Sept. 10, 2025 | Polestar CEO Michael Lohscheller; SellMyRide’s Chip Perry and Dom Pope

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Welcome to Daily Drive for Wednesday, September 10th, 2025. I'm Kellen Walker in Detroit.

Today on the show, ice-ray disruptions spread beyond Hyundai and LG to other Korean projects.

Toyota reportedly plans to make electric SUVs at its Kentucky plant,

and Polestar CEO Mikhail Losheller touts the EV startup's new flagship vehicle.

Plus, we'll hear from so my ride president, Dom Pope, and the company's new chairman, Chip Perry.

When I saw the dealers were able to capture their fair share of local acquisition opportunities,

I said, yes, I want to be part of that. Let's run through all the news you need to know to keep up

in the auto industry. The fallout from last week's immigration raid at Hyundai and LG Energy's

plant near Savannah is reverberating across the industry. Construction has now been disrupted at

multiple LG Energy Solutions sites across the U.S. Meanwhile, people familiar with the matter

tell Bloomberg News that some Korean staff are balking at assignments over fears of being caught

in similar crackdowns. According to one person, LG Energy has ordered the immediate return of

all workers and contractors traveling under the U.S. Visa waiver program, known as ESTA.

It has advised those on short-term B-1 visas to remain at their hotels.

An update to a story we brought to you on yesterday's show. Toyota plans to make

two battery-powered utility vehicles at its Georgetown, Kentucky plant and will end production of a

luxury Lexus brand model at the site. That's according to a person familiar with the matter

who spoke with Reuters. The person says the EVs Toyota plans to build in Kentucky will

be based on the RAV4 and the Land Cruiser. Japan's Nikkei news outlet previously reported that the

automaker plans to consolidate production of Lexus vehicles in the U.S. into a single location

down from two. Toyota declined to comment to Reuters about its future product plans.

And Jaguar Land Rover says some data has been compromised after the British

automaker was hit by a cyber attack that has derailed production and sales. The company said

it was informing the relevant regulators after discovering some data was affected.

Companies must inform the UK's Information Commissioner's Office if any information is

stolen or face fines. A JLR spokesperson declined to comment to Bloomberg on the

nature of the data and whether customer information was affected, saying the investigation

is ongoing. And those are today's headlines. You can find more details on all those stories

at AutoNews.com. Our colleagues in Europe are spending a big part of their week covering

the IAA summit in Munich, where automakers are announcing product plans and showing off

their newest models. Automotive news Europe managing editor Doug Bolduck got a chance

this week to catch up with Polestar CEO Mikhail Losheller. They sat inside the new Polestar 5,

which premiered at IAA this week. Hello everyone, this is Doug Bolduck with Automotive News Europe

and we are at the IAA in Munich today with a very special guest Mikhail Losheller, CEO of

Polestar and we are sitting in his latest creation, the Polestar 5, a halo car luxury

sedan that they just launched the other day. Mikhail, tell us some of the highlights of this vehicle.

We're great to see you all and you're right, we are in the Polestar 5, which absolutely is a

flagship of the Polestar brand. It really embodies everything what our brand stands for,

that's in particular the design, exterior and interior, but also the performance element

and sustainability. So a few highlights. This car is on our own new platform,

the Polestar Performance Architecture. It sets new technological standards.

It comes with 800-volt technology. Now pay attention to this one. This car accelerates from

0 to 100 in 3.2 seconds. It has 884 horsepower. In the interior, we continue the great success

storyway with Google and I think it's really a fantastic flagship and it's so, so great to

launch it, to show it here at IIA and we are downtown. Many people are coming. Many people

are looking it from the outside and obviously many people also see it from the inside.

And by the way, another fun fact, I am two meters tall and there's plenty of space for me

in the back and it's really a four-seater car and great to see you all here.

Fantastic Mikhail and that was a great description of the vehicle. Now one of the

things because a lot of our viewers are in the US and in the US, a lot of the questions are about

electric cars, electric cars, should I go electric? Also in Europe, we're seeing more people jumping

into electric in Europe. This car is going to compete against the Porsche Taycan and against

the BMW i7, but you still have some competitors that are driving with internal combustion engines.

You gave some of the statistics about what this, you don't give up anything by moving to

electric. From your experience, again, you've run car companies that are all electric, you've run them

with ICEs. Why would someone even consider going electric? Well, because it's so much fun to drive

it, right? And as you say, we go electric only at Polestar. I think the fun to drive,

the performance element is outstanding. And then it's easy to use, right? For example,

the charging is so fast. I think you charge in 18 minutes with the 800 volt technology. I

mean, it's a small break and then you can continue. The range is phenomenal. I think you

get everything. And of course, most important from my point of view, from our point of view,

is the future of mobility is without emissions, right? Climate change is real. Maybe it's not

the hottest topic in media in these days, but it's real. And with driving this car,

you don't have to worry about emissions and you get everything. You get all the fun,

you get all the benefits. And this is exciting. Thank you, Mikkel, so much for joining us today.

It took a few minutes out of his very busy schedule because it is packed here at the EIA or IAA

in Munich with this car, the new Polestar 5 Luxury sedan has debuted. Mikkel, thanks so much

for joining us and enjoy the rest of the show. Thank you, Duncan. Great to see you all.

Coming up, sell my ride president Dom Pope and the company's new chairman,

Chip Perry, joined the show. That's next on Daily Drive.

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Welcome back to Daily Drive. I'm Kellan Walker. Chip Perry is an auto retail veteran who

steered vehicle listing sites, auto trader, and true car. He's now joining Sell My Ride,

a vehicle acquisition platform for high volume dealers. He spoke with automotive news retail

reporter C.J. Moore, along with Sell My Ride president, Don Pope. Chip Perry and Don Pope,

welcome to Daily Drive. Thanks for having us. Thank you, C.J. So we're talking with you

both today about Sell My Ride, an online platform that allows auto dealerships to

source used cars and trucks directly from private sellers. Don, you worked on this

after you'd spent years working in traditional auto retail and lead generation. Is that right?

Yeah, that's correct. It's something that I really started to work on

around four and a half years ago here in the UK and then ended up over the other side of the

pond and met a special person in Chip Perry and really kind of established that there's a huge

need for it over in the States as well. And that's something that we're working on right

up to today. And you had a specific reason for building Sell My Ride and there's a problem you

say you're targeting with it and that's one of acquiring used cars and trucks efficiently.

Can you tell us a little bit about the platform and how it helps achieve that?

Yes, I think a lot of dealers have really sort of established that a lot of the other means

in which to acquire used cars such as auctions and the other party lead sources don't

necessarily result in acquiring cars that help them really meaningfully create profits in their

business. And used cars are such a great driver or profit and they're just looking for an alternative

source. Direct to consumer is something that's happened in lots of other industries and hasn't

really been mastered in the used car auto space as we see it outside of Kavana and Carmax.

I think a lot of dealerships know have really started to eat their lunch in their local

market so what we're really here to do is help them fight that fight, help them acquire used

cars directed from consumers and hopefully be a big revenue and profit driver for the dealerships.

And to which dealers is the platform available now? It's an online platform,

is it available to US dealers or is it international?

Yes, so to honestly our primary client base is actually in the US and that's our main

focus that's what chip is here to help me sort of with help me to grow our market share in the US

so really this is US based product and which dealers is it available for? It's really targeted at

dealerships who are already doing the track with acquisition people who have really turned

on to the importance of acquiring used cars directly from consumers. It's people with resource

dedication and the investment available in order in order to do it and dealerships that are

looking for at least 50 cars a month. This is really our target audience so it's not really

out there for everyone, it's out there for dealerships who are already

you know doing the track and who are really trying to grow their used car acquisition monthly.

And Chip, we at Auto News know of you from your time as CEO of Trucar which is a vehicle

listing site and going even further back as CEO of Auto Trader now part of Cox Automotive.

How did you come to know so my ride and what business practices or goals set it apart from

the growing pool of dealer targeting online inventory platforms to the degree that you

wanted to join? Sure, thank you CJ. Well I met Dom at NADA in New Orleans and immediately

after I learned about his platform I said this is interesting. The way the platform works is

they do digital marketing against a dedicated landing page that's dealer branded exclusively in

local markets and they bring prospects through Google and Meta in a very targeted way to a landing

page that converts it 40% and those leads then get handled by the lead handling team

which is assisted by Cell My Rides client success team. So when I saw the ingredients

and the success that the dealers were having I said I need to dig in.

So I went to visit some of Dom's clients people like Bob Ruth Ford in Pennsylvania

and Jermaine Honda and Dublin Ohio and others and I learned how successful they were with the

platform and in all my years in serving the industry I've always heard from dealers that

one of their biggest concerns is acquiring profitable used car inventory so this was a

solution that in all my years in the industry hadn't seen anything quite like this

it's quite unique and it very much complements as Dom said any other set of lead sources that a

dealer is using to acquire opportunities to buy cars from the public. Another thing that really

turned me on was when I understood and learned from some of Dom's clients, Cell My Rides clients

that the overlap in the leads that come from Cell My Ride is almost zero

with all the other third parties. We did a direct match with Kelly Blue Book ICO and

CarGurus less than 1% of the leads are in common so I've always believed that the used car market

both buy side and sell side is highly segmented so this says there's a segment a fresh segment

of customers that are responding to ads on Google and Meta that aren't using Kelly or

CarGurus or other third parties to list their car or to request a quote so these are some

of the things that really excited me about the platform and the fact that it produces such efficient

cost per acquisition numbers you know and the $500 are less oftentimes so we're off to the races

I'm enjoying the company's chairman I'm helping Dom work on client success particularly that's

where my passion is spending time with dealers their lead teams coaching them learning from

them providing feedback into the company that's what I enjoy doing so I'm excited about working

with Dom and his team so we're talking years for you in auto retail Dom working on sales lead

generation about how much time are we talking where was it at and what was in that experience

or process you know made you start thinking about how dealerships could source more used vehicles

directly from private party sellers what did you see in that is potentially more efficient

for them compared with other inventory channels like I said earlier it started here in the UK

with a dealership called Big Motor and World they're the largest independent they sell about

75,000 cars per year during COVID they came to us because it was very difficult to get

the used car inventory that they needed and at scale and they asked us and challenged us with a

to find a better way so that's when we looked at the largest platforms you know on earth Google meta

and we looked to see if we were able to do something we'd done in other industries which

was look at a direct consumer approach in the used car space we started you know zero cars per

month and we scaled that up to 1,000 cars a month and we've been able to maintain that for

around four years now so those guys have our intend dealerships all across the UK

we then worked with Toyota and Nectar's Great Britain which is a really fun project

lasted about 18 months and we designed their car buying process and it was that piece of work

that really gave us a confidence to head over to the US to look at a much larger market

and see you know how our product and service would resonate and and really it resonated very

well when it looked you know when we spoke with dealers and consultants and experts and

industry leaders like Chip we've sort of got the seal of approval that there really was great

market fit when we started to pitch dealers in order to work with them we saw that everyone was

interested in what we had and actually wanted to work with us which is something that I've never

really experienced before in my career so I think we're that's when I knew we were on to

something so there's a presence with this in the US presence in the UK how many dealers

have you guys estimated are using sell my ride so it's still in its impancy in the States

we're less than 50 dealers the target is only to get to 500 we don't want to be all things to

everyone we want to work with certain dealerships who've got this real need for used cars directly

from consumers who are willing to put the resource the dedicated people who are skilled in

acquisition to work with this and yeah that's the target here not to work with everyone

just to work with around 500 select dealers across the States you know I understand

some my ride has such capabilities as geotargeted ads how do those work or perhaps the

better question is where do private party sellers see the ads for some my ride

to know dealers are seeking that inventory perfect so I'll just take you through the

car buying process the first thing that we do is we sit down with dealers

and we try to understand their bi-plan so just really what inventory do they want the age of the

cars the mileage and certain brands that they may or may not want we then set up a dedicated dealer

landing page which will be in their colors their logo their brand it's all about building their

brand not our own and then we have some really targeted digital marketing so in the

last four and a half years we've helped dealerships across the UK and the US acquire over a billion

dollars worth of inventory so we've got pretty proficient marketers so we we send traffic

from those huge platforms where there's big demand to the landing page that landing page

converts a really high percentage and we feed those leads directly into the sales team CRM

at the dealership in some instance we even help them take the first call just because

we've got a call center in Nashville that we're able to get in a few seconds and ultimately all

this is designed to help them acquire used cars so there's a lot of secret source along the way

nothing more so much is the the client success which Chip's already touched upon how we're able

to coach dealerships to success we know what good looks like we also know what bad looks like

based on our experience so that's the whole sort of 10 000 feet overview of what we do how

we get the leads and how we help the dealers ultimately acquire cars and if I can if I could add

to that cj one of the things that Dom's team and does is track every lead all the way from the

top of the funnel to the bottom including how when the appointments get set when the appointment

shows where the car gets purchased and the digital marketing team then takes the data

from the people actually converted and feeds that back into the top of the funnel

and they use a specialized Google purchasing system called SA 360 which not very many people

have access to and so the targeting of the prospect out on the internet viewing ads in a very

sophisticated way is what drives the very high conversion rate on that landing page

and that makes that enables the process to be very efficient for the dealer produces us very

effective cost per acquisition in a very high ROI incremental gross profit from the cars that

they buy and then sell compared to the cost of this program ROI is expect exceptionally high

that's another reason why I'm very interested in working with the company that's daily dry for

today I'm kellen walker thanks to automotive news executive producer jake neer as well as automotive

news europe's dug boulder for their help on today's podcast you can get the latest news on

used car retail future products and everything happening in the auto industry at auto news.com

come back tomorrow for a conversation with td cowans etai mckelly about the firm's latest

data on how resilient the auto industry has been amid tariffs to really understand where the

cycle is going you need to have a clear view on consumer desires and needs around personal

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