doing business with

Paul J Daly  11:29  
you. Yeah. I mean, I wonder, do you know Ford has they have to have plans of just switching over to NACS adapters? Yeah, you got, I mean, has to, right? I mean, that's whatever the reverse adapters. There's got to be a reverse adapter, but I can't see test too many Tesla owners be like, No, I need to charge at the eVgo station. No, those Tesla owners be proud. It's like, Kyle, you're gonna use this android phone like, not gonna do it.

Kyle Mountsier  11:49  
Not a chance. Not gonna do it. Speaking of not gonna do it.

Paul J Daly  11:53  
Oh, segway, he's not paying for banks. He's not doing

Kyle Mountsier  11:57  
it, not doing it. Southwest Airlines is making a major shift, announcing that starting May 28 it will charge for check bags, owning its long standing bags fly free policy. The change aims to boost profitability, but may alienate some loyal travelers like you, boy uh only rapids rewards a list and business fair passengers will still get free check bags. Kind of sounds like a couple airline programs that I know. American Airlines. CEO Bob Jordan framed the move as part of an effort to attract new customers and improve profitability. Very interesting. Southwest has also announced plans to introduce assigned seating by 2025 revamp his fare structure and expand its international routes to stay competitive. So you're telling me you're not a regional low price. I mean, airline the challenges and status quo anymore.

Paul J Daly  12:47  
I mean, let's, let's talk about they've had one heck of a run. One heck right. When were they founded? In the 70s, 80s? Like, yeah, late 70s. I mean, so it's like Southwest being I mean, 50 years later. Like, no, 50 years later, it's okay, in my opinion, it's okay if you change some things and revamp and just realize what you are now,

Kyle Mountsier  13:07  
right? Yeah. I mean, they're there. They are in the big players brand, right? They're like, the last of the last of the big five US ones to kind of hold out on on something different. And now you've got all these challenger value brands that you're going up against and not competing from a pricing perspective. So now you have to get into competing for like the business traveler, right? You're no longer the bus of the sky, and so public transportation to the public transportation of the skies, right? So you've got to figure that out, which means they're probably going to have to revamp some interior stuff, revamp some seating, things like that, to attract more of that customer. Because, hey, look, people love, you know, preferential treatment, right? A list business fair passengers getting the preferential treatment, I can tell you, like there's incentive to get on Delta and united and Americans preferred pricing and and preferred seating tiers, but it's going to take a little while. Isn't

Paul J Daly  14:08  
the cheapest anymore, either? Not even close, right? So, like, if it was the cheap, like the value propositions disappear. I truly wonder if boarding the plane that way is actually faster. I tell you, as a passenger, it's definitely more annoying. Like, there's more anxiety on boarding a Southwest flight than Well,

Kyle Mountsier  14:26  
if you're like B 43 and on right, which

Paul J Daly  14:30  
means, like, I have to remember to check in on time, right? Like, everybody knows, listen, even if it's like Row 21 seat See, like people like knowing that that is their guaranteed little place in the world, right? They belong for the flight. And, you know, I flew a frontier flight, I don't know it was a few weeks ago, and frontier now has some options. They have extra legroom seating, which you pay a little more for. And they actually have their version of first. Class, where you can, you know, where they they guarantee no middle seat, so you get a lot of extra room. And it's not spirits done the same thing and, and I'll tell you what, like the opportunity to do that. I mean, I flew frontier, and I didn't book that. I booked that on the way home because it was like, I guess I thought it was cheap enough. And then by the time you add the bags and add the thing, like, I still pay 400 bucks for their like, advertised, like 59 flying, just cost something, you know, like, I think about that, something that can transport you miles away, in and out two hours. It

Kyle Mountsier  15:31  
just seems like it costs the thing. And, you know, whether you kind of upfront it or hit it on the back end, seems to always kind of get there. Yeah, they'll

Paul J Daly  15:39  
send the $9 fares. Or for, my 18 year old son, miles, yeah. He's like, I don't care. I'll get my seat back and I'll

Kyle Mountsier  15:45  
sit in the back. Yeah. Row 43 is going to be great. These,

Paul J Daly  15:49  
you know, these old joints aren't, like, aren't ready for that anymore. But we'll see. We'll see what happens. I think, I think this is a necessary move for a turnaround, like they can't they got here by doing what they're doing, and now they're in a new ecosystem, and it'll be interesting to see how they bring back the brand as a whole, because there's been so much bad press about the brand, negative sentiment around the brand. And I think if they just harness what they're great at and like, read, lean in like, I'm watching Starbucks do it in real time, right? I go to Starbucks five times a week, and I gotta say, they're crushing it, like their turn around in Syracuse, New York, the hospital, but

Kyle Mountsier  16:22  
they're going back to their roots. I know that's what I don't understand. Go back to your go like, deep. Get deep. Don't get don't just like, become ubiquitous. Structure

Paul J Daly  16:30  
doesn't allow them to go deep anymore. But if they go back to the hospitality, the friendliness, the hospitality, because back then, the reason they even existed and people were willing to board, however, is because they're like, these were people that were unable to fly because it was too expensive. That's not the case anymore.

Kyle Mountsier  16:44  
You know who the happiest people on the planet are? Spirit Airlines. Every single one of them is happy people. I've never met a non happy one, and the last three times I've flown on them, they do the whole like, stay funky things, yeah, oh. Like we I had one. I had one person having the plane. They were like, All right, now stretch your arms. Stretch your arms. Way up high, yeah, way down low. And they were like, Now, pick up the trash. You drop, yeah. Oh, that's a great one.

Paul J Daly  17:11  
That's a great one. All right. Look, we had a little fun on the show this morning. How'd you thinking about customer experience, car sales, charging, most importantly, we hope we help you think about the people. Make sure you go to ASOTU CON com, get your tickets so you can be with all the people you.

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