Used Car Market Updates, Tesla Prices Plummet, Astronauts Coming Home

Paul J Daly  0:00  
Music. Oh, there you go. That's the start music. Now we're doing a show. I mean, only seven episodes left until we hit Episode 1000 you would think, I understand, I'm the one that presses the start music. But you know, I mean, you know, it's been 993 episodes. Maybe I'm just

Kyle Mountsier  0:16  
a little tired. Sometimes there's a little bit of rust you gotta shake off when you're doing it every day. You know what? I mean, it's fine, it's okay, good, good work. Sometimes I think that people come for the days like today, when it's just a little late, you get that little early car. I think that's why people actually stick around. It's a brand. It's a thing, you know?

Paul J Daly  0:35  
It's, it's, no one will ever accuse us of not being like, authentic.

Kyle Mountsier  0:41  
I mean, just right? We're like, it's, it's Wednesday March 12, and we don't know how to put this, yeah, but actually, it's Tuesday March 18, right? That's jumbled his words because he didn't know how to say big words, in a sense, no, they just

Paul J Daly  0:56  
Kyle Reads slower than his brain moves, which is why he jumbles worse, right? Just slurs them all together. Oh my goodness. Well, listen, we had an awesome webinar. Just what day is it? Tuesday. Was last week, on Friday, but you can still see it. It was with it was with Robert blessing. And we talked just a lot about renew energy. And we had a great time, actually, because he showed my house. It was so fun. Well, they go around and they do solar installations and they make the case. They actually have a great way for dealers to make money and make a commission if a customer installs charging or solar panels on the roof. And they make such a data driven case for like, Hey, here's the cheapest way you're ever going to charge your EV, let's just call it for all intents and purposes, it's basically free for a consumer to install solar on the house. That's unbelievable. It's, I mean, like, it's more it's like, not actually free, but it feels like that. It is, I mean, like, when you talk about, like, what's your gas bill if you drive 12,000 miles a year? And like, I don't know what you pay $150 a month at current prices, whatever he's like, how does $30 sound to charge at home from the sun. Sound good, great. And that includes the solar installation. Oh, my, by the way. So it's a watch web, yeah. How do you get to that COVID? Just like, recapping, go

Kyle Mountsier  2:12  
to asotu.com like, scroll down just a little bit. It's right there. Yeah, and there,

Paul J Daly  2:15  
I will tell you, there's an Easter egg in there. It is an aerial photo of the back of my house with the deck, because he, like, they did a little configuration of what my solar array would look like to charge my EV, and I am going to brag on this for a second, because I was like, Where, what timing did the Google satellite have, where my deck was fully arranged with shares around the line. It never looks like that, folks, and now it does on the webinar. You should check it out at go to soda.com you can still get it. Still get the recording and go for it. Soda con COVID and hot. I mean, we're in the 50s now. Days left, the hotel is just about booked up. Please don't say we didn't tell you. Book your tickets now. Soda con com, the tickets are as cheap as they're going to be, and the hotel rooms in the event hotel are still available, so get them, because pretty soon they won't still have it be available. You'll be down the street, even if you miss it, down the street's not so bad, because we have, it's really not. We have everything. Partnership working. Are we talking about the partnership yet? Not yet. Which partnership moving people around? No, we're not talking about So close yet. So close to talk about a fun partnership. Okay, before I say anything else, I'm not supposed to say, let's just get into some news. Sometimes it's better than others. The used car markets heating up with February, retail sales jumping 16% month over month. This is the largest increase in years. While tax refunds are playing a role, tightening inventory, especially on budget friendly cars, is making affordability a continuing, ongoing challenge. Used vehicle supply dropped 2.8 million. 2.1 8 million units in March, down from 2.23 in February. Cars price under 15 grand have only a 30 day supply, well below the 42 day industry average. The average listing price for a used car in March was 25,000 006, which is a little bit down from last year, Ford, Chevy, Toyota, Honda, Nissan, account for over all of half of used cars, with the top five best selling models listing at an average price of 23 531, so that makes sense. That makes sense. Yep, February, certified pre owned sales hit 203,000 units, up from January, but still lower year over year.

Kyle Mountsier  4:26  
So there's only one clear message. This is the clear message that I have for every single dealer that's thinking about their used car inventory right now. If, if this is the trend, tax season is still high and you need to find the inventory that's going to turn fast and turn a profit. The place to do that is the service Lane in your customer base, because there's no other place you can't find it at auction. You can't find it in in just waiting for trades, especially trades on new cars, because of a new car pricing being so high, the only way to find sub 20. $5,000 cars, or really sub $15,000 cars that meet a budget. Look we're looking at, we went over yesterday, average used car interest rates over 10% when people are still looking for that 300 404 50 a month payment. The only way to find that payment in your used car inventory is to go source these cars out of the service drive and out of your customer base, I would be running acquisition campaigns to your customer base right now, now that'll sell you some cars in March and April. That will tell you it will the inventory come back if it doesn't, if it doesn't, if you, if you do it, and you get a bunch of those cars and they're sitting there on April 30, you holler at your boy and I'll meet you at AOT. Sound good. I mean, listen, speaking

Paul J Daly  5:46  
of used cars and values.

Unknown Speaker  5:48  
Segue.

Paul J Daly  5:50  
This one may be a surprise, may not be a surprise, but it also ties in with our third story today. Used Tesla prices are dropping at three times the rate with the of the overall used car market raising concerns about demand for both new and used models, while the market as a whole is cooling. Tesla's brand challenges seem to be accelerating depreciation. Tesla's used car prices dropped 3.7% in the last three months, compared to just 1.12% of the broader market. Over the past year, their use prices fell 7.26% nearly triple the market average of 2.68% so over the last year, they're tripling the market over the last 90 days, the model three is down 4.2% just the last 90 days, and the model Y is down 2.9% cyber truck down a little bit more, 11.5% but get this, cyber truck values year over year are down. Use cyber truck values 58% what I mean, that's unbelievable.

Unknown Speaker  6:53  
Sounds like, can you imagine having that level of like?

Paul J Daly  6:57  
It actually sounds like a car. Sounds like, Oh, if I'm glad I documented the whole thing, like, can I make money? Well, people were flipping them in the beginning. It's so weird. A year ago, people in the beginning, they were flipping new ones for profit. Month,

Kyle Mountsier  7:10  
yeah, absolutely.

Paul J Daly  7:12  
And now I don't know, I thought I got a great deal on the f1 50 lightning. You'll probably get an equal deal on the cyber truck, 58% depreciation, $100,000 truck. That's actually pretty, I mean, that's getting really close to that's why, $40,000 $100,000 Yeah,

Kyle Mountsier  7:30  
and I bet it's out there. Here's, I'm gonna say this, and this is maybe anecdotal, but I think this is still a blip, right? There's broad public we've always known the the only marketing arm for Tesla is their organic, social and Elon perception. Yep, it's that's it, right? And so this is a blip, right? Elon is, like, high in the news, and he's going to be high probably for another 60 days, but it'll run its course at that point. And not just that, but at least in my house and my kids friends, when they see a Tesla on the road, this is what happens. They're like, oh, a Tesla, right, right? And no, all our friends do the same thing when they're in the car. Nobody's like, oh, a Hyundai, right, right. So I think that the younger generation that maybe doesn't have the buying power right now still has a brand perception of that brand that is so high is going to be staying power in this thing. However, if you're in the market right now, or if you're selling in the market right now, this is a big Watch out. Make sure you know what these prices are doing, because holding these cars any amount of time is a losing proposition.

Paul J Daly  8:38  
I mean, it's probably, I mean, speaking of used car affordability, you probably get one of the best probably get one of the best deals you can like, dollar for dollar, pound for pound on the used car. Speaking of Elon Musk, yeah, great video footage for this one. By the way,

Kyle Mountsier  8:57  
after nine months, longer than expected, some NASA astronauts, Butch Wilmore and SUNY Williams are finally on their way home from the International Space Station the ISS, in conjunction with that, Space X launched crew 10 on Friday, docked on Sunday, and undocked and began its journey home early this morning, originally set for an eight day mission, their Boeing Starliner test flight faced thruster failures and delay, forcing them to stay aboard the ISS until a new crew could arrive. So, little bit of technical issues, but everyone's back home. I can tell you, there has been so much fanfare around this in the Middle Tennessee area, because Butch is from Mount Juliet, which is like, literally seven minutes from my house, and he went to school just about 40 minutes from here. So town hero, lot of lot. Oh, massive town hero. They're like, having an event for him all this time, that type of stuff. I love that. Sunni. Sunni said this. Said, This is my happy place. Speaking of. The space station said, I love being up here in space. It's just fun, you know.

Paul J Daly  10:03  
So I think I have a couple thoughts on this. But Nathan, first, can you put the video back up, and can you explain to us what we're seeing in the videos? Let's do the video. Here we go.

Nathan Southwick  10:12  
Yeah, sure. So,

Kyle Mountsier  10:13  
um, before we before we do that. Nathan is our resident space expert here. Okay,

Paul J Daly  10:20  
if there's a set, he's got it streaming on another TV, like He's our resident space space nerd in general, but also a SpaceX expert, or at least

Kyle Mountsier  10:29  
here we go. Hit us with it. Hit us. So,

Nathan Southwick  10:32  
so this is the Crew Dragon, and if you see right here, this is it on approach. The hatch is open now we're seeing a shot of it further on approach and inside it. Yeah, that's so I'll go back there. They're, they're flying it. They're, they're checking all the things. Those are two of the astronauts who are going to dock on it. And then our next shot here

Paul J Daly  10:51  
is night of a Tesla. Go ahead. Yeah, it's sort of, yeah, right. Kind

Nathan Southwick  10:55  
of similar design cues. You might say this. This shot here is of one the what you're seeing on the left is the Crew Dragon capsule as it approaches, and the view on the right is the ISS docking mechanism. It kind of, it's actually cool, because it kind of feels like you're looking at something out of interstellar but this is, like, actually real this is actually real space. This is how they dock in space. So I think at this point they were like, five meters away from each other. Music

Paul J Daly  11:24  
The moment it docks. Yeah, right, exactly they should.

Nathan Southwick  11:29  
And then, and then your next shot here is you're seeing the four astronauts exit the Dragon capsule, and, you know, greet all the people on space. And then there's a final shot of everybody together. So

Paul J Daly  11:41  
the capsule had six, seven people in it, and they picked up four astronauts.

Nathan Southwick  11:46  
So no, so, so they, they launched four astronauts to to the space station. There were six already there.

Paul J Daly  11:53  
Okay, so this was four. Four picked up the six. I'll tell you the six people look like they work for Allstate or State Farm. Khakis and red polos I've saved for being stuck up there. They look really great. I mean, they

Kyle Mountsier  12:12  
probably work out. I mean,

Paul J Daly  12:14  
NASCAR level sponsorships like put some patches on those jerseys and let them go for it. Listen, here, here, here's the crazy dichotomy of all this. We just went to outer space. Well, these astronauts were trapped. And Elon Musk, well, Terry was technically not,

Nathan Southwick  12:31  
technically not. They were

Paul J Daly  12:33  
trapped. They could just come home whenever they wanted.

Nathan Southwick  12:35  
The Okay, so, so this is like, this is a misconception. There were, if they had needed to get home, there were ways they could have get home. It would not have been fun, but it was not like the big, crazy thing that everyone made it out to be. They just had to

Paul J Daly  12:52  
stay in space longer than they needed to.

Nathan Southwick  12:55  
That's it like, technically, Paul, there was one time when you and I were trapped in this, like, this sort of like resorty place, a Mitsubishi Mirage place, and, like, we could have gotten home, right? I have

Paul J Daly  13:08  
a feeling their experience was different than ours. But space

Kyle Mountsier  13:11  
is kind of like a resort I place.

Paul J Daly  13:13  
Here's, here's, yeah, you get great views. Like, we can sell this Airbnb. So here's, here's what I think of, what I look at this. First of all, it's freaking amazing that a problem, that a private company built a spacecraft over many years that can just go pick up people from the space station. And so, like, last year, I think it was when, when was Elon was like, let us go get him right? Like, when it all fell apart. When did he say that?

Nathan Southwick  13:38  
Yeah, so, so a little bit of background on this. They flew up on a Boeing Starliner, and it was the first crude test of that vehicle. Anyways, they got up there, had a couple issues on the way, and they were like, NASA was basically like, look, we don't think we should send you home on it right now, now, now, the Starliner did come back, okay, so they would have been fine if they had, if they had come home on it, but yeah, then, then Elon was like, let me go get them. Let me go get them. And it sort of turned into this whole big

Paul J Daly  14:08  
thing, had that craft ever gone and done that before it

Nathan Southwick  14:12  
had done it uncrewed? And this is the first crewed mission of it. So that's the way that they test it. They do a bunch of testing, and then they do an uncrewed demonstration and a crew demonstration. So

Paul J Daly  14:21  
what I'm saying, if there's one person, so, like, obviously, if you've ever watched Elon during launches and things like that, right? It's a big ordeal. Obviously, he built this from the ground up. And so when Elon's like, Hey, your model wise are dropping faster than the rest of the used car market, he's like, I don't know. I'm picking some people up from space today. I

Kyle Mountsier  14:43  
don't know. I think we're gonna be fine. Yeah,

Paul J Daly  14:47  
we'll say, we say again, the dealers will solve the problems. The dealers always problems. They solve problems. Get out there. Solve some problems. Care about some people. We will see here tomorrow morning. We'll cue the music right now. This time you.

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