Bold 2024 Auto Industry and Economic Predictions | SDR #274

Happy New Year, everybody. Today, Christian and I are shining our crystal ball. It is so shiny. We are going to tell you what is going to happen in 2024. This is our predictions for 2024 and we talk about Truck of the Year and some other stuff.

That's right.

Coming up right now on Service Drive Revolution.

We recently took our team to Vegas to the Sphere to watch the movie, not to see U2.

The other thing.

Yeah. I would go back and watch YouTube, but I don't get what. I don't get you two in there. It doesn't seem like a place for a concert.

No, it definitely was the place for that. That movie, though. A Postcard from Earth, I think it was called. Right?

Yeah. By Aronofsky.

And were there 10 of us? Someone I. I don't know. I would suggest everybody go see it. It's. It's a. It's an insight into experience. Like, if you're running a service department, you're really in the business of creating experiences for clients. And they definitely are on the cutting edge of.

Adult experience. I don't know about kids, but when you go there, the way it's laid out, the way it's designed, how easy it is to get a snack. The robots in the lobby that you can talk to and then just the overall, they're blowing air, temperature. Haptics.

The seat vibrated.

Haptics, yeah.

Is that haptics?

The smell. So there's smell in there. And then the screen is. You know, it's not like VR, it's just. It's. It's.

Completely round. It's nuts.

Like, I. Immersive was the word I used to describe it. I thought it was phenomenal then, like from a service manager perspective, like paying attention to what it's like for the participant when they. From the time they walk in the door to the time that they are escorted out. Like, I thought it was a high level of intentionality. Not just during the performance, before and after was.

Was interesting too, when we were leaving, that people were lining up for the next show and how they moved us out smoothly. How many people?

So the. The venue holds 18,000.

This is my 10.

My unofficial guess is there was 10,000.

People in there because for the movie, they close off the sides. That' which makes sense because you probably wouldn't want to see the movie on the sides, but the concert would probably be okay from the side.

Heads up to Yosh, who got us the best seats in the house. We're in the center of the sphere.

Nobody knows who Yosh is. But me and you.

Yeah.

I'm just name dropping Yosh. Thanks. Thanks, Josh.

But they're great seats for the Experience.

Then. Then we took everybody to dinner.

Talk about another great experience.

And who was right behind you that.

You didn't notice within five feet, would you say is pretty accurate? I don't remember. Cause I didn't notice. Oh, it was a foot behind me. Garth Brooks.

Yeah.

Didn't notice.

I grew up in a small town in the 90s. I'm a pretty big Garth Brooks fan.

One of the, you know, highlights of my music.

Fandom is seeing Garth Brooks at the Encore acoustic for like two and a half hours.

Oh, I bet that was.

It was like the last show of the weekend and he just went. He just played forever. It was. It was incredible.

Yeah. Yeah. I could have touched him.

What's your favorite Garth Brooks song?

Oh, I think it's Wild Now. Friends in Low Places probably. I know it's cliche, but I really like that song.

Have you ever seen the stuff that Tom Segura does to Garth?

No.

You should look that up. It's pretty funny. I do think it's. It's interesting that he was dressed in all Carhartt like he's a rancher.

Yeah.

Even though he's.

He's in Vegas doing a resident.

I don't think he's a rancher.

Yeah.

Just guessing.

He could.

I think he might live on a ranch, but I don't think he's a rancher.

Yeah.

You think Gars getting up and.

Shoveling cow pies at 4:30 in the morning.

No, I think there. I do think that there are country musicians that do. I just don't think he's one of them.

Yeah, he's trying to dress like he is.

Yeah.

Funny.

But he has good taste in restaurants because that place was out of this world. It was so wonderful. That food was good stuff.

Yeah. We have a little inside track. So it's Mr. Chow's is the restaurant. Because we probably didn't say that.

It's at Caesar's Palace.

Yeah.

But we have friends.

Not in low places.

I think you've met the son of the owner of that restaurant.

I think I have to hit a.

Party at my house.

I'm pretty sure what's wrong with me that I'm completely unfazed by all that stuff.

Like, who cares? They're just people. But you know them.

But they. Yeah, they do a great job. Man, the food is so good.

It was art.

It was art. And that steak was phenomenal. It was a lot of protein. Helps out with my body.

You know what? You know where I went on.

The.

Other night for dinner?

I'm a guest. Cut.

Yeah. Do you know. Do you know that I had a bet with somebody about that?

No. Tell me more.

So they, they. And I don't think I should say the name of the restaurant because it doesn't matter, but they said, oh, I went to this restaurant or whatever, kind of a steak place. Best steak in the world. The guy says. I was like, interesting. You also, because the best steak in the world is it cut. And you're not saying cut. So it turns into a bet. Have I told you this story?

No. This is great, though.

So it turns into a bet.

Okay.

And so the bet is I will. I will buy it. Cut. He will buy at this other place. And we went to cut first guess what happened.

He said, you don't need to go to the other place would be my guess. Yeah.

He took one bite of the steak, a cut, and he goes, oh, yeah, no, you win.

That's kind of fun. Kind of.

Kind of suckered into it.

Yeah. There's a lot of cool things about cut. But that steak is by far one of the most amazing food experiences I've ever had.

Went there on the weekend and that sticks. So I get the fillet that's half Angus, half Wagyu from Australia.

Yep.

It comes as a six ounce steak.

Yeah.

Two ounces.

That's right.

Did you know that you can add 6 ounces to the 6?

Yeah.

Could you?

As many ounces as you want to add.

I did not know that. Yeah, I was with somebody who did that. They went 12, they went 10.

That's a big steak.

I stayed with my eight. I don't need more than that. Yeah, there's something about. It's just more filling, so rich.

So forces.

You enjoy every bite. When you get 10 ounces, there's a lot of meat.

Boy, we drank a lot of wine.

Did you. Did you have Caymus or did you have the big.

The big brother to Camus, the one that we had at Thanksgiving?

Yeah. What's the name of that again?

Something with a P. I've got a picture. I don't even know. The guy just brings it out now.

Oh, yeah.

He goes, he comes to me, he goes, this is Mr. Collins. This is our last bottle. And I go, I have a couple at home. You want me to run and get them? They're like a fifth of what you charge.

You think that was funny?

No, I think it's great.

That guy always has a story for you.

But the second bottle that we had was better than the.

We were all like, whoa, what the.

He goes, he comes up to me with the wine list. He's like, okay, for your second bottle. And I go, just keep it in this price range. And he goes, okay, I got the perfect wine. And he did like, he. Bo is his name. The sommelier there. He's great.

He lights up when you walk in. It's pretty hilarious to watch.

But I think that's because I just want to learn. Like, I love.

Oh yeah. He loves understanding the stories.

Yeah. He's educating me. So, you know, I feel pretty confident that I could go just about anywhere and order a bottle that would, you know, most wine list, I can order something that everybody would be like, oh, this is, you know, yeah, good.

He. He also is a really good example of somebody that really likes what he does for a living.

Oh, yeah. And those guys work some hours, you think? In the car business we work hours.

I. It's. I think it's kindergarten compared to what you have to do in that industry.

He's up it. He's there until 2, 3, and then he's up again at 6, meeting with.

Vendors and doing inventory and everything like that.

Nuts.

That time that we met with.

And they get one day off a week.

Yeah, it's probably Tuesday. Like, it's a, It's a. It's a terrible day off. It's Monday. Okay. But. But they're committed to, to customer service.

I'm getting hungry just talking about this.

Okay, let's do the news and then we'll do our predictions.

Yeah. So. So this all kind of goes along with, with the new year. And the first thing I want to talk about, and it's super interesting to me is Motor Trend, you know, came out with their Truck of the Year contest, which I used to really follow this. I remember when I was younger because I always wanted like, I was rooting for people and everything like that. But who do you think run one Truck of the Year?

Truck of the Year. So I'm going to guess.

Can I have a hint? Is it gas or electric?

Gas. Gas.

Dodge.

It was not Dodge. Now, what's interesting to me is out of all the manufacturers of trucks out there, how many manufacturers do you think had entries into the Truck of the Year contest?

Okay, so you got Dodge, Chevy, Ford, Toyota, Nissan.

Who am I missing?

You could throw the cybertruck in there.

Well, you said non electric.

Yeah, but. So, yeah, so two manufacturers there were only GM trucks and there was two Ford trucks. And then there was an electric entry was the Hummer, which is a GM product, but only basically the Colorado was going up against the GMC Canyon, which is the.

Wait, the truck of the year is the Colorado?

Yeah, the Chevrolet Colorado.

Oh, this is like the New York Times best selling list. It's curated.

So this is what fake. This is what I really understood years ago is that like this award is for purchase. In my opinion, like you can buy, you can buy this award.

It's owned by Chevy.

Yeah. So I thought that that was because.

If it was owned by Ford, they would have made the Ford number one.

Maybe that's what I think. But. But the fact that they didn't have a Dodge in the contest, you know, and the, that they didn't put a Toyota in there. And like there's a new Tacoma coming out for 2024 that they could put in there. There's a lot of really, really cool trucks that they should have put in this list. Rivian wasn't in there. So I mean there was just. There was things that they could have put in. Electric, ice, whatever it is. There's tons of really good products out there and they only did two brands. And I just think that's. That doesn't help a consumer try to decide what they want to do. So I was super disappointed.

Yeah, there's probably a lot of people that don't even notice that.

Yeah. And I didn't until I started to really look into it. Because you had to click on this is on Motor Trend site. You had to click on a separate article to figure out who was in the contest. So it just talks like this article talks about the Colorado winning the truck of the year.

You know, it's funny, within like a week period of time, I had this experience where.

I was sitting with somebody who is in the publishing industry and they were telling me how the New York Times best selling list is fake like this.

And at the time he said, you know what the number one. And this is years ago. You know what the number one selling book has been all year is some book by Bill O'Reilly at the time. And he goes, it's never appeared on the New York Times bestseller because I don't like him. And I think Jordan Peterson wasn't on there either when he was selling so many books. But they, they're only doing books. It's curated. So fake list. And it says right on there that this is curated. I won't tell you the name of the person, but somebody who has had six New York Times best selling books. And I are sitting in his living room, his bulldog is sitting on my lap and.

There'S a picture of me.

Is it a picture or a bio or something that said when, when we released gamification, it was number one on Amazon in five different categories. It was number one in HR for a long time.

Oh, that's interesting. So do you know that irsm, Irreplaceable Service Manager and Millionaire Service Advisor are still highly ranked on business categories?

Yeah.

So I'm not gonna check from them.

And so he, he tells me, he says something to the effect of.

That that's a fake list.

And that you're not a real author until you're on the New York Times best selling list.

The curated one.

The curated one. And I go, I just said by chance. I go, how? Like your last book that you, you were number one on there. I go, how many books did you sell that week? And he goes, well, I was on Dr. Phil that week and I sold 6,000 books. And I'm like, yeah, I don't. We were selling more than that on Amazon. I go, Amazon is just. The only thing they care about is sales. They don't curate that at all.

Like it's a math problem.

Yeah, there's nobody in there with a pencil writing in names or whatever. It's funny how those sort of lists are curated, but.

It'S a good way to control perception.

Yeah, I mean, there's a lesson there.

Not everybody is as jaded and skeptical as you. Some people just go, hey, I gotta go buy the, the Colorado and I gotta drive the truck of the year, so I'm gonna go buy one.

Yeah.

Not everybody is. Is broken inside and jaded. Skeptical.

Childhood trauma.

Skeptical. You're skeptical.

It's leaking off of me.

Anything else in the news?

Speaking of skeptical.

This is off the Reuters Press In 2023, bold EV strategies took a punch from reality. So it's super interesting that like this is again, I feel like it's a curated article pushing a narrative and we just have to kind of pay attention to this stuff because they're saying essentially that EVs kind of took a step backwards. And the thing that I would like to kind of point out is maybe they didn't hit expectations, but there was more EV sold in 2023 than any other year. EVs outpace the growth of the rest the ice market. And.

More people saw increases or more manufacturers saw increases than any other segment of the business. For instance, Audi Mercedes, Hyundai and Kia did really, really well with the electric. They all kind of started to grab market share away from Tesla, which we talked about a couple of years ago, that they were ahead of the curve, but that there would be people that, that got market share, but it wouldn't mean that they sold less vehicles. So Tesla sold more vehicles than they've ever sold electric. And all those manufacturers that I just mentioned also sold more electrics than they ever had before. So it made me do a little bit of research back into when hybrid got launched, and Toyota was one of the first ones. So 1997 is when they launched the Prius available in the United States in the year 2000. And they had really tiny.

When did Uber start? I don't remember, because every Uber was a Prius.

Yeah, I remember taxis for a long time out here in la, specifically being Priuses for the longest time, but, but that took a little while to ramp up and now, you know, everywhere you look there's a hybrid of some sort. So I would just say that maybe it's not as fast as they want, but I do think that electrification is a, is a possibility. But they're trying to push the narrative that it's not going to happen. And I don't know that I buy that. I just think it's what people want you to believe.

Well, hold on. How many cars is Tesla going to sell this year?

Well, they sell like 300,000 quarters. Let's say 1.2 million.

No, I think they're gonna sell close to 1.8.

Was it that many? I saw 300,000 and a quarter was the last number that I saw. But if they sell 1.8, I wouldn't be surprised, especially out here. Every other car is a Tesla.

It's making you want to look at.

It, tell a joke first.

So.

So what did, what did one snowman say to the other?

What?

Yeah, I smell carrots too.

This is like a winter speed round.

Yeah, 1.8 million.

That was their projection. And people thought that they would do.

2 million, that, that would be pretty impressive.

So when you say that the, the other companies are getting market share there, there was.

You know, they're still doubling their sales every year.

Yeah.

So next year they think they could sell 4 million. So every year Tesla is doubling their.

Sales, but at that moment, who cares about the total market share? They're selling more than they have ever sold before. And it's four millions getting close to their capacity. What they could do anyway with the giga plants and all that stuff. So There's a world where everyone can win. Like, Audi wouldn't say they did a bad job in electrics. I wouldn't think, you know, so I don't think that Tesla cares if they lost market share if they sold more vehicles than they've ever sold before. Although Elon's kind of funny.

It's fascinating to me that you had a Tesla and then went away from it.

I did. It's true.

I wonder how many people do that.

Okay.

Yeah.

Predictions for 2024, bold. You want to go first?

Yeah.

So.

I thought it'd be funny if we put these in an envelope and didn't open them until the end of 2024.

Yeah, I think. I think we should. And then we could.

We'll just go back and compare.

Could put it in a display case. It'd be funny. All right, so I've got four total predictions on here. The first is, I believe that the EV startup, Start Stop, all that stuff is going to affect the vehicle sales. I think it's going to all go down. I think it's going to confuse consumers and they're not going to know what to do. So I think they're going to keep their car.

Okay, so that's one of my predictions, and kind of a cousin of that prediction is that the average of a passenger. The average age of a passenger vehicle is going to be over 14 years for the first time in history.

I think that's pretty. Pretty good. So the prediction.

The third prediction that I've got is that one in two new general managers will come from fixed operations.

I think that's a little.

You think that's bold?

Bold, yeah. Not as optimistic.

Not as bold as my last prediction.

What's that?

The Chicago Cubs will win the World Series.

You hear that silence?

I did.

Those are all the people that agree with you.

Four people passed out. Okay, so those are my predictions for 2024.

I predict that there's going to be some sort of government aid for all the negative equity. Kind of like cash for clunkers.

Brilliant.

It's going to become a big problem. Sales on the front end are going to drop.

Demand will drop while inventories increase. Yep. Okay.

I like that one. I think there's going to be more and more consolidation in dealer groups. And then I think that not 2024, but by 2025, 2026, one of two of the big three will merge.

And if you had to guess which two, who do you think it'll be?

Ford and Chevy.

I agree.

There's gonna be consolidation I'll think it'll be Stellantis versus the Ford GM thing.

And Ford will be the one.

Oh, that they'll absorb the. Yeah, GM brands. That's interesting.

Those are pretty good.

What do you think they'll call the government subsidy program? Because Cash for Clunkers was pretty catchy.

Well, who's gonna be the president?

Oh, yeah, we have that. We can, we can predict too. Holy crap.

Well, I think whoever the president is is going to determine the name because like say, for example, if it's Trump, he's a marketer, so he's going to call it Trump's buyback program.

Yeah.

But they went after him, so they.

Won'T take office till 2025. I think that this is going to happen in 2024 under Biden's watch, kind of.

I just secretly hoping that the election sooner than it is, maybe a little bit.

Do you have a prediction of who's gonna win? Who you think is gonna win?

Oh, I hate them all. I'm so, I'm so tired of it. I'm so tired of all the games. I don't know. I, I'm so worried that Gavin's gonna be the, the next one up and he, I, for the life of me, I don't understand how he's the governor here when it, the, he's made such a mess. He may be the worst.

In the history. Like he's made such a mess. We, you know, when he came in, he had a hundred billion dollar surplus. I think we're running the taxes we pay here. We're running an $80 billion deficit.

It's a 200 billion dollar swing in an up economy.

Just think about the amount of waste and mistakes and like, it's just nuts.

It's not been fun.

No.

All right. I'm predicting Desantis.

We'll see what happens.

But yeah, I mean, you're a Florida guy.

Yeah.

I don't think there's one of them I like. Really.

I don't think that there's, there's nobody that we're due for a president that everybody likes. I'd really love to.

Kennedy.

Yeah. I don't understand. I, so I don't, I don't hate that idea, but I don't understand why people are campaigning against him.

Well, because he's competition.

Right. But there's not really, there's nothing incendiary about him, but they're trying to make it up.

Well, it's incendiary if you're a pharmaceutical company.

Which most people aren't yeah, but the biggest advertisers on TV are.

Yeah.

Which then media, you know, news is on tv funded by that, Right?

Yeah. So then they. They push their budgets onto candidates. Okay, that makes sense. All right, so let's see what happens, though.

I think more and more we're having an experience economy.

There's a lot to learn there.

The industry needs to. To think of that. Like, we leave the experience to chance, but everywhere else, people want to.

Go somewhere where they're taking a selfie and.

It'S shareable and fun and it's a way for them to express their identity.

I just saw this yesterday and I didn't print it because I wasn't. I didn't have enough time to do research to make sure it was valid or not, but was. They just did a recent survey that consumers would rather go to independents than dealers for service. Like, it's the first time in history that people say they prefer to go to the independent, even though the statistics say that they do anyways. But the preference is to go to independent.

Yeah, the dealers just leave it to chance. It's an afterthought.

Yeah. So that's something that could be interesting to talk about in the coming weeks is how to. We're going to have to get really good at that part.

Well, we are. We are excited for a new year, and we hope you are, too. We appreciate you spending this time with us and we'll see you again real soon. Thanks for tuning in to 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 8333 asksDr 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 that's offers.chriscollinsInc.com I'm Chris Collins, and I'll see you in the next video. Sam.