Speaker 1: Hello, and welcome to another episode of the Odd Lots Podcast.
Speaker 1: I'm Joe Wisenthal and I'm Tracy Alloway. Tracy, you know,
Speaker 1: there's this weird thing going on. There's always weird things
Speaker 1: going on. Yeah, I was gonna say, you have to
Speaker 1: narrow it down. I'm gonna I'm gonna narrow it down.
Speaker 1: There's this weird thing going on right now where investors
Speaker 1: are really excited about car companies, even though car companies
Speaker 1: are like barely selling any cars these days because of
Speaker 1: the chip shortage. Yeah. I have noticed this too, particularly
Speaker 1: by the way over um in China, Like, there is
Speaker 1: just a massive amount of capital moving into cars at
Speaker 1: the moment, but it's concentrated in one particular type of car,
Speaker 1: which would be you know, electric nicles or um some
Speaker 1: sort of hybrid plug in type things. Like. We have
Speaker 1: seen so much money move into that space recently, and
Speaker 1: I think part of it is the enthusiasm for tech
Speaker 1: that we saw last year, Right, People are looking for
Speaker 1: those big structural shifts, and the idea of electric cars
Speaker 1: is definitely one of those things. The weird thing though, too,
Speaker 1: And you know, I'll move it back to the US
Speaker 1: perspective for a second is like, okay, everyone knows like Tesla,
Speaker 1: it's done sort of this way. It was way out
Speaker 1: ahead of the space and the legacy automakers have you know,
Speaker 1: are catching up and they're rolling out more and more
Speaker 1: electric vehicles, but like they're getting a lot of credit
Speaker 1: for it, at least recently like four past a billion dollars.
Speaker 1: It's not like these companies are like crushing it yet
Speaker 1: as far as I can tell on the e vs,
Speaker 1: but they're getting a lot of credit for it. And
Speaker 1: as you mentioned, sales exploding in China. It's just investors
Speaker 1: not only seemed to rate like uh be bullshvs, but
Speaker 1: really just think like there's gonna be tons of winners
Speaker 1: into space. It's it's a is a lot of optimism. Yeah,
Speaker 1: well it kind of begs the question as well, like
Speaker 1: how much does it take for an old school car
Speaker 1: company to convert itself into an electric vehicle manufacturer? And
Speaker 1: here I have to admit I really don't know anything
Speaker 1: about the technical differences between building gas powered car versus
Speaker 1: an electric car, but it seems to me like you
Speaker 1: cannot just flip a switch and suddenly go into you know,
Speaker 1: procuring batteries and making e V s. So I'm very
Speaker 1: curious how much of this, this narrative about the old
Speaker 1: school auto companies suddenly becoming e V manufacturers, how much
Speaker 1: of that is hype versus reality. There's so many questions
Speaker 1: I have on that, Like, you know, one of the
Speaker 1: themes that we've talked to on many episodes, especially with
Speaker 1: advanced manufacturing, is this idea of like so of like
Speaker 1: tacit knowledge is something Dan Long talks a lot about.
Speaker 1: Something we've talked a lot about our semi conductor episodes,
Speaker 1: like do you just have the institutional knowledge to abuild
Speaker 1: these things? And then you're right, like there are different processes.
Speaker 1: I remember we had a good story a couple of
Speaker 1: years ago about the unions in Germany being very anxious
Speaker 1: about the EV transition because there are fewer parts in
Speaker 1: theory that means for your workers. So all kinds of
Speaker 1: huge questions about how this is going to work and
Speaker 1: what what the EV transformation will look like, and like you,
Speaker 1: I really just like don't know much about this stuff,
Speaker 1: but it's happening so fast that I think we better,
Speaker 1: we better catch up. Yeah, let's do it, let's do it.
Speaker 1: I am very excited for today's guest, we are going
Speaker 1: to be speaking to Nett Bullard. He is the chief
Speaker 1: content officer at Bloomberg and e F and one of
Speaker 1: the most knowledgeable people here at Bloomberg about all types
Speaker 1: of things ev energy, transitions, energy, tech, cars and all
Speaker 1: of it. Neat, thank you so much for joining us,
Speaker 1: Joe and Tracy, thank you for having me. As I
Speaker 1: used to say in radio, long time listener, first time caller,
Speaker 1: so a treat to be here. Thank you so much.
Speaker 1: So to get it right off the bat, like the
Speaker 1: evy revolution is on right, like this is happening. That's right.
Speaker 1: I mean, we're right now at a position of let's see,
Speaker 1: ten years ago, less than a tenth of a percent
Speaker 1: sales of global cars were electric, and the third quarter
Speaker 1: of last year it was ten globally. And there is
Speaker 1: of course some regional difference within that. As you can imagine.
Speaker 1: China finished the year in December more than EV sales,
Speaker 1: and that's the world's biggest car market. That was three
Speaker 1: point three million evs sold. Europe was about seventeen and
Speaker 1: a half percent. It's probably gonna end of the year, ABU,
Speaker 1: the US and the rest of North America a little
Speaker 1: bit lagging, you know, about ness than four percent in
Speaker 1: the in the fourth quarter or third quarter rather, but Nonethele,
Speaker 1: the trend very clearly is the electric vehicle's friend in
Speaker 1: this case. I mean, this is something that looks like
Speaker 1: a very classic steep part of the ES curve in
Speaker 1: and exponential growth, and it's happening much more rapidly than
Speaker 1: even a lot of people embedded in the space would
Speaker 1: have expected. And so it's really a fascinating time. And
Speaker 1: not just because you know, a lot of units are
Speaker 1: being moved in cars, but because, as you hinted at Joe,
Speaker 1: there are a lot of other industries adjacent to that,
Speaker 1: and I think, you know, we can have time to
Speaker 1: explore that maybe today, that it's so much more than
Speaker 1: just the car in terms of adjacent industries, things that
Speaker 1: flow into and out of this, what it means for
Speaker 1: all kinds of stuff, for the built environment, for behaviors
Speaker 1: that customers have, and for new competitions probably emerging and
Speaker 1: new coalitions emerging between all of these different sectors that
Speaker 1: might previously not have had much of a connection. So
Speaker 1: can I just ask, I suppose the most basic question here,
Speaker 1: and you mentioned that demand for electric vehicles has really
Speaker 1: taken off in recent years. What is driving those sales, Like,
Speaker 1: what is the attraction of an electric vehicle to a
Speaker 1: normal buyer who's out there thinking of getting a new car.
Speaker 1: So there's there's there's probably three things at the point.
Speaker 1: One undoubtedly is policy, so policies that either put limits
Speaker 1: on the amount of emissions per kilometer or mild driven
Speaker 1: in some jurisdictions, or policies that incentivized buying an EV,
Speaker 1: which is a relatively common thing here in the United
Speaker 1: States at the federal and the state level. The other
Speaker 1: is this sort of industrial reorganization that some companies have
Speaker 1: done around this that just sort of made it a
Speaker 1: decision that, you know, going towards things that are mechanically
Speaker 1: simpler may be advantageous for their for their few, your
Speaker 1: production um. And then there's also, you know, the element
Speaker 1: that consumers. It turns out in many cases actually like
Speaker 1: the electric vehicle experience, and I think we should probably
Speaker 1: widen out what that experience means. Obviously, driving wise, it's
Speaker 1: very different. It's almost impossible to find somebody who's driven
Speaker 1: an EV for the first time. It doesn't say, Wow,
Speaker 1: that's a great driving experience. But it's also a buying
Speaker 1: experience that's very different for many people. And you know,
Speaker 1: it's it's something that that falls into a an interesting
Speaker 1: place I think in our individual capital stack. Like for
Speaker 1: most people, of cars probably the second biggest thing that
Speaker 1: they acquire in their life after a house. But most
Speaker 1: people were probably acquiring more cars than they are houses
Speaker 1: every time. And there's all kinds of other stuff that
Speaker 1: goes with it. There's he the hedonic signaling of who
Speaker 1: you want people to think you are, what you are
Speaker 1: aligned to. You know, how do you drive technology? I mean,
Speaker 1: anybody can have an iPhone, not everybody can yet have
Speaker 1: an electric vehicle, but you you can do a lot
Speaker 1: of signaling with it. And and one thing that I
Speaker 1: think is unique and talking about this big sector that
Speaker 1: intersects all these other relatively stayed things like electricity or
Speaker 1: oil and gas, is that there's an element of personal
Speaker 1: choice here and style. But that is a challenge for
Speaker 1: a lot of long term planners to think of because
Speaker 1: it's never really been a thing. It hasn't hasn't been
Speaker 1: much of a powertrain choice in cars from like a
Speaker 1: hundred and twenty years really until really right now. So
Speaker 1: I strongly. I still have a regular annult car internal
Speaker 1: combustion engine, but I think, you know, the next time
Speaker 1: I got a car, it's gonna be an e V.
Speaker 1: And I had that experience where I drove someone's and
Speaker 1: it's just like so smooth and nice. And then I
Speaker 1: went back to my car and it's like, you know,
Speaker 1: did that thing where like sort of like coughs and
Speaker 1: hiccups to start type And as I got and you
Speaker 1: know what, it felt like. It felt like going from
Speaker 1: an iPhone back to like a flip phone. It was
Speaker 1: just like, well, and I this analogy is not bad, actually, Joey,
Speaker 1: you've gone back to candy bar que is and physical
Speaker 1: clicks as opposed to a seamless kind of universal service experience.
Speaker 1: So you hinted at this and then you said something
Speaker 1: specific and like, Okay, this is going to hit so
Speaker 1: many different adjacent industries because it's not just a technological change.
Speaker 1: It's going to change everything. You said, the buying experience
Speaker 1: is fundamentally different, which of course calls to mind the
Speaker 1: power of the dealer networks of the legacy automakers. We
Speaker 1: know that dealers are politically powerful, and you know there's
Speaker 1: this sole established way people go to a car and
Speaker 1: they haggle and they get off and you know, uh
Speaker 1: a year of satellite radio, et cetera. What makes the
Speaker 1: buying experience unique for evs? Why will that inevitably change? Well,
Speaker 1: I should I should qualify that a little bit, which
Speaker 1: is that it's it's for the hure play EV companies,
Speaker 1: they're just doing direct sales. The challenge I think is
Speaker 1: going to come about for a GM or a FORD
Speaker 1: or a VW group that obviously has this huge embedded
Speaker 1: dealer network that it works with that wants to sell things,
Speaker 1: you know, to get the to get that undercoat, to
Speaker 1: get the four mats thrown in. You know, you've got
Speaker 1: to maybe cut a deal on your your service schedule
Speaker 1: or something like that. So you've got kind of two
Speaker 1: poles set up, which is one we haven't we have
Speaker 1: a new product, and if we're going to stand up
Speaker 1: in a new market, why not just do it differently?
Speaker 1: I mean, the Internet does exist for all of these companies,
Speaker 1: and if you can kind of force a lot of
Speaker 1: your energy and attention into the web interface, you can
Speaker 1: probably save on other things versus you know, putting putting
Speaker 1: the car into a new electric car into a universe
Speaker 1: of other existing models, wherein you're presenting a choice within
Speaker 1: a brand that may be kind of challenging, and that
Speaker 1: itself implies all kinds of different stuff about how well
Speaker 1: does the sales staff know to sell an enter field book?
Speaker 1: Do they know that, do they know the KPIs to
Speaker 1: talk about when they're pitching it, do they know the specs?
Speaker 1: And also do they know what kind of experienced sort
Speaker 1: that they could promise down the line. But there's a
Speaker 1: wrinkle to that, which is that you know, um, you
Speaker 1: handed at this in your introduction. You know, uh, the
Speaker 1: engine and a BMW has got hundreds of moving cards,
Speaker 1: the murder in electric vehicle has a few dozen, and
Speaker 1: the battery itself is something that has much less complication
Speaker 1: to it in one sense, in terms of mechanical moving
Speaker 1: parts than the entire power train of an internal combustion
Speaker 1: engine vehicle. And that's a long way of saying that
Speaker 1: there's a huge amount of embedded attention and business in
Speaker 1: the maintenance schedule for keeping a bunch of hot, contacting
Speaker 1: metal parts that need lubrication and precision matching to work.
Speaker 1: In the business like that, that's a huge part of
Speaker 1: the business. In fact, the last time I got an
Speaker 1: internal combustion engine car, I have a Subaru outbag. I
Speaker 1: actually had to essentially sign a waiver top out of
Speaker 1: the maintenance schedule that they wanted to try to sell me.
Speaker 1: Because that that's a big part of the recurring revenue
Speaker 1: relationship that are the card dealers have with individuals. So
Speaker 1: we we've we've created this this inherent tension between not
Speaker 1: only what you're selling, but how you're selling, and also
Speaker 1: what people need to know and how they need to
Speaker 1: convey that selling experience and stuff like that. And yes,
Speaker 1: it's gotten a huge amount of pushback from the dealers
Speaker 1: and as you, as you indicated, dealers are very very
Speaker 1: powerful locally. I mean pretty much every jurisdiction in the
Speaker 1: United States has got some kind of card dealer in it,
Speaker 1: versus not every jurisdiction having say, an auto manufacturer in it,
Speaker 1: and even fewer that have purely electric manufacture. So, just
Speaker 1: on a related note to the differences in the buying experience,
Speaker 1: could you maybe walk us through the different fronts in
Speaker 1: manufacturing a traditional car versus an electric vehicle. And I
Speaker 1: guess one thing I'm curious about is whether or not
Speaker 1: something like building e vs actually requires a different work culture,
Speaker 1: I guess, to building traditional vehicles. You know, people think
Speaker 1: of companies like Tesla as hardcore tech, you know, really innovating,
Speaker 1: doing something new, and when people look at GM, they
Speaker 1: tend to think of an old school car company, and
Speaker 1: it just seems like there's a big cultural divide there.
Speaker 1: Now there's there's absolutely a big cultural divide, and I
Speaker 1: think we should sort of clarify a couple of things.
Speaker 1: So manufacturing the body of a car, if it's going
Speaker 1: to be stamped steel, you know, if you're going to
Speaker 1: be putting seats into it, if it's going to have
Speaker 1: windshields and windscreens, it's going to have wheels and tires
Speaker 1: and breaks. These things are largely coming from the same
Speaker 1: kind of supply chains and the same type of manufacturing.
Speaker 1: But it's kind of the core I p. And I
Speaker 1: would also say a lot of the corporate identity elements
Speaker 1: that are kind of in fundamental conflict as you move
Speaker 1: from internal combustion engine to e v s, and that's
Speaker 1: the replacement of this massively complex and massively precise set
Speaker 1: of things that have been optimized for more than a
Speaker 1: hundred years to take things, take a fuel aeroson wise
Speaker 1: it exploded, turn that into momentum that then it makes
Speaker 1: the vehicle move, and that then also in the process
Speaker 1: dissipates heat, gets rid of gases and all these things,
Speaker 1: and in the process of course, moves the vehicle, replacing
Speaker 1: it with a large, sealed up more or less inert
Speaker 1: slab of electronics that is oftentimes integrated somewhere else. And
Speaker 1: then motors that may or may not be made in
Speaker 1: house by an auto company and then put together in
Speaker 1: a in a in a package that looks the same
Speaker 1: on the surface and that does the same job. It's
Speaker 1: still moving a car, but that definitely kind of changes
Speaker 1: the frontier of where companies see a lot of their identity.
Speaker 1: Like a great example here is that as that Honda
Speaker 1: in Korea has just closed, it's R and D center
Speaker 1: that develops new internal combustion engines that they've had this
Speaker 1: for thirty nine years, Like this was a massive part
Speaker 1: of the company's identity to be stood up as an
Speaker 1: independent company was to do this. You know, the chief
Speaker 1: of R and D there said that, you know, it's
Speaker 1: an inevitable to convert into electrification, and that our engine
Speaker 1: development is a great achievement, but we must change the
Speaker 1: system to create future innovation based on this great asset
Speaker 1: from the path. So I guess it's a big psychological moment,
Speaker 1: like you know, what, what battle are you fighting technically
Speaker 1: within the automobile? Is it for greater efficiency? Is it
Speaker 1: for more speed and power and torque? All of those
Speaker 1: things that used to run through hundreds of moving parts
Speaker 1: being integrated into an engine and through a very sophisticated
Speaker 1: R and D apparatus are now having to rotate completely.
Speaker 1: And it is a really important question to ask, like
Speaker 1: how much of that can carry over from one place
Speaker 1: to another. Now, assembling a car carries over, but making
Speaker 1: and making a battery pack and a motor maybe just not.
Speaker 1: So you actually just mentioned one question, Um that I
Speaker 1: wanted to ask, which is where do batteries actually come
Speaker 1: from for electric vehicles? And do any e V manufacturers
Speaker 1: actually make their own batteries. Yes, Tescam makes its own
Speaker 1: for long term of course, in partnership with Pana sonic Um.
Speaker 1: There are a number of manufacturers not far from you
Speaker 1: in southern China, S A, T, L and B y D.
Speaker 1: There's there's an increasing interest in doing manufacturing in Europe
Speaker 1: and some here in the America's as well. And again
Speaker 1: this this will be an intriguing question to see how
Speaker 1: it plays out in terms of do companies have our
Speaker 1: company is able to I don't know, better leverage their
Speaker 1: supply chains by being diverse, having a number of suppliers,
Speaker 1: or are they better off taking everything in the house,
Speaker 1: you know. On the motors side, the analogy would be
Speaker 1: that many automakers may do their R and D, but
Speaker 1: they have a third party here, one supplier that manufactures motors.
Speaker 1: So it's you know, it's a bit of it's a
Speaker 1: bit of both at the moment. But but again it's
Speaker 1: very very different, and it's very highly concentrated at the moment,
Speaker 1: given given the fact that so much of this capability
Speaker 1: is it China and the rest of East Asia. God,
Speaker 1: you know, there are so many different avenues we could
Speaker 1: go down, and already feel like Tracy, We're gonna have
Speaker 1: to do like ten episodes this here, because I'm sure
Speaker 1: I could ask an hour's worth of questions necessarily, like
Speaker 1: just on battery manufacture and then of course the chemicals
Speaker 1: and commodities that go into battery manufacturer. So like it's already,
Speaker 1: like my head is like spinning out at different thoughts.
Speaker 1: But I want to go back to this question of
Speaker 1: what becomes of a of a automaker's identity in this
Speaker 1: sort of evy world. And something I'm sort of like
Speaker 1: wondering about is, you know, and like the late nineties
Speaker 1: with the personal computer, and suddenly it's like, okay, everyone
Speaker 1: just like puts the same operating system in the computer,
Speaker 1: and everyone puts the same Intel chip in it, and
Speaker 1: suddenly all these like computer makers more or less lose
Speaker 1: their identity, and you know, we can sort of remember
Speaker 1: all the ones that fell by the wayside, like Compact
Speaker 1: and so forth. Is there a risk that that happens
Speaker 1: in autos where the tech sort of is really happening
Speaker 1: somewhere else and they're sort of like assembling the same
Speaker 1: parts as everyone else and don't really have any sort
Speaker 1: of unique purpose anymore. It's a really great question, And
Speaker 1: I actually like this analogy because I can put it
Speaker 1: right back into a question, which is, if we think
Speaker 1: back to the late nineties, was there anybody who came
Speaker 1: be it as like I'm a compact guy. Sorry, you know,
Speaker 1: I'm a gateway. I'm a gateway man, my family has
Speaker 1: been a gateway. Man that song I'm ever going to
Speaker 1: use for my desktop PC. Like Dell almost got there,
Speaker 1: They'll almost got dude, You're getting a Dell, right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: that was the closest it almost got there. I would
Speaker 1: say Apple has definitely carved that territory, even for people
Speaker 1: who spent some sort of years in the technical wilderness
Speaker 1: with with Apples. But I think the auto identity is
Speaker 1: not only deeper, but I mean it is really like
Speaker 1: multi generational. My family as F one, not for it's
Speaker 1: F one, and they've had since we since my stepfather
Speaker 1: was buying them off construction site seventies. Like that identity
Speaker 1: is as old as I am in a sense, and
Speaker 1: so is definitely a challenge for the big manufacturer, which
Speaker 1: is you know where where does the kind of the
Speaker 1: loyalty lie within? That is case in which people saying
Speaker 1: like I love the F one fifty, but now that
Speaker 1: it's gone electric, I won't buy anything from four or
Speaker 1: on the other hand, and this is data from Ford
Speaker 1: last month, is it the case that by electrifying an
Speaker 1: iconic nameplate the Machi and the F one fift lightning,
Speaker 1: are you able to new people to your brand and
Speaker 1: actually think fourd's case is really instructive because they've got
Speaker 1: about two reservations for the F one Lightning and THEE
Speaker 1: for those of you outside the US, is the best
Speaker 1: selling car or vehicle in the United States for more
Speaker 1: than four decades. They have two reservations, of which sev
Speaker 1: of the customers are new to Ford, which is pretty
Speaker 1: extraordinary if you if you think about it from a
Speaker 1: captured perspective, being able to sure market in doing that
Speaker 1: is pretty great if you're looking at this as a manufacturer.
Speaker 1: That said, there's always the risk of, I think the
Speaker 1: kind of the E V one experience, which is also
Speaker 1: from the late nineties, of delivering a subpar experience and
Speaker 1: not necessarily self sabotaging it, but under selling it. And
Speaker 1: that could take the form of deliberately saying this is
Speaker 1: a compliance vehicle and we're not really interested in it,
Speaker 1: to kind of the soft pedal version, which is people
Speaker 1: just don't know how to sell it, but I but
Speaker 1: it seems to be that that with the electrification of
Speaker 1: the two best selling the F one Fifting Lighting and
Speaker 1: the Chevy Silverado full size truck, that you've got this
Speaker 1: and this sort of interpoment of new things into into
Speaker 1: an old not just brand, but an old nameplate that
Speaker 1: people have a lot of loyalty to. So I think
Speaker 1: it's going to be extremely interesting to see how this
Speaker 1: plays out. Because of the time. Of course, you have
Speaker 1: companies building off of their own like what Eon Musket
Speaker 1: call first principles for e v s and that's not
Speaker 1: just obviously tested, but that's Ribban, that's Lucid. You know,
Speaker 1: the two friend vehicles of the years on the truck
Speaker 1: with the Lucid air car and the Ribban R one
Speaker 1: P truck. So with all this attention on electric vehicles,
Speaker 1: investors getting very enthusiastic about the space, as Joe mentioned
Speaker 1: in the intro, lots of money flowing into it. Do
Speaker 1: we see any signs or should we be at all
Speaker 1: concerned about over supply? And one of the reasons I
Speaker 1: ask is because in China at least, we have seen
Speaker 1: some ev companies that you know, set themselves up, attracted
Speaker 1: a lot of initial investment, and then seemed to very
Speaker 1: quietly shut down. And I guess one follow up question,
Speaker 1: and it's related to your point about brand loyalty earlier,
Speaker 1: but what does being competitive in the e V space
Speaker 1: actually look like. And how do you differentiate between winners
Speaker 1: first as losers as far as the knots of brands
Speaker 1: popping up and then quietly going away. Well, that looks
Speaker 1: very much like the early days of the auto industry,
Speaker 1: right large. You know, when we had hundreds of manufacturers
Speaker 1: in the United States, and you know, some of them
Speaker 1: lasted longer than others. There were packards around and then
Speaker 1: our parents were born. But you know, Stuts as a
Speaker 1: brand is no longer with us, Detroit Electric is no
Speaker 1: longer with us. There are are more things that fall
Speaker 1: by the wayside than not. And actually, maybe to go
Speaker 1: back for our sort of best stop computing analogy, it
Speaker 1: may be the same kind of thing. Lots of people
Speaker 1: are trying something similar. Differentiation will be determined maybe more
Speaker 1: by the market by anything else. But another wrinkle to this,
Speaker 1: and I hinted that I would afford, is that the
Speaker 1: fact that you that a lot of these new models
Speaker 1: are kind of doing a determination of product market fit
Speaker 1: and products scale by asking for reservations. Yeah, is a
Speaker 1: way kind of size the market and events. So for instance,
Speaker 1: Forward doubled and then doubled again the planned production capacity
Speaker 1: for the uplift lightning based on reservations. So rather rather
Speaker 1: than like stuffing a lot with product that nobody wants
Speaker 1: to move, what they're working for here is is a
Speaker 1: more supple and a more kind of bi directional sense
Speaker 1: of demand and supply at the same time. I'm not
Speaker 1: quite sure how that plays in the in the Chinese
Speaker 1: auto market, but it's definitely something that as as companies
Speaker 1: are testing the thesis here in the AIDS, they're finding
Speaker 1: that the reservation method is is an interesting way to
Speaker 1: get things going. Um, and it's been you know, it's also,
Speaker 1: let's be honest, it's also been part of a very
Speaker 1: nice story to tell the markets when when Ford is
Speaker 1: able to go to the market and say it an
Speaker 1: investor today, Hey, look we doubled our we double production
Speaker 1: based on reservations, and then we're doubling it again based
Speaker 1: on reservations. You know, I was gonna ask you, you know,
Speaker 1: you mentioned that the four F one fifty, the electric version,
Speaker 1: it's had this extraordinary thing. New people are coming into it.
Speaker 1: What about your family or the old the families of
Speaker 1: F one fifty loyalists who had one specific idea about
Speaker 1: what an F one fifty was are they excited. I
Speaker 1: don't mean your family specifically, although maybe you can answer,
Speaker 1: but are the generations of F one fifty owners showing
Speaker 1: enthusiasm for switching over to an electric version? I haven't
Speaker 1: seen that data yet, but I'm gonna sort of I'm
Speaker 1: gonna game this now, which is first tailgate and you're
Speaker 1: the dude who can run like hundred watt sound system
Speaker 1: your car. You pop up in the front trunk and
Speaker 1: you've got your yetti in there full of beer, and
Speaker 1: you're like, look, you know the space to keep things cold.
Speaker 1: There's also and this is definitely the feature set for
Speaker 1: for for Ford and for Rivan as well, is using
Speaker 1: the vehicle and as essentially a mobile hub for all
Speaker 1: the other electric activities that you may need to do
Speaker 1: with work. I mean the fact that the fact that
Speaker 1: you can charge. You can run a chop saw, you
Speaker 1: can run a micro saw, you could probably run a
Speaker 1: table saw if you wanted. You can definitely charge every
Speaker 1: other peripheral battery that you've got off bits in the
Speaker 1: F one. That's definitely gonna get noticed. I handed that
Speaker 1: my family always had one, but we got them as
Speaker 1: fleet cars. They were white F one fifties no crew
Speaker 1: cab with a with a flat six, and then they
Speaker 1: have been making for decades like they were just they
Speaker 1: were work cars. And so like when you when you
Speaker 1: put this into the work case, it's extra fuel you
Speaker 1: don't need to buy. It's all kinds of capabilities that
Speaker 1: I think people will find to have at the consumer level,
Speaker 1: that kind of g whiz at aspect. I haven't thought
Speaker 1: about this at all, that like, this is the first
Speaker 1: time it's occurred to me or I realized this that
Speaker 1: if you have like this powerful battery and unlike with
Speaker 1: an existing car battery, you know, like zo right, you
Speaker 1: drained it out just by leaving the lights on for
Speaker 1: five minutes or whatever, Like this is like a really
Speaker 1: powerful piece of equipment that you're carrying around with you. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, like I think I think that that will
Speaker 1: be will be interested to see how that kind of
Speaker 1: peripheral use cases evolve around this. Like if you look
Speaker 1: at like Ribbean's advertising, for instance, has got somebody set
Speaker 1: up and set up in the R one T in
Speaker 1: the woods at a camping site, but they're running, They're
Speaker 1: running like hundreds of feet of L. E. D. Edison bulbs,
Speaker 1: you know, basically setting up your Instagram ready camping site,
Speaker 1: but without being like, oh, I need to bring a
Speaker 1: generator for this, or I'm gonna drain my battery and
Speaker 1: doing so. Oh that's cool. Yeah. So, I mean, we've
Speaker 1: been talking a lot about the one fifty, and when
Speaker 1: I think about pick up trucks, I kind of think
Speaker 1: about people, you know, I don't know, in the hinterlands
Speaker 1: of Texas or something somewhere out in the country, um,
Speaker 1: doing country things, And I know that's the stereotype, and
Speaker 1: it's probably not really true anymore. In pickup trucks are
Speaker 1: very very popular in the cities as well. But this
Speaker 1: sort of begs the question of I guess infrastructure, and
Speaker 1: my understanding is that charging stations are still an issue
Speaker 1: outside of major cities, So I guess the question is
Speaker 1: how long is it going to take to build out
Speaker 1: that infrastructure and how much does demand for evs actually
Speaker 1: depend on that happening. So I haven't I have a
Speaker 1: different take on this, which is that actually I think
Speaker 1: that the charging infrastructure is largely a bigger issue in
Speaker 1: cities than in the suburbs. Where it is an issue
Speaker 1: in the countryside is for long distance driving where you
Speaker 1: want to be charging as quickly as possible. The reason
Speaker 1: that I don't have any v is that I don't
Speaker 1: have a garage. I worked on the street, and I
Speaker 1: have yet to sort of figure out exactly how I
Speaker 1: would negotiate charging. Now, my neighbors down the street have
Speaker 1: two testamas. I have no idea where they charged them,
Speaker 1: but obviously they do. And whether they're doing it at
Speaker 1: the office, whether they're doing it at at Whole Foods,
Speaker 1: or whether they're they're going somewhere else and kind of
Speaker 1: finding a charging solution, I'm not really sure yet. I
Speaker 1: think what's going to be interesting isn't like, yes, we're
Speaker 1: going to need this massive build out of charging networks.
Speaker 1: And right now, like globally we have about one point
Speaker 1: five million charging connectors worldwide, of which them in China.
Speaker 1: By the end of this year, that's probably gonna be
Speaker 1: like two point seven million, so it's almost doubling in
Speaker 1: total size, and it's going to solve a number of
Speaker 1: different potential needs. So one of them is the is
Speaker 1: essentially replacing the in inner city gas station, so a
Speaker 1: place that that you would normally go fill up leave,
Speaker 1: but now you need to go and spend slighting more time.
Speaker 1: The other is in a place like a big box retailer,
Speaker 1: where you're you're already going to be spending some time,
Speaker 1: and that kind of matches you're the amount of time
Speaker 1: you're going to spend. Then there's the third case of like,
Speaker 1: well we need to build a network for highway driving.
Speaker 1: I'm gonna drive on from from New York City to
Speaker 1: Miami and I want to do it in my EV
Speaker 1: Where am I going to charge it on the way?
Speaker 1: And then there's the other case, which is, you know,
Speaker 1: I have a home and I have a place to park,
Speaker 1: and maybe I will use that as my charging solution.
Speaker 1: I think it's gonna it's not to play for here.
Speaker 1: You know, our homeowners is going to find the need
Speaker 1: to charge their car in twenty minutes, probably not. Are
Speaker 1: people on the highway going to be happy to spend
Speaker 1: two hours waiting for their vehicle to charge? Also? Probably not?
Speaker 1: And so I think what's what's interesting to me is
Speaker 1: not just what gets built, but who owns it and
Speaker 1: what's the knock on business? And Joe I always think
Speaker 1: about this, even like what's the Buckey's future? Yeah for
Speaker 1: for for electric vehicles for those of y'all don't know BUCkies.
Speaker 1: I don't know, Joe, you can probably tell better, tell
Speaker 1: me better than than than I can with buckets. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's the best. You know, they have great bathrooms for
Speaker 1: one thing, so I have memories of like the best
Speaker 1: place to change your baby's diaper if you're on the
Speaker 1: road is definitely a bucket is. But it's like this
Speaker 1: like amazing sort of like Texas institution that has tons
Speaker 1: and tons of places to fill up your gas tank,
Speaker 1: but also like tons of gifts and barbecue inside and
Speaker 1: tons of like dried smoked meats and t shirts to
Speaker 1: try on and cowboy hats and like you just kind
Speaker 1: of want to hang out there. And they pay their
Speaker 1: staff really well, so they have a very good staff.
Speaker 1: It's very pleasant. Like I said, the bathrooms are extremely
Speaker 1: clean and so like, uh and I think you know
Speaker 1: our colleague Connor Send and when your opinion wrote like
Speaker 1: a thing it is like if all gas stations were
Speaker 1: like as enjoyable as Bucky's, like, oh, thirty minutes to
Speaker 1: like charge your car, Yeah, I'm cool with that, but
Speaker 1: like obviously most gas stations are nearly nice enough that
Speaker 1: you would want to spend thirty minutes there. But I
Speaker 1: think it's super important for us to consider what this
Speaker 1: is like because like you know, there's a time carve
Speaker 1: out two to charging. It's not as long as what
Speaker 1: a lot of people think. But it may not be
Speaker 1: that dona'nt think. I mean, if you're if you're on
Speaker 1: a road trip, you know, if you can say you
Speaker 1: had a four hundred mile battery capacity, well, at that
Speaker 1: point you're in a battle between battery capacity and latter capacity.
Speaker 1: You've got to stop at some point and when you
Speaker 1: and when you do, maybe there's a charging is part
Speaker 1: of a sort of nexus of other attractions that take
Speaker 1: you to a place. Well you have to have to
Speaker 1: eat too, especially if you have kids exactly. And you know,
Speaker 1: like it's funny because the pushback I've gotten on this
Speaker 1: when I when I sort of point is that as
Speaker 1: we were like, you know, I had the road and
Speaker 1: I go I was like, do you have children under five?
Speaker 1: Because you can't do that, Like you need to go
Speaker 1: somewhere and you know it'll be like it'll be like
Speaker 1: driving perhaps in the early days of the Interstate Ighway,
Speaker 1: in which attractions pop up, you know, you know, is
Speaker 1: it is it the mystery spot? You know, is it
Speaker 1: walled drug? You know, what kind of thing is it
Speaker 1: that people plan their journey around. But I just want
Speaker 1: to give some costs here. I'm like, how big this
Speaker 1: in this industry? Is the United States that is going
Speaker 1: to eventually have to deal with this. There are nine
Speaker 1: dred and sixty thou people working in gas stations in
Speaker 1: the United States. Most of those have a convenience store
Speaker 1: related to it. There are a hundred and fifty thousand
Speaker 1: convenience stores of themselves fuel and they some about of
Speaker 1: the motor fuel that's purchased in the US. But also
Speaker 1: like of that hundred and fifty thous about ninety thousand
Speaker 1: of them are single operators. So like there's a huge
Speaker 1: set of questions to be answered here. That's not just
Speaker 1: buying like the Buckeyes and the Flying Jay's of the world,
Speaker 1: but by tens of thousands of Soul proprietorships. So I
Speaker 1: guess we've been talking about how electric vehicles might change
Speaker 1: things like the way we live. This idea of using
Speaker 1: them as a center for all your electric activities or
Speaker 1: you know, a transportable center for all your electric activities,
Speaker 1: and the way they might change traditional car companies garages
Speaker 1: and things like that. I wanted to ask, I guess
Speaker 1: ah even more macro question, which is, what is the
Speaker 1: impact on demand for oil if everyone is suddenly driving
Speaker 1: evs and do countries you know nowadays Saudi Arabia, United
Speaker 1: Arab Emirates big oil producers clearly hold some geopolitical sway
Speaker 1: because of their oil reserves. And I guess my question
Speaker 1: is does a country that has a bunch of lithium
Speaker 1: reserves suddenly become the new Saudi Arabia under a scenario
Speaker 1: where everyone is driving evis and there's a need for
Speaker 1: a lot of batteries. So this this is one that's
Speaker 1: definitely worth parsing out to sort of figure out what's
Speaker 1: the same and what's different in the resource inputs for
Speaker 1: these cards. So yes, definitely there's there's there's potential on
Speaker 1: the lithium side, on the nickel side for some short
Speaker 1: term shortages, and you can definitely see that in in pricing.
Speaker 1: The price of lithium really went went really skyrocket in
Speaker 1: the last year by a factor of about five over
Speaker 1: the course of the year. We do expect that to
Speaker 1: to sort of moderate over time as more capacity comes online,
Speaker 1: So you know, it definitely within that domain kind of
Speaker 1: shifts the locusts of control to like a few places
Speaker 1: at at a period of time. The one thing you
Speaker 1: can say about materials in battery, the battery metals, is
Speaker 1: that they can be and will be recycled. We hear
Speaker 1: oftentimes people saying that nobody recycles them. I'm like, well,
Speaker 1: they're still on the road, like nobody recycles them in
Speaker 1: the way that they're not recycling a lot of iPhone
Speaker 1: thirteen max is Uh, it's just not you know, they're
Speaker 1: not rolled off the market yet. And also, um, I
Speaker 1: think that we will see a pretty sophisticated hipparatus to
Speaker 1: decide what to do with batteries at the end of
Speaker 1: their life. But to take it back to the oil producers,
Speaker 1: the interesting thing here is that is that we think
Speaker 1: you should think about this among like a marginal cost curve.
Speaker 1: If if demand goes down, then you start chopping off
Speaker 1: with the margin, which is always the highest price and
Speaker 1: oftentimes sometimes the smallest units of supply that are in
Speaker 1: the market. And you know, my colleagues were expected by
Speaker 1: the middle of the center, we've got tens of millions
Speaker 1: of barrels a day less demand for road transport fuel.
Speaker 1: Now that doesn't mean that it crams all oil demand
Speaker 1: down and then it starts to moves negative, but it's
Speaker 1: definitely entirely possible. But when that happens, what it's probably
Speaker 1: going to do is follow very kind of classical economics,
Speaker 1: which is, users with the most flexible will supply and
Speaker 1: with the lowest price are probably the ones that will
Speaker 1: be pumping the remaining barrels of oil over time. And
Speaker 1: so what it probably does is but the the powerful
Speaker 1: position back in the hands of big producers lots of
Speaker 1: capacity and with low costs, and those are the producers
Speaker 1: in the Persian Gulf, Saudi Arabia, the UAE, it's Russia. Um,
Speaker 1: you know, definitely, the the impetus there is that these
Speaker 1: companies will or these countries rather will almost certainly be
Speaker 1: pumping the very nast barrels of oil that come out
Speaker 1: of the ground because they're the ones able to withstand
Speaker 1: this change. On the margin. The bigger challenges for marginal
Speaker 1: small producers, for producers that have a very inherent fundamental
Speaker 1: cost and and things like that. So you know, it's
Speaker 1: it may actually bed the strength of some of today's
Speaker 1: biggest oil producers that's really interesting and I hadn't I
Speaker 1: hadn't thought about that at all. I don't only talk
Speaker 1: more about some of these like deep structural I don't
Speaker 1: want to say oppositional, but maybe oppositional like forces you
Speaker 1: mentioned like sell thing is going to happen with all
Speaker 1: of the gas stations and how many people uh that
Speaker 1: employees and all of the convenience stories associated, like there's
Speaker 1: gonna be that's going to be turned up somehow. We
Speaker 1: don't know. Maybe they'll all be like BUCkies, or I'm
Speaker 1: excited about roadside attractions like random like dinosaur museums in
Speaker 1: the middle of nowhere. I want to go back to
Speaker 1: something we talked about the beginning, the labor intensity of
Speaker 1: e V manufacturer and obviously mentioned you know they're they're
Speaker 1: simpler if you're moving parts in theory, if you're moving
Speaker 1: parts and means if your workers on a shop floor.
Speaker 1: What can we look at when we look at the
Speaker 1: labor intensity of a pure EV player like a Tesla
Speaker 1: versus a GM or a Ford and what does that
Speaker 1: tell what are the things that are going to arise
Speaker 1: for the legacy automakers even if they have popular products.
Speaker 1: You can solve that part in terms of the stresses
Speaker 1: on their own workforce. So I think I think where
Speaker 1: the stress actually in the first instance, is going to
Speaker 1: come in in the in the tier one and lower
Speaker 1: supplier network. You know, Toyota has Toyota City, and it's
Speaker 1: made up of hundreds of suppliers that make very specific things.
Speaker 1: They make a specific kind of seal, they make specific
Speaker 1: types of valve, they make specific types of solarnoids or connectors,
Speaker 1: and all the different things that flow into into making
Speaker 1: and automobile engine have got their own supply chain of
Speaker 1: small companies that produce very precisely made and very precisely
Speaker 1: planned products. It's the same in Germany obviously, where you
Speaker 1: have similar value chains. But even more than that is
Speaker 1: like there's another layer back from that, which is there's
Speaker 1: the capital, the capital equipment manufacturer. So the companies that
Speaker 1: make the tools that make those valves that go into
Speaker 1: a BMW engine or that go into a Toyota power train,
Speaker 1: We're gonna start to see it resonate resonate out further there.
Speaker 1: I mean, like in the big auto businesses are assembly
Speaker 1: businesses for the most part, there are you know, there
Speaker 1: are still some companies that do full integration of things
Speaker 1: that they're making, but they're you know, the biggest part
Speaker 1: of the role in a plant is integration of pieces
Speaker 1: that have come from these very diverse supply chains. And
Speaker 1: it's the change in the supply chain. It's going to
Speaker 1: be a big of a deal. I mean, if you
Speaker 1: think that, like, if you think you know this is
Speaker 1: this is not exactly precise, but basically every part, one
Speaker 1: way or another, is probably a company, and every company
Speaker 1: itself buys things from other companies that go into it.
Speaker 1: It's going to be this huge compression along the way. Now,
Speaker 1: if I'm an automaker, I may not necessarily find this
Speaker 1: all that problematic. Having a more consolidated network of suppliers
Speaker 1: maybe one that I can plan longer term with, maybe
Speaker 1: maybe advantageous. But politically it puts it puts a kind
Speaker 1: of schism within what we think of as the auto industry.
Speaker 1: You know, like tires and brakes may still be aligned
Speaker 1: with the d s UH and infect tire manufacturers make
Speaker 1: a whole new set of products just for evs, but
Speaker 1: auto assembly and making of engines and making of finenges
Speaker 1: and valves and solennoids and fittings is probably going to
Speaker 1: have a little bit of a crack up in time.
Speaker 1: So just on this note, I mean, we're basically talking
Speaker 1: about everyone who currently has a traditional car going out
Speaker 1: and buying a new car, which would obviously entail a
Speaker 1: lot of spending um and the possibility of making a
Speaker 1: lot of money for companies that produce e v s.
Speaker 1: I guess my question is, to what degree does this
Speaker 1: new industry spark a sort of follow on boom in
Speaker 1: manufacturing and the parts that you are just discussing, Like,
Speaker 1: is there a possibility that in places like the US,
Speaker 1: as big car makers start to switch to e v s,
Speaker 1: that we do start seeing I guess, more battery making
Speaker 1: or you know, tire making or specific EV parts being
Speaker 1: made in the US, and that industry expanding. I mean,
Speaker 1: it's it's possible. It's possiblely we see these new industries
Speaker 1: popping up and expanding. But but another another possibility is that,
Speaker 1: you know, so much of this essentially becomes part of
Speaker 1: the semiconductor value chain, which, as we know right now,
Speaker 1: is pretty complicated. You know, my colleagues estimate that you know,
Speaker 1: the semichonetric bill of vehicle building materials as a percentage
Speaker 1: of the vehicle building build materials is like about four
Speaker 1: is probably gonna be about So if you think about replacing,
Speaker 1: you think about replacing all these little pieces that manage
Speaker 1: the flow of liquids, gases, than the person of heat
Speaker 1: and then the lubrication of moving parts with things that
Speaker 1: maintain flow of electrons and do heat heat control uh
Speaker 1: and do system maintenance within a battery. Those are those
Speaker 1: are much more tronic than they are panical. And so
Speaker 1: you know, it's going to be really interesting to see
Speaker 1: where that doesn't create new new value chains popping up.
Speaker 1: I mean, there's an intriguing kind of thing happening here
Speaker 1: for Ferrari, wherein the new CEO of Ferrari, Benedetoa, has
Speaker 1: come from ST micro Electronics, which is a major Apple supplier,
Speaker 1: and he in turn brought with him two executives from
Speaker 1: ST Microelectronics that have come over. And this is a
Speaker 1: sort of like very in our face kind of example
Speaker 1: of maybe the new kind of core I p you
Speaker 1: need to fold into thinking about electrification and needing this
Speaker 1: to say, I think Ferrari has quite a bit of
Speaker 1: pride in the in the engines that it makes. I mean,
Speaker 1: you know, this sort of idea that all of these
Speaker 1: industries are tech semiconductors, etcetera. Bleeding over into each other.
Speaker 1: I remember a few years ago there was a lot
Speaker 1: of hype about the silicon the fang is the silicon
Speaker 1: value giant making some play an auto and Google head
Speaker 1: a thing. I think they're a little bit more focused
Speaker 1: on the autonomous side, and every once in a while
Speaker 1: there's a story about maybe there'll be an Apple car
Speaker 1: one day. Are they playing in this space? Is it
Speaker 1: sort of like, actually, maybe there is not some connection
Speaker 1: between the search engine and a car, Like where are
Speaker 1: they on all this? I mean, it's like like the
Speaker 1: question I guess is what the electrifications that have moved
Speaker 1: the abstraction layer of cars in a way that a
Speaker 1: tech company to get in and play and we can
Speaker 1: kind of we can kind of start carving this off,
Speaker 1: like do they want a business of stamping metal? Probably not?
Speaker 1: Probably not? Are they Are they in the business of
Speaker 1: doing an operating system? Me? But do you want to
Speaker 1: be in the bluing an entertainment system as well as that?
Speaker 1: And also what's the value capture that you get and
Speaker 1: what's the model? Are you able to create a recur
Speaker 1: and annual recurring revenue relationship within the car that has
Speaker 1: software like margins or are you going to be doing
Speaker 1: auto industry park it for making physical stuff. I mean,
Speaker 1: it will be very interesting to see if Apple brings
Speaker 1: a product market is and what it what it views
Speaker 1: as the relationship. But also like where does the technology
Speaker 1: point of control flow in a way that is important
Speaker 1: for a for a technology company to get into this.
Speaker 1: I mean, like in in a sense, Apple and Google
Speaker 1: are in all of our cars every time we plug
Speaker 1: in our phone and use that for mapping and for music. Um,
Speaker 1: you know they have they have actually they've taken away
Speaker 1: market share from like in that market share, but kind
Speaker 1: of presence and brand presence from companies own self developed
Speaker 1: entertainment systems or from navigation systems as well. I really
Speaker 1: hope we don't have to start paying monthly subscriptions for
Speaker 1: like our operating system in an evy or the entertainment system.
Speaker 1: I know. But but Tracy, the way to think about
Speaker 1: it is that like I I as as I mentioned
Speaker 1: at the beginning, I had to opt out of the
Speaker 1: equivalent service agreement when I got my new car. So
Speaker 1: auto companies are will definitely do their best to try
Speaker 1: to steer you in that direction to to a services agreement.
Speaker 1: I do think that companies will try to do that
Speaker 1: and want to do it. The question is, you know it,
Speaker 1: does an automaker know everything about me just because I
Speaker 1: I go get the tires rotated once a quarter, not
Speaker 1: exactly in the same way that the technology company might.
Speaker 1: You mentioned, Okay, of course, like the semiconductor intensity or
Speaker 1: the chip intensity of these new cars is going to
Speaker 1: be much higher than they were. We know that there's
Speaker 1: a shortage of chips for the legacy cars, but a
Speaker 1: lot of them are at the low end. So it's
Speaker 1: kind of the chips are at the low end. It's
Speaker 1: kind of a different story than the longer term. But
Speaker 1: you know, like I'm also wondering about the sort of
Speaker 1: like the mechanics community, they used car parts community, the
Speaker 1: O'Reilly's of the world, the pet boys of the world,
Speaker 1: the auto zones of the world. This has been an
Speaker 1: issue for a while that like cars are getting more
Speaker 1: like computers, and you hear it's like, oh, you can't
Speaker 1: repair your own car anymore, and you know, it's just
Speaker 1: it's not the same. So this is not strictly an
Speaker 1: evy thing, like this sort of like phenomenon has been
Speaker 1: going on for a while and there's been anxiety about that.
Speaker 1: Is that going to accelerate the stress or are is
Speaker 1: that whole industry going to find a way to adapt
Speaker 1: as it has for some time, even as our car
Speaker 1: has already become more like computers. I mean, it's it's
Speaker 1: a really important thing. I mean, what's the pet Boys
Speaker 1: or NAPA Auto parts business when there are hundreds of
Speaker 1: fewer moving parts in in the part of the vehicle
Speaker 1: that wears out the quickest, that needs the most maintenance,
Speaker 1: and there are for the record, there are just under
Speaker 1: two million people who work in dealerships and parts the US. Like,
Speaker 1: it's a it's a pretty big business. And it's recovered
Speaker 1: almost completely from UH from diving during the pandemic. So
Speaker 1: that's a good question, like would you would you go
Speaker 1: to pet boys for what? Like what's the job to
Speaker 1: be done? Are you going to go there too? Jail
Speaker 1: break your vehicle software? Well, you know TESTNA will do
Speaker 1: that doesn't obviously jail break it, but TESTA will allow
Speaker 1: you to do over the ear up dates that happen
Speaker 1: automatically and improved performance or safety and other automakers are
Speaker 1: moving in the same direction, so it is a big
Speaker 1: challenge for them as far as repairs, I mean, body
Speaker 1: work and things like that are the same, but you've
Speaker 1: got new things to be aware of. I remember Bores
Speaker 1: has to do training for its mechanics around the battery
Speaker 1: pack of the new tyicon because you know, you could
Speaker 1: you could burn yourself by touching hot metal in a
Speaker 1: in an eternal muntion engine, but you can absolutely electrocute yourself.
Speaker 1: So you know, like like, where's the specialization within that,
Speaker 1: And it's just not a big enough market probably yet
Speaker 1: for that to have emerged. Most of that still flows
Speaker 1: back through dealers. Not only that, like these places occupy
Speaker 1: a lot of physical real estate, but what happens to
Speaker 1: the what happens to the bid the big box parts
Speaker 1: store and the people who work there. There There there's a
Speaker 1: lot of things that are in play here that we're
Speaker 1: I think only just beginning to kind of think ahead about,
Speaker 1: you know, and I imagine that there are strokes of
Speaker 1: all of these companies that are starting to ask these questions.
Speaker 1: But you know, we're we're not there volumetrically for this
Speaker 1: to really make a difference, but it will that I
Speaker 1: mean that was amazing. I do feel like, you know,
Speaker 1: in my mind, there's like ten more hours at least
Speaker 1: of episodes. There's there's, there's, there's so much more. Each
Speaker 1: one of these things itself is like a multi trillion
Speaker 1: dollar inquiry with tons of open questions. You know, what's
Speaker 1: the brand and loyalty to Brandon nameplay, the way the
Speaker 1: car moves, the business model, all kinds of stuff is
Speaker 1: gonna be going to be in play, and it's gonna
Speaker 1: be really interesting. I mean, I think that we'll see
Speaker 1: some incumbents that make it. They're all all even Toyota
Speaker 1: has now sort of come around to the fact that
Speaker 1: they probably need to do this. But there is a
Speaker 1: place for new entrance, and you know it's gonna be
Speaker 1: It's gonna be interesting to see and I do look
Speaker 1: forward to going to Buckey's sometimes. Yeah, you gotta go.
Speaker 1: This was great. I think, you know, we really need
Speaker 1: to do a lot more and this was like a
Speaker 1: great starting point for what I think will be many
Speaker 1: odd lots on related topics. So Net, thank you so
Speaker 1: much for coming on the show. Thanks Joe, Thanks Tracy,
Speaker 1: Thanks so much. Tracy. We gotta do a battery episode, obviously,
Speaker 1: like the battery supply chain, right, yeah, lithium oil, lithium,
Speaker 1: what else um, the future of gas stations, that's its own,
Speaker 1: like future of I guess car repair shops, future of
Speaker 1: car repair shops um, probably like unions and auto maker labor,
Speaker 1: either at the O E. M's or the part suppliers,
Speaker 1: and how they're going to navigate that. So many I'm
Speaker 1: so excited. I feel like that we have what future
Speaker 1: of roadside attractions? Yes, be interested in the future of
Speaker 1: like the American road Trip is, like, it's what I'm
Speaker 1: super accepted. So I do feel like this is going
Speaker 1: to end up being any Conductor series reducs, where every
Speaker 1: time we record an episode on e VS it just
Speaker 1: leads to five more episodes. It already feels like that.
Speaker 1: But on the other hand, the notion of everyone in
Speaker 1: the world, you know, maybe not immediately, but over the
Speaker 1: course of a few decades switching to a new type
Speaker 1: of car, that is a really compelling argument that it's
Speaker 1: going to have to have some knock on effects. Oh yeah,
Speaker 1: and you know, just the sheer number of like a
Speaker 1: employees in this space. You know, we're talking like a
Speaker 1: million here, are a million there? Like in the US. Like,
Speaker 1: obviously cars are a huge deal in the US specifically,
Speaker 1: but there's so many like millions of millions of different
Speaker 1: industry not millions of different industries, numerous different industries with
Speaker 1: millions of employees that are going to be affected by this.
Speaker 1: And look, there's gonna be it's also going to create
Speaker 1: tons of new jobs in ways that we don't expect,
Speaker 1: but yeah, it's going to. I think like that's thesis
Speaker 1: is that regardless of who wins, this is going to
Speaker 1: change so many different aspects of the economy and life.
Speaker 1: Is one that I find to be quite convincing and
Speaker 1: quite compelling, right, And I mean, if you think about
Speaker 1: cars specifically in America, they're they're so entwined with society
Speaker 1: and culture, the way cities and suburbs are planned and
Speaker 1: actually work. It feels like once you start changing the
Speaker 1: actual thing that drives that pun um, once you start
Speaker 1: changing actual cars, it just it feels like it has
Speaker 1: the potential to impact all of society and the way
Speaker 1: we live. And I think that made a really compelling
Speaker 1: argument for that. You know, I was like kind of
Speaker 1: like wondering, it's like, are people going to, like, like
Speaker 1: what is the cultural pushback going to be when someone
Speaker 1: shows up at a job site or a football game
Speaker 1: with the electric fifty. But I'd like that so compelling.
Speaker 1: It's like just like run all the machines and all
Speaker 1: the saws and all the equipment right from the car,
Speaker 1: like running awesome, like sort of like tailgate operation with
Speaker 1: like a working refrigerator and a stone and all that
Speaker 1: right for the car. Like that's awesome. People are gonna
Speaker 1: love that. So I'm like totally sold. Yeah, you'd be
Speaker 1: the cool guy, like with the best pregame, right, a
Speaker 1: great sound system, probably a TV, like a huge TV
Speaker 1: or screen that you could set up. It's it's it
Speaker 1: sounds awesome. So I'm super excited about seeing them all
Speaker 1: over the place. Now Yeah, all right, well it looks
Speaker 1: like we have our work cut out for us. But
Speaker 1: for now, shall we leave it there? Let's leave it there.
Speaker 1: This has been another episode of the All Thoughts podcast.
Speaker 1: I'm Tracy Alloway. You can follow me on Twitter at
Speaker 1: Tracy Alloway and I'm Joe wi Isn't Though. You could
Speaker 1: follow me on Twitter at the Stalwart. Follow our guest
Speaker 1: Net Bullard on Twitter. He's at nat Bullard. Follow our
Speaker 1: producer Laura Carlson Laura M. Carlson followed the Bloomberg head
Speaker 1: of podcast, Francesca Levi at Francesca Today and check out
Speaker 1: all of our podcasts at Bloomberg under the handle AD Podcasts.
Speaker 1: Thanks for listening to