AAH #706 - The Reckoning: EVs, AVs and ICEs

Speaker 1: Out Online After Hours is brought to you by bridge Stone Tires Solutions for your journey.

Speaker 2: Welcome, everyone, appreciate your joining us on Bottoline after Hours today.

John's not here, So again I had to impanel the smartest people that.

Speaker 3: I know in this industry, and since they weren't available, you got to.

Speaker 2: Sam. So, Sam, we submed I will never be able

to say your last name harder than that slash, I can assure you. But so from Guide House Insights, pleasure

to be here, that right, right, yeah, right, okay. Stephanie

Brindley got that right from S and P Global Mobility.

And we have a new bie on the show, never been here before, John bell Snyder from Autoblog. John, happy

to be here, thank you. So I'm just I'm just

I'm just throwing you into the to the mailstream with these two. I mean, it's just like so it's unbelievable.

Speaker 4: So so okay, So Sam, one of the things that I'm very fascinated about then you're deeply involved with studying is the autonomous vehicle market. And you know, a couple

of weeks ago Alphabet said, WEIMO, we're going to be five.

Speaker 2: Billion dollars to help you does anybody else have a chance in that space?

Speaker 3: In North America, It's gonna be tough for anybody to compete, but you know, and it's still such a nascent market right now. WEAMO is operating in three cities in the

greater Phoenix area, San Francisco, and LA obviously to you know, some pretty good sized markets, and they're pretty well established.

They're doing over fifty thousand paid rides a week now between those three cities. And they just announced expansions in

the Bay Area UH and UH and l A UH in the past within the past few days. UH and

last month they also expanded a couple of months ago, they expanded their service area in in the Phoenix area UH to over three hundred square miles. There's still lots

of opportunity UH for others to come in and play in that market. That the challenge for everybody is figuring

out a business model. And you know, of course that's

just looking at the US. UH. In other parts of

the world, you know, Europe, there's basically nothing yet. UH,

nobody's established really yet. But in China you've got a

number of pretty aggressive competitors. You've got by do Auto

x UH pony A I and and and several others, uh Momenta that are all pretty strong competitors in that market. So,

you know, I think what we'll see is the companies that are based here are not really going to gain any kind of foothold in China, and that's going to be a much bigger market for these things anyway, I think than the US and for the foreseeable future. But

there's still lots of time for others to come in.

Speaker 2: Uh.

Speaker 3: You know, so in the next several years, you know, you could potentially see Crews make a comeback. Emotional could

uh you know, could make a comeback. Uh and Zeke's

still has has potential because you know, they've got backing from Amazon.

Speaker 2: Okay, so so you mentioned Motional, So that's the Hyundai Aptive thing.

Speaker 3: But then mostly.

Speaker 2: Because Active said, we're not going to invest in that anymore.

Speaker 3: Right, and what they said, you know when in doing that, and when when they announced the additional investment from Hyundai into Emotional a couple of months ago. Uh, at the

same time they announced that they were pushing back there really you know, really their commercial launch of driverless robo taxi services to twenty twenty six was supposed to start.

They were targeting late twenty three. Uh, they pushed it

back to twenty six, stating that, you know, we're still trying to figure out what is the right business model to try to get the profitability. That's the same thing

we heard a couple of years ago from Ford when they pulled the plug on ourg you know, Cruz you know, has been was among others struggling, among other things, with trying to figure out how to get to a profitable business model. Even Weimo is not making profits, not not

by any stretch of the imagination, which is why Alphabet is having to pump in another five billion dollars. But

the fact that Alphabet is now putting in that five billion when they had kind of scaled back over the last several years some of their some of their investment in Weaimo to see how things played out, you know, starting several years ago, for the first time they took some outside investment because, uh, you know, Ruth Poor at the now former CFO of Alphabet, you know, she had been scaling back a lot of the outside projects, the other bats projects within Alphabet, but she kept going with

Weaimo because that one seemed to have the most potential.

And now this is the biggest infusion that Weimo's gotten in quite some time with this five billion. So clearly

the Alphabet management sees that, yeah, we're starting to get some scale there and getting some consistency and starting to build up, and so they see some potential. Whether or

not it's profitable potential in the next five to ten years remains to be seen, but s getting there.

Speaker 2: So so, Stephanie, you you look at the car market very closely in vehicles and types, and so when General Motors announced that the Crew's origin, the vehicle that was developed with Honda in General Motors, that bread box shaped thing was off the table and that they were going to go with the next generation Bolt, did that surprise you?

Speaker 5: Not really, with the problems the cruise is having and the actual the primary reason that it got stalled and killed is they weren't getting the the waivers that they needed to go with no steering wheel and with no accelerator pedels and no braking pedal. They needed that waiver

in order to make that work, and they weren't really getting it. And there is a way to do it

on a super low volume, but you have to do like under three thousand units a year. And so during

the earnings call when when Mary addressed that, you know, she's just like that. That wasn't a volume and the

normal low waiver you weren't going to get enough to it.

You couldn't get an approval to do that. They've been

working with nits what four years on.

Speaker 3: That SAMI something like that.

Speaker 5: Yeah, so it's not new, So they didn't get that approval and without that approval, you weren't going to be able to have enough of them at any point, and so they kind of were. And they've already designed so

if they changed their mind, they could do that if they got.

Speaker 3: There about the tooling.

Speaker 5: They've got there about the tooling, they could they could turn it back on at any point if they wanted to.

But right now they're not seeing it. And I agree

with Sam the part of the problem here is the business model for all of these people getting into it.

There's two it's twofold, I think, and that the technology WAYMOW and Cruise have both demonstrated really strong technology. Part

of Cruz's problem with the accident, of course, was one of those things that they didn't handle it as as bussed as they could not just that there was an accident, but there was a little bit of back and forth on that and that that doesn't ever go well. But

neither of the both of them are still building up and scaling and figuring out the technology. It's not necessarily

ready to expand to fifty markets and in the next two years. And even if it were to standpoint, they're

not sure quite how you're going to make money on it.

Their depot system hasn't been set up. Who are you

really going to have managed the cars? Are you going

to do it like Musk has floated? Do you do

it like Airbnb or do you do it like an Uber car? These are questions that are still out there

and haven't been resolved, and a lot of it goes to this really nascent.

Speaker 2: Well, you know you just mentioned Uber and and Uber's earnings call this week, the CEO said, quote, over the quarter, we grew av trips on Uber by six times year over year via our ten partnerships across mobility, delivery and freight.

And his last name, who is Coastal Shaki, So it's even more difficult to say that, you know, he was he was basically saying that the advantage that Uber brings to the party is basically, you know, they have a system and therefore they're able to optimize the utilization of vehicles and you know that's how you.

Speaker 5: Know, that's very true, but that doesn't necessarily help way more crews get to the skill that they want with these vehicles.

Speaker 3: That helps Uber, Yeah.

Speaker 2: But before Uber's got a partner. So the like the

Waimo thing in Phoenix is Uber and.

Speaker 5: Emotional is working with Left so that that part of it working with Lift and Uber to kind of get the trips managed, I don't think is the more difficult.

Speaker 3: Yeah. I mean that's a fairly straightforward thing. I mean

that's basically the same as what they do today with ride hailing. You know, when back when Uber and Lyft

were both trying to develop their own automated driving systems, I wrote on numerous occasions that this was a fool's errand for them to try to be developing their own because what they had is that what they have is an asset light business model. They don't own any of

the vehicles for any of the stuff that they do, and by trying to develop their own automated driving systems, they would have then had to make transition to owning, manufacturing or build or buying vehicles and managing all these vehicles themselves, and they would have gone from an asset light to a very asset heavy model. And that's where

the operational you know, trying to figure out the business model becomes a problem, because now you've added a whole bunch of expense that you don't have with the kind of platform that they currently have. By doing partnerships with

Waimo and Cruz and others, you know, it's no different from human drivers coming on the platform. They're just bring

bring automated vehicles on and so they still take a cut of every ride it takes.

Speaker 2: It it provides an advantage for companies like Waimo to collaborate with.

Speaker 3: Yeah, because they get more utilization and the right hailing platform gets to take a cut of the fares.

Speaker 6: And I'm not I wouldn't even necessarily.

Speaker 5: It doesn't feel as much like a collaboration as it does a supply contract. You're gonna you're gonna give me

my software.

Speaker 3: Yeah, that's that's really all that's really much more of a supply collaboration is kind of a little going to stretch applies.

Speaker 2: Right, geny thing is all nonsense or where are you on this?

Speaker 7: Well? I think, you know, I think the collaboration between

the two makes sense. I think.

Speaker 8: When it comes to passengers riding in cars, the automated cars offer predictability, you don't have to talk to a person.

Speaker 7: But you know, I think on the data side.

Speaker 8: The WEIMO has to you know, continue to get the data that needs from the from the rides, from the sensors, and expand that and do simulations. And I don't think

Uber really wants to do all that, So I think working together they can sort of serve each other's models as customer and partner.

Speaker 3: Just to elaborate a little bit on kind of what the business model challenges are, particularly for ride hailing, uh, you know, for to do robo taxi services. The problem

that you have is that they're at any given time of the day there is not a consistent demand for rides, and the rides the distribution of where people want to go is also very inconsistent. In the morning, you tend

to have a lot of people wanting rides from suburbs or outer parts of the city in towards city center areas where they might be working opposite at the other end of the day, and during those those peak periods of demand, oftentimes at the other end of the ride, there's nobody there that wants to go back in the opposite direction, and so what you end up with is the vehicles having to do a lot of deadhead miles where they drop somebody off and then they've got to travel back to where they started from with nobody in the vehicle. So the actual utilization where you're generating revenue,

the revenue generating miles are going to be probably somewhere at best between thirty five to maybe forty five or fifty percent, and perhaps even less than that. And with

the costs associated with these vehicles, you're not making money on it. It becomes very difficult. Deliveries on the other hand,

and this is why a lot of these companies have also spent a lot of effort on trying to figure out how to do deliveries. Deliveries are a lot more

predictable because you can plot roots. You know, especially if

you can do multiple deliveries on a single trip. You

can have a go, have the vehicle go from a warehouse or store or distribution center, do multiple stops, drop off orders, and then come back to back closest to where you started from, and you can minimize those deadhead miles, so the unit costs are way better in that case.

Speaker 2: So basically, just as could arguably be the case with even evs or fuel cell vehicles, that if you have a deterministic use of the vehicle, it makes more sense than random use of the vehicle.

Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean that really applies to any kind of view.

Speaker 6: It does.

Speaker 5: And some of the deadhead mile stuff that Sam was talking about applies to if you're in a taxi service, which is why you either have super expensive rides from the airport from Detroit up Detroit.

Speaker 3: From any airport.

Speaker 5: Really we're here, So I thought i'd a different example, and you don't have that many companies even offering the service.

And when you do, it's expensive. Well, you layer on

the extra cost of antonous vehicle, and that gets intensely much more and much more difficult because you've got Sam would know the number for the cost of sensors better than I would, but you've got huge costs and sensors and software and things that you know, a Lincoln or you know, whatever your your taxi cab doesn't have right now, so that's that's part of it too.

Speaker 2: So so so Sam you you mentioned in passing China and a number of companies there doing autonomous vehicles, which, as Stephanie indicates, our sensor intensive vehicles. And so the

Biden administration has announced that basically it may be banning vehicles Chinese software in vehicles that would have level three autonomy and above and looking at it from the point of view of a national security concern. What's your take

on that.

Speaker 3: I think, you know, when you're when you start talking about the software, that's that's a little bit better than some of the other things that have been talked about.

I mean, there's been talks, there's been discussions about, for example, banning vehicles with Chinese sensors Chinese light our sensors as an example. You know, just having a Chinese made sensor

on there is not necessarily going to be potentially beneficial to any any adversary because the data on the vehicle is not that useful without you know, without having some way to get it off the vehicle. And that's where

potentially the software, you know, taking the software out of the loop there could achieve the kinds of goals that they want of making potentially making these vehicles more secure.

Now do you know, do the Chinese you know, is it really a security problem at all? Anyway? That's pretty debatable.

You know, I think, you know, they're making a boogeyman out of China in this case, because the reality is, you know, having the software in consumer vehicles is not necessarily if you're if what you're doing is trying to do data gathering, it's not really the most efficient way to do it. You know, having software on our phones

that's actually probably a lot more efficient than doing it on our cars because our phones are actually you know, they're trying to track somebody. You know, your phone is

going to be on you all the time. Your car

gets left somewhere in a parking lot. You don't necessarily

know what the final destination is. You have a general

idea what you know, what's in that area, but you don't necessarily know final destinations or what somebody is doing.

Have much better idea. The phones are a much bigger risk,

much bigger attack surface than our cars.

Speaker 2: So you know, this issue of China today. I believe

it was that MG, which is owned by s A C announced that it would be building a factory in an R and D center in Mexico. So so, Stephanie,

do you see this as being edging into the US market or are they going to completely ignore the US market and just you know, go to Latin America and South America and elsewhere.

Speaker 5: I think they start with Latin America and South America and elsewhere because there is an opportunity there and they have there, are selling well, and they hit sixty thousand units in Mexico last year. Last month they outsold had

to in Mexico. You have to go down there. They

weren't in the top ten, but they're up there pretty high.

So they're they're doing really well in Mexico, and.

Speaker 6: They could they could do better with capacity there.

Speaker 5: I've been thinking about that one, of course, since the announcement came up this morning. And I wonder if it's

if the brand in and of itself has got a slight edge over BYD to come into North America just because it's a more known brand. And I wonder if

the influence of the MG history and SAIC is also a partner of GM. I wonder if they have and

this is not known yet but I wonder if they have just a little bit of an edge on understanding Western tastes. And they are pretty successful in Europe, so

they have a history of already building cars that Western buyers are more used to, and BID has competitive vehicles.

It's not that they're not, but there's still a different thought process, it is still a different culture. You look

at the products that General Motors develops for US and for China, and there are really there are a lot of similarities, but there's some very subtle differences that really come down to what people expect in different markets. So

is there potential for MG to understand the US market faster than BID?

Speaker 6: There may be.

Speaker 5: I still think you're looking at a well, first of all, we don't know how much they're going to spend, we don't know what time the timeline of that construction, we don't know where the plant's going to be, So you're probably talking four years before that plant even exists. And

then you're also talking they will deal with Latin America and South America first. So if MG does ultimately want

to go into the US through this route, we are still talking. If you we're still probably talking eight nine

years before that even kind of pencils, and there's plenty for them to do. But I do think there's potential

depending on how this all shakes out, John, what.

Speaker 2: Do you think about Chinese brands being accepted in the United States? Assuming that you know, I mean, some could

argue Pollstar is a Chinese brand. Some could argue that

now Volvo is a Chinese brand. But if there was

if there was a vehicle that was labeled B Y B, right, how would that be accepted? Do you think.

Speaker 7: You know the climate right now?

Speaker 8: I think politically there's gonna gonna be a lot of people.

Speaker 7: Just saying don't buy Chinese products.

Speaker 8: But yet the end consumer, I think a lot of people don't really care where it comes from. They just

want the cheaper product, the product that works better, the product that's available. But yeah, when you've got regulations being imposed,

it makes the whole thing tricky. It makes it tricky

for the manufacturers who want to bring these things in here and do.

Speaker 7: It at a lower cost.

Speaker 8: In terms of yeah, the average Joe who wants to buy a car, it's just going to depend on the market.

Speaker 7: I think, you know, East coast, West Coast are.

Speaker 8: Going to be more receptive to it, but like you know, the Red States, I think there's still that gung hou.

Speaker 7: There's a lot of paranoia.

Speaker 8: About China, and I think it'll be a political topic no matter what.

Speaker 6: I think.

Speaker 5: It reminds me of U A W sort of stuff, you know, do you buy U W or do not buy U a W? And that that all of that

talk happens, and then somebody goes into the show room advice what they feel like. I do think that there's

opportunity for cost I think there's there's probably a growing number, and there's a certain lum of buyers. It's just like

is it cheap?

Speaker 6: Oh wait?

Speaker 5: And this by DS is cheaper than a Toyota, and it's cheaper than the Toyota and it feels almost as good or close enough that I can't tell the difference because I'm just driving back and forth to work. There

there are people who will just look at that, and I think there's an interesting element as well. As the

US market gets more and more diverse and we have more and more people from various different cultures in different spaces, there's there's a change to what the typical American consumer thinks.

Because that is changing, it's much more fraction than it was before, and forgetting political stuff. It's not that it's

just somebody making that decision. There are I was talking

with a colleague and you know, absolutely he was hands down, if the buid is cheaper than the Toyota, I'm buying it because it's the cheapest thing I can find.

Speaker 6: And that value was what he wanted.

Speaker 5: And I think that Americans tend to want to find a deal, but they want to trust the brand and it's not They're not likely to say even though it's ten thousand dollars cheaper than the Toyota, So that's going to seal the deal for me. We're going to need

a couple of others so that there's more people bringing in different ideas, bringing in different norms, and bringing in different cultures. So I think we might see a different

a different shakeout from what we saw versus when Toyota and Honda came in and there was anti Japanese sentiment at that point. When there's constant UAW conversations and that

is huge here in Detroit, but you get out of Troit and nobody cares. When it's in the news, it

kind of matters. Six weeks later ask somebody where the

car is built, and they have no idea. They may

or may not know an MG they may, And I think it's important. One of the important thing about the

China brands too, is whether they remember that MG was a European brand at one point, and Volvo doesn't feel like a Chinese brand to most American consumers. I don't

think MG will, but BYD they just don't know where it came from.

Speaker 2: See, I just sort of wonder, okay if they don't know.

Speaker 6: It was Chinese till you tell them, Okay.

Speaker 3: If we go back and then you know, there's a lot of people out there wearing red baseball caps with made in China tags on the inside that they just don't care. Yeah, And I think I think if it's

the right product, if it's a good product, it's well built, and is there a price that they can afford.

Speaker 6: They'll consider it.

Speaker 3: Yeah, they'll absolutely consider it regardless of where it comes from.

Speaker 2: Well, I was gonna say, if we go back to the you know, the the Hyundai experience, when when Hyundai was having all of those quality problems, right, and so basically what they do they basically said, Okay, we're going to offer the best warranty out there, right, and people listened and they said, oh, if they're going to offer that warranty, they must be pretty good cars, because who wants to well.

Speaker 5: And there was timing on that too, because when they offered the better warranty, they had a better car than they did when they started. So it wasn't just offering

the warranty, it was the ability to improve that quality and get it to where it needed to be, and the warranty and enabled people to give it a second try if they had or if.

Speaker 6: They knew somebody.

Speaker 2: When the chairman of Hyundai told the people that basically we're going to be offering this, they suddenly realized, oh, we've got to start building better vehicles. They built the

better vehicles than they announced that they would have.

Speaker 7: That.

Speaker 3: You know, when you look at contemporary Chinese cars, especially the evs. Yeah, fifteen years ago you looked at a

Chinese car, you know, it was it was quite literally a joke. I mean, they were poorly built, they were

terrible design, you know, fit and finish was awful. You

look at a Chinese car today and it's as good as anything built anywhere in the world. It is so

you know, I think people will you know, they'll walk into a showroom and they'll look at that and they'll say, it's how much a month? Sign me up? I'll take it.

Speaker 2: So so okay, So I want each of you to say, Okay, what will the consequence of this beyond the domestic auto industry in let's say ten years.

Speaker 5: In ten years, I don't think we have a huge I think we're looking a little bit for that than ten years. I don't think ten years is going to

be the at least for the US market.

Speaker 2: Yeah, US mark.

Speaker 5: For global it's a bit of a different story. But

the other part of it is anytime you enter a new player, you're somebody loses market share, right, There.

Speaker 8: Will definitely be more competition, And yeah, it depends on the rules at the time, like are they going to have the build manufacturing in the US? I think, you know,

already established players have more of a head start. But

then there are people like Voldo, Yeah we'll just switch our manufacturing from China to South Carolina and call it a day and just expand that. But I think, yeah,

ten years, you know, it might start to see a little more competition, which I think will be definitely good for the consumer. But yeah, I don't know, it'll be

longer than that before. You know, I think any major

player starts getting hit here at home in China. Yeah,

like GM Ford, they are going to struggle. But here,

I don't I don't think so for a while.

Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean Western brands are already getting hammered in China.

I mean they've gone from a few years ago having a majority of the Chinese market to now being the like thirty five percent of the Chinese market and shrinking fast and a lot. You know, what happens here A

lot of that is going to depend on what the political situation is, what situation is with tariffs. You know,

if if we start applying tariffs even more aggressively, you know, even if they start trying to build vehicles here. You know,

Trump has talked about putting tariffs on Chinese brand vehicles built in Mexico. Technically, vehicles in Mexican built in Mexico

should be able to come in duty free because of the USMCA, But if he starts up, you know, if here or anyone else starts applying tariffs to Chinese brand vehicles built in Mexico, you know, that's that's going to have an impact on what the adoption is, you know, because it obviously has a big impact on what they can offer. Its pricing a lot also depends on what

the Chinese domestic economy looks like, because one of the things to keep in mind is a lot of these Chinese OEMs are still losing a ton of money. They

most of them are not profitable, and most of them have at least some notable equity stake that belongs to some level of Chinese government, whether it's federal government or provincial or local government. They have a significant equity stake

in there, and they are being subsidized. A lot of

these vehicles are being sold at a loss. How long

can they continue to do that, uh, you know, in order to gain market share?

Speaker 2: It remains to be seen. But I mean, okay, so

there's like, you know, half a bazillion Chinese automakers, maybe a give or take, you know, just just ball parking there. Okay,

But I mean, isn't isn't it? Basically? I mean it's

by d Jili and s A, I see. I mean

those are sort of like the big three, right yeah.

Speaker 3: Yeah, And then there's a bunch of others that are creeping up there.

Speaker 2: And so my point is is that if they're going to be building plants in Mexico, it's probably you know, now we've you know, two out of those three have already announced, right and you the other shoels WROP at some point and and so I mean that's.

Speaker 3: And Julie is already here with Volvo in South Carolina.

Speaker 2: Right, so, you know. But but the thing that I

think about is is that if we go back in time ten years and look at the China market, how you know, the flip to what they call new inner vehicles and so they announced last month it was the first time, you know, more than fifty percent of the vehicles sold there are new energy vehicles. But that includes

hybrids and plugins, plug ins. But I mean, it's just

been like this, you know, really fat gift. And I

just wonder if we look at the domestics that are in the process of changing over what they have historically done, and you've got these guys who are basically saying, you know what, we got no history, We've got no you know, thing that we need, you know, preconceived notions of how you do stuff. We'll build a plant and start pounding

these things out.

Speaker 5: Well, I think there's a few things and one of it and sam As Sand pointed out that the quality of the Chinese vehicles the first time they were at the Detroit Auto Show and some other other places was bad.

Speaker 3: They stayed your hand in those panels.

Speaker 5: But they figured out how they nailed down how to build the cars in that period. And what you looked

even at Honda and Toyota, and you look at Hondai Kia, and you look at some others when they when they came in, they learned how to build cars when they were here. So that that growing pain period of the

lack of quality. You know, Hundai went through that while

they were selling here, right, China went through that. Chinese

most of the Chinese automakers went through that when they were in their own home market. And so they can

come with a product that's already baked. And I think

that's going to be interesting about it too. The production

adding manufacturing plants in North America doesn't make the market any bigger, right, so somebody is going to have to lose at that point in terms of you know, if BYD and and if MG started off by shipping a lot more south, then that's less pressure on the US market, pressure on southern markets and South American markets, but not US.

But adding a bunch more plants means somebody on other plants is effectively going to produce.

Speaker 6: Less or not.

Speaker 3: We've already got too much capacity, and.

Speaker 5: They already have too much capacity, and they've got China and they do which is all right, all right, so we got we gotta do.

Speaker 2: I'm going to stop you care I'm going to have you continue what we see. We can't even stop this show.

We got so much going on, but we are going to stop for our good friends, bridgetone, so take it away.

Speaker 9: Keeping your heart racing in and out of the gym, that's what really matters.

Speaker 1: Bridge.

Speaker 9: Don't pretends to sport as tires with a fifty thousand mile limited warranty.

Speaker 2: And we are back. And I interrupted Stephanie when she

was talking about the overcapacity situation in the United States talking about how if we get new Chinese plants in here, that this means somebody else is going to lose some volume.

Speaker 5: So somebody else will and it doesn't necessarily have to happen quickly, but you know that ultimately will happen. We

already have more capacity than we really need in China, the mainland China market. With new energy vehicles being not

necessarily pure battery. I think that's an interesting thing too,

because if you look at if you if you look at Toyota, for example, and apply the Chinese definition of new energy vehicles like they're at fifty percent for some of their things, they're already like there with just hybrids.

So I think I think that considering and granted the most of the conversation is about Chinese automakers bringing in electric vehicles because of the price potential, price parody there, considering that was only new energy vehicles and assuming that is the only way is an interesting element of it too.

It's it doesn't necessarily the Mexico byd Shark, right, that's a plug in hybrid that is not an electric that's not destined for the US right now. But they're not

only electric vehicles, and I think thinking of them that way is interesting as well. You have to you have

to kind of think about it a little bit differently that powertrain solution.

Speaker 3: And you actually have quite an interesting mix of via goals in Chinese market. You've got BEVs. You've got hybrids,

You've got what we think of a traditional plug in hybrids, you know, twenty thirty forty mile range, but they're also an increasing number of extended range evs, you know, where it's a larger battery, the power the engine is only operating as a generator, kind of like you know what we're going to eventually see from Stilantis with the RAM charger, you know, and there's already a number of those on the market in China, and so there's a more diverse mix of vehicle types, powertrain types in that market, and

things that they could offer here that we're not currently getting from domestic manufacturers.

Speaker 2: So sort of shifting to another thing almost entirely, and this is going to be right in your ballpark, I think.

Speaker 5: So.

Speaker 2: Did you see the report that Carlo's going said that basically Honda is manipulating to take over Nissan. And this

goes back to when Nissan and Honda earlier this year had announced and that they were going to be collaborating on software defined vehicles, and now they've added Mitsubishi to the mix, and so I started looking into that agreement that they had in I mean, I was really rather astonished of the closeness with which they are talking about collaborating.

They're working on R and D quote considering the possibility of mass production development of whatever comes out of this R and D. They're talking about batteries, sharing specs and suppliers,

and Honda and Nissan will study the lithium ion batteries for evs manufactured by l H Battery Company, a joint venture company between Honda and LG Energy Solutions to Nissan in twenty twenty eight. They're going to commodize the specs

on E axles, and they're going to look at their global portfolios and agree on models and regions to provide supplemental models to one another. So, Sam, this software defined

vehicle thing seems to have kicked this off. Tell us

what you think about what's going on here?

Speaker 3: Yeah, well, you know, between software defined vehicles and electrification, there's a lot that you know, there's a lot of things that are very costly to develop that are not necessarily product differentiators from a consumer standpoint. You know, things

like the battery, the underlying software platform that's running on a vehicle. You know, even most of the applications that

are running on a vehicle to the to the average consumer, they don't know the difference between what comes from a dozen different companies. It's all basically the same user interfaces.

You know that the top level skin of what it looks like, that's where you can differentiate. And some of

the features you know that you can put on there to create a different user experience are differentiators. But there's

a lot of this other stuff that is very costly to develop and benefits from a lot of scale, both on the R and D side and the manufacturing side, that it makes sense and I think we are going to We've already been seeing a lot of these kinds of partnerships, and we saw the recent announcement of the joint venture between VW and Rivian to use Rivian's electrical and electronic architecture and their software platform for future VW Group vehicles, and we're going to see a lot more of that. This is just one example. Whether Honda goes

all the way to a full takeover of Nissan, that may or may not be necessary if they can gain enough benefits just from the collaboration on the underpinnings of the vehicles.

Speaker 5: It's an interesting development too, and I guess I would say we're thinking of when Carlos go and says this is an obvious takeover, you know, is that a little bit of an old school thinking, because the reality is you need to share on the batteration, you need to share in the software, and you need to share on Stam's point, those things that the consumers doesn't really don't.

Speaker 6: Really care about.

Speaker 5: They care about the range of the battery, they care about power of the battery, but where it came from, and you know what, chemistry does not matter to the consumer at this point.

Speaker 6: It's not something you can choose. So if you can

share all of that.

Speaker 5: And if you say that that Honda's looking to take over a Nissan, that that's thinking about it as manufacturing plants and and the vehicle stuff, that that is separate.

So maybe it's it's a little bit the world is changing, and I don't know that that's.

Speaker 2: How many years ago did Sir Jio Marcioni have his Confessions of.

Speaker 3: A Capital Capital Junkies.

Speaker 2: Yeah, when he was saying that more the domestics needed to share, share all of that stuff, and I mean that was ten years ago.

Speaker 8: Yeah, And yeah, I think as long as you share the underpinnings and not the designs.

Speaker 7: You know, I think consumers.

Speaker 8: Aren't big fans of badge engineering. You look at the

partnership with Honda and and GM and just some of those things just don't carry over very well to Honda, and it's sort of.

Speaker 7: I think, almost dilutes the brand a little bit.

Speaker 3: But as long as it's you know, stuff that's underneath the.

Speaker 8: Skin and you don't see, I think it makes a lot of sense. Ford and Volkswagen had a pretty good

success with their partnership of trading you know, underpinning of vehicles while still maintaining their own designs.

Speaker 2: So so okay, so so expanding that a little bit. Okay,

So the Honda prologue is and it's basically Blazer. It's

a Blazer. Okay, it was one thing and there's like, okay,

switch gear and there. So so that vehicle. Are you

are you suggesting that that's not a good thing?

Speaker 3: Yeah, sort of, yes.

Speaker 8: I I think in its execution it should be. It

should feel more.

Speaker 7: Like a Honda.

Speaker 8: I think accurate did it a little better, but but yeah.

Speaker 2: A little better.

Speaker 3: Well that's there are challenges with with those two vehicles because the GM aul tiam platform is so overweight that you know it has negative impacts on the driving dynamics.

I think that has a that's that's a big part of the way those vehicles feel.

Speaker 5: Yeah, and switch gear is interesting and and and some consumers aren't going back and forth necessarily the Chevrin hub and and may not pick up on the switch gear.

But you're right, that's where differentiation needs to happen. I mean,

I remember when when Saturn was.

Speaker 2: Bringing between us.

Speaker 6: That didn't happen. I know when Saturn brought.

Speaker 2: Over the astro, which was that was an see I thought you were going to go down the road. When

Saturn offered the red line, which had.

Speaker 6: Consumers didn't notice that, but it was. It was, it

was the cool thing.

Speaker 5: But no, I remember sitting in that carr and thinking, like, the switch gear is very European, and that was a bigger step because it was European switch gear which operated a little bit differently and wouldn't feel as familiar at least hadas using SHP GM. Switch gear operates a way

that the consumer expects it to. But that's where some

of the differentiation needs to come into play. But how

much do you want to spend and developing a different term and indicator.

Speaker 2: Right, But you know, as.

Speaker 3: An example, I just spent the past weekend driving the twenty twenty five Lincoln Aviator, and a couple of weeks ago drove the Explorer, the twenty five Explorer, and those under the skin are the same vehicle, but you sit in it and it looks and feels completely different from an Explorer, and you know, it looks completely different on the outside. That's an example, and that's within one company.

There's no reason why two companies or more companies, you know, if they collaborated in the right ways, couldn't provide that more of that differentiation that the customer does see and feel in the driving experience. And so it can be done,

you know. And GM maybe didn't go as far as

they should have with the Prologue and ZDX and the GM vehicles. But but that's not to say it can't

be done.

Speaker 2: So you're suggesting that perhaps, when we get back to the original question, that that Carlos going was just basically or or or looking for some visibility.

Speaker 3: Yeah, looking for some attemptions, of course.

Speaker 5: Yeah, but that's and that's maybe just not seeing that that part of it. Handa does not need to take

over Nissan for the two of them to be able to share development and have a big impact on both of their bottom lines. They don't need to take each

other each other over to make that happen.

Speaker 2: But does one need at some point to disappear?

Speaker 3: There's it could be argued that there are too many brands, and certainly if we start seeing a bunch of Chinese OEM's coming in, there will absolutely absolutely be too many brand. Yes,

there's not going to be enough scale for a lot of these brands to continue surviving, but I don't know that we're necessarily at that stage yet.

Speaker 5: But that's one of my concerns with all the brands that do want to come in, is how do you fit?

We already have enough brands that consumers get plenty confused, and then we have brands that are offering ice and electric vehicles in the same showroom, so they're offering twice as many cars as they did three years ago, and that's going to continue to explode and at what point.

Speaker 6: That's why I.

Speaker 5: Think it's so one of the things that I think makes it so difficult for a BID or an MG or a invast to break in. I mean, even Genesis

with all of their support from Hyundai and from having at least put the name out there a little bit on the Hyundai Genesis before, it's taken them again, almost a decade to get to where they're at. It takes

a long time to get enough consumers aware and enough consumers to consider, and enough consumers to buy. That isn't

a process that you can just drop it up and say here we go. It's going to take forever. That

doesn't mean that they won't be committed enough to accomplish it, but it's going to take a long time. I wonder

if maybe at some of the smaller brands that are really more at risk than than than the larger brands Mazda.

Speaker 3: Or Yeahs or both of those. Yeah, maybe some of

the you know, some of the more premium brands like an Alpha, Ramele, certainly Fiat. Yeah, Fiat's reason for existing

in the US market is highly debatable, but yeah, definitely.

And you know, even some of the brands that are incoming like Scout, Yeah, and you know you mentioned MG and you know, at least MG having some brand awareness in the US, mgs haven't been sold in the US in forty years, you know, just like Scout. And while

those of us that are old enough certainly remember MG and remember Scout, it's questionable how many you know, next generation consumers.

Speaker 2: Do you remember MG or Scout?

Speaker 7: I do from you right about him. I remember seeing

around as a kid and.

Speaker 2: Yeah, you saw some old guy driving one and you.

Speaker 3: Thought, look at that.

Speaker 8: Well, my buddy's dad had an import shop where he worked on him, so he was always bringing mgs through.

Speaker 2: I didn't really see Scouts, but.

Speaker 3: All droommate had an MGB My roommate after college had had a Scout.

Speaker 8: Uh.

Speaker 3: But you know that was forty thirty five years ago.

You know how many people today really have awareness? So

do we do we need these additional brands coming into the market? Is are they Are they offering anything particularly unique?

And particularly in the case of Scout. Uh, you know,

we've already got Rivian, you know that has gotten itself somewhat established here and they're going after the exact same consumers.

Speaker 2: So so okay, so are you suggesting that So for those who have founded of the new Scout is this is basically Volkswagen has said, okay, we own this brand because what they got it.

Speaker 3: Yeah, they've got Navistar, which is brand name, yeah owned International International owned Scout and so they're so they're building a factory in North Carolina, Georgia.

Speaker 2: Thank you sean To to build this adventure vehicle, right.

Speaker 3: Bicky truck on an suv that are electric, just like another brand based in in.

Speaker 6: Uh in, Illinois, all right, market and then another.

Speaker 3: And it'll be sharing It'll probably be sharing the same electrical architecture and software platform.

Speaker 2: Mm hmmm. So okay, So so what I thought I

heard you say is it basically that you've got Rivian and Scout. We've got too many brands, right, So does

this mean one of those goes away? Or we just

live with two companies offering essentially the same product.

Speaker 3: I mean, we already have multiple companies offering very similar products that compete with each other. But you know, in

the case of new ones, you know that don't have an established brand awareness, you know, it's debatable whether they will be able to get enough traction in the marketplace to be self sustaining.

Speaker 8: I feel like Scout's a cool enough brand though that you know, they can leverage some of their history and get people pumped up and.

Speaker 6: The question is can they get enough people pumped up and do enough people want it?

Speaker 3: That is a really good question.

Speaker 7: It's a funny time to.

Speaker 6: Be coming before we're coming into this conversation.

Speaker 5: And Bronco and Wrangler are obviously not electric and both of them had production issues at the end of twenty three with the strike and with some other things. But

that market hasn't really grown with Bronco coming in.

Speaker 2: So you're saying the pie is this big, yeah, and rank when you used to have a big piece of that pie, but now the slice is much smaller slices, but it's still the pie.

Speaker 3: Yeah.

Speaker 5: They Scout and Ruvian are going for the same customer.

You don't get more customers because you're still going for the same customer. And is there enough volume of those

customers to support two brands the marketal side, I won't, but that's the questions as we go. Scout's really cool,

as we go, Bronco is really cool. Are there enough

to support it in a long term? Bronco's not gone anywhere,

But and you've.

Speaker 3: Also got other competitors also going for like Toyota this year has launched a new forerunner, a new Land Cruiser, you know, both of which are arguably in very similar segments to Wrangler and Brocco and Rivian and Scout, and there's others you know, coming over the next several years as well from other manufacturers, the off road.

Speaker 5: Oriented adventure type SGV vehicle, and that that whole attitude and ethos is really popular right now, but it doesn't necessarily mean that is still not a ceiling for the number of people who want it.

Speaker 6: And when everybody is kind of hid in that direction, you know, it's.

Speaker 5: I think it's a big question million vehicles, and I don't I don't think it's it's it's growing a lot, I mean.

Speaker 2: Okay, So, so we've established that Volkswagen owns Scout. Volkswagen

is just announced it is putting five billion dollars in.

Speaker 6: Billion is a really is it really is a constant number? Right,

It's five billion for new energy a new battery plant here, It's five billion. It's just it's just it's a change.

Speaker 2: It's good, it's a good number. It's a good number.

It's the anti to.

Speaker 3: Get into the game.

Speaker 2: Okay. So so I'm just looking at from the point

of view, is that basically and what people don't know is that we had a little exchange about this yesterday.

So I'm still astonished that Rivian announced it lost not five billion, but one point four to six billion dollars in the second quarter, which basically means it loss thirty two thousand, seven hundred dollars per vehicle sold. This just

astonishes me that you're a dealer and you're you know, you're saying to somebody, Hey, you know, I want you to buy this one RS you know, one RT and it you know, it's it starts at seventy grand and we'll just but oh, by the way, we're going to be losing thirty two thousand, seven hundred bucks on each one of these if we see. Okay, so they're.

Speaker 3: Losing all this money.

Speaker 2: But because they have up on volume, think yeah, it eventually worked out for Amazon and some other things. So

so they got the first tranch of the billion, and that's like save the day. So I look at it

from the point of view I'm I'm in Wolfsberg and I'm saying, holy crap, things are going to hell in China for us, Things are going to hell in Europe for us. We're putting all this money and yes, I

understand that this is where software defind vehicle electrical architecture sort of thing. But I'm saying, you know, we got

this company, they're competing with our Scout. I don't think

I like that very much. Maybe I wouldn't want to

be sitting in Scott keyhos chair. Yeah, so Scott Keyo

is a man who runs Scout. So okay, Sam elaborate.

Speaker 3: Well, you know, I mean Scout is still at least two and a half years away from first production. Rivian

is already selling about sixty sixty five thousand vehicles a year.

A year before Scout arrives, Rivian's going to be launching the R two and then the R three. I would

not want to be the last one arriving at the party, And for Scout, that's kind of the position that they're in.

They are going to be one of the last ones arriving to this party where there is, you know, as Stephanie said, a limited demand for these types of vehicles at least, you know, like the R one class, maybe more so for the R two and R three. Those

should definitely sell in much higher number because they're going into market segments that are significantly larger, especially the R three.

But it's you know, when you're starting from scratch, building a factory, building a platform, and you know, and re establishing a brand after forty plus years, that's that's going to be a tough challenge for anybody, for the folks running Scout.

Speaker 2: So do you think it'll be to the point where there's actually someone running Scout or do you think that at some point in the not two distant future, not ten years sooner than that five billion, ten years that's the numbers of the day that Volkswagen just may say h were.

Speaker 6: Arj Skarrange doesn't want to give up.

Speaker 5: I think that Rivian as and we haven't in the deal is not complete so we haven't seen the final documents yet, but from what I can tell so far, Rivian's independence is maintained in this and I don't see Rivian wanting to do that. And they're in the right trajectory.

These losses that they've had are reduced from before and it's getting better. At one point they were losing one

hundred and ten thousand dollars on these vehicles that they were selling for seventy or eighty, so it was way bad and the volume that it should be expected. You know,

there's a limit right to They do need to get that volume up, they do need to get the scale, but they're also going to lose or they're also going to get a lot of benefit from the scale of the components that now are going to be spread across BW vehicles, and not quite as quickly as the media report sort of suggests, because it's going to take time for BW to put it on their architecture, but that that is a benefit for ri Rivian's going to get some revenue out of that JV too, and you know,

some of it, you know, comes down to addity. Ran

had a plan that didn't include being bought by someone else, and if they can execute on that plan, then they don't need to be So I think the hang up is going to be at Rivian and VW has fifteen brands, do you really need another one and just the idea of just buying it it's just kind of just quick and like that sounds obvious, But do you remember what VW's EV and software defined vehicle initial investment was going

to be is way over fifty or sixty billion.

Speaker 3: I think it was on the order of about eighty some billion dollars.

Speaker 5: Yeah, and they spent five billion, no, four billion. What

was on argo was in the billions too, and they just walked away.

Speaker 3: Yeah, they put about two and a half billion into and.

Speaker 5: Just walked away from that. So the five billion is

a lot when you think about it as rivian. That's

a lot when we think about it here. But when

you look at what VW is spending and what they have, it doesn't necessarily mean oh I bought you, I own you top to bottom because I gave you this money and they didn't get there and they're getting something for them.

Speaker 2: But ego back the point of Okay, if you have an exact almost competitor to what you are trying to sell, you may look someone as skance at at at least one of the two things.

Speaker 3: Let's put it this way. I I am not a

hundred I am far from one hundred percent convinced that Scout vehicles will ever go on sale. Yeah. I give

it maybe at best of fifty to fifty shot. Really

Scout makes it to production, Wow, that's more likely. I

would not be at all surprised to see Volkswagen Group, you know, pull the plug and say yeah, we don't need this sell the brand. You know, we we we

don't think that we're going to be able to sell enough of these to justify the investment, and that they.

Speaker 2: Just say yeah no, Yeah.

Speaker 8: When Scout was announced, you know, everyone was banking on more and more EV buyers and sort of plateaut a little bit. I think a lot of the EV share

is growing among everyone sort of but Tesla, but still there's it's just not there's not the turnover from ice to electric as everyone.

Speaker 7: Expected maybe two, three, four or five years ago. And

back then, you know, they see, uh, the Bronco came out.

Speaker 8: Everyone's uh really excited about this, and you know Bolinger people were pretty excited about that.

Speaker 7: Enthusiasts anyway. But then they see we.

Speaker 2: Had we had the Ballander in the studio.

Speaker 3: I think twice it was literally here in the studio and Robert, very very loud minority were saying, yeah, this is really cool, we want this. That's you know kind

of this. You know, a very similar loud minority uh

that you know talks about loving brown manual transmission station wagons.

Uh you know, so with a diesel with a diesel yeah, or or a big super charge V eight you know that'll also work. So you know, there's often a loud

minority that speaks up and then when it comes to actually putting putting their money on the lines, like maybe not so much. So you know, scout, like I said,

I would give it at best fifty to fifty that it makes it. But to the you know, the question

of Rivian, the thing I think what's going to be interesting to watch is the next two three quarters for Rivian because they've they're now starting to build the updated version of the R one. The original R one was

a really good vehicle, but it was also in many ways very over engineered and very expensive to manufactures way more by the time they got to production, they realized it was way more expensive to build than they thought it was going to be because of a lot of design decisions that they made for things that people consumers don't actually see. And you know, having looked at the

details of what they're changing for the R two, you know, and what they're starting, what they're building now that's taking a lot of cost out of the vehicle. So you know,

from a consumer perspective, it's very much similar. In fact,

you know, it's there would be even higher performance versions of it. But and it'll have a lot of new

feature capabilities, but it'll cost Revion a lot less to build it. So that gap, I think over the next

six to twelve months, is going to shrink dramatically, and I would not be surprised to see them get to at least break even on the R one by the middle of next year.

Speaker 2: So, speaking of costs, in Stephanie, I want to have you handle this one. So I looked at cars dot com.

They're ten cheapest vehicles that had ice engines in their ten most affordable evs. So I added up all their

prices and divided by ten.

Speaker 3: How clever of me.

Speaker 2: And so for now this is this is certainly not an apples to apples comparison, because I don't think I've ever been in an EV and A that that hasn't had a really nice interior that's been well thought of and well executed. And I've been in some ice vehicles

that are not.

Speaker 3: Yes, you remember the Mitsubishi.

Speaker 2: I mean, well, all right, what we're talking about contemporary Okay, So the thing is is that Okay, So for so, the average for ice vehicles, for inexpensive ice vehicles is twenty one, three hundred and eighty one bucks. The average

of the ten least expensive evs is forty two thousand, five hundred and eighty seven dollars. Okay, so it's it's

more than twenty grand. So I always look at the

point of view if like, wow, you could buy two of these ice things, you know you can drive one every other day. So the question I have to you,

because you know you're looking at all these numbers all the time, is the affordability issue in the US right now?

And how do you see this playing out? So if

we just look at this as as just being table steaks, do you see that there's going to be a perhaps even longer maybe ten years before we see more.

Speaker 6: We will see that forty two thousand dollars average come down, you think.

Speaker 3: And you're going to see that ice average go up signific like by the end of this year. The Mitsubishi

Miraj is going away, the Nissan Versa is very likely going away sometime in the not too distant future, and the prices of some of those other cheaper models, some kicks it's going up by several thousand dollars. The Ford

Maverick for twenty twenty five going up by an average of twenty four hundred bucks. So it now starts at

twenty seven thousand dollars, not twenty thousand two years ago.

So you're going to see those two numbers converge pretty rapidly over the next couple of years.

Speaker 5: And we're still in an early stage for for ebs too.

We're we do need, we need more affordable electric vehicles in order to grow that part of the segment. But

right now it's still a super emotional choice. It's still

an aspirational choice, and we're still in that space, and I think that it naturally will we'll even out. And

then if you if you look, I mean F one fifty lightning sales are here or there, but you an F one fifty buyer can choose to spend eighty.

Speaker 2: Grand on blading. Sales are like nowhere.

Speaker 5: So it's not about affordability with the F one fifty, right, and you can get you know, an EV at that thirty five thirty six thousand dollars price point and they're not flying off the shelves.

Speaker 6: The problem right now, I don't think is affordability.

Speaker 5: I think we're still at the issue of adoption a core adoption isn't where it needs to be.

Speaker 6: Ultimately, we do need.

Speaker 5: More affordable vehicles to be in the market because it gets people into the market, it gets people to know your brand. It's part of building the whole thing. It's

not just out of the goodness of their hearts. But

does it need to be an affordable EV right now?

Not necessarily. We aren't really at a consumer adaption point

where it needs to be an EV at every price level.

And it'll grow and develop, and those two things will get much closer than they are now. I guess they're

going to be equal, but they're going to get much closer than they are now. And I think more affordable

or more accessible price points opens up some of the market.

But I don't think that's the big problem in twenty twenty four. I don't think that's the big issue of

how quickly EV's are coming up or not coming up.

Consumers will say I was thinking about it, but it was expensive, so I didn't. But I feel like that's

part of they've already decided not to, and so they're telling you the ten reasons why they didn't, and there are ten reasons and net one. So it gets to

be it gets to be they didn't want it is really what it comes down to, you charging infrastructures and charging infrastructure, education and experience.

Speaker 6: It's experience is still a huge issue with that. And

by experience, I.

Speaker 5: Don't mean just did they see it on the road and did they drive it. But I was talking with

somebody the other day, I'm like, I don't know, do you need to do. Bring back and it hasn't worked

on ice cars, but bring back a two or three or four day test drive with an electric vehicles so somebody can kind of see what happens if you live with it for a couple of days, and you know, that willn't necessarily help you understand a road trip, but it might help people understand how.

Speaker 6: That's not that difficult.

Speaker 5: Necessarily, It's not as difficult as it sounds to make that transition. So that experience level for consumers is really important,

and we don't have enough of that yet.

Speaker 6: And there's things that are just organic and take time.

Speaker 5: That's so I looked at when we came into the beginning of twenty four, I was thinking that the electric vehicle sales in twenty four and twenty five, it's important that that they go up. It's important that consumers are responding.

But we aren't at the right product mix yet. We

aren't at the education level yet, we aren't at the infrastrut Sure you have a level, yet we're not going to be there until twenty six, twenty seven, or twenty eight.

So right now we're just playing around at this and so so right now, how quickly it goes is much less concerning to me than what happens in twenty six or twenty seven. If twenty six or twenty seven we're

still sitting at seven or eight percent because consumers happened jumped on, then we have a different problem.

Speaker 2: But wasn't twenty twenty five one of those years that we sort of with sort of like five billion and ten years.

Speaker 3: There's I mean, there's the you know, the really enthusiastic, you know mots of it.

Speaker 2: Who is running Mercedes twenty twenty three will be.

Speaker 3: A pricet priority. Yeah, yeah, I was not paying closer attention.

Speaker 5: I was not really on board with the twenty one and twenty two we're gonna all, yeah, twenty.

Speaker 2: Five, you know that that is that that's going to be the magic year.

Speaker 5: But you know, But the other thing about throwing out a number like that, whether it's Mary Bare's twenty thirty five, I like vehicle electrified number, whether it's a rock Obama, we were going to have a million evs on the road twenty ten or something twenty fifteen. But the important

thing that I know you're right. One of the important

things about putting those start of targets are out though, is it does set a direction for the company or the government or whatever organization has set it that through top to bottom. You can say, Okay, if I have

choice A or choice B within the organization that's going to make it happen, I'm going to choose this because this is the direction that we want to go. So

sometimes setting a target is much more important actually achieving it.

Speaker 2: In some ways a speak a direction. The big hand

has gone over. So we we've actually run beyond an

hour here, and I know that we could probably keep going here. So I've got to bring this to a close.

So I mean, as much as I mean we'll shot the camera off, we can keep talking. But for the

people who are out there, So John, Steph Sam, thank you for being here, and for those of you who are watching or listening, go to the website, subscribe support like us do all of those things because we need the support. So thanks for being here, Thanks for watching.

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