Speaker 1: Bloomberg Audio Studios, podcasts, radio news.
Speaker 2: Coming up. It's the Davos of the automotive world.
Speaker 3: I don't think there's a better way to promote your
Speaker 3: brand to win here.
Speaker 4: I think it's bigger.
Speaker 5: One would before.
Speaker 2: Bloomberg's Hot Pursuit goes inside the action, giving you exclusive
Speaker 2: access to the world's most grueling endurance race. Welcome to
Speaker 2: the twenty four Hours of Lamont.
Speaker 6: Welcome to a special edition of Hot Pursuit. I'm Matt
Speaker 6: Miller along with Hannah Elliott.
Speaker 1: We're in Lamon, France for the legendary twenty four Hours
Speaker 1: of Lamon, one of the most prestigious, challenging, and historically
Speaker 1: significant races in motorsports.
Speaker 6: Leamon isn't just about speed, It's about Survivalour.
Speaker 2: Hours of Lamon is part of the Automotive Triple Crown,
Speaker 2: alongside the Monaco Graham Prix and the Indianapolis five hundred.
Speaker 2: It's a grueling endurance test that has attracted top level
Speaker 2: executives and business titans as a destination for networking and
Speaker 2: deal making. Those pilots who survived across the Finnic line
Speaker 2: when sporting glory and a permanent place in the history books.
Speaker 1: For over a century, Laman has been the ultimate proven
Speaker 1: ground for what cars and car companies are made of.
Speaker 6: We sat down with Ford CEO Jim Farley and Aston
Speaker 6: Martin CEO Adrian Hallmark to talk about the ROI of motorsport.
Speaker 3: For us, the biggest is off road market. You know,
Speaker 3: we have you know, almost twenty percent of a global
Speaker 3: profit coming from our enthusiast off road products, and we
Speaker 3: race it to car. We said Baja, we have said
Speaker 3: King and the Hammers. That's a big thing.
Speaker 5: You know.
Speaker 4: I don't think there's a better way to promote your brand.
Speaker 3: Look what Ford winning in sixty six at Lama did
Speaker 3: for Ford Motor Company. It made us a global company.
Speaker 3: We're an American company, but that moment changed us completely, and
Speaker 3: that's why we're going back in twenty seven to take
Speaker 3: on Ferrari and take on Porsche. We think we have
Speaker 3: the technology but also the tech transfer software, battery, tech, aerodynamics.
Speaker 3: It's different than the seventies, but the tech transfer over
Speaker 3: to our road cars is immediate. You'll see hundreds of
Speaker 3: Ford engineers here who will be working on Monday on
Speaker 3: our road cars. And it's really important tech transfer, but
Speaker 3: we do it I think as smart as we can,
Speaker 3: and maybe as a racer, I'm more sensitive about wasting
Speaker 3: money on racing, and we challenge ourselves to be really smart.
Speaker 4: I think we've done a great job with.
Speaker 3: The off road, the raptors, the tremors, all the broncos.
Speaker 3: I think that's been, frankly, some of the smartest investment
Speaker 3: we had in racing.
Speaker 6: You say you're an American company, and you've outed yourself
Speaker 6: as literally the most American car maker. Eighty percent of
Speaker 6: the cars that you sell in America are made there.
Speaker 6: Donald Trump was saying maybe he's going to go after
Speaker 6: even higher auto tariffs. While you've said in the past
Speaker 6: that causes costs and chaos, does it also kind of
Speaker 6: help you because no one else makes as many cars
Speaker 6: as you do in America.
Speaker 4: Well, for Ford, this is a moment for us.
Speaker 3: You know, we we have employee pricing out there. We
Speaker 3: gained a couple points to share year over year. A
Speaker 3: lot of Americans are shopping forward because now they're starting
Speaker 3: to think, hey, half the cars in the US are imported,
Speaker 3: and if all the car companies were like Ford, there'd
Speaker 3: be fifteen new factories in the US, a million new jobs.
Speaker 3: You know, I think a lot of Americans are starting
Speaker 3: to pay attention to where these where these cars come from.
Speaker 3: And for US, yes, I think Donald Trump's policies, especially
Speaker 3: around the Asian countries where you know they've supported with
Speaker 3: substities direct or indirect for their automobile industry.
Speaker 4: You know, this is a great thing.
Speaker 3: We have to sort out this Mexico Canada thing because
Speaker 3: we need to keep the vehicles affordable in the US
Speaker 3: and there's actually a lot of parts we can't even
Speaker 3: make in the US, and so we have to kind
Speaker 3: of sort out what it rolled does Mexico and Canada
Speaker 3: have in our North America market from supply chain.
Speaker 4: And manufacturing keep the vehicles.
Speaker 3: Affordable, and that's something that we're talking to administration. We
Speaker 3: found the administration to be very positive to work with.
Speaker 3: They want to help companies like Ford that did the
Speaker 3: right thing for Americans.
Speaker 4: But we have more work to do in.
Speaker 6: Terms of what the administration has been trying to do
Speaker 6: with China. Are you satisfied with the rare earth minerals
Speaker 6: that you have access to. I know that you had
Speaker 6: to slow down production in the past. Have you been
Speaker 6: able to secure the amount of magnets that you need.
Speaker 3: It's day to day. It's day to day. These high
Speaker 3: patron magnets. The raw materials for them only come from
Speaker 3: certain places in the world. They're all processed in China,
Speaker 3: and they go in your speakers and your autosystem. They
Speaker 3: go in your motors, for your wipers and your seats.
Speaker 3: They're all over our f one fifty for example. We
Speaker 3: have applications in them offcom. They're getting approved one at
Speaker 3: a time. You know, we're educating the administration, we're educating
Speaker 3: the Chinese leadership about how important these jobs in the
Speaker 3: Midwest are.
Speaker 4: They are dependent. We have had to shut down factories.
Speaker 4: It's hand to mouth right now.
Speaker 6: The electric business, though, I would imagine, also is dependent
Speaker 6: on in some sense higher gas prices.
Speaker 4: I drove your Lightning. It was fantastic, spent a week
Speaker 4: in it.
Speaker 6: I've driven the Machi for a couple of weeks, and
Speaker 6: one of the great pleasures is you don't ever have
Speaker 6: to go to a gas station. Right How are those
Speaker 6: businesses doing right now because you've taken such big losses
Speaker 6: there and maybe slowed down in terms of your progress
Speaker 6: into evs.
Speaker 3: Yeah, we've really changed because we're thankful we've been number
Speaker 3: two to Tesla for three years in the US because
Speaker 3: we spent our capital like five six years ago and
Speaker 3: all that product's been out for four years that you mentioned.
Speaker 3: So we've learned a ton now. We've changed our capital
Speaker 3: allocation for evs. We've reduced suspending, changed the battery chemistry
Speaker 3: a lot to focus on more profitability. We've gone down
Speaker 3: market and mostly in commercial. Those are the only markets
Speaker 3: where we think in the US, you know, an age
Speaker 3: seven percent of the industry is going to make sense
Speaker 3: for EV where you can actually make money. And the
Speaker 3: EPA requirements have a big impact on the EV investments
Speaker 3: by OEMs. During the last several years, you know, we
Speaker 3: had to kind of sell like fifteen to twenty percent
Speaker 3: of our mix to be evs, both for the ZEV
Speaker 3: states California, Colorado, New York, but also you know, to
Speaker 3: meet the national tailpipe emissions.
Speaker 4: And so what's happened.
Speaker 3: Interestingly, the total number of evs in the US has grown,
Speaker 3: but the total revenue has not changed in three years
Speaker 3: because the prices have come down equal to the volume
Speaker 3: going up. So the EV market has not been going
Speaker 3: for three years. If you look at total revenue. Everyone
Speaker 3: looks at unit volume. Don't look at that, look at
Speaker 3: the price and the volume, and I think we now
Speaker 3: have a good strategy going forward. A lot of our
Speaker 3: competitors are just investing for the first time, and good
Speaker 3: luck if you're selling eighty thousand dollars SUV electric vehicle.
Speaker 3: We've invested a lot in hybrid. We are really successful
Speaker 3: with our truck. Hybrid's the best selling vehicle in the
Speaker 3: US for forty seven years, been in the F one fifty.
Speaker 3: Twenty five percent of those customers now by hybrid, and.
Speaker 4: A lot of it is exportable power.
Speaker 3: You can run your house for six days within F
Speaker 3: one fifty hybrid now, and the others don't.
Speaker 4: Offer that at all.
Speaker 6: Aston Martins CEO Adrian Hallmark.
Speaker 1: Talk a little bit about what the brand gets out
Speaker 1: of the race. Obviously this is an iconic race. What
Speaker 1: do you get from it as a company?
Speaker 7: I think if you compare it with that Formula one activity,
Speaker 7: the media coverage is a fraction of the pure global
Speaker 7: awareness that F one gets, But if you look at
Speaker 7: people that are interested in high performance.
Speaker 5: Vehicles, it's much more relevant.
Speaker 7: So it's a smaller audience, but it's almost self selecting
Speaker 7: because most people buy supercalls hypercast sports cause they love
Speaker 7: endurance racing. Why I've used this that we all have
Speaker 7: before until Formula One got a lot bigger in terms
Speaker 7: of number of races per year when it was only
Speaker 7: sixteen races.
Speaker 5: Rough that's exactly the same as a twenty four hour race.
Speaker 7: So Lamont is the same as a full season of
Speaker 7: Formula One back ten years ago and faster. So from
Speaker 7: a technical challenge point of view, a people challenge point
Speaker 7: of view, it's got to be the most demanding, incredible
Speaker 7: sport in motorsport.
Speaker 1: Talk to us a little bit about sustainability at Aston Martin.
Speaker 1: Where are you guys with the sustainable power trade and
Speaker 1: where are you taking from the racing that we might
Speaker 1: see in the cars in the future.
Speaker 7: So I think from a Lamont point of view, it's
Speaker 7: probably the furthest away from our sustainability strategy.
Speaker 5: Why we have no hybrid.
Speaker 7: We've gone for a naturally aspirated twelve cylinder engine, which
Speaker 7: is what makes the Valkyrie Lamon cars so incredible. There's
Speaker 7: nothing else on the track like it. But if you
Speaker 7: go to the road cars, we've just launched Valhalla. It's
Speaker 7: a hypercar. It's two point six seconds to sixty two
Speaker 7: miles per hour, over one thousand horsepower carbon fiber tub
Speaker 7: hybrid system front electric axle, high power V eight engine
Speaker 7: and a motor in the gearbox to combination well.
Speaker 5: Over one thousand horsepower.
Speaker 7: That's our first plug in hybrid for the road as
Speaker 7: a regular car. Over the next five years, all of
Speaker 7: our cars will be hybridized, and then within the ten
Speaker 7: year window we'll have launched one or maybe two electric vehicles.
Speaker 7: But we certainly see for the next ten years until
Speaker 7: twenty thirty five, let's say, the majority of our business
Speaker 7: now will be electrified combustion engine systems that massively reduced
Speaker 7: real world emissions but also give more importantly, way more
Speaker 7: horsepower than the current products.
Speaker 5: And that's the direction that we've taken.
Speaker 6: I sat down with Laurence Stroller at Q or whatever
Speaker 6: you call your Aston Martin shop in New York on
Speaker 6: fifty seven the Park, and he was doing with me
Speaker 6: the back of the napkin math of what Aston Martin
Speaker 6: could be if it got even half of a Ferrari valuation.
Speaker 6: I'm sure that's the goal that you're aiming for as well.
Speaker 6: What are your plans to get there and what do
Speaker 6: you have to do to get investors to attribute that
Speaker 6: kind of valuation to Aston Martin.
Speaker 5: One word perform.
Speaker 7: You know, as a company, we've been around for one
Speaker 7: hundred and twelve years and it's been a rocky journey
Speaker 7: for that one hundred and twelve years. The brand has endured,
Speaker 7: it's got a fantastic reputation. The response that you get
Speaker 7: in an Aston Martin is unlike anything I've experienced, and
Speaker 7: you know, I've been with great German brands and another
Speaker 7: great British brand for combined twenty five years of my life.
Speaker 7: You can't stop at a gas station or at a
Speaker 7: hotel without somebody taking a picture of you or asking
Speaker 7: you a question about the car.
Speaker 5: It's phenomenal power is there.
Speaker 7: What we need is a consistent approach to product development,
Speaker 7: which under Lawrence and that new investment approach has.
Speaker 5: Begun the first five years.
Speaker 7: If you look at what we've refreshed and what we've delivered,
Speaker 7: Vanquish has knocked it out the park. We're beating the
Speaker 7: Italian competitor in road test hands down. That's never happened before.
Speaker 7: We've been accredited being better looking in certain products, but
Speaker 7: never on a track in absolute extreme conditions. The asten's
Speaker 7: the best. So we build cars at work. They look fantastic.
Speaker 7: But we've really got to now with this transition between
Speaker 7: the current product range, the hybrid range and electric. We've
Speaker 7: got a whole strategy which I can't talk about in
Speaker 7: detail today, which will rely on less volume growth, more
Speaker 7: quality of margin, quality of business, operational excellence, all the
Speaker 7: quite boring stuff that makes great companies even greater. We've
Speaker 7: all done it before and that's what we intend to
Speaker 7: do here. So we've got the brand, we've got the performance,
Speaker 7: we've got the design. We've now going to make the
Speaker 7: business as beautiful as the cars.
Speaker 1: Up next, we'll go one on one with racers behind
Speaker 1: the wheel. Welcome back to a special edition of Hot Pursuit.
Speaker 1: I'm Hannah Elliott along with Matt Miller.
Speaker 6: For Racers Lemon Is where legends are made. We caught
Speaker 6: up with Formula one world champion Jensen Button as well
Speaker 6: as Michelle Gatting, a member of the Iron Dames all
Speaker 6: female auto racing team.
Speaker 1: We talked about what makes this race so different than
Speaker 1: any other. Tell us a little bit about the difference
Speaker 1: of between what it takes to be a great endurance driver,
Speaker 1: versus F one driver. I know it's a slightly different
Speaker 1: skill set.
Speaker 8: F one driver it's the most selfish role possible in sport,
Speaker 8: say more, because it's all about you. You know, you
Speaker 8: know that the team will say, you're racing for this team.
Speaker 8: You know you've got to put the team first. But
Speaker 8: we all know that the driver is racing for themselves
Speaker 8: because you win a championship and you know your main
Speaker 8: competitor is your teammate who is in the same car
Speaker 8: as you, and he's the person that you have to
Speaker 8: be He's the one you get judged against. So you
Speaker 8: have to be selfish. And that mentality was very difficult
Speaker 8: for me when I when I got married and I
Speaker 8: had kids and suddenly you're the least most important person
Speaker 8: in the household. So getting over that selfishness was quite
Speaker 8: difficult for me, and it took It did take a moment.
Speaker 8: Insurance racing is very different because you have to work
Speaker 8: with your teammates. You've got to work with your team
Speaker 8: to develop the car and compromise. You know, compromising is
Speaker 8: something that you're not very good at doing. As an
Speaker 8: fun driver endurance driver. It's all about compromise, it's about
Speaker 8: getting your teammates at your level or even higher than
Speaker 8: where you are, because then you know, even if you're
Speaker 8: the slowest guy in the car, you know you're quick.
Speaker 6: You must work on maximizing your strength for those for
Speaker 6: those forty five minutes or whatever. And here, like you
Speaker 6: have to wake up at three in the morning and
Speaker 6: get back in the car. What is it like driving
Speaker 6: at night? Driving or tired? What is it like seeing
Speaker 6: the sun rise as you're you know, doing you know,
Speaker 6: one hundred and eighty five miles an hour down a
Speaker 6: straight at Lamar.
Speaker 8: You are always jet liked, basically, you know, that's the
Speaker 8: feeling that you have when you're driving the car.
Speaker 4: You're jet like.
Speaker 8: You know that you're slightly off, always slightly off. If
Speaker 8: you're lucky enough to get into the start of the race,
Speaker 8: that's probably the only time that feels normal. The love
Speaker 8: of this race for me is is sunrise sunset. You know,
Speaker 8: that just blows my mind. When the sun drops and
Speaker 8: darkness falls, the circuit comes alive, it becomes quicker, the
Speaker 8: wind drops, the cars are a bit easier to drive,
Speaker 8: but you have to get used to that change in light,
Speaker 8: which is also very difficult. And I don't know, if
Speaker 8: you've noticed, there's a lot of buz here at the moment,
Speaker 8: so we've got yeah there. So like after two laps
Speaker 8: you have a covered wind screen and trying to look
Speaker 8: through that when the sun's in your eyes it's not easy.
Speaker 8: So sunset's great. Sunrise. The best moment of the race,
Speaker 8: you know, really is when the sunrises, you see.
Speaker 4: How dirty the cars are. You know you've come through
Speaker 4: the night.
Speaker 8: You kind of feel like you're at the end already,
Speaker 8: even though you have another ten hours to go. So
Speaker 8: that moment is a very special moment and you've got
Speaker 8: through the night. If you've not had issues, you're still
Speaker 8: in with a chance of a win.
Speaker 6: The shell Gatting a member of the Iron Dames all
Speaker 6: female auto racing team.
Speaker 9: The Iron Dames were born in twenty eighteen. It's an
Speaker 9: all female project that is supporting women in motorsport not
Speaker 9: only as drivers, but as engineers, mechanics on the marketing
Speaker 9: side because the sport is it's huge and it needs
Speaker 9: people like women as well. And the project is special
Speaker 9: because we are an all female end up sharing a car,
Speaker 9: three women racing against all the others, and the end
Speaker 9: of the day, like we always say, we when we.
Speaker 1: Put the helmets on.
Speaker 9: We have race drivers like anybody else, but we definitely
Speaker 9: want to give female drivers a chance to be seen
Speaker 9: out there, because that's what's been missing over the years.
Speaker 9: And I think what the project has been doing since
Speaker 9: the very beginning in twenty eighteen has really been showcasing
Speaker 9: that women can compete on the same level as men
Speaker 9: in the highest level of endurance racing. We have won
Speaker 9: races in the World Championship, in the European Championship, and
Speaker 9: we are proving that we can race alongside the men
Speaker 9: and we can beat them.
Speaker 10: I just want to ask, because I have a couple
Speaker 10: of daughters at home, four and one. They're watching racing
Speaker 10: with me every weekend, what do I do to get
Speaker 10: Edna and Lola into this sport, to get them prepared
Speaker 10: and hopefully to a higher level.
Speaker 9: Well, the first thing you should do is bring them
Speaker 9: to a race, bring them down to the Iron Name's
Speaker 9: garage and show them that there are three ladies there.
Speaker 9: Who is proving to your girls that is possible. Because
Speaker 9: we had a dream we were their age. You know,
Speaker 9: back then, when I was very young, it was difficult
Speaker 9: to have somebody to look up to. In terms of
Speaker 9: female drivers, because there was not really any. Now hopefully
Speaker 9: we are the drivers that your two daughters can look
Speaker 9: up to and say, yeah, but they are doing it
Speaker 9: because with hard work, dedication, and passion and commitment, you
Speaker 9: can do whatever you want in life. And this is
Speaker 9: what we want to showcase with the Iron Dames Project.
Speaker 1: That's it for this edition of Hot Pursuit. Thanks for
Speaker 1: joining us.
Speaker 6: Tune in to see more of Hannah and me on
Speaker 6: our Hot Pursuit podcast. Wherever you get your podcasts, this
Speaker 6: is Bloomberg