Are EVS The Future Or The End?

Welcome, everybody, to Service Drive Revolution. Today we're going to talk about our electric cars, the demise of our industry. We also are going to talk about Christian's parenting style. We're going to talk about how I completely eliminated my 50th birthday with the time machine. And maybe should we be going into junkyards as a new business model? I'm Chris Collins. This is Christian Lafferty. And that's what's coming up on the big show right now.

Now, I can't speak for Christian, but I can say from the bottom of my heart, I missed you guys. I did. Christian probably didn't, but I did.

I. It was a long break, and I feel it's great to get back to the couch.

Yeah. A lot of stuff has happened.

Holy cats. It's been nuts, hasn't it?

Was like the. We did one in the middle of December, right?

Yeah. Right before the holiday.

And what's interesting is our downloads are up, even though we haven't been putting up new episodes, which is not a normal thing. I don't think previously, when we would go a while without putting an episode, the download just kind of slide. But I think that.

There'S a little momentum going our way with that because our downloads are up year over year, even though we're not posting new stuff.

Well, I think some of our old episodes have gotten topical again just because there's been some weird changes in the industry over the last few months. So some of the things that we've talked about, I think, have gotten more relevant, which is kind of neat when that happens. It makes us timeless.

So one thing that happened is I turned 50 in the middle of January. For those keeping track, I'm a Capricorn. That means anything to you? If it doesn't, maybe you should look it up, because it's good to believe in astrology and fate and all that.

It's a proven science.

Yeah. Just like.

Well, there's a lot of cool Capricorns, but my favorite is Howard Stern is a Capricorn.

Oh, okay. Got it.

So kind of fun. So I went to London. I did this thing because I did feel like there was pressure for me to have a birthday party.

Yeah, you totally dodged it. I. I figured that's what you're doing.

So I.

Ultimately didn't want a 50th birthday party just because I'm not excited about turning 50 at all. So I did the ultimate thing on my birthday. I flew to London and lost half of my birthday.

Yeah.

And so I took off here in Los angeles at like 9 at night. And I landed in London at like 2:30 in the afternoon on my birthday. So I missed my birthday in the air in a sense because I lost it in time travel.

Yeah. Because what is that, an eight or nine hour difference from here.

So I, you know, did everything I could to avoid the fact that I was turning 50.

Yeah, you skipped a third of the birthday.

And the other thing that drives me nuts. And I don't want to hear it in the comments. I don't. Don't email me, don't text me. That 50 is the greatest. That 50 is the new 30. Shut up. I don't want to hear it. Don't try. I hate that people have been doing that to me lately. To you. That drives me crazy.

They're placating you.

It's like if. If you take a tape measure. We used to do this at the coaching meetings. You take a tape measure and you go to what, the average ages of a male in America that eats meat and smokes cigars and drinks tequila. I got. You take the tape measure and then you go to 50 and you look at how much is left. We're running out of time. So if my patient seems short with people, it's because I'm about to die. The other thing is I had a blood test and besides the fact that my cholesterol is a mess and whatever, my PSA is up, which is a indicator of tumors and things like that. So now I have to go get a bunch of tests done to figure out what that's about. And that's never good news. So, yeah, I'm on the way out.

Who wouldn't want to turn 50 with all that kind of stuff going on?

Yeah. Yeah.

I was thinking too that another reason that our downloads are improving is that we've had an influx in people that have ESP tuning in. So this is a joke. What is esp? Extra sensory perception. Where you can read minds and everything like that. A lot of your psychic abilities.

Right.

So I feel like it's only fair that I tell them a joke.

Continue on.

That was great. So, yeah, I avoided my 50th birthday. Had a great time in London. I would love to live in London. It's my favorite new city.

It's pretty cool that I feel like you did come back with some inspiration and a little bit of rejuvenation almost. And I was thinking that it's good for everybody. Every once in a while you got to take a step back, maybe go to your place and come back and have that fire burn a little bit hotter again. So that's what I think came out of the trip.

But the art in London is nuts. Like the National Gallery there and the Tate and it's. But they. In a sense, the. The other thing that I've kind of taken away from going there a couple times is that we really should have a king. Why we need a king or a queen? Because.

They are not affected politically. Like we are. Like, you know, here, if you talk about vaccines or you talk about, you know, different things that are politically charged, people are just on one side or the other most of the time, like, they're so affected, and they really, most of the time have no clue what they're even talking about, but they. They're standing for something or.

Right?

I mean, that's one of my. My favorite things to do is just ask what you would call an elicitation question, where you just say to somebody.

Boy, this Covid is crazy.

And then just see where they run.

And this is a great tip for service advisors, actually, because you don't have. You can. You can bring up a subject that's topical without showing your cars. So you can say like, oh, this Covid is crazy. And then the person's going to run to the right or the left or wherever they are, and then you don't ever have to. You don't. You're irrelevant. Your opinions are relevant most of the time because people are so fired up. But I love how people assume in those situations that my opinion is one way there's so. People are so affected and so convinced that they're right about things. They assume that you agree.

Yeah.

So, like, for. For example.

When Biden won the election and the neighborhood I live in, I was walking the dogs, and people were.

You know, out in the streets, and they actually had an impromptu parade in West Hollywood. It was on TV and everything. But people, there was this couple that came up to us, and they're like.

You know, same thing. Like, you know, wow, it's. I think I said something like, oh, wow, it's crazy. And they're like, oh, isn't it so great? We got what we wanted. And the guy's like, you know, touched me, and he's like, we got what we wanted. Assuming that I had voted for Biden, right? Not asking me who I voted for. Just. Just assuming that there. There's an impossibility that I might have voted for the other side, which is. It's the same thing with COVID Now you go to London, people are a lot more jovial. They're less contentious. And when they talk about the vaccine, they call it the jab. So just their sense of humor already in, you know, how jolly they are about things, is coming through. And they're like, people got the jab or didn't get the jab, but there's a queen there that just shows up and is proper and does the right thing and is the symbol of sophistication. And so all of the politicians look like the buffoons that they are. Like, when I was there, Boris, their prime minister, got in trouble because he'd had a couple or they'd had parties during COVID So. So he was telling the country to wear a mask and distance and not congregate, but they were. And so he had to formally apologize to the queen. Like, can you imagine if our politicians had to apologize to you, like, if you were king? It just creates this level of keeping the fact that politicians are, you know, lobbied, and they don't always have our best interest at heart. Like, they have an agenda and they have an opinion and that sort of thing. And then if you had that, you know, that figurehead that stood for sophistication and doing the right, you know, there might be something to that. I don't know.

Okay.

Now, the problem would be who would be the king and would they be trustworthy? You know, that's the problem. But it is interesting just politically, to see how unaffected they are compared to us. And do you know what's on their news? Just like in Canada. You know, when you go to Canada and you turn on the news and it's us, America.

No, I didn't know that.

Yeah, it's the same thing over there. Half of their news is what's happening here. Because it's. It's entertaining.

Yeah, because there's nothing going on here. It's not as polarizing.

Well, I mean, they have, like, the queen, you know, went to lunch here or whatever. Like, they have that. But in a sense, our politics oftentimes and what we do is easy to serve up as entertainment. Yeah.

It's reality TV for the rest of the world. That makes sense.

And also, you could make the case, like, we're important to the world in a sense, as a country. But it's funny. So, yeah, I had a great time. I love London. And then I went to Ohio.

You did?

So I've kind of been around. I'm glad to be home for a while.

It's a lot of traveling for you in a very short amount time. Of long time.

Yeah. If anybody's thinking about submitting a speaking request, no is the answer. I'm not going anywhere. Okay.

You can ask me to go speak some more.

It's already. It's on your calendar already.

We can delete that. I don't want to go.

It's good stuff though. So anything else before we segue to our subject of the day?

No, I'm pretty excited to talk about this. I think it's. It's a good subject. In the end, I think will be something people are gonna be like, oh yeah, that makes sense.

Yeah.

Excited about the topic a lot.

So speaking about electric cars and the idea, you know, are electric cars going to be the demise of service departments?

Fair question.

And so when you go down this path.

We did a survey on LinkedIn just trying to kind of understand where, where you were at and, and what you were thinking. And so the question that we asked is will you be the owner of an electric vehicle in the near future? Now, 42% of you said yes and 55% said no. And now let's go through some of the comments and just kind of set the stage to. For the climate out there. So do you have your. I mean, I don't know. There's probably over 100 comments here, right?

There are. Yeah, I've got, I've got little notes next to many, many of them, but.

So Scott Higgins, who is a service manager at a BMW dealership said, I won't buy an electric vehicle yet because the infrastructure for charging stations is not there yet. I live 50 minutes away from the dealership. So. And there are none between us. So that. That makes sense. Scott, then another Scott. Scott Hansen.

The power grid in this country has enough of a job powering what it already, what is already in use guarantee. The more electric cars going on it, the bigger the strain and the cost of electricity is going to go through the roof. Those aren't my favorites, but those are kind of. Kind of. Those are pretty accurate to what the rest of them are. Right?

Yeah, there was definitely a lot of infrastructure things about I liked. It wasn't an answer to the question, but I also thought that there were things that I hadn't really thought about before. Was same page. Danny Fulton just asked some really good questions like thinking about it just in general with EVs, what's the longevity of them? How long does an EV last? What do you do at the end of that thing? And then they started to kind of get into the batteries. Hard to recyc. Are we Trading cleaner air for polluted soil and groundwater. So maybe kind of going the environmentalist route. I thought some of those were good questions. I never even thought about that before. Like, how long does one of those things last? I mean, in 15 years? Are they junk? I guess is what I was thinking.

David Rogers here, who's the president of Shop4D, would that be like Shop Four Wheel Drive?

Oh, I was thinking four dimensional.

Four dimensional. So president of Shop Four Dimensional. And then he has. He's a leader, an innovator and a founder. Pretty strong title. Maybe we should work on my title. What does my title on LinkedIn say? The number one most effective fixed ops trainer and dealer coach in the world.

We should change mine. So leader, innovator, founder.

I like founder.

So anyways, Mr. Rogers here said people didn't ask for this technology. It's being forced upon us by politicians and not to save the planet as the propaganda pushes. So Mr. Rogers, he's a little in favor of conspiracies there. You're scared to say anything about any of these because last time we talked about people's comments, they were like, I'm never listening to the show again. So we lost two listeners and. Right.

But we pick people up.

You're watching your. I don't know.

I was.

I don't care. By the way. I told you, I'm getting old and I have no patience.

Totally understand that. No, I just.

You're trying to be politically correct.

I think.

See it in your face.

No, I just think that it's interesting. I don't think that. I don't think that there's a. That electric solves all the problems of the environmental issue. I think it's just about what technology is in transportation and what it's going to become.

Shane Rut says, the way I see it, batteries don't do well in the cold. What happens when the power goes out? What is this going to do to the grid?

The power will be out.

James Yano says, where are people in apartments going to recharge? And then I hope that Scott desart here is a Seahawks fan, but he says in eastern Washington, Oregon, Idaho, Montana, the infrastructure simply isn't close to supporting electric vehicles. There's simply no way you could drive across these states without it being a large burden of stress trying to find stations. Then Carolyn Marie says the batteries are harmful to the environment and cannot be recycled.

Oh, Robert Day, that's a story. You know who Robert Day is? No, that's Vicky's old boss that owned Concord.

Oh, wow.

He is a. He's a pretty smart guy. But look at this. So I'm just going to read a part of what Robert wrote. But the they have very few moving parts will certainly change service department needs as they become a bigger part of the mix. On the other hand, electric cars are not more environmental. When you include all of the mining, smelting, shipping and waste from electric cars and electric production it is marginally worse than internal combustion.

And then. Here we go. Bob Hellwig.

Yeah, it looks good.

How else would you say that?

Last night I'm Hellwig all the way.

Hellwig. Yeah, Heliwig. What about Heliwig?

Not doing it.

I like helloig. If the current current feds pushing EVs ever get up and turn around to look they would see the Beggs power. That's one I didn't understand. Is that a typo?

I think so.

They would see the Beggs power comes from what they are trying to remove. Could you interpret that for me?

What they would see the hela wig trying to say they would see that.

The biggest power comes from what they're trying to remove. I don't know.

Greg Hopkins. Too much range anxiety. I take long trips.

Rick, hold on. Let's talk about that for a second. So range anxiety. So that's when you're driving somewhere and you're worried that you're gonna run out of charge.

So I wonder if it's kind of the same thing on the combustible engine side. Now you drive a really economical vehicle. What is it again?

A Prius.

What's the other one?

Can you imagine me in a Prius?

No. I feel like you'd be like every.

Time I go to get in.

Yeah, but. But you drive a Range Rover, right?

Is it a Land Rover or a Range Rover?

Land Rover is the manufacturer. Range Rover is the model.

Oh, okay. I always get confused.

But you drive a Range Rover. Super economic.

Says Range Rover on it.

Right. But it's a Land Rover is the manufacturer. I'm sure of this.

By the way. I love that thing.

It's a pretty cool. I think I can't spoil that. What you're going to do. But it's going to look really neat in two months.

Oh no. I'm getting it wrapped tomorrow. So I'm wrapping that thing like a.

Well, I saw Tyson Fury's Range Rover on the Internet and he had camo. And so I'm doing the same idea but I'm doing it in blue camo and then I'm powder coating the wheels black. But I'll have that back by Monday. I'm pretty excited about that.

It's super creative.

It's gonna look really cool. Cause the interior is like chocolate. So the chocolate with the blue, you know, I'm just trying to fit in and look like everybody else.

Right, and you do that a lot.

Conforming too.

But the truth is that Range Rover's never seen a gas pump it didn't like.

Yeah. So that's what's interesting when you talk about range anxiety is when I filled that thing up. Well, the first couple times I went to fill it up, when I got it, I couldn't fill it up because the pumps shut off before I could fill it because they have like, they go to 75 bucks and then they shut off here. Why do they do that?

I think that's a credit card limit. That happens. That's happened to me before too.

It only happens at certain gas stations around me. But I found a gas station where that doesn't happen and I filled it up so it was completely full, tippy topped. And I get in and the little trip computer says that I have a range of like 250 miles. Now. Now my chick's Tesla, fully charged, has a range of like 389. It's almost 400.

Yeah.

So range anxiety to me is interesting in the sense that the electric car cars, or just in my circle, the electric car goes further than the gas one. But then you could make the case. But there's a gas station everywhere, right?

Yeah, I think you could make that case for sure. But I think that there's a term like you got that anxiety about charging anxiety or whatever they just said it was. But I think that there's a really good term that the team came up with for what you must have. And it's gas guilt.

Here. You're shit. Because everybody needs to understand that Christian has a Tesla. Christian was the pioneer of people here getting Teslas in the sense you were the first one.

Yeah. And I think that.

And so now, now the snobbery is coming out like, oh, he's better for the environment than me. And so what are you calling me a gas.

What, you have gas guilt?

Gas guilt, yeah. The other thing that I want to tell you is that I don't care how many dolphins I kill, I love straws.

I also love straws.

So not only do I not have guilt about gas, I love straws.

Yeah. And not the paper straws, right?

No, the paper straws feel weird in your mouth.

Well, I just think that it doesn't make sense. And it's funny, I was just having this conversation with my 9 year old. My 9 year old. Amazing that he came up with this deduction. We were talking about straws over the weekend and I'm like. Because he lives in Florida. So I'm in Florida and we go to a place and I get a plastic straw and I'm like, man, I love the straws in Florida. And I'm like. He's like, oh, that's right, you have those paper ones. He's like, why would someone make a straw out of something that can't get wet?

The other thing that I love here in California and I have a friend that when you go somewhere with them that's going to involve beverages or food, they have like this case and you're like what are we playing pool? Like you think they have a pool cue? They have metal straws they carry with them. So they're reusable metal straws in a case that they like clean at home and then bring. And that's a great, like it's really great that there's people like that out there.

It's so funny.

But that's not me. Okay, now we both had the, the same favorite comment on here, which was from Daniel Buss. Daniel, you win the best comment for anybody.

That was so great.

Unless they make one with a V8. Absolutely not.

I love that he had a couple of hahas.

Yeah, he was great. Thank you for that, Daniel. Scott Waddle. We own two evs and do multiple thousand dollar repairs regularly. And then so there were a couple of comments in here that had to do with the cost of repairing EVs.

And.

Let me get to those.

Okay, so Kim Star said in Norway we have EV sales of 80%. So I believe Norway.

Is the number one Tesla.

Sales or how would you know? So they have charging stations like they.

Have.

Parking meters like they're everywhere there.

Wow.

Sales of 80% the last five years. But as a OEM you must manage both worlds at the same time. Be good at warranty repairs and be good to get hold of the the old car park that is still a moneymaker. What does that mean?

That I'm not sure. That might just.

When EVs get out of warranty. It's also a new world to look into as new parts are expensive as hell. Used parts can get better income than ever thought. So that's the part, Kim, that, that I thought was really interesting and it made me wonder, should we go into the junkyard business? Should we open A couple junkyards with just specializing in AVs.

It sounds like it could be a.

Really lucrative idea because if you think about how fast technology changes.

Like if you think about old iPhones, they no longer service them. Right, right. And they're always trying to get you to do the new model. There is going to probably be a pretty big market for used parts and that it's, it's a, especially because a lot of these new companies coming out with electric cars that don't have a history or an infrastructure like Ford or GM in their parts supplies, they're not going to warehouse 20 years worth of, you know, parts for the different models that they're going to make. So it is an interesting.

Idea in the sense that it's gonna be different. But let's, let's kind of, let's talk about this in the sense of what is really going on here. So, you know, a lot of these comments come from people in our industry that are service managers, service advisors, dealers. Right. Are, are commenting here and most of the comments are.

Anti electric cars in the sense of range anxiety, structure, infrastructure, that sort of thing. And this is where our industry constantly missteps and becomes reactive instead of being ahead of the curve. And so there, there's also some comments in there like, oh, you know, where I live, nobody buys electric or you know, in our, in our rural area, it's not a, that sort of thing. And so we, we kind of like react to the situation and we have an opinion and we look at it in, you know, reference to how it affects us personally. Right. But in a sense, what we're doing again as an industry and pay attention to what I'm about to say because we have a long track record of doing this. And I don't, you know, if you're the CEO of GM or you're running a, you know, a little shop somewhere, is that what we tend to do is treat the symptom, not the cause in these situations. So we've been talking about this a lot lately. Internally is a lot of the training that we do treats the symptom, not the cause. So we'll have a dealer or a service manager say, you know, we need advisor training and does your advisor training have scripts.

That. The idea is that we're going to have advisors memorize scripts and that's going to make them better instead of, you know, making them understand what we're trying to do. It's in essence we're giving them fish instead of teaching them how to fish. We're not Fixing their mindset. We're not getting them to want to do better. We're giving them a script in the script. But scripts don't work in the sense that I could deliver a script and I could say things the way I say them, but that exact same thing wouldn't be as effective if Christian did it, because he's not me. And it comes across as a script. Like you can tell when you call places that they're reading a script, right? We've done BDC training with scripts and it takes a while for somebody to be good at it and most of the time when they get good at it, they actually change it a little bit to fit their, their personality. So we want them to understand the spirit of what we're trying to do. But script, same thing with, oh, train my advisors. Well, training your advisors 100% of the time in the last, you know, probably three years is treating the symptom, not the cause in the sense that most of the time what you need is you need more techs. I don't think we've gone into a dealership where we didn't need more techs. If we train your advisors and they sell more, they, they aren't going to be able to get the work done, which is going to teach them learned helplessness, going to affect their self esteem, it's going to compound the problem and it's going to piss customers off. So, you know, what we need to do is we need to fix your systems, we need to add more capacity in the production part of the business and then we can train the advisors. But by the time we get to training the advisors, that really isn't as important because the floodgates have opened up and the advisors can do what they wanted to do all along. And it ends up. It wasn't advisor training that it was our biggest need, it was production, how the work was dispatched, all of that, that really at the end of the day fixes the problem. So now as an industry, when we're talking about electric vehicles is we're talking about, oh, I won't own one, I don't care, the infrastructure, whatever. And I get this question often from dealers and they'll say, Chris, what are your other Volkswagen dealers or what are your other GM dealers doing? Because the manufacturer, I got this from an Audi dealer just the other day. The manufacturer wants me to spend 150, $200,000 to put in chargers and a dedicated section to electric vehicles in the showroom. And they're like, I don't want to do it, the manufacturer doesn't know what they're doing, etc. Etc. And once again, we're talking about the symptom. So now if we understand.

That an issue here is the infrastructure and dealers are losing and service departments are losing their equity with consumers and the, the need and cars are more reliable than ever before, would we not try to put ourselves in front of the consumer by having the infrastructure come to us? Would we not install charging stations and be on every nav map out there and make it easy, have, you know, a situation where they can get coffee, where they feel different about us as a dealership, make sure that they work, that the charging stations work? Would we not want to be the solution and the answer, instead of talking about change and the symptom and we don't want like we have an opportunity right now as an industry to endear consumers to us to figure out how we can be the answer. Because if we want to sit around and, you know, if you would like, Christian and I can do an episode where we sit here and debate about whether electric cars are good for the environment or not. We can sit here and debate whether manufacturers should be making electric cars or not. But the trains left the station. And so in a sense, do we want to get ahead of this or do we want to sit around and talk about what's already in our future? Like I remember being a speaker pre Covid. So it's a couple years ago now in Vegas at an automotive accounting.

Meeting. So it was accountants for the automotive industry and dealers. And there was one of the top brokers on stage talking about selling dealerships and the buy sell and the different public groups that were buying. And he was talking about how.

People are waiting on buy sells for Volkswagen dealerships because Volkswagen had announced that half of their lineup would be electric by 2025 or something to that effect. And he's talking about it like Volkswagen is pushing the electric cars on everybody because they woke up one day and that's what they wanted to do. And not at all considering the global climate of we, we have this ego in America or, you know, we're number one and we are number one in a lot of areas. And we do have an incredible system here of capitalism. And you know, it's. There's no better country, I don't think then, then the US or Canada, you know, or, you know, the UK too, I enjoy. But I mean, I love America and I'm biased in that, in that sense. But what we're losing sight of is that the Leadership in China.

Said that by 2026, every car sold there has to be electric. And now China sells more than two times the amount of new cars than the US sells. So if we're selling 14 million new cars a year, down from 18, so our new car sales are shrinking because of parents like you that don't raise their kid to love cars. So you're not out in the garage with your son rebuilding engines, right? You're buying in video games and he's playing on a, you know, what are those, Wiis or Nintendo Switch? Yeah, he's playing on the Switch. So where a lot of us were building things and taking things apart, these kids, because of your bad parenting and Christian especially, you're, they're online and they have no connection whatsoever to cars as a part of their identity. It's not something that they've invested in emotionally. And the average age of a kid getting a license is, you know, longer and longer.

They just don't care.

Yeah, they don't care. They're not buying cars. So our new car sales are shrinking different in China. Their middle class is growing, that those kids are out rebuilding cars on the weekend. Like, you know, they're doing what we were doing 30 years ago in a sense. And so they're selling close to 30 million new cars. You're the president of Volkswagen and you're like, okay, so the number one consumer of new cars has said that we cannot sell any gasoline powered combustion engine cars by 2026.

I have to retrofit my plants to build electric cars. Now am I going to go open more plants for Americans because they don't want electric cars? No. Hey America, you're going to get some electric cars. And then, you know, you also, then what those manufacturers do is they lobby our politicians which are glad to take their money and things like Biden putting it into the infrastructure deal. The government is going to buy all these electric cars. Like something you're like, what? Hold on, wait, what? Like, you know, you see it now at the top of, of our politics that the manufacturers have done a good job lobbying. Instead of trying to change consumers mind, they're just going to make it a part of what's going to happen. And so we could sit and talk about corrupt politics. We could sit and I mean, but won't get us anywhere. Once again, we're talking about the symptom, not the cause. So as leaders in our industry, what we need to do is we need to say, well, how can we use this to our advantage.

Now let me tell You a story about my chick buying a Tesla. So Christian buys a Tesla. He loves it, has nothing bad to say about it. Greatest thing ever. Blah, blah, blah. So she, she wanted a Tesla. So we go online, we go to Tesla's website, we order a Tesla, very easy, extremely. Says, I call Christian. I go, oh, it says what, it was going to be four months.

Yeah.

And you go, it won't be. And I'm like, no, it says it is. And you see that they don't have chips and whatever. It won't be. It wasn't two months in. You get an email, hey, your car's here. Schedule your delivery now. Schedule your delivery. Is this you? Schedule a delivery. And I think I did it for like 8 o' clock on a Saturday morning. The kid shows up in the car, he asks you to open the Tesla app, log in, and then he transfers the car to you in the app, hops in an Uber and leaves.

Your car is yours.

Yeah, he did ask if there were any questions. But the car, I mean, it's pretty intuitive. Like, there aren't a lot of. There aren't a lot of things that would spark questions. Because it's very intuitive.

Or the app will help you to, like, there's. There's resources for you, as much as you need.

So now that's the buying experience. Completely different than me trying to buy a Land Rover. Range Rover. That situation was a nightmare. Still, to this day is a nightmare. My WI fi doesn't work in the thing. Like, just nightmare. Now you got to charge that thing. And so in the Tesla, you have this map that tells you where chargers are. And half of the chargers that you click on, it says, coming soon. The other ones that it'll say, this is a fast charger. And it's in a parking structure in a shopping center. So we would get down to like 50 miles. You would go to that shopping center, and guess what would happen?

They wouldn't have any open. They'd all be full.

No, they were broken. So you got to download a separate charger to pay for the charging, because it's not Tesla. Now, the closest Tesla one is in Santa Monica, which is, you know, where traffic could be 30 minutes away. So I'm just saying, in my general area, where I live, it was terrible. Now, the charger, it comes with charges. You know, maybe you could fully charge the thing in a week.

Yeah, the really slow one for sure.

It's like you get like three miles an hour charging with the one that it comes with. So then I'd seen in forums and on the website that you can have a charger installed in your house. That was kind of always a plan. The guy comes out and he says, oh no, whatever. We got to run a wire over the top of the house, fifty five hundred dollars. So then you're. You install a fifty five hundred dollar that you're not planning on whatsoever, but you don't really have a choice because you can't charge anywhere. And it's not even the fast one, it's the middle one. So it'll charge it in like five or six hours, but it doesn't charge it in an hour like the, you know, the faster ones do. So my experience with range anxiety and charging that thing, it. I'm in, you know, I'm in Los Angeles. It's pretty progressive and an early adopter of these sort of things. It was not easy. And so now as a, as a community, how could we make it easy? Like if we, if we went. If somebody in a Tesla or in an electric car went to the map and hit the button and they were looking for a charger and it was you, and you had people coming in. Now you have traffic. And now that traffic can turn into whatever you want them to turn into. But now we're starting to think of ourselves as a solution and stop treating the symptom. So although these comments are fun and it's fun to talk about and it's fun to get caught up in conspiracies.

And there's. Is it haunted in here that that book keeps falling or is it just the stand?

Yeah. So that's my thought. Is that what we really need to do is we need to start treating the cause and not the symptom. And we need to change our mindset and our approach to think of this as an opportunity, not as something that we have a saying, because we really don't. It's happening. So get over it.

Yeah. Become the destination.

Yeah, for sure.

And I think that that's part of what goes into it too, is the one thing that has happened in our industry over the last 10 or 15 years is that dealerships started to build a lot of like those Taj Mahal looking places and imagine that. So then you start to transform your dealership into a destination and people have like a regular stop that they do with you. I mean, think about the relationships that you can build. I love the idea that you'd said, I can't take credit for. It was like, okay, so they're, they're charging. Can we offer them a Complimentary inspection. You get the car in the air. Can we make sure that the tires are aired up, that they're. You know, that they have good tread on them, everything like that. Every time somebody comes in, what's the issue with putting them in the. Putting them in the shop and taking a look at them, too. And the customer just gets used to that. And then what would be great is they come in, they plug in, then they walk in there like, hey, I got 45 minutes left on the charge. Can you put it in the air after that? And then they start to actually ask for that. And then every time they get service done, you know, granted on electric cars is less, but. But it would always be there. So then you have to think their retention goes up really, really high because they're always with you. And it always makes me think about this one dealer group that we work with. And if you go into their headquarters, they've got the museum there, and there's a replica of their dealership, their first dealership that they had. And you could see that that was like a social place. And I think that we could use electrification and the charging and everything like that for this to become like, you know, like a coffee bar or something, A place that thing go and that people go. And, like, now we start to talk about. Because you have events at the dealership.

Well, you could. You can. You could sell car washes, you could sell details. You could measure their tires. There's all kinds of things that you could do on top of coffee and that sort of thing. But we need to think of ourselves as an industry closer to shopping malls than. Than an Apple Store, in the sense that these big dealerships or service departments that we've built, you know, don't have the same leverage in the marketplace that we used to have. But malls, some have adapted and some haven't. Right? Like, so, for example, malls, more and more. You'll see that they have a Whole Foods, There's. There's a mall here in Los Angeles that spent a lot of money and lobbied really, really hard to get Italy, which is kind of like a Pike Place market of Italian food, where they have, like, they make their own cheese.

They.

They have like a dessert, an espresso, a couple restaurants. But it's a destination. Whenever my mom comes down from Seattle, we take her to Italy, and it's the best babysitter. You know, you give your son a switch or whatever, and that's a babysitter. Taking her to Italy is a babysitter. But it brings so much traffic to that mall. That it, it brings them back to their original business model where the Nordstrom's and the J.C. penneys and the Sears were the anchors of the mall and people would come there and then those people would wander into Orange Julius or to the other shops. But if you understand the mall, the, the model of how a mall works, a lot of times the Nordstrom's or the businesses that are bringing traffic aren't paying rents. Like there's a, there's a couple interviews with the Nordstrom's kids where they're talking about, they used to just sit on Mondays or Tuesdays and take meetings with developers that would say, we'll give you 40 million in free rent to come here because they're bringing traffic to that mall. And then the mall is making their money off of charging rent for the other tenants inside of the mall. But when the traffic goes away and Sears goes out of business and J.C. penney's goes out of business and now people aren't coming in to buy tool because you know, a big part of Sears was die hard Tools, all of that. You don't have that traffic anymore and they're going to Home Depot or Lowe's. You remember there was a time where you were going to Sears for that sort of stuff, right? And Sears was in every mall. They have to adapt. And so they're, they're trying to adapt. We have to adapt. But there's a lot of malls that are, that are closed up or you know, are more like cemeteries that in the sense that they treated the symptom. They treated the symptom. And just like Blockbuster Video, they're like, well, what we need to do is have the movie experience at home. So we're going to sell popcorn and you know, two liter jugs of Coke missing that. The, the whole thing is going to online and you don't have to return something. And it isn't even about late fees. It's just about I can go through an index and, and hit a button and watch a movie at home. I don't have to go anywhere. And they're missing that. Right? And so let's not, let's not do that as an industry. Let's stop treating the symptom and let's try to figure out how can we be the solution, be the solution for our customers and reposition our mindset and put your opinion aside. Like all these comments are great, but they, they don't fix anything. The, the closest one is the, the one where we're talking about from Kim in Norway, where, hey, they break, wait till they're out of warranty. And they're expensive. And we can sell a ton of tires because they're heavier. So tires, alignments, there's, there's a lot of money to be made. But how many dealers do we run into that, like just aren't in the tire business, just not interested in it. And so they're trying to dictate to the industry what's going to happen when the train already left the station.

That's right.

So think about that in the sense of let's be the answer. Let's figure out how can we get in front of this and make it easier for consumers. How can we get, how can we help get rid of range anxiety by being the solution and making sure that, that our charging stations are reliable. Cause that's another thing is a lot of them don't work.

Yeah, they like to break.

Yeah, they break a lot. So that's my thoughts. Anything in conclusion, you were a little light on the jokes today.

I was a little light on the jokes. It was a good topic. I'm trying to decide if I want to throw one in there or not. I don't know if I even know any other jokes. Yeah. Oh, you know what?

Yesterday I was sitting in the office working. I'd been gone for the last week myself, so it was a lot of catch up to do. But, but Angel's like bugging me. He's like, come on, Christian, come on, Christian, we got to make paper airplanes all day. He's like, come on, Christian, let's make paper airplanes. Finally I folded.

Got a little laugh.

It's so good.

All right, that's great. Awesome. Well, we missed you guys. Thank you so much for tuning in. Please share this with your friends. Let's start a conversation about how we can be ahead of this and let's stop bitching about the, you know, the symptoms and let's start talking about how to be the answer and be part of the solution for our customers. Because we're here to serve customers and fix a problem for them. So let's figure out how we can do that and then we will see you next time on Service Drive Revolution.

Thanks so much for watching this episode of Service Job Revolution. We're uploading new stuff every day, so make sure you subscribe and click the bell icon so you don't miss out. If you have a question you'd like us to answer on the show, call 8-333-ASK SDR and we'll answer your question on the show. That's 8333-ASK SDR. For special deals on our books and training, head over to offers.chriscollinsinc.com now that's offers.chriscollinsInc.com I'm Chris Collins and I'll see you in the next video.

I'm just saying in my general area, where I live, it was terrible. Now, the charger, it comes with charges. You know, maybe you could fully charge the thing in a week.

Yeah, the really slow one for sure.

It's like you get like three miles an hour charging with the one that it comes with. So then I'd seen in forums and on the website that you can have a charger installed in your house. That was kind of always a plan. The guy comes out and he says, oh no, whatever, we got to run a wire over the top of the house. $5,500. So then you're. You install a $5,500 that you're not planning on whatsoever, but you don't really have a choice because you can't charge anywhere.

And it's not even the fast one, it's the middle one. So it'll charge it in like five or six hours, but it doesn't charge it in an hour like the, you know, the faster ones do. So my experience with range anxiety and charging that thing, it. I'm in, you know, I'm in Los Angeles. It's pretty progressive and an early adopter of these sort of things. It was not easy. And so now as a, as a community, how could we make it easy? Like if we, if we went, if somebody in a Tesla or in an electric car went to the map and hit the button and they were looking for a charger and it was you, and you had people coming in. Now you have traffic. And now that traffic can turn into whatever you want them to turn into. But now we're starting to think of ourselves as the solution and stop treating the symptom. So although these comments are fun and it's fun to talk about and it's fun to get caught up in conspiracies.

And there's. Is it haunted in here that that book keeps falling or is it just the stand?

Yeah, so that's my thought, is that what we really need to do is we need to start treating the cause and not the symptom. And we need to change our mindset and our approach to think of this as an opportunity, not as something that we have a saying. Because we really don't it's happening, so get over it.

Yeah. Become the destination.

Yeah, for sure.

And I think that that's part of what goes into it too, is the one thing that has happened in our industry over the last 10 or 15 years is that dealerships started to build a lot of like those Taj Mahal looking places. And imagine that. So then you start to transform your dealership into a destination and people have like a regular stop that they do with you. I mean, think about the relationships that you can build. I love the idea that you'd said, I can't take credit for. It was like, okay, so they're charging. Can we offer them a complimentary inspection? Get the car in the air? Can we make sure that the tires are aired up, that they're, you know, that they have good tread on them, everything like that. Every time somebody comes in, what's the issue with putting them in the. Putting them in the shop and taking a look at them too. And the customer just gets used to that. And then what would be great is they come in, they plug in, then they walk in there like, hey, I got 45 minutes left on the charge. Can you put it in the air after that? And then they start to actually ask for that. And then every time they get service done, you know, granted on electric cars is less, but it would always be there. So then you have to think their retention goes up really, really high because they're always with you. And it always makes me think about this one dealer group that we work with. And if you go into their headquarters, they've got the museum there, and there's a replica of their dealership, their first dealership that they had. And you could see that that was like a social place. And I think that we could use electrification and the charging and everything like that for this to become like, you know, like a coffee bar or something. A place that thing go that people go. And like, now we start to talk about. Cause you have events at the dealership.

Well, you could sell car washes, you could sell details, you could measure their tires. There's all kinds of things that you could do on top of coffee and that sort of thing. But we need to think of ourselves as an industry closer to shopping malls than an Apple store in the sense that.