What lies ahead for the Auto Industry in 2024? Sandy's Predictions (+ BIG Announcement!)

[Music] hi everyone welcome to another episode of Monroe live um here in the New Year I'm Jordan roacho with Sandy Monroe uh we had a lot happen in 2023 um both in industry and at Monroe and we just kind of wanted to start off the new year talking about some major topics um things that we'd Le learned and seen in 2023 and moving into 2024 um maybe talk about what we envision for the future what we're seeing in the industry um and maybe make some predictions about what we might see from different oems um and different uh industry attributes so a few of the topics that we'll cover today are you know looking at the intense competition among Global automakers right EVS are massive right now it's it's a it's a major race to the Finish Line to See which OEM is going to be coming out on top and 2024 I think is going to be telling in that regard for sure there's RIS Rising consumer expectations right so with the onset of autonomy a lot of additional features Adas coming you know really to the Forefront of design everyone's talking about new features how to implement what the best practices are there's going to be a lot uh a lot coming this year in that regard regulations you know Nitsa is obviously ever present and and they're driving up the bar in terms of what's necessitated from oems in the way of design and Hardware that a vehicle must be equipped with and lastly you know another thing that's really pressurizing the market is Silicon Valley among you know other places to include other regions especially China for example oems are coming out of the woodwork right and that's really pressurizing the automotive space specifically in the EV realm and so we'll talk a little bit about these things and you know from sy's perspective what your your perspective is on those and uh kind of start the new year out with some predictions and thoughts predictions and thoughts well um I thought we were going to start about uh what happened in 2023 first but we can do whatever you want he you're the guy in charge now so U my predictions and thoughts I I think that um 2024 is going to be a water shed year um lots of the North American car companies have backed away from Auto uh from the EV World um you know basically because they're listening to what Wall Street has to say but I think that um I think that there's going to be um a shift probably somewhere close to the election uh when people kind of understand who's who might get elected and that'll probably be more of a determining Factor than pretty much anything that makes any logical sense so I'm going to I'm going to say that some companies are going to do phenomenally well um one of them already made a big announcement Ford uh Jim Farley put out a a note just recently saying you know the F-150 is still the uh the number one truck and it's also the number one vehicle as far as sales is concerned um and I know a lot of people were thinking that the lightning was going to basically cannibalize some of that and it obviously did not um I see uh and and they also I mean there's a myriad of things that they've turned out to have the number one vehicle on and I think that's because of good judgment on on Jim Farley's uh part he he and his team just seem to um have their uh their finger on the pulse and you know what the auto makers are are going to want to buy and whatnot um I'm not 100% sure I I like the idea that the um what is it the the dealerships are telling Ford no I don't want to have an Eevee on my floor N I don't want to have do and I know why because EES have no maintenance and that means their their profitability is going to drop like a rock I mean there's no there's no point to have a dealership if they can't do oil changes or fix your blown head gasket or something like that the these are these are things where they make the real money they don't make any money on really selling new cars used cars yes not not new cars so at the end of the day I think that I think that we're going to see a lot of upside for at least Ford and and I'm also predicting that we're going to see some serious problems with uh places like Volkswagen and Germany in general yeah it's it's interesting Sandy you know you talk about the lightning and its success and and how Ford's handling that you know and and how tuned in to they they are to the market the customer base and how they've deployed their vehicle you know recently you spent some time down in Texas at the Tesla event right um you got some some firsthand experience behind the wheel of the Cyber Tru you know speaking of being tuned in and and competition coming in the year you know maybe as it relates to the lightning like what were your what were your thoughts um getting behind the the Yol I should say the Cyber truck and sitting down with those five folks from Tesla you know the five Executives like what I guess what are your kind of two or three takeaways both from the drive and the experience in the Cyber Tru and then also with the conversation with the Tesla folks well I think that um I think that when you drive that vehicle um it is a new Driving Experience um because of the electric steering uh and because they can you know a very little bit of steering is all I need when I'm going fast and um and so the way they've got it calibrated the steering system in a parking lot gives you the ability to basically spin the thing on a dime I mean that's that's figuratively I'm I'm telling you it'll spin like as if you were driving um a Prius or something it turns really easily because even though I'm only going I think it's like 320 or whatever lock to lock even though you're going a really small amount um the the car compensates because it's got electric steering or sorry steered by wire you you you turn remarkably quick right um and that comes from two things you've got the electric steering uh sorry drive by wire in the front you also have driveby wire in the back because it's got four-wheel steering right so it turns really quick and it's fabulous to drive a big vehicle like that like any other pickup truck it's it's big and and and it just makes it just makes everything wonderful so it sounds like Tesla I mean kudos to them it sounds like not only do they have the right Hardware in the vehicle but they took it a step further and they calibrated really well right they spent a lot of time and they really dialed in that tactile feedback and the customer experience so as you move up in speed um the characteristics of steering changes now uh when you first get in it it takes a bit because I'm expecting that I'm going to need you know a huge sweep to get into a parking spot um and then you find out who I'm I'm staring right at this guy's rear bumper so you you have to you have to take a few things into account yeah uh when you when you first get in the vehicle but it does not take long to acclimatize yourself their body and your I hand coordination all that stuff comes really really quite quickly and this is where the Yol really shines um a lot of people used to complain about the the model S plaid especially um you know man this doesn't really work I think the the next thing that Tesla should do is um is put if they can uh put the uh um put the drive by wire um into into the model 3 sure yeah I mean as we talk about compet ition and we'll get into cost a little bit further down the list here but you know it's one of the things that's uh when we're looking at ways to take out costs steer by wire is definitely one of those and weight and weight absolutely and um actually there's there's a whole bunch of uh features and functions that you get by steer by wire with steer by wire that that people don't take into account when they're making a determination so when you when you start fooling as you know when you start fooling around developing a new product there's always somebody that's is going to say well how much is that going to cost how much is that going to cost but they don't usually look at the cause and effect that some of these things happen like so you've got steer by wire um which means that basically I'm going to take the whole steering gear and all the other muck that goes along with that a big long shush Kebab uh pole that comes from the uh front of your car right pointing right pointing at your heart so I I'm a big fan of have been a big fan of getting rid of um mechanical steering for a long time and because we work on aircraft the F-18 doesn't have anything like that the F35 doesn't have it none of the commercial big commercial airplanes they all steer by wire why is it we can do it on a huge plane but we can't do it on a small car and mostly it's because people were afraid of the cost but they didn't take into account everything that goes along with it so the weight goes down when weight goes down that means efficiency is going to go up it means that you're going to go further the um uh the electronics are going to move faster and more reliably than what you're going to have with a with a normal vehicle and it basically allows me now to have an AI kind of Driving Experience if something comes along some people have very very I have very quick reflexes for an old guy um when I we had a little thing going on here and uh somebody bumped a cup off the edge of a table and I caught it before it hit the ground that's the exception it's not the rule somebody my age shouldn't be able to catch that and it it just but it just happens some people are lucky but most people are not and having steer by wire means that as the sensors pick up the potential for an accident that's going to happen yeah instead of having time to like only scream your car could steer itself out of the way yeah and this is where I see the the biggest opportunities yeah absolutely well it's good to hear that there's some positive remarks from the Cyber trck Driving Experience you know and the whole steer by wire uh it seems like was well executed based on your experience there from the discussion that you had with the Tesla Executives like what are what are some of your thoughts or takeaways from that conversation well the biggest thing for me was the uh the leap of faith into 48 volts every engineer has known that 48 bolts should be the way we do things um probably forever I mean uh when I was at Ford what's that like 40 years ago 45 years ago uh we were talking we why don't we go to 48 we wanted to 42 volts but why don't we go to something different and it was always back the same thing oh not in the marketplace oh that's good enough and like I said if you want to get ahead in a car company all you got to do is say no you'll be promoted and because you'll never take a risk never and the people who say no or the people who get in way of progress always get promoted right that's one of the reasons why no matter which OEM you're at except for Tesla um saying no is the fastest way to the top so for me um I look at 48 volts as a giant enabler yeah and again what do I get well I get a lot less weight when when I can decrease the uh the wire diameter down to a quarter of its normal size when I can uh when I can get uh power distribution at at much much easier rates um I'm I'm winding up with what I I get I get less weight I get um more or quicker um the IR losses are way better it's like nothing I mean all these things add up right uh and they say well there's no suppliers well I can tell you right now that's kind of like a lie right it's been out there for a long time 48 volts is used in lots of different applications it's just that they're not the same suppliers and and I think Tesla executed it at an intelligent time meaning they didn't start out the gate with 48 volts they waited until they had industry clout they had enough Firepower from a capital perspective and otherwise to go and deploy something like that um but I mean the the benefits of it are irrefutable to your point you know well and it enables one other thing or let me rephrase that it just goes hand inand with one other thing and that's the um ethernet system that they've got yeah so in the old days we wanted to have something where we could reduce the amount of wire going into different parts of the car sure and we invented this stuff or it wasn't invented by Ford it was it was kind of like universally known but it was called multiplexing and what you'd do is you'd have a couple of wires that would go to a small box and that little box would run uh would take the place of a big box somewhere else with with long wires going to it and that little box would then make your windows go up the window regulator would would go up and down sure um all kinds of different things could be done with multiplexing but it was slow so as soon as you push the button it had to think about it and then it would go up and down well with the new um um ethernet ring that they've got uh that that Tesla's got I mean again we're looking at Giant reductions in the amount of um CA that I need now I need to get to the to the cable to the ethernet cable and uh and I'm running very small communication wires and then I've also got small wires because I'm at 48 volts and all of a sudden now what have I got I got more weight savings weight savings is cost savings weight savings is range on and on and on it's just it's just a smart way to go but again looked at in isolation oh no no we can't do it can't do it no no no no no and some engineer or engineering manager whatever wins they get a promotion and a big big bonus and a pat on the head these kinds of things in isolation mean nothing but collectively when you when you look at the 800 volt we didn't talk about that but going to 800 volts is a good deal as well because my cabling again get smaller and on and on but you've got 800 volts 48 Volts for the uh the inside of the uh the product the car the vehicle and then you've got the ethernet ring these things combined are to me okay it's got I can shoot a machine gun at the side of the Cyber truck well that's okay fine I don't think I'm going to get into a situation like that but that'd be good anyway but at the end of the day I look at what did they bring what technology did they bring to the party and for me the big thing was the looking collectively at 48 volts 800 volts the ethernet ring and um and and Drive by Wire yeah those things collectively uh make a big big difference yeah absolutely and and to I think elon's mentioned it as of you you know it's not like these Technologies don't exist in the world they do it's just no one is applying them to the extent that Tesla is in a vehicle right and so I think Elan said he's like well why not and that's a good question why not and I think to your point Sandy you know there's a lot of folks in the industry and well we've always done it that way yeah and you're not going to get heads and shoulders above of anyone you know trying to go that route so you know what what's funny about this is um when you look at an ad you know for a car or whatever um they like to focus on things that really have been around for a long time and you're basically polishing a turd it oh look at the seat oh look at the instrument panel oh look at these blue lights that we've got all over the place what is that really do for me right okay uh that's marketing's way of making you think that even though it looks the same uh and it does the same as what you had before it's new and exciting right and maybe that works I don't know it certainly doesn't work for me I want to know what's going on underneath the vehicle I want to know what's underneath the skin anyway to to tell me whether or not I'm going in the right direction and that's where like I say I was very very impressed with the driving the uh the technology and the openness of the uh of the folks at Tesla I mean I I don't know if you're I don't know if we ever mentioned it but you know nobody reviewed any of those uh no one from Tesla reviewed any of the videos we made none right none I mean and and everything's one take we don't have uh we don't have like oh let's do that again there none of that stuff so what you saw was in real time and right now it's yeah it's pretty Raw it's pretty from you know it's it's on the spot no doubt about it you know so still on the topic of the cybertruck you know and as it relates to the industry as a whole Sandy so let's say the Cyber truck is a smashing success I suspect it will be right it already is in many respects how do you think that other automakers are going to respond like what is a reaction that you could foresee in this calendar year and Beyond anybody that's got a car in the design phase so either in Bubble Up or phase one if they're not if they're not moving to 48 volts there should be you know an execution or at least a a shaking hand and good luck at your next job that that's number one on the Hit Parade so I think that that'll roll out faster than anything and based on what I've heard from at least three different car companies when I've talked to them um they are scrambling to try and see if they can get that going as fast as possible yeah now the good news is that um Elon and his infinite generosity decided to hand out how to get involved or how to get started in um in 48 volts that design guide cuts a year maybe 18 months out of the process here's here's how you do it here's who's doing it now here's the suppliers we're using all this all this stuff's available for free anybody that doesn't take advantage of it is a fool right there's no there's no reason in the world why you wouldn't want to do this and anything that doesn't have 48 volts in four years will be an antique it'll be it'll be difficult yeah toh to try and find replacement parts yeah yeah I think it's certainly disruptive um and it's kind of unbelievable you know sitting here knowing all the stuff that Tesla puts out to the public what they do right most of our customers as you well know right they keep they play that stuff quite close to the vest and test sitting here saying hey here it is here's what we know about it now they're not going to go and engineer it for you but I mean they're giving you quite a bit relative to most other oems out there I think then in tandem with releasing something like a cybertruck 48 volt ethernet you know exoskeleton Giga castings the whole nine it's like yeah I I could absolutely see some oems especially like your to your point in the design phase saying well holy crap we got to go figure some stuff out quickly you know well and you mentioned Giga cat castings the Giga casting the first one we saw was that one over there and that was in 2021 and now everybody's ordering machines I mean and it's not just in North America it's it's also in China the Chinese are in the process of um like scrapping whole underbodies completely and uh and replacing them with castings scrapping um stamping stamping lines I mean this is a big deal yeah to Mo to move quickly into what they see as the future well and and that's a great segue to the next Point here you know Tesla fans and you know pundants if you want to call them that have said competition is coming for a long time and recently you know we see China's byd surpassing Tesla in electric car sales in the last quarter of 2023 yeah in the last quarter but um uh if we look at this little chart we can see here that um um for the whole year um Tesla uh sold more than than byd did right however um byd did beat Tesla in the last quarter of last year now what does that mean well I've already I in my interview with Elon Musk I said my prediction is that byd will be the biggest car company on the planet that isn't just in EVS I mean it will take the place base of Toyota and Volkswagen and General Motors they they will not have a chance against byd no way no way so you look at that but but when you say just the last quarter it's also important that you keep track of what happened for the whole year this is the same thing as When U all the financial analysts said oh the third quarter EV sales have gone down oh this is it this is it and you know sell your stock or sell short and all this other when you when you get into these kinds of things you you have to take a much longer view of what's going on than just that right and uh and if we look at last year we're looking at how many EVS were sold uh percentage wise and you look at this year and if you read The Wall Street Journal or Bloomberg or what have you it comes along giving you the impression that EVS are all done it was a fad it's gone now let's get back to to you know let's get back to uh gas guzzling whatevers um at the end of the day it's not really that way um actually what you do is you look from year to year instead of day to day and you'll find out that hey uh EVS went up quite a bit this year sure next year I believe it's going to be even more and I believe about halfway through the year you're going to see people saying well you know we we shut that plant down or we cut the production out of the plant but I think we're going to be pumping that back up a smidge and that's what I'm going to see and the reason for that is because day by day more people are figuring out that hey um EVS don't cost as much to charge up as it costs to fill up hey um there's no maintenance I I don't need oil changes I don't need a radiator flush I don't need on and on and on sure hey my tires last longer hey I I don't need I my brakes don't I don't use my brakes that much because I'm using regen which makes me go farther and it also slows the car down but it doesn't tear the wheels up and it doesn't affect the brake pads so at the end of the day you start getting this information out and there's no such thing as range anxiety and and of course when again back to Ford leading kind of the big companies in the in the right direction saying we're going to use the Tesla charging system and the reason for that is because they work all the time and I don't have to I don't have to fool with that and that's not my core competency anyway so now with people being having access at least with Ford and uh well actually almost all of them now except for Volkswagen and a few others everybody has access or will have access to the uh Tesla yeah uh yeah the uh the North American charging system that that gives uh that gives the world a whole different perspective on range anxiety which I never bought into anyways I mean I I went crisscross to 8,500 miles and uh did it in 11 days and I never had any range anxiety I don't I don't know what the I I don't know where that a came from sure but it was obviously some marketeer not a not a real person so as we you know as we wrapped up the last quarter byd started to to get the edge on Tesla in terms of sales you know going into 20 24 uh presumably byd is one of the the oems that we'll be keeping an eye on is there anyone else in Industry any other OEM that you would see is posing a significant challenge uh versus Tesla for for example well what we need to do occasionally is look at somebody else the data and this is by far is one of my favorite charts out there I've shown this about a dozen times and this is from um car industry analysis these guys did a great job and you can see here that ch's got 25 different EVS in the marketplace right now all over Europe all over China all over South America all over everywhere right coming in second is stantis now we don't see much going on here in North America but then I've kind of predicted that stanus is probably going to abandon ship on North America their headquarters is for sale right now they they want to get they want to get out of that um I don't see I haven't heard anything about a new 300 or what are they going to do with the the RAM and the charger or sorry not the ram but the the Challenger and the charger I haven't seen a a ram truck that's going to compete with a lightning or and I can't even hardly imagine it competing with the U with the Cyber Tru uh so what's happening so we were talking about PR predictions I believe that stellantis is probably going to move Jeep and uh and RAM somewhere else probably China and I believe that they'll just kind of like diminish their involvement here in North America yeah it's it's interesting right depending on which vehicle line you look at at santis right they just they announced the Ram charger so they use a 3.6 L as a range extender and that I know for sure has created a lot of Industry Buzz um because of the range that it offers right the that range anxiety thing that you had mentioned it truly does get rid of that um but you know you look at other car lines like I think the Chrysler 300 about a month ago more or less I think it was at the tail end of 23 they announced the last Chrysler 300 coming off the line so yeah I think there's definitely a question mark out there in some respect with stellantis like what's what's the next major sedan what does that look like in in what capacity meaning how well will that compete with a model y or anything else in North America speci specifically you know it's interesting well the the North American Market is uh is tough um there's no question about it it's a very difficult Market to uh to enter but when you do get in if you do make a big splash you make a lot of money there is nothing there's no other Market out there where you can make as much money on volume as you can here in North America and that's why most people are trying for it but if you don't understand the market that's when you that's when you lose and and you can lose big if you don't understand the American market so absolutely you know in terms of making money it's interesting Tesla's had a trend of continuing to reduce prices yeah you know do you do you anticipate over the coming months or this calendar year do you anticipate any other oems out there trying to do the same thing in order to keep up with the Joneses as it were well um I do know that Volkswagen has reduced their cost Ford's reduced their cost GM has reduced their cost now GM reduced the cost on the bolt which I thought was just bril that's a great idea I thought the the regen on the bolt or the relaunch of the bolt I thought hey this is it these guys got it by uh you know they've got to buy a margin here this is good because all their investment costs were now all gone so when people say they they can't make any money and whatnot it's because you fold in the investment cost associated with it development cost and went on well the bolt had sold enough that it it was ready to go why they folded up their cards and and moved away is beyond me because now that you've got something in the marketplace that really is a competitive vehicle why why would I shut it down and run away is that to I mean again it must be something to do with uh making Wall Street happy I'm not sure but to me looking at General Motors doing that it just I see I there's no I see no sense in that at all yeah I too thought it was a it was a odd move from GM um I I didn't necessarily see that coming um but they did fill an interesting void in the marketplace in terms of a small lower cost Bev application do you do you see any other automakers right now like if you had to pick one that would maybe fill that void that is well poised to do so to fill that lower cost small EV Niche that the the bolt offered to the market I don't know what's on the drawing board I'm hoping that General Motors has got something else coming down the pike but it doesn't sound like it because they they aren't reworking the plant um that's the lake orian plant I think right yeah so I I haven't heard anything about from any of the Machine Tool guys about doing any kind of rework maybe they can pick up on the same pins or something like that maybe they can just reprogram the robots I'm not sure but at the end of the day um we don't I don't hear or see anything there um I know that I know that for sure Ford and Volkswagen and BMW and Mercedes all have small cars that they're trying to um crank out but I think like I said I don't care who gets in as president 2024 they may be able to keep the Chinese out maybe but I doubt it but 2025 that'll be it because once there's a new administrative Administration in or even if it's the same one uh there's going to be a public outcry hey how come if these guys aren't giving us any cars how come you can't give us any car why can't we get Chinese cars remember I was alive and and and cognizant of what was going on uh when the Japanese started bringing their cars in sure and it was public opinion especially California actually cal every area that's congested California and New York City they they kind of said hey you know what we're tired of the air pollution we're tired of um high prices for crap cars and that was the reason that uh that the Japanese got in and uh it wasn't because of uh uh oh well we're negotiating or anything that was a baloney um these guys all get elected by people and if the people are screaming and yelling and saying they want something and you don't deliver you don't get reelected right so I believe that the Chinese will get in because their products are well certainly Superior to certainly Superior to what we've seen here from the from the guys at Volkswagen um I mean they're they're just really good vehicles really good so I I believe that um that the Chinese will come in and that's where the void will be filled yeah interesting it's uh the there's a whole slew of oems out there that are not I'll say maybe they're industry house household names I'll call them that right now but certainly you know if I were to talk to someone who's not in industry and like hey what do you think of the byd seal they'd be like what are you talking about but they don't know that you know there's a lot of vehicles and a lot of them are quite good you know they're they're all good I mean I spent a lot of time in China along with a whole bunch of other people training them how to design product we that's what we did training them Hond to design product and mostly design of what oh yeah electric cars then we have had all kinds of Europeans Americans Japanese that were over there showing them how to build a perfect car every time and the the Chinese are very very good at learning um they uh they Don't Make Junk um pretty much everybody on the planet is using one of their appliances in their house no question about it I mean you think oh I'm buying a GE I'm no you're not you're buying higher oh I'm buying Sams well no you're not that's made in that's made in China as well well I'm buying it doesn't matter what you think you got it's all made somewhere else doesn't matter whether it's a micro microwave or a or u a rice cooker or a coffee pot or a big giant refrigerator or a stove it doesn't matter it's all made in China and they make good stuff they Don't Make Junk anymore they there's no doubt about it yeah that connotation lasted for longer than maybe it should have yeah um you know going back to you you had mentioned uh closer to the intro the this Dynamic kind of attenion right now in in the news and everywhere else I know Detroit Free Press has talked about Ford for example saying you know only half of their dealerships I think it's just over 1,500 or something are going to sell uh ice and hybrid only right they're not going to sell EVS yeah what's your reaction to that and and what do you think that sort of indicates in the market today maybe and maybe it's more indicative ative of dealerships and how they operate I'm not sure well um there's an adage about um you know the U the tail that Wags The Dog and um and I think that that's what's happening right now the union is a tail that's wagging a dog um the dealerships are the tail that's wagging the dog and when you um when you follow the rules or sorry not rules but if you follow the dictates of the um servants the master is going to fail simple as that that's the way it works when the when the when the worm turns your your ability to uh to figure out what's going to be the right way to go is going to be hampered and the reason for that is because the people let's use the unions they're looking at hey I want more money money okay so what impact is that going to have we won't sell as many cars well we want more money well as we can't sell cars because they're too expensive then that means that we won't need as many workers yeah but we want more money so they've got one voice that has one view of the world one view of the automotive world and in reality when you get to the top of the house people complain it that guy made a million dollars what did he do what impact did he have yeah but our guys are putting nuts and bolts on yep and it's an honorable kind of job no question about it but does it create more wealth for the company so that we can make more cars so that there's more guys putting nuts and bolts on the car that's lost when you look at the dealerships hey that's going to affect my profitability if I can't maintain main vehicles I don't want those guys doing that I want well they that's their Viewpoint and when you have a single source of viewpoint when you have one Viewpoint and you don't see the rest of what goes on sooner or later it's going to hurt the the dog and the dog will die so that's kind of like the way I see it when the tail wags the dog the end isn't too far away no and it's something that we're seeing pop up right like you know dealers having a certain disposition towards EVS um and it and it's hard to say chicken or the egg is that because they're not moving as many vehicles as they had hoped they don't like dealing with them they don't get to your point the oil change benefit in the after sale sense um it is difficult but there's no doubt that it's got an impact in the industry as a whole and and how it'll just it'll just hurry on the uh the application of the Chinese getting getting their products into the marketplace sure So speaking of you know Trends Tesla cyber truck you know Giga casting is something that is an industry term now you know Tesla has coined it you know and now everyone is looking you know to your point there's folks scrapping whole underbody lines trying to replace with castings um you know China certainly an area that we're seeing that are there any other automakers like maybe such as Toyota or others that that you would Envision really trying to aggressively pursue this and deploy this and their vehicles moving forward yeah well um right now we know that because one of their gig casting machines was at the show that I just spoke at yeah uh the casting show I spoke at and um and there's a Ford machine and there's a Hyundai machine and a Honda machine and I mean they're they're right there you can't miss them they're huge so um so we know about that we know that General Motors has already got castings um in um in in a couple of their vehicles they're more like the uh this this type of casting here not not die castings but they're they're C was coming out and there are some images absolutely yeah yeah so we know about that um we don't know uh and we know uh that um uh we know that some of the German companies are moving in that direction all of the Korean companies most of the Chinese companies and um I'm pretty sure that Honda and Toyota are are going to be coming out with their versions in the not too distant future based on rumor and in uendo yeah and we see this with our clients also and you you talk about um in in hearts and Minds you know which is something that Monroe um Sandy and and other folks will give in terms of talking about sort of the ethos of Monro how we look at things things and how we should look at engineering something for example or how you should go about designing it and you say that you know maybe I'll get the percentag is wrong but you know engineering is 90% psychology and 10% technology right and what what I see I know in working with clients is often that for something like a giga casting the they could have all the data in the world in a theoretical sense and they still would not go for it there would be someone your point that would say no because we don't have we've never done it there's no one out in the competition that's doing it successfully in production that we can confirm and look at so we're not going to do it but Tesla comes along and you know over there on the floor we've got Giga castings kind of all over the building right V and then now all these oems you know the eyebrows raised and everyone says we we we need to know about that we need to go do that and and it becomes this huge Buzz do do you think think that that psychology is really all you know it just took it's interesting to me it took just one person or one OEM to go out and do this and the and all these other oems start getting on board quickly do you attribute that to the psychology technology or do you think that the technology just happened to spring up no it's uh it's the same thing it's the psychology 90% of the people will say no faster than anything they don't want to get involved with anything that's different because it'll affect my bonus it'll affect my uh it could ruin there the car career if it's good for the car and good for my career it's an easy path if it's good for the car bad for my career it ain't going to get in if it's good for my career bad for the car it'll probably get in and that's kind of the the way things are it's just it is what it is and those options if you like um are the things that people consider continuously if they want to get ahead head inside of an organization yeah okay but Tesla doesn't think that way right Tesla thinks hey if we come up with something new Elon is going to say hey you did a good job and that and the other thing coupled with that is that the the the mentality over there is if you don't fail you haven't been doing anything right right and so you've got a different psychology that culture cultures are very very difficult to change inside of organizations or countries or companies or even amongst people cultures are hard to change but when they do change if you can make them change there's always huge huge improvements huge improvements and that's kind of like what's going on with the the psychology you you you have to change the mind um well we say um if you change the mind the ass will follow something along those lines so but it's true yeah once I've once we've shown this and once and once people see it and once they see the documentation and the numbers because this is now real it's not a guess right then they they're they're willing to sign up and move ahead yeah and in a similar vein as with the gigac castings you know something that I think Tesla in many respects pioneered in the OEM space but the Chinese market is now following is the rapid development Pace that they're setting right you know we used to speak in terms of five or six year life cycles to a you know and and now people are doing it in 3 years 2 years 2 years and 18 months so if we look at we look at um what Tesla what Tesla's been doing okay with the three the Y the you know revamping of different things um they they seem to have somewhere between an 18 to 24 month schedule now the Cyber truck was different so I asked Elon about it and it's in the in the interview I said well how come it took four years well I said well a little bit had to do with covid that that slowed us down we had to change the a supply Community considerably to go to 48 volts we had to find a lot of stuff so they weren't just creating a car they were creating a new form of industry and that is a much bigger job much more challenging than just um okay we're going to reskin the car and that in the olden days would take at least three sometimes four years right now the Chinese are are swapping stuff out they don't have that same um perception that you have to hang on to assets so the the big thing that uh that we always heard was well I got to make sure that we get our money's worth out of these old piece of machines why they're old and and they they aren't accurate and the money that we saved by not buying a new machine we lost in productivity and um and you know excessive labor for trying to fix whatever came out of that machine that's where things again fall apart when you um when you listen to the wrong people and the wrong people are usually in that situation those people are usually people who um understand only one thing if I don't spend any money I'll get a bonus if I spend money I'm going to get my hands slapped yeah they're quick to fail quick to cut their losses and move on to the next thing exactly and that that mentality again that's a mentality that's a culture and again you get back to which classification you put that in is it a technological thing or is it a psychological thing anything to do with culture anything to do with changing your mind anything to to uh change the course of how things are done or the rules and regulations for that course that's all psychology nothing to do with technology absolutely um kind of changing gears you know going back to EVs and what we see for 2024 and also looking through the lens of what we saw in 2023 there's been any number of small attempted oems startups that have come out and said you know I'll I'll say trying to be the next Tesla trying to come up with own vehicle and do their own thing you know do you believe that some entities like lucid and rivan will stick around through 2024 and Beyond um or do or do you think that they're kind of destined to go on the ground like what what what do you envision for some of these startups because there's no doubt that it is a you know just the market alone North American Market's tough but the industry is tough yeah okay so um um when it comes to to uh rivan I believe that they'll be fine they have uh enough diversity in their product that um as long as they can get rid of a tremendous amount of weight and um and redesign the products a little bit more so that they're easier to put together and uh maybe they what what they might have to do is uh negotiate or maybe take in some of the componentry that that they currently Outsource to suppliers maybe they need new suppliers maybe they need to take in house I'm not sure but they they've got a higher cost than they should have um but these things are overcomable it's you can overcome this it's not that hard sure um when you look at at Lucid you've got a different cor kind of a problem um uh they've had a lot of there's been a lot of noise uh but there hasn't been a lot of um I don't know um performance um and um I I I've said it dozens of times and I'll say it forever their electric motor system and or the drive system is absolutely brilliant the best that there is out there but it's expensive um and the rest of the car is outrageously expensive now they've got the new one coming out that's supposed to be less expensive and whatnot but I don't see them flying off the showroom floor uh and so consequ monthly I'm not 100% sure I don't know what they're going to do but I do know one thing they're funded by Saudi Arabia the country s and um um you know people were throwing rocks at Mary bar for making money Peter um rolinson made over $200 million and and I I really don't see I I really don't see much in the way of results so uh I believe that some companies might uh might have to get bailed out or maybe they'll just pack up the whole thing and ship it off to Saudi Arabia and try and sell it to the Arab Nations I'm not sure but I know one thing for sure I know one thing for sure I don't see how far is going to make it I don't see um Lucid being hugely profitable anytime soon there's a few of them out there that are like that and I I don't I don't see I don't see a way forward so them yeah um but you never can tell something could happen but they don't they don't they don't look to me as as being anybody who wants to put another luxury car into the marketplace and wants to try and compete with a new electric EV Bentley or or Rolls-Royce or whatever they got yeah you got a really tough uphill battle with that I don't know how you're going to do it but if you look at actually one thing we should look at is the the new technologies that are out there um and one of them being you know hey guess what we got U sodium batteries now don't need any lithium right oh if we need lithium we got new processes like energy X we got a new process there uh to uh to take uh lithium out of um out of salt water or brine it's different than salt water and they take it out of Brine and guess who's uh guess who's doing it as well oh Exxon so we're looking at we're looking at lots of different new things that are coming up that could change the whole complexity or everything basically associated with u with the most expensive part of any of the electric vehicles and that's the battery yeah if the battery price goes down significantly because of we're going to use sodium or lithium now as cheap or uh you know any any any number of different things that could happen if we've got that who's going to who's going to stand in the way of of ev's then yeah absolutely if one of these guys can I mean it's a race to get to that technology and implement it in a vehicle you get there first um I would say your future is well certainly much better than it was before and and everyone's scrambling to get there for sure um and a similar light but away from the product and looking at manufacturing AI is coming about a lot of robotic Technologies are maturing quicker than ever you know um things like these uh humanoid Bots right that look like people but are certainly robots are are entering the manufacturing line what do you anticipate um for this year and beyond for robots being implemented on the line um what what types of savings not in a quantity amount but do you think the savings could be drastic for the oems as it relates to manufacturing costs by deploying these these robots on the line well it depends the uh the original idea about behind the um robots that Tesla cranked out was to attack the 3DS dirty dudy dirty drudgery and dangerous and uh that's that's good um and I've never really been uh I've never really seen one of these things live and in person working but um I did see a video um on a guy's phone when I was in Texas in Austin now the video uh was probably 3 to 5 minutes long and it showed me a vastly different robot than what I saw from Tesla and that robot that robot was phenomenal if that robot is put into the marketplace with you know silicon fingers and stuff like that that will make a huge difference that and I can hear the union screaming right now saying you know we don't want those robots you know and uh it's going to be tough a tough decision uh for them to swallow because hey if it's expensive we've got to try and figure out how to make it less expensive if that robot can do what a human can do why have I got a human that guy works in the dark and by the way he also Sees at the back of his head instead of the front of his head I mean I now have peripheral vision I'm never going to have a guy trip over anything he's never going to walk backwards into a forklift truck this robot can see all the way around him he can do tons of things that an average man can't do or human I'm telling you what uh things are going to change a lot if uh if the um if these new robots that are are being developed come to play but I I I I I'm glad you brought that up because some people said that I saw this at uh at Tesla I did not yeah I did not see anything I only saw one guy or I don't even know it was a man or a woman I was so shocked at what I saw that I can only remember what I saw that was it I it was really really fascinating from somebody like myself I worked on the very first robots the unimate robots when I was 16 I'm telling you what uh this is a really big this is a huge step change it's a different thing yeah it's a different totally different yeah yeah well Sandy um thank you for your time I I know this has been an interesting discussion looking ahead at 2024 and kind of what we saw in 2023 do you have any closing remarks or anything that you'd like to close out with I think uh I think that um 2024 is going to be I think 2024 is going to be kind of a u um like I said a watershed year this is where people I think are going to either come to grips with the fact that hey you know what the ice engine is dead and um yeah there there may be applications for um for something like a u you know um a hybrid or something for a while but to me a hybrid is going to be the pet rock of the future I mean people that'll have them and and whatnot sometimes people like to grasp at the good old days you know they to they like to say that well we can let's get back to the good old day well first off the good old days weren't all that good because I've been I'm old and I know what the good old days were and the second thing is I I just don't think that I don't think that no I don't think anyone really wants to go backwards I think what we want to see is what's the future and that's why I think that the Cyber truck from a styling standpoint definitely looks like the future uh from a technology standpoint it really is the future I mean that's what people are going to want whether everybody runs around inside of a cyber truck I doubt that very much whether it affects the like when the Taurus came out in the uh 80s everybody wanted a jelly bean instantly that car everybody wanted that that vehicle right and it had a giant effect all the way around the world everybody went from one brick sitting on top of another brick to the Jelly Bean the swoopy curvy whatever kind of model sure I don't think you're going to see that with cyber truck um I don't think that that's going to happen I don't think everybody's going to you know immediately dance into that kind of a product but I think it's going to have some kind of impacts yeah yeah yeah it's it's interesting I'm very curious to see how 2024 unfolds with the elections right that impacts regulator and number of other things just economy in in general so it'll be interesting but I know we'll be tracking it closely um if you are interested in anything else at Monroe does certainly we have reports for sale um and we do work with a lot of these oems to help them solve these issues and focus on that psychology piece that we're talking about obviously we have to be in tune with technology but psychology at the end of the day is really what makes or breaks some of these companies culturally speaking um and ultimately their profitability um so if you are interested contact us at sales lean design.com and other than that uh we'll uh we'll stay in touch with you throughout the rest of the year so thanks everyone thanks there's one more thing one more thing okay so um our cyber trucks are coming through and we're going to be getting them shortly the um the Cyber trucks uh are going to be uh coming in and we are going to be tearing them apart one of them anyway one of them is going to be mine but uh but one will be Torn to Pieces and we will be filming it we will be analyzing it and then we'll be costing weight um every every Material Science everything comes in in those reports so they'll be coming down the pike here shortly um and um and so the good news is that um we will be working on that um hopefully we'll get it done by the end of the first quarter yeah so excited to get our hands on it thanks Andy yeah okay so oh that was the thing so we do not need any any cyber trucks from anybody um there's like 350 people that have sent me notes and we couldn't do anything because we our lawyers couldn't figure out what uh what would happen if we did take a uh take one of those cyber trucks and um and do what we needed to do and I don't want to be a scab kind of a guy and uh you know basically um piss off the guys at Tesla I don't want Elon is an enemy so uh so we have our cyber trucks uh coming up and um so thank you very much for sending all your notes in and anybody that bought one of those those little um uh bottle opener things uh thank you so much we still have them but um but uh we we we really are U now on the way and we'll be getting the these trucks are going to cost 20 sorry 120,000 bucks a pop and I don't how much the taxes and delivery fees in are are going to be but if you buy those pop bottle openers uh that'll help us out as smidge so anyway excellent thank you thanks everyone Thanks for tuning in appreciate it [Music] byebye

Channel: Munro Live

Views: 385,994

Keywords: EV, BEV, Sandy Munro, Munro, Electric Vehicle, Benchmarking, Electric, Insight, Lean Design, Design, MunroLive, MunroLive.com, ElectricCars, Review, Car Review, Automotive, Automotive Review, Teardown Titan, Tesla, video review, Elon Musk, Munro Live, Ask Munro, Technology, Luxury, Electric Car, Elon, Musk, Tesla Cybertruck

Id: J9mZndxJ3Nc

Length: 59min 53sec (3593 seconds)

Published: Fri Jan 12 2024