AAH #639 - Sandy Munro and Cory Steuben On Tesla's Master Plan Part 3

I'll do online after hours is brought to you by Bridge Stone Tires Solutions for your Journey. Gerry John, good to see you, I know, let's

get going. Well, we missed you last week, so yes, just

so you know, yeah, uh well, hey, look, everybody knows we got Sandy Monroe coming on the show. There he is, Corey stupid

with us as well, so you guys hey, yeah, the Dynamic duo.

Oh that's right. So tons of stuff to talk about today, just

so the audience knows some of the stuff I want to get into. I

want to hear some of your guy's reactions because you were personally yet Tesla's Master Plan Part three down in Austin this new assembly process which blew my mind.

Twenty five thousand dollars car. What's it gonna take to get a twenty five

thousand dollars look and make a profit on it? That's the key, right,

and then the other thing do Tesla os. I'd love to get your

guy's reaction to that. But in any case, But but but first we

got everybody knows who Sandy is, Corey level set us, who are you?

What do you do? So our audience knows you? Oh yeah,

thanks. So I've been at Monroe for eighteen years. Sandy hired me as

an intern back in two thousand and five, so I've worked my way up all these years. And I was the one who who pushed Sandy to be

on YouTube and John, I gotta hand it to you. I when he

every time he went on auto line, I noticed your fuse were way up three hundred thousand, seven hundred thousand, and I said, Sandy, we need to bottle that up and kind of keep a little bit of that for ourselves. So I was there for the first hundred videos for say on YouTube.

But I'm the president of Monroe Associates right now, so um, I've been helping Sandy grow the company over the last two and a half three years and we're doing pretty well. So I'm glad to be on I also have

a long history in automotive benchmarking. I've supported Fiat christ Or Automobiles for the

better part of a decade for the development a lot of their platforms, So I have a deep understanding of automotive design and manufacturing. It's Sandy you,

of course, you're just a YouTube star. That's basically, well, I'll

just sit here, sit there and act like a star or something. Just

just just just influence, just you know, just by your presence. Oh

yeah, good, good that that that makes it easier for me. If

I don't want to see anything, I can't make a mistake. But no,

but Corey, Corey's kind of modest. He's also it was also big

into auto racing. He had a he had he uses cube basically just to

store um troll fees. At one time you could not get into his cube

at all, and it was piled from floor to the top of the ceiling with with trophies. And then what'd you do with those trophies? What you

do with every one of them? Unbelievable? Us about you? What's your

race? Winged sprint cars? Oh right, yeah, totally. Oh man,

Oh okay, next time we get together, we got to talk racing because that's my passion too. Excellent, that's great. Uh So anyways,

uh, Corey does an awful lot. And one of the things he did

does way better than I do is remember so um if he throws out a number, you can you can hang your hat on it. It's correct.

So so that there we've we've preset everything. Now everybody can sit back comfortably.

And uh, couple of guys have sent me a little thing that they're they're going to be having popcorn and beer while they're watching. So yeah,

and probably if there's any there's any of the OEM, they're probably going to be taking one of their heart attack builders. Yeah. Hey, so let's

talk about master Plan Part three day that you guys went down too, because I want to get your reaction because the media shrugged, Wall Street yawned.

I mean, I was blown away by the presentation. I mean, I've

never seen a presentation like that from an automotive company. But Sandy, let's

start with you. What what was your reaction to the whole thing. Corey

and I were like little children giggling when they gave us the plant tour.

There were so many Easter eggs laying around, There was so much information, information and was ready for the picking that they There was no press there.

I don't think there was only financial people. And I mean the term pearls

to swine comes to mind. These guys had no clue what they were looking

at, none whatsoever. And like I said, if if you would have

been Corey or Eye or maybe you know, hundreds or thousands of other engineers.

You were on the verge of peeing your pants. It was phenomenal,

phenomenal what we got a chance to look at the drive process for making their new battery packs. I mean, we'll probably get into this kind of stuff,

but their their new drive process. They showed us up close. They

wouldn't let me anywhere near the presses for making the big castings and whatnot.

But in fact that one guy said, so was four guys over there.

They know who you are, Okay, So it wasn't for safety reasons they kept you apart from dial They didn't want you guys to see too much up close. They exposed us to a lot of stuff. I thought it was

brilliant. It's um, without a question of a doubt, the most open,

honest I've ever seen. And it was a wide aisle tour, but

I mean it was. It was stunningly populated with with everything that if you

were an engineer you'd want to have a look at. Yeah, yeah,

Corey, what was your reaction and some of your key jakeaways. Yeah,

So, like Sandy mentioned, we interfaced with a lot of traditional investors.

So there are people from Fidelity there, people from family funds, so they have a very weak technical background. So Sandy and I actually spent a lot

of time explaining to the people on the tour what they were seeing. It

was like we were the tour guides for some of the institutional investors. And

this one woman, Aaron, Aaron Riley. She followed Sandy around like a

little puppy the whole time and was just blown away that people knew it.

You know, Sandy was being you know, inundated by people who knew him, Tesla employees and whatnot. But there was one instance where they stopped our

tour and I noticed that they were doing some testing on an inverter and the form factor of the inverterer didn't match any inverter that we've ever benchmarked, and we've benchmarked every Tesla. So I go, Sandy, Sandy look, and

we were supposed to we had hard hats on invest We weren't supposed to cross the aisle. I just walked across the aisle. I'm like, I don't

care, what were they gonna do? Kick me out? And I'm looking

in this glass test cell. They were doing sheer testing on the moss bets

on how they were mounted, but a completely different form factor, different thermal thermal cooling strategy. And what I think we were seeing was a new a

new inverter for the next gen powertrain, which they never showed in the presentation.

So Sandy had his notebook open and we were I was writing in his notebook what I was seeing because my eyes are better. Sorry, Sandy and

old Angel do that too, and if that's the end of the three were feverishly taking notes and documenting what we saw, and everyone else was just standing there like little uh, you know, lemmings, ready to walk along to the next presentation. So the next thing they presented to us was their current

generation drive units. So the guys standing there with a microphone and here you'll

see our Model three and Model wide gearboxes, and Sandy and I aren't even paying attention. We're just looking at what we just saw. So you had

to have a really trained eye to kind of pick up some of the new stuff. And like Sandy said, when we were in the stand and the

casting section, I was counting the number of people there offloading each casting So we were doing in depth benchmarking of the number of people. What were the

people doing. This person's doing a quality check this person's doing because we want

to understand the savings that they're getting from this giga casting process. It was

the first time we saw them production, so we're doing doing math counting people.

Well, everybody else is kind of you know, wide wide eyes looking around. So it was it was pretty pretty high over. So see,

let me ask let me ask you this. Okay, We've all been in

lots of factories, okay, um, and you said that as you're walking around the Austin plant, you know that you're you're seeing things that are entirely different. Okay, So so give us a flavor of of what would be

standard operating procedure in any of the plants that we could you know that that are within the vicinity of where we're all at in our perspective places and what you saw down there, Well, let's start off with something that you might find interesting. A lot of guys might find interesting. Um Um. What

I found out was how quickly they could cast the front and rear castings.

I already knew that walking in. Um what was the cycle time? That's

what I was getting get too, forty five seconds per sci Wow. That's

sorry, sorry, that's no, that's incorrect. The assembly line is at

forty two seconds. The assembly line is forty two seconds. People hit sixty

seconds and they, you know, break out the champagne. These guys are

at forty two seconds. So I did that with three consecutive cars heading down

the line, and that's then I found out that the the cycle time.

So we all know that the the castings are made in less than a second, right, So they close the press, turn it on a second later.

The castings inside it takes thirty two to thirty four seconds for it to cool it down to the point where you can open it and get it to hick out. And so I was, you know, I've seen lots of

videos and whatnot on this, but I've never seen the casting itself. This

was my first time looking at it, and it's got all kinds of wonderful things. So there's a thing called peanuts. You use them for capturing to

make sure that everything's flowed properly. The peanuts fill up and then you know

that this casting is probably going to be in good shape. And then it

goes up to the top and there it's a thing that looks like a little waffle or something, and in essence, what it is is it's a radiator kind of. So the metal goes up there, it hardens because it's going

in and hardening right because it's that part of the of the dye is cool.

And then it goes down and it acts like its own shut off.

So that that totally blew me away that they were showing us. I mean,

it was wide open for everybody. So then I started looking at die

casting in general, and I found out, well, I kind of already knew that most people are right around I don't know, maybe six or eight percent scrap, but the scrap can be ground up and you can do it again in most cases. Then I started doing some in depth kinds of stuff

and I found out that in Europe, where you know, BMW does diecasting and onnot, they think that world class is about four percent. And then

through nameless sources, I found out that Tesla is running two percent scrap.

Now they may be not they may be the scrap that they actually throw away, but the two percent is what they'll live with. Two percent scrap.

So think of stamping factories, how much do you throw away there? Oh,

we recycle that, we sell that scrap iron to somebody else or this or that. It's scrap it's awful, and you can't do much with most

of it. And if you want to do something with it, you got

to you gotta scrub that Pillsbury off the stamping company. So for me,

the biggest thing that I wanted to see was the was the die casting and whatnot. And and when you guys are ultimately going to want to talk about

the twenty five thousand dollars vehicle when you're when you're looking at all the skateboard basically having around two percent scrap rate. Uh, that's uh, that's going

to be pretty hard to beat. Um and a forty three second cycle time,

so forty two forty three. Yeah, how about your Corey To to

Gary's question, well, what did you think was different that you saw that you would not see in a traditional plant. Well, first of all,

the scale of the plant is humongous. So I've been in a decent amount

of factories, not as many as Sandy, but I think I've been in about a dozen. The building is a mile and a half long. There's

a mile how long is it? It's huge, and it's when you're in

the main floor it's actually two levels. So they have a main floor and

a mezzanine level whether they have offices, and then what looks like the roof is the floor of an entire another whole section and it's like a cement floor on the second level. So we weren't seeing any of the cybertruck line.

So somewhere in that building they're probably preparing the cyber truck line on that third floor you think, I think it'd be the second main floor or the third floor. Oh yeah, there's massive portions of that building that we didn't even

see. Ye and and John, I gotta say I love the video that

you did on your assessment of how Tesla is going to assemble cars in the future. I watched that. It was really really good and that I think

is absolutely critical for them getting the cost down. So typically the manufacturing costs

is not a huge cost driver in the vehicle, but it is when you're trying to scale and you don't want to build twenty plants. You want to

build twelve plants or ten plants. So to hit that twenty million number that

Elon has put out there, he's got to get there without having to build twenty assembly plants or thirty assembly plants if you look at the throughput of traditional OEMs, so I think it shrinks the size of the plant by forty percent.

I think that's what they said. That's what they said. And I

see a huge advantage in the body shop, in the sorry, in the paint shop. So now that you're not sending an entire vehicle through the paint

shop, the volume of a vehicle, so widthwise, height wise, and lengthwise, you can now paint in more of a plane or fashion. So

if you have two body sides, a hood, fenders, rear facia, front facia, the width, the amount of area you're gonna have to take up, and even the tooling and articulation of your paint robots changes completely if you're only painting essentially from one direction. If you've separated the vehicle and you

send it through so, I think there's so many, so many rabbit holes.

You can go down on the efficiencies that they'll gain with this new way that they're not only building the car, but how they paint the vehicle.

Right, And I like you said that they are probably going to use structural adhesives. I do agree. It will be structural adhesives and a combination of

threaded fasteners. Well, people can see your video, John, explain what

this process is. Okay, we're people, so a little bit, a

little bit of background. You know, most people don't know this, but

the moving assembly line is actually a very inefficient process. And the reason,

you know, just to use simple numbers, which I used in my video.

If your cycle time is sixty seconds, which is typical for a legacy plant, that means every worker has essentially sixty seconds for their station to get their tasks done, and they walk along the car as it goes down the line. Then they have to walk back to the head of their assembly station,

pick up parts and start again. Well they typically have it varies by

station, but rule of thumb, forty seconds to do their task and then twenty seconds to walk back, pick up parts and start it over again.

At twenty seconds is wasted time. It's not value added. And the way

that you make up for that inefficiency is you just have more stations and more people on the line, which just adds cost. So by getting rid of

the moving assembly line and essentially designing the car to be assembled as modules that all come together at once at the very end, lets you have it opens up the modules to being assembled with automation, it allows workers to get around things, not having to lean over, climb in and out of the car, and things like that. So yeah, I think that the savings overall

are going to be even greater than what I talked about in my video.

M So, is that an efficient way to build cars? Sandy? I

mean modules? And what are the natural pieces that would go? You know,

that would that would be Actually the natural pieces are the ones that that they showed in the video. So if you go to their if you go

to their website, or actually we've ripped it and here we go. Here

we've got some of the modules there. There you go. So what you're

looking at here is basically the whole body, and you'll see it's already all painted. I don't have to take the doors off put them back on.

I don't have to take the hoods. And in a lot of cases,

declids don't don't get touched. They just get painted once. But it causes

an awful lot of um consternation when you're trying to get this thing down the line in the paint department. Robots have to dive in there and do what

they have to do in order to get the paint onto the onto the material.

When you're looking at something like what is shown here. Um, I

mean a long, skinny paint line is a whole lot better than a great, big, gigantic wide one with that has to run relatively slow. And

like, if I can interject two, when you have a full body in white, you have to leave room for the robots with those bit tenture welders and all that, So you compromise the design of the body to allow robots to get in there. With this new process, you don't have to do

that, that's correct, So you leave you leave a leading edge all around everything so that somehow you can get in there and quite frankly use those pincers are not cheap. It's it's kind of expensive to put in all the stuff

that we normally put in to make a vehicle. So at the end of

the day, um, this is something that no one's ever well, that's not true. Other people have thought of taking the doors and sending them down

through a different paint line, and that that didn't really work out well because now you've got a separate paint line, and on and on and on.

But if you have the same paint line and you're running the cars. By

the way, there's another thing here too. All the all the stylus on

the planet, every one of them, they want to have one thing that nobody wants to have two tone paint. That's why we put big giant blackout

panels and applicas and whatnot so that we don't We can get a different contrasting color or something, but we don't have to try and shoot two colors with this. You want to have red doors, no problem, I mean you

can. You can do whatever you want. You can make this. Think

about it too. You build up a whole body in white, then you

gotta dump dump the whole thing in the elbow tanne. Then you got to

bring that out. You gotta, you know, let that all drip dry

and stuff. And then you start painting. So you're painting a lot,

and you're coating a lot of places that maybe don't even really need it.

You're right, So you're adding cost, you're adding weight, you're adding assembly time. This new time USLA process gets rid of all that. But here's

another question for you guys. Do you think they're going to paint why not

go with a wrap? Well, um, you can go with a wrap.

My guess is that this is this is a good idea for right now.

But anybody that ever wanted to say, hey, there may be an opportunity here to go to um plastic or carbon fiber or composite or whatever.

Okay, now I can shoot them in color. What do I need that

for? And actually that's what we're doing with that Tara do have. Terra

car probably is not going to see paint. It's it's carbon fiber and it

will come in in color and that's that. And it's the same sort of

a deal they the Tera is is going to be showing up with a perfect body, perfect and that's kind of like what you can get out of this process that that Tesla's showing you. Um, they may be using steel initially,

but eventually they might be going to something else. So so basically,

Sandy, are you saying that, like for thet Era, that the color is put in the mold when the part is created. Therefore there's no secondary

operation required. That's correct. Well, even even with this new Tesla process,

as you guys know, and a typical assembly plant, the paint shop is the most expensive part of the plan. They're typically three hundred million dollars

or more. They're very energy intensive and you know, so mega savings you

know, by just just think about the pollution control. Are you kidding?

That is the absolute biggest cost associated with pollution in any factory is the paint shop. How do you get rid of all the crap that? I mean,

nobody wants to have a paint shop in their city ever, and you're always crawling with people who want to inspect to make sure you're not cheating.

This all goes away, I mean with what they're talking, well, let me rephrase that. It all goes away with that Tira. But it's,

uh, it's still going to be something that they're going to be doing with UM with Tesla, but but it's not going to be UM, it's not going to be as arduous because I don't have I don't have a spray guns shooting all over the damn place. I mean, if you watch, uh,

if you watch a paint line, you'll see that. Uh, the

you have to you have to clear the jets on the spray guns before the robots allowed to I'm sending it into the air. So if I'm underneath the

car or whatever, all these things happen and h and quite frankly, Um, every one of those extra little bursts that you have to have that causes more pollution, and it in essence, it just it just throws paint down into the into the there's a suction that brings it down. All that stuff

has to be taken away and tossed when you're looking at smaller pieces that are painted on both sides by simple robot mechanism, I mean it's it's going to cost less, and it's going to be it'll require a whole lot less maintenance.

Yeah, I see it as being one hundred percent better all the way around. Yeah. So John, in Tesla's presentation, they essentially said that

they're gonna get these cost reductions on their next gen vehicle through three places.

I think one was through these improvements in manufacturing, so how the cars built, how it's assembled. Another big chunk was I believe power training battery.

And that's where Monroe has a real strength as our understanding of what those things cost. So Sandy doesn't know this, but I have a whole cost of

build material from a model why broken down into sixty line items, and I'm not going to give away our costs on this for free, but just gonna say there goes to sales. Yeah, but forty three percent of the cost

of a testam model, why is the powertrain, battery pack, the cooling pack, the gearboxes, you know, So that's frontmere motor, that's Pernolil drive version in the battery really pull a lot of cost out. They essentially

have to slash that forty three percent of the cost and the half Now they stated that the cost of their drive unit is going to be about a thousand dollars. Right, the vehicle most likely will be rear wild drive, so

that'll end up being about a quarter of the cost. If you factor in

you're saving about half the cost on one unit, and then it's only going to be in the rear, so huge savings there. And then from a

battery perspective, the vehicle must be smaller and it'll probably end up being forty to fifty kilowatt hours and lithium iron phosphate. So based on just rough Napkin

math, that's about ten to twelve thousand dollars off the manufacturing costs of the vehicle and the fact that they insource all these components mean they're already not paying a supplier the supplier markup. So think of all the suppliers out there,

Continental, Bosh, Magna. They exist, they have huge staffs that sell,

they have overhead, they have buildings. Those organizations exist off of the

profit margin they're making off of selling all their components. If they eliminate that

profit margin that they're paying external partners, that's even more saving. So,

Sandy, what are your thoughts on where will they have to cut costs.

Well, one of the things that they've done to cut costs they've gone from wound motors to hairpin motors. And what I thought was brilliant, absolutely brilliant.

They didn't talk about it, but they showed it, and I about pid my I couldn't believe it. I'm getting all excited. And the guy

next to me, look, he was a financial guy of some sort.

Because we eventually got a seat, they said, oh, maybe you might like to have a you know, a coffee or something before the team comes back on stage, and so they all bugger it off. And when they

came back on stage, I mean, I'm all excited. I just saw

what I was hoping to see, and that drops the price significantly because it's fully automatable. General motors invented given kudos for that, but they invented the

hairpin motor, and it is a breeze to automate. It's fabulously easy to

automate those I don't have a PAVESI machine. Is a wonder to watch.

But they're expensive. They're the things that usually people buy from Windings. This

is just absolutely amazing. Now what do you get out of that? Well,

you get a boost somewhere between twenty and thirty better power out of that thing. And it's costs less at least fifteen plus percent less because I can

fully automate it. It's it's a it's a great idea. So I'm thinking

that there's one good example. But then if we look at them, if

we look at the batteries, Holy Mackerel, Korey and I. When the

Korey and I got a chance to go and see the dry cell manufacturing, I mean again, all these guys are looking around, and do you think they'll have cocktails? I was hoping we could get shrimp, you know,

and that kind of stuff. That's a little stretch. Some of them were

asking good questions. Oh yeah, okay, So the big question for me

was how much difference is there? So let's say that this right here,

right here, that's your standard standard line for making a battery pack, and a whole bunch of that is reclaiming or adding and claiming of the solvents that they need in order to make that thing with a dry cell. How about

down to one third the size? Two thirds is gone. And when they

showed that that vision, um, they had a little we weren't allowed to take pictures, but they showed the little vision of that. I couldn't believe

it. This is I mean, oh, Sandy, you don't understand prismatic

blah blah blah. Okay, give me a prismatic on that one. I

mean, or not prismatic. But yeah, so are they going to be

able to solve I mean they're having a problem with it with that battery.

Are they going to be able to solve it and scale it so? Well?

While we were there, um they did mention. Somebody asked a question,

are you using a dry process on the anode and the cathode? And

their answer was both. So they I believe they're the one that's on the

copper. I forget. I think it's the that they've gotten the dry process

down, but the cathode from based on what they said, they said both on that, so I feel like they've struggled to scale the second half of it. But clearly there was a ton of production happening while we were there.

They were creating these roles called mother roles that were one point five kilometers long and they were sixteen sixteen batteries in width that they cut eight times to create sixteen roles, or they cut fifteen times to create sixteen roles, and then the slit ones ended up being what goes into the battery packs, so each cell, sorry, not the pack. So they were producing. But

also on the line we noticed that there was twenty one seventy packs being installed into model wise in Texas, so not all the packs being installed were the structural packs that we you know, we have at Monroe that we've torn down, so SOT six eighties. Yeah, so we did not see forty six

eighty packs being installed in final assembly. Do you remember seeing that, Sandy,

I pointed that out. Yeah, I saw the twenty one seventies.

So at the end of the day they said that they were running twenty one seventies or they had twenty one seventies going into the packs. The forty six

eighties, they had two styles, the old style and the new dry cell style. And what they talked about was the new dry cell style. And

for that they said that they were they were looking at a giant amount of material savings because they didn't have to reclaim solvents and on and on. At

the end of the day, when you look at everything in Aggregant, the twenty five thousand dollars vehicle seems to be well within their reach. I have

no idea what everybody else is going to do, but I do know that that they're going to be in They're going to be in really good shape here real. Yeah. And the biggest news to me, to me personally,

was the switch to forty eight volts for the rest of the TV. Yeah.

The electrical architecture here. Hey, let's let's get into that boat.

We got to take a quick commercial break. We got to give a good

things out to our sponsor here at Bridgestone. But let's come back to that,

Corey. We'll pick it up right after this. How do you bridge

Stone tire stop shorter? On what roads? Is there? Hydrotrack technology but

you don't have to know how the science works, just where the brain is.

What really matters is they're bridge stone. All right, we're back.

Yeah, let's talk thirty eight vold because the voltage and cars hasn't changed since like the mid nineteen fifties. Yeah, I mentioned in twelve bolts. It's

always been always right. You know who's six volts combined or you had or

you had a twelve bowlt. No to look it up, Sandy, it's

six vaults up through the early nineteen fifties. Well, okay, all right,

I'll take your word for it. I think Forge was the first one

to go across the line twelve volts in sometime in the early fifties. Huh,

well, there you go. Away, go ahead anyway, the younger,

right, the wattage demands of modern vehicles is so much higher. Um,

it's incredible. Vehicles are larger. So I was driving to work today.

I drive a Yukon XL. It's huge, and I see this tiny

car. I thought it was a Geo Metro. I'm like, oh,

what is that? And it was a Dodge Caravan from like the late eighties,

early nineties, and it was so small. I'm like, what was

this a little clown car? So our vehicles are larger, the electrical demands

are so much higher. If you look at electric power steering, electric eboostum,

you have electric park break. These are high energy, high wattage demand

systems. It only makes sense to switch to forty eight volts. The savings

that you can get on the wiring is astronomical. And I was having dinner

with a couple engineers on Tuesday and I mentioned this and all of them were like, oh, yeah, you know, everyone's known that forty eight volts is the right voltage. But and these worked at these people worked at traditional

oms. They're like, yeah, but you know, no one could ever

commit. And I said, well, Tesla's doing it, and they're like,

well, it's the right decision. So even traditional OM engineers know that

this is the right decision. But the shock that it's going to send to

the supply base because let's say you're a seat supplier and you make seats, your motors and all your adjustments are all twelve volts. Well, Tesla makes

their own seats, so they've eliminated that. Now you have an HVAC supplier,

all the blower motors are twelve volts. Well, a lot of them

have switched to brushless PWM, so switching there isn't as big of a deal.

Same thing with your fan motor for your going pack. Those are brushless,

so they already have converters in there. So some of the higher draw

systems are they're primed for switching. It's the little stuff that doesn't matter,

your door lock mechanisms, your trunk latch, that's where it's going to be more expensive. It's not the hydraw things. So Tesla's really committing if they're

going to switch all their lighting, and now that lighting is already led, you already have conversion there. So cars are ready. They're ready for forty

eight bolts. They're finally just pulling the bandid off. Well here's the other

thing they made. They made the announcement of course that you know, whatever

they can't buy, they're going to make themselves do it. Okay, So

when you're when you're looking at the tier ones, they're probably rubbing their hands together and going, oh my god, what's going on here? But think

about it, like like those kinds of components are like two there, they're tier two, tier three kind of components if Tesla starts making their own forty eight Bold sensors, and what are these guys are gonna do? And guess

what they won't have? There will never be a shortage. Never. And

I'm sure that the two of you can remember when I used to sit on your show and say, I don't think I don't think that this outsourcing is a good idea. I've thought for a long time we went way too far

away from vertical integration. And usually people would say, well, are you

going to have your own you know, rubber plantations and whatnot. It's well,

maybe not that far. But at the end of the day, I'm

telling you I was right then. And by the way, I got to

tell you that when I was at Ford, and this is in the eighties.

In the eighties, everybody wanted to go to forty eight Bold systems, everybody except for one group, Finance. So there you go. So finally

engineering is going to win out over finance. Are you kidding me? Were

gonna buy those things? Not anymore? So Tesla has changed that a little

bit, and it's a will phone. It's going to force everybody else to

do it. Why should I have twice as much weight for my component try

like for the wiring and whatnot and anything that's low voltage, it's going to be the oeums who don't switch will just be at a disadvantage, and it's a disadvantage that the customer won't realize. So it'll just end up in the

either the pricing of the vehicle or lost profit margin for the business. Yeah,

you think about it, it's gonna take them forever to change anyway.

Even if they make the decision right now this afternoon, it's gonna take them years to make that change. And imagine, imagine if you're at GM and

you're just now rolling out your Ultium platform, and then they have the ultified platform which is supposed to underpin their architecture for probably a decade or two, and just a few weeks ago, Tesla announced forty eight volts. That means

you're going to be the whole time that ULI Ultium platform will be in use for the next ten twenty years, you're going to be obsolete. You're you're

obsoleted already at a disadvantage. So sole I mean, let's let's put some

some boundaries around this so we can understand what this disadvantage really means. I

mean, so a number you know, Mercedes has had for forty eight volt systems. BMW has been using forty eight volt systems, but they have a

twelve volt system as well, right, right, So so big difference, okayig difference, right, okay? But so how big is the big difference?

What what impact does that difference have either on the manufacturer or on the person who owns the vehicle. Yeah, so, first of all, those

forty eight volte systems you've mentioned, we're really aware of those. Those are

typically for PHVs or mild hybrids. They would add a forty eight volt battery

for a belt start generator, and this was real prevalent about ten to twelve years ago. When they added those forty eight vol systems, sometimes even higher

sometimes they were ninety volts. They would then be like, okay, now

that we have this other battery in here for the hybrid, let's run the steering rack and they've run four or five items off of it to get the savings on those wiring. But to go whole vehicle, that's the big deal.

Everything else, that's where you get your savings because there's so much wiring in a vehicle. For the low voltage wiring. That's where you're going to

attacking one or two systems, there's small savings. But then also having a

twelve volt lead acid battery. It's like it's like having both the worst of

both worlds. Sandy, Yeah, I couldn't agree more. I mean,

everything that Corey just said is absolutely one true. We've looked and heard about

everything that said that everybody's thinking about doing one of these days, but they didn't and so and we talked about the wiring, but actually the connectors are smaller too. Everything about it it gives you. So I've been telling everybody,

you know, oh we gotta have range, we got to have bigger batteries. Now that's not true. What you really need is number one arrow,

number two, friction, number three, um weight, and number four, which is the absolutely most important efficiency. And that efficiency can only come

by getting rid of the boat anchor things that you don't really need. And

one of those boat anchor things that you don't really need is a twelve bolt system. If you can move to forty eight bolts, I can reduce the

gauge of the wire. Why is teslas so much? I mean when you

look at to Audietron Scott. What is that one hundred and ten kilobot hours

or something in their in their battery. I can't remember something like a hundred.

I think it's ninety kil hours. I thought it was more than that.

But anyways, what's Tesla got seventy three? That one I do know?

And yet it goes for there, goes faster and goes longer. What

I don't get it? How can that possibly? Because it's the inefficiencies that

are associated with the delivering of the power and actually the accepting of the power.

Every time, every time somebody does something inside the car with a switch, a button. Uh, there's a little bit, there's a little bit

you lose. You lose every time. And that's why when we we we

we help people readsign the cars. Oh man, it's like I can't I

can't begin to tell you something. Sometimes it's just like fish shooting fish in

a bucket, not a barrel, a bucket, because it will have you thought of this, well, I don't think dot stop right there. You

are correct, you didn't think and they don't like it when you say that kind of But at the end of the day, the job is to try and keep as many companies as we possibly. It's not just we don't have

Tesla as a customer, they don't need us. But at the end of

the day, every every car company that I look at that has a problem, that's something we should try and help out with as much as we possibly can. I don't want to see a whole bunch of companies go belly up.

I'm not here voting for one car company. I'd like to see us

doing things that are in a smarter fashion, and that means changing the way we think, changing the way we do things, changing the engineering, preconceived notions. Oh no, no, we have to have twelve volte Why why

what does it do for me? Well, we've always done it. Execute

that, man. That's that's what I think really needs to happen. I

think brooming some of these characters out of the way, or changing the rules and regulations as to how you how you decide what innovation really and truly needs to happen. That those are the things that I mean, We're gonna talk

about Tesla all day long. Yeah, they're doing stuff brilliantly. What does

everybody else doing? I mean, how are they going to keep up?

How Sandy you've been saying that for thirty years. I mean that, well,

I got to memorize. Now, what will it take to make other

people in industry finally understand this? I mean, is it? Is it?

Basically? Because you know, Tesla's in their face now and they can't

avoid looking at it. And it used to be that they could like blithely

go on their way and pretend that business as usual is fine. Well,

um, that's going to be one thing. But um, boss Kettering,

we all kind of know who he was. He had done it fast drying

paint, He invented free on. He was the guy who gave us the

electric starter, all kinds of things, and he said that nature has to take his course. And then he would go on to explain that nature meant

that these guys are going to die and maybe somebody else will go on and take their place. I mean, it's the only thing that can happen.

Something has to die for something else to live, and some of these old ideas have to die. And as a rule, you know, when old

Charlie walks away from being the guy in charge of holding back the radical new stuff that these clowns are talking about. When Charlie moves away, guess what

we'll be able to progress. And that's the way it is. I don't

even think it's going to happen. Then. You know, one thing that

came across to me for you know, Master Plan part three is how they do so many things concurrently, design, engineering, manufacturing, designing of the manufacturing equipment, everybody working real time in one room, reporting to one person, and none of the legacies are set up to be able to do that.

The only ones who I think maybe have a chance are for It and Renault. And I only say that because you know they they've split off their

ev opera. They can start clean sheet. But the other ones will have

to go through enormous structural and I mean corporate structure changes and they're not set up to do that. I hope they're even talking about it. I haven't

heard any of them talk about it, and John, one thing I noticed when I was at the Tesla factory is that the culture of the people is different. When I interface with a lot of my friends and classmates who work

at traditional oms, typically my conversation with them it's like, hey, how's it going, And they talk about their career, they talk about their career inside of GM or Ford. Oh well, you know, I'm applied for

a level eight and my bonus was this. And it's like you talk to

anyone from Tesla, and it's never about themselves. It's always about where the

company's going, the advancement of their goals and their mission. It's like a

different mentality and it's kind of actually refreshing to hear people from Tesla versus people from traditional OEMs. And you can kind of see that in how they operate,

particularly in their presentation. Sandy and I liked one slide where they talked

about how they've internalized the development of their software that they use to run their business. And we're a small business, so Sandy and I will have to

have some software for our four owen K and our software for our AP and a R and it's a huge pain, and you try and tailor the software for our small business needs. And Tesla has their own internal software group that

develops software for them. How they sell the cars, how they collect the

data, that is not how it is at most traditional. No, you're

so I'm looking at my notes that I took from that, right, And so they called it the Tesla OS and the same software is for sales, it's for orders, it's for financial services, it's for accounts payable, it's for document generation. And they've got a feedback loop too, so that they

can learn how to make it even more efficient. I've never heard of any

company, well, motever, whatever, talk about an OS for the corporate because they buy it. They buy SAP, right, so what's wrong with

buying SAP? I mean you obviously I've never tried to use that shit.

I mean, oh my god, you gotta be kidding. The apocryphal story

the SA Peaky comes in and he's there so long he joins the bowling league, But that's exactly well, yeah, yeah, the the aged bowling league, I mean a senior bowling league. Yeah. SAP is like a nightmare

um interfacing it with anything, and we've tried to interface it with our software and then what they'll do is they'll make a change and didn't work anymore.

So they they tried to, you know, lock everything in. But I

can guarantee you for sure that whatever Tesla came up with, it's going to be a whole lot simpler. By the way, there are other car companies

that you should know about that do have vertical integration, and on top of that, they look at they look at a team in a slightly different way, and they all live in China. That is a problem for all North

American car companies because eventually, regardless about how much the president wants to stomp his foot, regardless of whether he happens to be a Republican or a Democrat, it makes no difference. Sooner or later. Sooner or later, they

will get into the United States. And that's why I'm trying to help out

as many car companies as we possibly can, especially here in the US, because quite frankly, I do not believe we have the talent, the techniques, or even the will to try and take him on. I think I

showed you guys a chart a long time ago and he said. Somebody said,

well, who do you think the biggest is going to be in twenty thirty And I said, probably by d I haven't changed that view. I

think that in North America Tesla may may may take a fairly large chunk, it'll be a little less now. Think goodness that Toyota fired Toyo Da and

put in I think Soako is his name's Sako San and yeah, and I met him a long long time ago. He probably doesn't remember me, but

I remember him. He's a smart guy, and he understands business, and

he's also an engineer. So I think that he's going to make a big,

big difference, and I believe he's going to spin the Toyota boat around and then like where I saw things falling off, like uh, I don't want to get into it, but VW and and Toyota both and the GM simply because I just don't think anyhow, let's just go on. Okay,

So those three companies, so Toyota, Volkswagon, General Motors. So are

you suggesting that you think that Toyota has a better chance than the other two?

I mean, oh, I know now, oh absolutely? Are you

yesterday? Yes, yesterday the one hundred ninety three billion bucks that that VW

said it's gonna be spending on evs? You think that that is? Where

are they going to get it? What are they going to sell next?

I'm gonna they're gonna have to sell Audie for sure. I mean, they

got rid of Porsche. They're gonna have to go and sell something else.

What are they gonna sell? And what are they gonna sell or let me

rephrase that. You know they what was at last October or whatever whenever they

announced their new diesel engine. You know what, Sometimes you gotta cut and

run. Um and they didn't. So they're hoping for the underprivileged countries on

this planet. Will still maintain the diesel and the gasoline and whatever. But

they don't buy nearly as many cars as what Volkswagen is trying to sell.

Volkswagen I made a mistake. I predicted they were going to clobber everybody.

I figured that the mistake with the diesel gate and whatnot, that company had spin around and with deats at the helm right to the moon. But um,

I don't see that happening anytime soon. So a question for Sanity and

Quarry. You guys think Toyota's really going to do a restructuring of the company,

no question about it. If they're if they're committed to a new path,

they'll execute very quickly. And we've always been impressed with Toyota vehicles for

decades, and they do they don't have They're not as far behind as you would think because they have so much expertise in the hybrid realm, particularly with the Prius and all the Preux variance. So when it comes to thermal systems,

batteries, traction motors, that's all very scalable. So they're not starting

from scratch. They just need to learn to scale up a full, full

BEV, a full purpose built BEV instead of what they currently have. Yeah,

they'll be okay. Yeah, I'm telling you. If you think back,

the first Toyota I ever saw had a chain drive. I could not

believe my eyes. Guy crawls underneath a car looking I bought a new car,

and he says, it doesn't even have a prop shaft. And I

looked up when I saw that, and I said, good luck, chumbley Well, it didn't take long before everybody was buying a toy Yoda. My

dad woh, never buy it. Japanese car. Well, World War two

kind of guys. They said things like that, but it wasn't long.

It didn't take long before even the guy across the street who was died in the wool I'm only buying a GM product, showed up with his Toyota saying I love this car. It works really well. And Toyota has a way

of turning every adversity around and like I said, um, I think that they're going to come along. I think Toyota, Honda, Uh, most

of the most of the most of the Asian car companies are definitely in it to win it, whereas other guys are still arguing, arguing, Sandy, what card you buy yesterday? I didn't buy it. You did, but

it was yeah, we bought a Kia and yes, and so Sue drove it last night and I couldn't film her because there were so many expletives.

Here's a deal. When you put a car into the marketplace, into today's

marketplace, and you're gonna try and take over some part of the EV market share, and you don't have what everybody's used to. Okay, so we

go in and a Rivian. It's gonna work just like the Teslo, and

on and on and on. But if you don't have that, if you

want to do push button start, push button stop, step on the brake, don't do this. Oh if this one doesn't have it, it doesn't

have region, and you're just you're kissing the market goodbye. You have to

be basically copying. This isn't a time to say, oh, we're going

to set the standard don't do it. Don't set the standard because you're gonna

lose. The Ionic is going to be a good car. I'm sure we're

gonna find lots of good things in it. And I'm sure that. I'm

sure that when I get a chance to drive, because I've driven more electric cars than what Sue has, I'm sure I'll have a better view of it.

But last night I was pooped. I got off the plane she was

driving. I'm not really interested in driving right now. I'll try it out

maybe tonight or something, but I'm sure I will have a different opinion.

But Sue, look at the buttons. Look at this, Look at this?

How do I find that? And it's got buttons and it's just totally

overwhelming. That car. That car needs to have a scrubbing. And when

it gets scrubbed down to what you know is going to be commonplace in the marketplace, it's going to save a tremendous amount of money. Because remember,

every button costs something. Every button has the potential for failure. Every button

is twelve volts, Every button is mechanical, on and on and on, and that kills your efficiency. So every time you push a button, you're

kissing away some of it. In fact, I was I gave a bunch

of speeches when I was at this high point university and I started talking about edge computing and one of the guys put up his hand. He says,

what's edge computing? So I explained, you know, you try and get

everything as close as you can because you don't want to lose any time whatsoever.

And the guy says, wow, this stuff all runs at the speed of electricity. That's faster than the speed of light. Everybody, Oh,

well, I guess what. Everything adds up. Sooner or later it adds

up. So the more you can get to edge computing, the more opportunity

you've got for efficiency. And like I said, weight, arrow, friction,

efficiency, efficiency, that's what you want to shoot for. It's easy.

Not only is it cheap, it actually reduces the cost of the product, it makes things go faster. Everything there. It's going to be hard

to every Every stylist wants a different look, so arrow is kind of tough.

Wait, if I want to get rid of weight, increase efficiency, and if I want to get rid of fiction, well there's a lot of ways that you can do that, but one of them is to make the product more efficient, more effective, and we all know how to do it.

It's just that in a lot of cases, sometimes you have to pay a nickel over here, but you can save a dime over there. And

that's why this vertical integration stuff works really super well because one guy is scrubbing the other guy's back. Yeah. Hey, look we're getting to the top

of the hour. And you know, it's interesting, We've talked a lot,

a lot of great information from both you guys. We could do three

or more shows on that whole master plan park and there was so much there.

Yeah, you could talk for a week. So one of the things

John and I talked about offline was one of the things that impressed us was the number of people that they had on that stage that we're articulating what it is that they do. And you know, it occurred to us that we've

never seen, at least not in recent history, the traditional automakers bring out that many people who are going to say, Okay, this is what we're doing. Whether you know it's the powertrain engineer or the design guy, or

the finance guy or you know, the human resources person, it means just like, what was that an impressive It but my take on it was Elon was showing the investors and the world that Tesla is more than just him.

So with all the Twitter stuff that's been happening, the stock was dropping when when Elon bought Twitter, and to me it was it was highlighting all the very impressive people and the roles that they play and then lining them all up was like a show a force like this is Tesla, not just Elon.

It was less about Elon and a lot of the other investor days and events.

Elon talks for sixty or eighty percent of the time, and oftentimes they'll have somebody else up there, but Elon had more of a muted role, and frankly, he was less eloquent and prepared than a lot of his other other people that were really great. So, but that's typical Elon. He

never is very good on stage when it comes to presenting. So my impression

was he was showing the world that Tessa's moving forward. Whether or not he's

in control or not, he clearly is still the leader. But that's what

I think he was trying to show, like, hey, look look at all these people. Yeah, you know, um, there was almost as

many people on stage as there was left in the audience because they took a break and everybody went off to eat shrimp. So at the end of the

day, Elon and his people were up there and we did not stick around.

Owned after about the four stupid ask questions that we did sit around and listen to, we figured, you know what, let's get in a car and get the hell out of here. There's nothing going to happen. We're

never going to be recognized because we're weighing a heck in the back. And

if we did ask a question, I mean we probably chase other people out of the room because all they were looking for. They were looking for the

golden nugets, nuggets that that appeal to them. And what is your financial

forecast for next quarter? How do you how do you explain somebody? Hey,

you know what, there's this long vision. Today is here, Tomorrow

is somewhere else. You got to get from here to there, and it

isn't next quarter. Oh I'm bored. You're bored because you don't know what

you're looking at. And that's where the pearls, the swine thing. It

keeps coming up to me over and over again. You know, I just

can't believe it. They came out and said all these marvelous things that just

made me so excited. I couldn't believe it. And then so, I

know you don't want to talk about financials, but stop right there, he said, he ain't going to talk about him. Why you ask it?

I mean, it just it was very very I can't imagine. I can't

imagine how these guys could be so ill informed, or why they why they brought those people in. Why didn't they bring somebody that actually kind of like

knew what was going on in the plant, understood what the heck they had just because they talked for hours. I have no idea how many slides there

were, but I'm telling you what, there was so much stuff in there.

It's like drinking from the fire hose of knowledge. It was just stunning.

Yeah, I totally agree. Like I said at the top of the

show, I was blown away by that presentation. I have never seen such

a thorough presentation, so comprehensive, so many different places of a company as that one was. And the stock dropped like eight percent as soon as the

thing was over, and after hours trading, and I was stunned by that because not me you loved at. What you need to do is get in,

get surrounded by by two hundred story one hundred and ninety eight other people that have no idea what they're looking at, and then suddenly it all becomes clear. Oh you didn't tell us anything. Oh my god, they must

be going broke. I can't imagine what had been like. I don't know

what the fanciest hotel in um, Oh yeah, we do the four seasons, but that that was at the four seasons. What was a fancy hotel

that we had breakfast four seasons, four seasons. So that's where all the

high rollers went and had their martinis and whatnot. And I'm sure that in

those conversations they convinced themselves that you know that that tesla is definitely heading south.

Now, oh everybody will overtake them, and they're wrong. They're wrong.

I mean, and you know what, I don't know. I don't,

I haven't got I got one guy that said, hey, Sandy, UM, can you give me an interview? I'm sure your phone is ringing

off the hook right, Well, it ain't. I didn't have any reporters

asking me what I thought, because they already know. They didn't no quarterly

reports. Oh they're going out of business quick, where's my short cell?

Whatever they have? I mean, they just they don't get it. They

had no idea what they were looking at. But I'll tell you one thing

I can tell you for sure, every OEM CEO, every one of them, they looked at that or their people looked at it, and they got reports and they went yeah, yeah, So that's a good transition, Sandy.

I actually have a question for John. So John, I think early

on, probably half a decade ago, maybe a decade ago, I think you were kind of lukewarm on the transition to evs, but I think you see Tesla's progress. I have a question for you, very specific. At

one point in time in the future, will Tesla sell more vehicles than GM?

Oh? Great question. So you're right. I mean I was very

skeptical of electric vehicles because I know every problem there is with them, and I was very skeptical of Tesla because it kept loading money every single year.

It just lost money year after year after year. But as this industry is

wont to do, it runs into a problem and they just keep chipping away at a chipping away at a chipping away at it so you know, batteries were so expensive. Cost has come down. Batteries were so heavy, they

still are heavy. The weights coming down. There was no recycling there.

Now there is recycling. So what I'm getting at is everything I knew that

was wrong the industry in and not always led by Tesla, but often they've just been chopping away at those problems. And uh, and then Tesla twenty

nineteen, I think it is they finally made a net profit, a gap profit for the year, and that's when I went, Okay, boom these guys not Now I believe that they can do it um, but when will it sell more than GM? So I want to say, uh, GM

sells like I think last year just under five million vehicles. Yeah, that

counts some of their Chinese ventures, it does, it does? It counts

four hundred and forty five thousand of those little ruling Mini evis. It makes

twenty two dollars in profit. But yeah, honest, So I mean Tesla

will need to have So let's just look in the US. I want to

say, GM does. I got the numbers, but three million, two

point one or something. No, No, no, I think it's more

than that. I think Ford's a at about two point four. I think

GM's at about three million. Yeah, okay, So Tesla needs to get

to three million units of capacity. As soon as it does that, it

will outsell General Motors. Well, there's another thing that we have to take

into account as well. So right now the United States has been pounding the

table and saying, don't buy Chinese stuff. What happens when China says,

oh, take your Yankee, Doug, GM and Ford and anybody else that's over there and get out of China. What do you think is going to

happen there? Well, look, you know, it was interesting because that

was a question to is it Tom shoot at Tesla the guy who's looked Pike.

He's emerging as the COO of the company. But one of the analysts

asked, you know, what about China? What's going on? And Elon

threw it right in his lap, Tom Sho's lap, and he said, you know, look, we do the best we can. We employ a

lot of people. You know, we we have a lot of suppliers in

China too that employ a lot of people. And so I think the more

likely thing, rather than China turn on Ford or General Motors, they'll just say oh, America, you will not sell US high tech chips. We're

not going to sell you any more lithium or cobalt or any of that kind of stuff. You know, just chop off the supply of raw materials and

bring the US EV industry to its knees. Well, not everybody, because

uh we You know, there's a lot of people in the industry that I know, and there's a lot of places now that are are showing up saying, oh, you want lithium, Oh, we can give it to you.

Oh and by the way, there's a whole city in Ontario called Cobalt for a reason. Um, we have gigantic deserts full of full of lithium

or anything else that you on for that matter. I think it's going to

be um an argument between alleged environmentalists and UM and progress, and I think that progress will win and the environmentalists will lose. So I think that raw

materials may be the sort of amalachies right now, But at the end of the day, I believe that the big stick is going to be you can't sell cars in China. That will be the big stick, and that will

be disastrous to Volkswagen, especially Volkswagen and General Motors. So, so,

Corey, when do you think that Tesla will out sell General Motors? I

think twenty twenty nine. So here's a question, say twenty twenty eight,

and there's Corey twenty twenty nine. So so Corey, Sandy, what's the

output at Fremont? How many? How many can they make there? And

what's the output going to be at Austin And what's the output going to be in Mexico? So, Sandy, you've already Sandy already predicted seven hundred and

fifty thousand out of out of Rouston Cybertruck and model Why because that's what they're going to build there, Okay, seven fifty there, and then the one in Mexico. The plant's going to be twice as big but require sixty percent

the floor space. So if you're twice as big, that's one point five

million, and if you're sixty percent the floor space, then that's two point two five million of the little cars, right, So, and then Freemont's what seven hundred and something. Yeah, well I don't know if they've ever

hit seven hundred thousand. So Leicest Tesla made one point four million vehicles right

around the world. And most of that's kind of what I'm focusing on is

I think there's a chance that Tesla will out sell General Motors in North America before the deck aids over. Yeah, and I'm taking a total volume,

not just DVS. Right, Well, we're we're looking at We're looking total

volume. Yes, you're right, Um, and I uh, like I

said, twenty twenty eight, it's the number that I'm I'm I've been hanging my hat on. I moved it from twenty thirty. Corey's at twenty twenty

nine because he knows I'm old and I can't add. This is this is

when they'll pass General Motors, Yes, exactly, said well the fifty percent, Yeah, fifty percent is what I think is going to be the market share. But I don't think General Motors are going to be able to keep

up because there's going to be other people that are coming in and they're going to eat away at GM's. Um, it doesn't matter. One year ain't

gonna make it, doesn't matter. It's going to be somewhere around twenty twenty

eight, twenty twenty nine, twenty thirty. Who cares which exact date it

is. I'm just telling you that that the uh, the folks at GM,

I've got to move. Like we were talking just a few minutes ago,

we had a management meeting and GM is doing a lot to try and figure out how they can get rid of the access that they've got in overhead.

I'm not going to just point it engineering or something, but overhead and in their to their benefit or in listening to what Corey had to say, sounded like they've got a good idea. They say, oh, we're not

going to lay anybody off, and then they lay a whole bunch of people up, and then they do evaluations and there's more people. Then they offer

a buyout. So if you're a low performer, now you're staring at a

buyout offer, I think you'll have a decent amount of people taking it.

So, Gary, what's your thought on GM offering buyouts to of salaried workers.

Well, I think that they may be shooting themselves in the foot from the standpoint of there are undoubtedly some good people that they're going they'll be losing because the people are going to say, you know what, they obviously don't value me that much. Therefore I'll take the buy out and I'll go find

somebody that does value me. And you know, Sandys, you're well aware

of you know, things like profound knowledge. Well, that takes time to

develop, and you know, at the end of the day, propulsion systems notwithstanding, there are still elements of a vehicle that need to be right in order for someone to want to buy it and to provide value and efficiency and so on. I think that they may be just and maybe this is just

an HR move that basically they say, well, you know what we got, We got to send this letter to all the people, because if we target people, it may be lawsuits city. So well, here's the thing.

When we were talking today, we're probably going to need more people.

And I said, it's like cancer. I mean, when you carve out

cancer, you've got to take some of the flesh that is still good with it. And some of that's going to be hit in the marketplace, and

that's probably where we're going to be to pick up a few folks. A

slightly different point of view from my side, My prediction is if there's somebody really good at GM who they really like, we're gonna tell them no, you don't get the buyout, and they'll make it very clear to them, we want you to stay, And to Gary's point, you have to make it blanket. Otherwise there's sexism, there's ageism, there's you know whatever kind

of bigotry that the company could be accused of performance reviews and blah blah blah.

Believe me, my bet is GM's going to keep the good people and not let them go. Well, there's another option depending on where you are.

Corey was talking about grade eights and they don't get this, but once you hit a certain point in time, and you hit a certain level in the Big three, you get the option for VTP voluntary termination plan. And

that's what I took when I left. And that VTP comes as a result

of you either having a total disagreement with the direction of the company or you hate your boss or something like that. These things happen, and that's how

occasionally you'll see somebody saying, oh, yeah, I'm going to be all done by the end of the month. That's VTP. They don't agree and

they don't want them hanging around. So here's your piece of paper that says

you're not allowed to talk nasty about whomever. Whatever company you're at, you're

sign that you get a big check and you'll leave, and that's the other option. So yeah, for lower level guys, that might be true,

but as you move up in the ranks, there are a lot of options to get out of a company. Well, when you look at what they're

getting rid of, it's middle management, upper levels of middle management. That's

what they're trying to clear out. Yeah, and it also excluded people who've

been hired in the last five years. So if they've done any stre j

hiring in the past five years, none of those people were included in this.

So yeah, okay, but these people are gonna be watching the show and they're gonna hear you guys basically seeing that Tesla's gonna eat their lunch.

Therefore, they're looking at their careers going maybe we got to go somewhere else.

Well, here's the thing they could be thinking that, But most of the time when they're going to be thinking is those guys don't know what they're talking about anyway, and they already tuned out. So there you are.

No, it's it's it's hard to I mean, people that have strongly held rules and regulations wind up with something called a skatoma. It's a block that

your eyes are working, but they can't really see. Your ears are listening,

but they aren't really. And this skatoma thing is rampant among people who

really and truly can't see the future. And there's a tremendous number of them,

I mean, especially in a world. Um there's a lot of guys.

In fact, I had an argument with somebody on the airplane, not an argument, but a short discussion. Ah, you know, those things

are gonna, you know, disappear really and I don't think so. But

no, everybody loves a big V eight and on and on and on.

Okay, finally, yeah, I'm not gonna argue. You know, my

dad told me that never argue with a fool. People can't tell who's who,

so um, so you just kind of like move on. And I

think that, really and truly there are people right now that have got that skatoma and they probably turned off already. They don't even want to hear the

name to it. Wait a minute, wait a minute. Don't we have

a president that doesn't use the name tesla or said he finally he finally said it? What Yeah, when he had to announce the deal with charging network,

Yeah, oh that's right. Jeez, Okay, I take it all

back. It's Mary Barrow, who I think has never mentioned tesla the word.

I don't think you can find one instance of her saying uttering the word tesla. Well, you'll have to have her on John, Yeah, ask

her to give her her comments on what she saw in the or Okay, I'll contact them. I don't have a lot of faith that i'll get her.

Other people at GM, yes, but you know Mary is so hard to get I'm sure they'll just basically say we don't talk about competitors and just leave it at that. Yeah, that sounds very a PC. Yeah,

so Corey, going back to what you asked before, I just looked it up. GM sold two point nine million vehicles in North America last year.

Ford sold two point three million. So wow. Yeah, I didn't realize

they were that close together. Yeah yeah, yeah, and Stillanta sold one

point eight million. But the funny thing is Stellantis made way more profit than

GM or four did. Yeah, they're just a real a smaller organization.

Yeah, I mean yeah, the group here in Auburn Hills is just I think it's like a third the size shadow if you go to GM or four there's just massive organizations. Well. The other thing too is Mark Stewart,

who runs Stilantis North America, claims their break even point is thirty percent capacity utilization, which blew my mind. You know the industry rule of thumb as

you hit eighty percent capacity and everything above that is is pure profit. He's

claiming their break even is under thirty percent. Is that possible, Sandy?

No, let me rephrase that. No. I have no idea. I

have never heard of it. I did. I did the studies at Ford

Motor Company when I was still in finance staff, and variable break even is what we were looking for. How do we make a plant? So it's

variable break even point? And uh, there's a lot that goes on inside

of a facility that tells me. I mean, you look at your legacy

costs. The legacy costs alone, UM would kick that. I don't know.

You know what, what's that old adage of figures don't lie, but liars can figure or something. I don't Figures don't lie but liars, Yeah,

something like that. But anyway, at the end of the day,

that's a very very very low number. Um, And I don't know,

Uh, I don't know what that includes. Or how they look. All

you can do is look at the profit that they they reported. But here's

the ring. We don't know anybody, hardly anybody left in engineering. We

definitely don't know anybody. Well not let me rephrase that. Okay, a

lot of the people that we knew aren't there anymore. A lot of the

executives that we knew are not there anymore. Somebody I have taken their place.

But no, here's what's going on. The guys in Auburn Hills are

down to two platforms, Stella Large and Stella Frame. Everything else has gone

to France and Italy. Yeah. So when you do that, when you

get rid of that that much overhead, I mean it overhead costs when it comes to profit, and if that's gone, if that's walked away, if it's not coming back, Yeah you can. You can run a company.

But at thirty percent, no, I've never heard. I've never heard that

kind of a number. I couldn't. I can't imagine how to get to

it. Really. Well, look, I broke down the numbers. I

looked at this all right, So, uh, Chrysler North America, I Stellantis North America has an operating margin almost equal to Tesla M sixteen point four.

That's right, that's exactly right to sixteen point eight, right, exactly right. Yeah, So I don't know if they're going to be able to

maintain that, you know, because they now they've got to go through the transition to electric, right they don't even have one electric on the road, and uh, you know that that that's gonna jumble up what they've so right now they're sitting pretty if they can maintain that, you know, God bless them, But it's going to be real tough. So somehow it seems that

muscle cars, jeeps, and light duty pickup trucks are not probably going to be internal combustion powered vehicles all are not going to be prosperous for the future for that company. Well, they can write it to the end. They

can write it to the end. But you know, you know, this

is what I was going to ask you guys too about Volkswagen. And it's

twenty five thousand dollar car. I mean, anybody can do twenty five thousand

gout dollar car. You know, you can buy a bolt today for twenty

six thousand, and that's even before the seventy five hundred dollars you know rebate kexing, but are they making money? You know, anyone can all a

vehicle for twenty five thousand. I've got a lot of confidence Tessla will make

decent margins on a twenty five thousand dollar car. Yeah, I have zero

confidence that VW will. I can guarantee you that go ahead. Co John.

I have a problem with americans expectation that a twenty five thousand dollars vehicle is something that we should be that's what we should be paying, because think about what's in a vehicle now that wasn't in a vehicle twenty years ago.

Think of the FMBSS standards, the amount of ultra high strength steel in the amb pillar, in your crash structure, your air bags. I drove a

nineteen ninety one Nissan Maxima that sold for eighteen thousand dollars in nineteen ninety one.

Based on inflation alone, eighteen thousand dollars in nineteen ninety one is like thirty one thousand dollars in today's dollars. And that Nissan Maxima had no analoc

breaks, no high strength steel, no airbags. It had a V six

engine with a man transmission. I loved it. I loved it, but

they were making a ton of money on that. Nissan was selling it at

seventeen or eighteen thousand back in nineteen ninety one. Now, if you look

at the major cost drivers in an electric vehicle, like I talked about early, forty three percent of the cost is the battery and power train. That

amount of money is almost double the build of material costs of a car built in the early nineties. So the American consumer saying where's my twenty five thousand

dollar car, it really should be where's my thirty four thousand dollar car?

If you want to equate it back to expectations in the nineties and two thousands.

I'm big on the macro economics of affordability, and twenty five thousand is a super high bar to achieve, or low threshold for people to get under.

Beyond how to get there, I just think the expectations are pretty aggressive for the American Yeah, but that's always been true, Corey, because you know, the Bureau of Labor Statistics always used to show a modern car compared to one in nineteen sixty seven, and it is exactly to your point.

It's like, holy crap. You know, the today's cars are even if

it was ten or twenty years ago or whatever, compared to nineteen sixty seven, the modern car was so much more car for the money. But the

reality is, I mean, historically in the United States, it took twenty four twenty five weeks of income annual income for somebody to be able to afford a car. You know, right now the average price of a car is

about fifty grand and the average household income is about sixty five grand, So that affordability index of twenty five weeks twenty four weeks of income is blown way out of kilter. If Tesla or anybody can come out with a good twenty

five thousand dollars car and it's looked, the re reality is to sell it, you've got to have the amenities that people are expecting, the challenges make a profit on it. But if somebody comes out with a decent electric that

they can make a profit on, it's going to be the modern day model T it's going to sales will explode. And that's that's where I'm coming from

as well. I believe that because Tesla is vertically integrated, and like I

said, I didn't believe in vertical integration all the way to rubber trees.

But at the end of the day, he's he's made deals with nickel, nickel mines. Uh Tesla's made deals with buying places where you can he can

mine lithium or refine lithium um. If you can control most of the costs,

sooner or later, you are going to be able to produce something that nobody, nobody else can even just dream of. And to twenty five thousand

do I think that they'll do that, But I know one thing they will do. They will make sure that they make as much profit today as they

will on that low cost vehicle. Yeah, and the low cost will still

include the hardware for and the sensors for their full self driving capability. Whether

or not it works to the level that everybody expects, they'll still be selling every vehicle with that. You know, it's fifteen hundred twenty five hundred dollars

worth of computing power and sensor suite, camera suite. That's not something other

OEMs are going to do. If they sell a low cost EV like the

Bolt, does the Bolt have full self driving capability? No, probably has

a backup camera. You know. Well, here's well, you know,

they destroy your twenty five thousand dollars car. If you charge fifteen thousand dollars

for FSD, that doesn't work. But you know what, there might be.

There might be another situation year that most financiers never really think about.

Most of the people in finance. So I sell them a car and I'm

giving away something. Oh, don't do that. But what happens if I

sell them a car and give something away, but then later on I can collect more money? Okay, this is like selling razor blades and that's what

they do. So well, so now Tesla gets money from when you charge.

Tesla gets money if you if you decide to get a full self driving Tesla could probably down the road safe. Well how about this, how about

a monthly fee not fifteen grand, but we'll turn that on inside your car for a monthly fee of I don't know, two hundred bucks a month or something like that. People are going to look at it all that's the same

as my cable bill or whatever. I'll do it because it's going to be

a lot more comfortable, a lot easier for them to get around. And

I'm telling you what when you put stuff into a car, like what Tesla's putting in where or you know, oh you don't you want to buy you don't like your car because the rear seats aren't heated. Done. All we

do is push the button right, that's where that's where Tesla can make money and everybody else won't. And will it show up in the initial sale,

maybe not. But what will happen later on is oh, you wanted this,

Oh you want that, you want this, you want that, and all of a sudden, these magic things come on because they're already there.

I mean, we've torn apart enough of the Tesla vehicles, so know what we bought. And remember when we tore apart the we tore apart the Model

three and we tore it over. Hey, look at this, those morons

look at that. They put rear seed heating in and as soon as Tesla

heard that, they turned the rear seat heating on for everybody. Oh,

I'm telling you what. These guys are smart. There's a difference between pragmatic

and inventive, and they're inventing. I did the math on the amount of

hardware that Tesla gave away, so the adoption rate for people paying for FSD is below fifteen percent. I think it's fourteen percent. So they've sold four

million vehicles and let's say three point five million had the hardware, so that's model three many New SNX. So with that adoption rate, about three million

of those vehicles are driving around with an extra thousand dollars worth of hardware that's not being utilized. So three million times a thousand is what three billion?

Yeah, three billion dollars of hardware that's just driving around the road, not being used to its capability because it still would need some processing power for your basic safety system. So the thousand dollars is actually a very conservative amount of

extra computing power for hardware two point five three and now hardware for I think it's wild considering how we've worked with traditional OEMs. That'll have seven wire harnesses

for all the trim levels. You know, you have the base model,

you have the LT, you have the LS, you have the high country, and they'll have a twenty seven dollars wire harness and a twenty three dollars wire harness and a twenty one dollar wire harness for all the different modules, for all the different trim levels. They'll they'll put in so much undue complexity

because they don't want to give away two extra dollars worth of wiring in the LT versus the LS. But Tessa will give away a thousand dollars worth of

computing power on every vehicle, which then drops the complexity level in the plant down to world class levels because every model three M, Model Y all gets the same module whether or not because they don't have all the trim levels.

So plant complexity reduction is something that's oftentimes overlooked, but a low amount of colors and essentially no variability on their builds besides battery pack size and whether or not you have two motors. It's incredible. Well, here's the thing that's

the Toyot sorry, the Honda mentality. And yeah, and they they won.

They they beat everybody. And when you tore their cars to pieces.

Oh, here's a connector that doesn't go anywhere. Here's a connector that doesn't

go anywhere. They don't care because they just got rid of several guys on

the assembly line. Um, they don't have to build as bigger plant.

On and on and on. I mean, people, I can't begin to

tell you how many folks told me I was full of shit. On the

casting stuff. Remember that thing's been sitting at They went out of business.

They're actually in China. Now. The guys that sent me those casting that

casting U system that they had for for a skate part, and they took it to China. Chinese got it. So that sandy that won't work.

That won't work. Now we've got the real numbers. Now, I mean

you take a third, a third of the of the body shop disappears and half the people oh well we didn't take that, and well wait a minute, it's made out of aluminum. Yeah, but the scrap rate is like

next to nothing. When you put scrap and everything else into this and they

don't have any how much does that save you? Well we didn't take into

account. Well then there's the quality a perfect build every time on a casting.

Well that doesn't mean anything to us, because on and on and on they'll always find the excuse. And that's the big thing I was talking about,

that psychological thing to Skatoma. They'll always go and figure out how to

block the facts so they can live in whatever the strange world is that they live in. Well, look, you know what are the advantages Chesla has

is so few models and so it can really concentrate on one. And you

know what you see is they introduce new things like castings when they go to new plants and so, you know, like the Mexico one, they're going to revolutionize vehicle assembly when they build that plant, and they're going to have a low cost model in there. The legacies that they got to go with

what they got. I mean, you know, if they go out and

start building all new plants and the like, you know, they've they've just obsoleted this the sunk cost that they've got, and they can't do anything with it. And so that's another reasons why the legacies they don't have a fighting

chance with the way that Tesla is doing things. It reminds me of the

cell phone industry when the app when the iPhone was launched. I think the

big players were Motorola and Nokia, BlackBerry and a BlackBerry, physical buttons, footphones. They were dominating the market for the better part of a decade or

even even longer. My father had a big Motorola, you know, brick

phone. He was over the road mechanic and he had all sorts of batteries

in his truck and he had that for like a decade and in a matter of years, the iPhone essentially revolutionized what a cell phone is and I cannot live without my iPhone fourteen Pro. Actually all of our filming is done on

iPhones. Every minute of our fifty million views and like half a billion minutes

of Watchtime was filmed on an iPhone because it an eleven Pro, twelve Pro, thirteen Pro fourteen Pro. People were like, wow, you know,

the colors are so great, wide color gamut, HDR, great optical image stabilization. This has all been born from an industry that, you know,

the old cell phone industry was was so established and they got wiped off the planet. I don't think we'll see quite such a dramatic I'm not saying that

oeams are going to be wiped off the planet, but I think there's going to be casualties. But then there's some people who who did exactly what you

were saying, John, didn't Ford Motor Company going tear down a facility to put in the lightning, and didn't they add two ends to it so they can get to one hundred and fifty maybe two hundred thousand out of that plant.

I mean, if they want to, they can do it. But

where are they going to get the investment funds? Who's going to give them

that money? Now that you've got a couple of banks failing, and the

facts and everything else, they're all dried up and gun. Where are they

going to get that funding? Who's going to give that to them in order

to make it happen? Well, look, you know, Ford is building

that Blue Oval City. It's essentially a brand new rouge plant down in Tennessee.

It's going to be very vertically integrated. And this is why I'm saying,

I think maybe Ford is Ford and Renault. They're the only ones who

have carved out all their ev operations, set them up totally separate. All

the top execs in this new Ford model E. With the exception of one

of them, Lisa Drake, none of them have automotive experience. They're all

out of Silicon Valley, And so that tells me they have a chance of doing it right. Designing, engineering, manufacturing, all in the same room,

designing all at the same time, all reporting to one person that and Renaud's apparently doing something very similar carving that off. But that's why I think,

you know, with this technological disruption, just doing a better job of what you've been doing is not going to get the job done. And this

is one of the flaws of the Toyota production system. When you look at

Toyota's or Tesla's new manufacturing process, new assembly process, Toyota has been improving a flawed system. Tesla said, We're not going to try to improve a

flawed system. We're going to reinvent it completely and take all those inefficiencies out

of it. Okay, but is it going to do that at every single

one of its plants or will it do it going forward? I mean,

John, as you said earlier, you know, when they're build a new plant, you put in the new casting operation or whatever. So so I

mean you'll have Shanghai, you'll have Berlin, you'll have Fremont. Are these

plants all going to transition to this new modular build or will they continue There's no point. There would be no point in continuing it, but everything that

they do in the future probably will go in that direction. Now having said

that, I can tell you that the Fremont plant has got the great big giant casting things put into their facility. Those big giant can things will basically

take up a small corner of the body shop, and they'll start making things that way. I can tell you for sure, because um, well I

know the I know the casting guys, and I know the all the mold makers and stuff like that that are that are that that they they've they've let me know that almost everybody on the planet is buying those great big casting machines because they've figured out, hey, this makes dollars and cents, so let's go in that direction. So can you do it on the hop absolutely.

The other thing is what happens to old plants. Well, you shut them

down or mothball them and call it a day, and then have everybody in the city, you know, pointing at you and say, you bastard, what did you do to us? Well, you can't. You have another

option, and that is as one product dies off, you can go in there and scrub it clean. And we've done that. We've done that with

a dozens dozens of different industrial kind of facilities and in different industries. Okay,

you limp along for a little while, you do build ahead, then you go in and scrap everything out. It's gone. You keep some stuff,

okay, so you're still going to need some stamping dice and still still need some stamping machines. Keep the good ones, relay it out, then

do it again. And it's not that hard. And what you do is

you take an old building that you know, nope, everybody's neglected it.

Well, once you got everything out, water blasts the thing, painted with this new kinds of paint that stick to everything, put on a new roof, and guess what, you're back in business. Or you can do what

they did in at the rouge for Ford and just say you know what, this head its day, forget it, bulldoze it. And somehow they still

got product out the door. But now they've got a new facility that's actually

three times as big as the old the old truck plant, and and now you can survive and thrive. That's the kind of stuff. That's the different

kind of thinking that you have to have. And again we get back to

why aren't they thinking or doing that? Well, because there's a bunch of

old guys that have a certain view on how things should be done, and that view is old fashioned. And if it's old fashioned and you don't do

anything new, you wind up dying. So there will be death, There

will be there is going to be people who are going to disappear, and when they vanish, that might mean there's a plant available that you can refurbish and put another product in. And then you take your old plant and you

say, maybe if it's too expensive to refurbish ttfn bulldoz that turn it into I don't know, a shopping mall or something. And the way you go

do it again. And I think I think, for instance, what was

the biggest tragedy that ever happened during during the shutdown or during the bank meltdown?

They tore down the GM truck plant. Wah. I could not believe

when that Pontiac truck plant was torn to pieces. That was a billion two

for that paint shot. All of that facility was just absolutely brilliantly done.

It all got scrapped. Why because the people in Washington had no clue.

Well, I just we'll just get rid of that. A brand new,

absolutely brilliant plant went away that now GM could use to you know, turn into whatever their next generation product is. At the end of the day,

you have to start thinking further ahead than the end of your nose. And

that's where it's really going to be tough for most of the OEMs. Yeah,

Corey. So getting back to Gary's question, I'd like to get your

thoughts too, how do you think Tesla is going to backfill? You know,

because even at the Matter Plan Part three day, they mentioned that they build three different model wise, the one in Shanghai is different than the one in Berlin is different than the one in Austin. How do you think they're

going to handle getting everything back to where it's all co paesthetic. So they've

actually set a precedent here. So when Sandy interviewed Elon in January of twenty

twenty one, he asked a question, Hey, are you going to put these giga castings in the Model three? And his answer was essentially no.

So the tooling, the stamping, dies, the design of the Model three was pretty well established and they've been manufacturing it from late twenty seventeen, eighteen, nineteen twenty and now it's twenty twenty one. So we didn't necessarily,

you know, believe that. So we bought a twenty twenty two, a

twenty twenty one Tesla Model three, got it, looked at it and lo and behold, it just had was all stampings. But they did update the

so they made some improvements, but that core architecture remained the same. So

they've shown that once they set out some level of investment for a model, even though they launched the model why with these Giga castings, they still make the Model three today all stampings, so they have stuck it out. Now.

I think they're working on a new Model three and that they've shown some being driven around with Camo. I think that maybe it's taken them seven years

essentially, with six years, probably the end of this year, they may finally launch a Model three with some Giga castings. So I think you'll find

a similar timeline. So if they finally launch these this low cost vehicle with

this crazy build, you know, modular build, that's a bigger plant tear up than replacing stampings with castings. Right, So I think you'll still see

anywhere from seven to ten years of build out of Model wise in Shanghai, Giga, Berlin and Texas as Is including the cyber truck. However, they're

building the cyber truck, and then it won't be until you have a generational change. You have a new generation of Model Y and potentially a new plant

where they'll change what it looks like or maybe they'll make a three row off road at suv like a key EB nine or a Grand Cherokee Explorer size.

You may see them with a new plant and a new vehicle go that way before. So I still think there's too much sunk cost and tooling and design

and validation for them to make a monumental change quickly. It's not a bad

thing, but they look, they're making money and they're selling the product, you know, so they can keep doing things like they're doing right now.

Yeah. Well, they also they've also seen a drop in the Model three.

The Model Why basically cannibalized a lot of the sales that they would have got out of the Model three, and so I think that the Model three will be something that once it gets into a lower volume, eaten up by what's going on with Model Why, eventually they'll they'll come up with something new or something different. But it's why bother right now. Not. I mean,

they're dominating a marketplace. They can't build cars fast on them. I

think they got like half an hour of a backlog, that's about it.

I mean, they seem to be able to sell anything they can push out the door. But I think that I think that they're like Corey said,

there's going to be some new product that'll take the place of the Model three.

I'm not sure what, but I'm pretty sure that it's going to be um something worthwhile. He's Sandy. We forgot the most important thing to bring

up auto Line past one hundred thousand subscribers. John, what do you got

to show up? We got the plaque from Yeah and a very nice personal

letter and I know you guys have gotten it two from the CEO of YouTube and I likewise h what she said here. She said, if every one

of your viewers represented a light year, it would stretch across the Milky Way.

Oh wow, wow, So you guys with your viewers, could you know, wrap it up three times? I don't know. I actually don't

know what to what that number would be. But but anyway, I'm congratulations

to you, Johant. This excellent, excellent news. I did not know.

I'm kept in the dark about all these important things. Thanks for bringing

that up, Corey. I really appreciate it. Oh yeah, hey,

look and once again you were an inspiration for us even starting our own channel.

And I remember talking to you because you were in our building right before the pandemic, and I think I filmed for you a little clip you did a Sandy in the model Model Why. And after I did that, it's

like, well, I can do this, you know, that's how hard can it be? You know, just got to edit videos whatever. And

I told you, And I also told David Welch from Bloomberg and David Tracy from Gelopnik, because all three of you came in in like two day period.

I said, hey, can you can you just mention we're starting a channel, and all of you were really kind, Yeah, no problem, will mention it. And then it took off like a rocket ship. We

got like forty thousand subscribers in like three weeks, you know, and now Sandy's he gets recognized in airports like yeah, well look, you guys deservedly have gotten the giant audience that you have because you're doing something nobody else is doing in the world. I mean, your teardowns, your insights, you

know, the programs that you do, the multiple different videos that you put out. Nobody has that content, I mean, no one. Yeah,

thanks, well, well, thank you very much. It's very humbling to

hear this, this praise and quite frankly, John, I've always looked up to you. So you're you are the you are the voice of Detroit and

I'm I mean and everybody knows who you are. Um. I might get

recognized by by people in an airport or something, but the real people who who run the automotive world, everybody knows who John McElroy is. Not so

many of them know who Corey and Sandy is. So well, Gary you're

you're all right too? Yeah? Yeah, oh yeah, oh Gary?

Oh yeah, sorry, yeah, we forgot about Gary. Everybody knows Gary

Vassilash. Hey, guys, we should probably wrap it up here. You've

been extraordinarily generous with your time. Really appreciate it, and ud let's keep

doing this because this was a great conversation. You know, I'm sure the

audience appreciated you know, how much insight, how many facts and all that came out of this. Well, thank you very much for inviting us.

It's very kind of you to do that. Thank you, Thank god,

Thanks okay, thank you, thanks yea, thank you, and thank everybody for having tuned in. I'll Don'tline after Hours is brought to you by Bridgetone

Tires Solutions for your journey. If you liked this program, I would like

to learn more about the automotive industry. Check out our website at Autoline dot

tv, or look for us on YouTube on the Autoline channel

Tesla Cybertruck

Volkswagen I

Toyota Prius

Fiat Freemont

Nissan Maxima

Ford Model T

Tesla Model Y

Ford F-150 Lightning

Jeep Grand Cherokee

Ford Explorer

About this episode

Original notes