AAH #734 – The Most Reliable Cars You Can Buy

TOPIC: Vehicle Dependability PANEL: Jason Norton, JD Power; Jackie Charniga, Detroit Free Press; David Kiley, Wards Auto; John McElroy, Autoline.tv

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
O'll online.

Speaker 2 (00:00):
After Hours is brought to you by bridge Stone Tires
Solutions for your Journey.

Speaker 3 (00:08):
Hi, everybody, welcome to Autulne after Hours. I'm going to
have an interesting conversation today what's the most reliable cars
that you can buy? And we're going to get into
that because we've got Jason Norton from JD Power who's
going to help us dig into all the latest data
that they they've got from their vehicle dependability study. And
we've got Jackie Charnigha from the Detroit Free Press joining

(00:33):
us too. And Jackie, great to have you here, and Jason.

Speaker 4 (00:37):
You too, thank you. Yeah.

Speaker 3 (00:39):
But so first off, maybe people don't know they hear
a lot of JD Power acronyms IQs Initial Quality Survey VDS,
Vehicle Dependability Survey or study. So explain VDS so.

Speaker 5 (00:56):
Perfect, Thanks for the segue and thanks for having me
on today. So our initial quality is measuring ninety days
of ownership, where our Vehicle Dependability study is measuring three
years of ownership.

Speaker 4 (01:05):
So at JD Power we have that ability to really
track that full.

Speaker 5 (01:08):
Ownership experience through our various studies that we have and
the latest one of course that just came out in
February was our Vehicle Dependability Study.

Speaker 3 (01:15):
I like the VDS because you know, the IQs measures
quality after ninety days of ownership. Right, all right, we're
being joined by David Kylie. David, come on in, man,
have a seat, Let's put a microphone on you. Sean
can help you on that. So just below everybody knows

(01:36):
David Kylie's from wards and we're talking Vehicle Dependability Study.
So anyway, as I was saying, I like measuring after
three years of ownership because I like to say, after
ninety days, come on, everything.

Speaker 4 (01:50):
Should work exactly you would hope.

Speaker 5 (01:52):
So anyway, but yeah, obviously our data shows there's some
issues with those ninety days of ownership vehicles as well.
But yeah, with three years of ownership, you really start
to see where those broken out working areas, Where are
those different areas where you're having software issues that are
continuous throughout that ownership period. So you know, really diving
deep into each of those issues is what we're able
to do. And of course, our Vehicle Dependability Study, just

(02:13):
like all of our studies, is true voice of the customers,
So we're asking real customers, real owners of these vehicles.
What are these different issues, And we measure nine different
categories within our study that really looks at infotainment, exterior, driving, assistance,
all these different powertrain aspects, so really diving into that
full vehicle experience that they're having at that three years.

Speaker 6 (02:35):
And i't mean to overreact to infotainment, but that one's
the worst in my opinion.

Speaker 5 (02:40):
It is the worst scoring category in our study as well,
So it's most problematic for many customers with the one you.

Speaker 6 (02:45):
Like, Jackie, Well, I have a cell phone and it
does a lot of things, and it does a lot
of things better than my vehicle does. And I don't
think there's too much crossover that needs to happen between
what a vehicle can do and what my phone can do.
I'm supposed to be when I'm behind the wheel as
far as I know driving, and it's just a huge distraction.

Speaker 5 (03:06):
Yeah, that bringing your own device into the vehicle is
definitely what's really problematic for a lot of customers. So connectivity,
we were talking about this before the show. You know
that Bluetooth pairing is really one of the top problems.
Android Auto Apple car play experience is the top problem
in the industry.

Speaker 4 (03:20):
So all these.

Speaker 5 (03:21):
Different device related activities that the customers having. Even oem
app is becoming more and more problematic in the industry.
So definitely that device customers just want to say, hey,
this is my life. I want to bring it into
my vehicle and continue my experience.

Speaker 1 (03:34):
So well to your point, Jen, measuring how people feel
about a new telecommunications and system that there maybe or
unfamiliar with in the first ninety days, I have to
believe that the complaints hit the ceiling, whereas over three

(03:55):
years you kind of figure out, you know, how different
things work. But the larger problem, I'd be curious if
you agree. I heard a great term. I'm not going
to take credit for it. Men, you bloat. I think
that it's the great one of the great descriptors of
you know, when there's just too much stuff that you

(04:18):
have to cycle through to do what you want. But
I just I love that term. I feel like I
want to make it the permanent name of a column.

Speaker 5 (04:29):
And it is true, right, So a lot of customers
there's a lot of new features, so oh yeah, of
course want to put these new features into the head unit.
Let customers find them surprise and delight as features is
what they know, we like to say, but it also
becomes very overwhelming. So and especially when you're getting in
and out of the vehicle. If I just go get
a cup of coffee and I get back in my vehicle,
now I got to search all the way back through
my menu to find out where I was in my

(04:50):
last place that took me so.

Speaker 4 (04:51):
Long to find before. So a lot of that is
coming through in that four years of ownership.

Speaker 3 (04:58):
Give me a one check and then then you Jeki,
what is it? I mean pairing, pairing the phone to
a car. It's been around for years and years and
years now. Some automakers really really good at it. You know,
I'll cite the Hondai group. Houndai Kiya seem to be good,
Toyota seems to be really good. Others. You know, I'll

(05:20):
try to pair the phone and I'll start, you know,
the search on my phone, and you know, just certain
nothing happened, so I stop that. Then I start the
search with the car, and then I do my phone.
Then everything's fine, and then on other cars it's exact
opposite way. And why have they not figured this out
by now?

Speaker 4 (05:37):
You know, everyone is working really hard with it.

Speaker 5 (05:39):
But as we know, technology gets continuously updating on cell phones,
so things are happening faster on cell phones, and maybe part.

Speaker 3 (05:45):
Of it's the phone problem. I don't know.

Speaker 5 (05:47):
I don't know if you can necessarily attribute it to
the phone, but maybe it's not the software, the OEM
keeping up with the phone software, so it's making that
compatibility issue. Also, we see a lot of issues when
there's multiple phones. So if the user has two phones,
maybe they connect a work phone or they have a
you know, significant other's phone in the vehicle as well.
So that priority of phones is where we see a
lot of issues. So you know, if your partner moves

(06:07):
your vehicle, all of a sudden, they're the number one
vehicle or the number one phone within the vehicle and
you get in the vehicle and it's you can't find it.

Speaker 1 (06:13):
I'm smiling and laughing because we have this problem in
our house where my partner it's primarily her car, but
both of our phones are connected. There's history there, but
it's like, you know, I'll actually wire mine in, but
it's reading hers, which is on Bluetooth, and now I

(06:34):
have to go muck around with something else. But to
your point on Hyundai, I just want to say over
a long period of time. I have a lot of
experience with Hyundai Kia tech centered stuff. They do some
of the best research, like beta testing, seeing what the
consumer wants and all of that. I worked closely with
another company among the Detroit Three. They're tear bullet this.

(07:01):
They don't bet a test, they don't do real life
consumer How is this going to work for the constrer?
They say they do, believe me, it's it's not so.
I think culture is actually culture at different companies is
one of the separators on how good these things are
over time.

Speaker 6 (07:19):
I hope I don't reveal which Detroit three member with
my anecdote that is completely unrelated.

Speaker 7 (07:24):
But I had a similar experience.

Speaker 6 (07:26):
You mentioned the phrase surprise and delight between these features.
I mine was more of a surprise and dismay because
it was I was trying to help my father with
his jeep Wrangler and he wanted to know how to
use the map feature, and it took us about ninety
days to realize there was no map feature. They just
wanted it to come from your phone. Now, I feel

(07:47):
like that's an interesting point what automakers feel they have
to build themselves versus what the phone comes with already,
and what are customers more likely to use and what's
a more seamless experience. But nobody told us that his
phone is is vehicle no longer had a map, and
that became an issue, especially if he's relying on that
to not even determine where his vehicle is, but what

(08:08):
direction it's facing it in some spaces.

Speaker 5 (08:10):
Yeah, yeah, No, there's a challenge right now in the
industry as a whole. I think everyone's aware of it,
just figuring out how to implement new technology pieces in
the vehicle, how to make those customer experiences really you know,
move on past you know what they're able to update
or not update within these in vehicle systems. So, you know,
I think that's just the push and pull what we're
seeing in the industry right now. But you know, I
don't know if anyone really has that solved yet. I

(08:32):
think there's a lot of different viewpoints and the ways
that each different OEM is trying to take. But you know,
right now, I don't know if there's a good direction.

Speaker 1 (08:40):
You know, surprise and the light can go, you should
go well beyond the telecommunications and the interface, right So words, right,
we're doing. We're evaluating our ten best user interface and
interior designs and some of the things that I encourage
us to look for. One of my favorite surprise and delights.

(09:02):
I asked the OEM when they first introduced it.

Speaker 3 (09:05):
How much did this cost?

Speaker 1 (09:07):
Because it's great? And they said, and they said, didn't
cost anything. It was just a software thing. And I'll
tell you what it was. And this is the kind
of thing that companies overlook. Nissan when they first introduced this, uh,
they were one of the first ones, if not the
first one, to tell you which tire was low after

(09:29):
everybody had to do the tread act tire pressure monitors
which one and then when you get out to put
some air in the tire, the horn beeps when it
reaches optimal PSI And I just thought, how much did
that cost? Because it's wonderful? Yeah? Nothing, it was just software.

Speaker 4 (09:49):
February.

Speaker 3 (09:51):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (09:52):
I mean it's those simple things. I don't understand why
every company it's not a patent thing, why every company
hasn't has an copied it.

Speaker 3 (10:01):
So, you know, it's interesting we're talking about all this
connectivity and infotainment and all that because years ago on
the vehicle dependability survey. It would have been like oil
leaks on the garage floor. It would have been a
rattle in the trunk, it would have been a transmission
that crapped out. So has the industry fixed those old problems.

Speaker 5 (10:20):
Now those old problems are still prevalent as well new
problems that are overtaking those problems. So when we look
at our industry as a whole or our study as
a whole, we group things into problem aggregates, so we
can look at things like broken outworking, poor performance, so
that's more connectivity things like that, but we also look
at software defects. Software defects this year at a twenty
percent increase year over year, so it was the highest

(10:41):
increased percentage wise by any of the problem aggregates what
we have. But when we look at the top problem overall,
it's still the broken out working, which this year made
over a quarter of the problems of the studies. So
still very problematic across the industry, but we are seeing
that software defect related areas, in enfotainment related areas really
taking over some of those issues.

Speaker 1 (10:59):
Would question about to study itself, would it be too
expensive or too problematic to extend it even longer to
like five years instead three.

Speaker 4 (11:09):
That's a great point.

Speaker 5 (11:10):
I mean, that's a big topic within our organization right now,
as well as maybe understanding these longer term ownership periods.
We know that people are holding out to vehicles longer
and longer.

Speaker 3 (11:18):
If you look at pastcar, it's fourteen years. I mean
combined with trucks, it's like twelve point four or whatever.

Speaker 1 (11:24):
And by the way, most bumper to bumper warranties, I
don't know, I'd have to look at all every automaker,
but so many of them end at thirty six thousand miles,
three years, thirty six. But there's not that much stuff
that's going to go wrong. But you know, the seventeen
minutes after my warranty expired, I had a part in

(11:48):
my car break. It was like a forty buck part.
It costs like almost three thousand dollars to replace because
they had to pull the whole dashboard. None of it
was covered.

Speaker 5 (12:00):
Yeah, we know there is a big focus I say
our organization, but our organization also you know, we're working
with a lot of OEMs.

Speaker 4 (12:05):
OEMs.

Speaker 5 (12:06):
That's a big point of topic for them too, is
understanding these longer term ownership periods and what maybe they're
able to do to implement help these customers out during
those periods of time.

Speaker 6 (12:14):
For sure, I had a question that I sort of
want to ask the group because I've recently returned to
automotive journalism and I haven't been in the game for
a while, but I wanted to kind of go back
to cell phones a little bit. So we talk about
how technology changes quickly, and it seems like cell phones
are the most important tool that we have that's changing.

(12:35):
And from my experiences, we used to be able to
tell fashion like you know, an image could tell you
what decade and what was happening culturally or politically, and
you know, I would be watching a television program and
I'd see a Ford Flex and I knew it was
two thousand and nine. But when it comes to what
is the difference between the newest, latest vehicles and what
makes a new car new feel new from a customer

(12:56):
perspective and is worth the price tag, I want to
know what that means anymore. It used to be cup holders,
this car is twelve cup holders whatever, And when it's
just you know, you can only tell something's a period
piece based on if it's a flip phone or a smartphone.
What is the distinguishing factor with the vehicles. I've had
a chance to talk to some designers and you know,

(13:17):
even Cadillact.

Speaker 7 (13:18):
Their concept car just has the DeLorean doors.

Speaker 6 (13:22):
And we always use the jet sins as a touch
point as what the future is going to be like.
But from what customers think when they get into a
new vehicle, what is what is the thing that makes
it new? Because we're talking to Edmunds, talking to Cocks
and other people, they would always say, if you want
a new car that you can afford, your new car
is three years old, get that one instead. So what

(13:42):
is what is your take doing the study and you
guys from covering this industry, what do you guys think?

Speaker 4 (13:46):
Maybe I'll loll you guys go first number one.

Speaker 3 (13:48):
I think it's a great question. Here, great question, and
I would say it kind of depends on the vehicle
or vehicle segment. So like if you're talking Mustang Corvette, well,
I you know the product develop guys, I say, guys,
you know gals too, you know guys yea, yeah, they
got a laser like focus. Boy, do they understand what

(14:09):
that customer wants? Probably full size pickup buyers too. You
know exactly what those people want. When you get into
other let's say, mid market family sedans. Ooh, that gets
really hard because you're trying to appeal to such a
broad base of owners that have all kinds of different
needs and wants, you know, demographic, psychographic. So yeah, I

(14:34):
would say styling still counts both inside and outside. And
then you know, having some kind of cool feature and
I can't think of one right off the top of
my head. Well I'll say something like four wheels steering.
That's where you bring your friends and neighbors over and
go look at this thing. Look at a crab walk,
I mean a gog at what it can do, even

(14:57):
though you're never ever gonna really use it unless you're
a hardcore off roader. So I mean that's kind of
my reaction to your question, but it's a hell of
a good question.

Speaker 1 (15:07):
Well, you take a look at the Rev four, for example,
the Toyda Rev four, which was the best selling car
last year. I think that that is an example of
a car that, in terms of the guts, the platform
and things like that, it should just be continuous improvement.
The day is you and I have been around long

(15:28):
enough we remember when I'm trying.

Speaker 3 (15:32):
To remember, by the way David's indicating towards me, you
and I have been around a long time.

Speaker 1 (15:37):
That we remember going to the Detroit Auto Show when
Chrysler or CEO Bobby wanted to make a point about
how everything had changed in one model to the next.
And I can't remember which model it was, but he
threw a bag of parts and bulk and he said,

(15:57):
he said, this is the only thing that carried over
from last generation to this generation. Wanted to emphasize, this
is all new, you know what. People buying Revforce don't
care if the thing is all new. They care about
continuous improvement and maybe a tweak on the external styling
to you know, to mirror kind of current fashion trends

(16:20):
or you know, something like that. But man, they just
people buying rev fors and cameras and they just want
to see that it's it's it feels new, it's smarter
than the last one I bought, you know, well pretty much.

Speaker 3 (16:36):
And to get back to our subject matter expert here,
they want dependability. I mean, that's why so many people
buy Toyota's. Toyota always does very well in the survey.
But this year General Motors, my jaw dropped when I
saw how well the GM brands.

Speaker 4 (16:51):
Did in the General Motors had a great year this year.

Speaker 5 (16:54):
So they had twenty award eligible models, fifteen of them
actually were in the top three within their individual segments,
so really their whole portfolio was within that top three
within those individual segments. Toyota still very very strong though,
I mean when you look at them and in General Motors,
they each received six segment awards. But the number one
overall nameplate this year was Lexis, so really moving up.

(17:14):
Number one mass market brand this year was Buick, so
that was a great, you know, great improvement for them.
Toyota actually did fall to that number two when it
comes to mass market overall. But when we look at
all those different pieces of what these companies are doing,
it's really just focusing on those customer needs and trying
to improve their products. Right, So go back to your question,
you know what is the biggest thing, and a lot
of it is coming down to functionality making things easier

(17:36):
to operate for customers. So we know technology maybe not
making that point, but that's the point of technology is
to make things easier on the customer. But you know,
there is still a bridge that they're trying to gap
right now for that. But you know, overall, I think
it's a lot of that is coming down to functional behavior.

Speaker 4 (17:51):
So you know Wrap four.

Speaker 5 (17:52):
You know that's more utilitarian, right, That's that's someone who
wants things to function right. I want my space to
be right, I want my cup holders to work. I
want to be able to have good storage. All those
different aspects, you know, does create this new sense if
I'm able to make things just that little bit better
for the customer. So that's when I was really focused on.
But of course quality, quality, quality is what we're.

Speaker 3 (18:14):
You know, the other thing that jumps out at me,
GM and Toyota, the biggest car companies in the US market,
both of them above average. When you're that big and well,
i'll put the two together. When you got the number
one and number two, it's hard to be above average, right,
I mean, it's just from a number standpoint, What is

(18:38):
it about them that they did so well?

Speaker 5 (18:40):
When you look at these brands, it's really designing in quality.
So we have the ability to separate design which we
consider difficult to use, difficult to operate sides of things
versus a broken or difficult malfunction side of things. So
when we look at those, they're at the top of
the ring charts when it comes to that design aspect.
So again, making things easy to work or as best
as they can for their customers to make things these
it works. So designing and quality really helps elevate them.

(19:03):
So over the three years of ownership, if there is
a defect or malfunction, you don't have to worry about
the design of things. You can actually just chase down
what's being broken and how to fix that over that
ownership period.

Speaker 6 (19:13):
But if it's in the center of the vehicle and
you've got to rip the whole thing apart, yeah.

Speaker 1 (19:16):
I think. I think GM culturally has gone through a
pretty impressive transition of improving design. I think that their
EV improving quality. I think their EV stuff is great
and just a little thing which I've cited in coach.
They're also become the most efficient manufacturing manufacturer in the

(19:41):
world when you look at employees per vehicle or vehicles
per employee. But I did this breakdown and it's really impressive.
You know, they continually you don't see a massive restructuring
layoff of something like that at JAM what they did,
They do it all the time. They keep they keep

(20:03):
rationalizing and optimizing their workforce to what they need and
where the market's going. Hey, is that hard on people
who wind up having to shift?

Speaker 3 (20:12):
Absolutely, But what you're saying is that they're sounding more
and more like Toyota.

Speaker 1 (20:16):
Would they it's I have to do a more in
depth analysis of the numbers. But if because Toyota and
GM have no certain non automotive operations and employees, but
if you look at the number of vehicles for employee ratio,

(20:37):
GM kills the competition, it's like up around thirty six
or thirty seven vehicles per employee. Toyota is in the
if you just do it that way, Toyota's in the
upper twenties. But I think almost nobody else is in
the thirties, and so GM has just done a really
good job. I think of changing their culture under Mary Beara,

(21:00):
you know, and Mark Royce and some of the other people.
I know that you had a very illustrious guest late
last year, former GM executive who we all love, you know,
who was bashing the culture GM. I kind of feel
like that's at a date, you know, the culture that

(21:21):
I'll just say, is it Bob Loah? I love we
all love Bob, but I feel like the description of
GM's culture by Bob is at a date, you know,
for what's been happening the last five to ten years.

Speaker 6 (21:33):
Can you contextualize that that entire phenomenon? So is it
that when you're trimming the fat of your employee payroll
you have more for R and D, you can fixate
more on the vehicles themselves.

Speaker 1 (21:43):
There's an enterprise cost to having too many people. I mean,
I've worked at a couple of you know, closely, not
as an employee of the OEM, but as a as
a supplier. And when you when you keep after the
headcount and you don't let headcount that isn't optimal to

(22:06):
the direction you're going. When you keep attacking that, it
reduces the enterprise cost of wasted time and time that
is just misspent in the wrong directions.

Speaker 6 (22:18):
But is the best way to do that, say, have
every employee justify what they did the week before.

Speaker 1 (22:24):
I don't think I don't know what the system is
at General Motors. But you know, I wasn't going to
talk politics, but I can't. But I also don't think
that that approach that we're seeing in the news is
very useful or productive to employees or culture either. I mean,

(22:49):
I just think GM is doing a much more professional, systematic, deliberate,
consistent level that because we're not saying, oh my god,
we have ten thousand too many employees, you know what.
I haven't seen that in some time from GM. I've
just really impressed the way of the way Mary Barra

(23:12):
has changed the culture over the last ten years.

Speaker 6 (23:16):
I think I'm very interested, obviously in where that culture
is going. And yes, I'm the GM reporter for the
Free Press, so I'm more interested than I am and
on anything else. But the culture has to be fixated
on a goal and a mission, and that's something that
I'm very eager to figure out. So in terms of
what it makes a vehicle that we drive today, safe, dependable, useful,

(23:39):
safe being the first thing, because obviously GM talks a
lot about zero emissions, zero accidents, everything that they're working towards.

Speaker 7 (23:46):
But when I ask that question about what.

Speaker 6 (23:48):
Makes a vehicle new or what are the features that
it should have, I'm seeing, in my experience limited, though
it may be more and more conversations around what could
a vehicle be other than a fan you drive? And
that's something I'd like to ask the group as well,
in terms of your ideal vehicle. And a lot of
people I've discussed this with at a GM obviously in

(24:11):
the Assistant Driver program and autonomy. We all saw what
happened with CRUs and that's another point of consolidating, getting
experts into this system they've already had and getting rid
of some employees that might not be doing what they
needed to do. But then you have a vehicle that
is a living room, a kitchen, a sensory deprivation tank,

(24:32):
a spa, Like, what is a vehicle going to be?
And is all the technology we have going to assist
the driver for now until it takes over completely.

Speaker 7 (24:44):
So I'd like to ask that as well.

Speaker 6 (24:46):
What a car should be and what we're not trying
to make it fly anymore. It looks like we're just
trying to make it Some people are I want to
interview them, just make it think for itself.

Speaker 3 (24:57):
Look, it depends on the individual. What does an individual
want out of their car? You know, if I'm buying
I go back to the Corvette, the Mustang, I'll throw
in Porsche BMWMS, and the list goes on and on.
The hell, if I want the car to drive me,
I'm buying that car to drive it. But you know,
enthusiasts comprise roughly ten percent of the market. Nine would

(25:23):
love to have the SPA, the deprivation tank, the living room,
at the kitchen, and have this car do everything for
them in their daily community. You know, who wants to
drive in stop and go traffic. I've never met anybody
that wants to drive and stop and go traffic, but
for millions of people who work that everyday reality. So yeah,

(25:44):
if I can push a button and it goes fully autonomous, woohoo,
I'm all for it.

Speaker 1 (25:48):
Yes, for that driving situation. Then I want to be
able to turn it off, you know when I want
to when I want to take control of the vehicle.
And I think that's where we are. It's funny when
you said the SPA thing, the car that I immediately
think of is is the Lincoln you know that's made

(26:10):
in Japan. And you got the Aroma China, China, Sorry sorry, Nautilust,
the and and and the Aroma therapy and I'm I'm
sitting there and this whole there's this whole phenomenon that's
being explained to me about people who want to pull
into their driveways and stay in their cars. And I
just thought, how many people is this depends? Well, so

(26:35):
if somebody told me this is where the origin of
the car is, and in China, it's that, it's where
we're it's it's it's much more of a thing because
people have smaller residences. They might have, you know, several kids,
and and this is more of a thing now. I
happen to be driving with a friend of mine who

(26:58):
and she said when when we tested the vehicle, She's like, oh,
I'm all over this, and you know, and I thought, maybe,
I don't know, is there a gender split in all
of that? Because when I get home in my driveway,
you know, I got a house that's comfortable, I guess
things I want to do, you know, I just get

(27:18):
out of the car and I go in my house.

Speaker 6 (27:20):
You don't want to do them in the car, watch television,
take a zoom in my driveway.

Speaker 1 (27:25):
No, I don't want to do any of that. Occasionally
I've gone into the car for a quiet place to
record my podcast intro. But but to your point, there's a.
There's a race among some automakers to put a lot
of do dads and fancy stuff and to be able

(27:47):
to say it's a lifestyle vehicle. That's my favorite. I've
been hearing that all my career. It's a lifestyle. Well,
what is it a lifestyle exactly? So it's it's but
we're talking about depending ability. That's the best thing they
can do. Design quality, design quality in so it doesn't

(28:07):
cost me, you know, two and a half grand to
replace a forty buck part. You know, do these things
make it so the horn beeps when I reach out
the mole. There's like the two hundred smart things. They
could design it to every car that everybody would love,
but they don't want to copy one another. There's competition

(28:29):
internally about whose idea gets put up. That's the stuff
that gets in the way of quality.

Speaker 6 (28:35):
I have a question about especially cost, because in terms
of dependability and the desirability of certain different lifestyles in
your vehicle. Can you describe the split between luxury buyers
and is there like a tax bracket breakdown of people's responses.

Speaker 5 (28:51):
What we're seeing, really the big divergence right now is
with technology.

Speaker 4 (28:54):
Again, going back to this.

Speaker 5 (28:55):
Where we see in the premium models this year, everybody
remain pretty flat year over year, So it was two
hundred nine problems about with premium vehicles where we saw
a big uptick with mass market vehicles. A lot of
that was because of integration of new mpertainment systems, new
driving assistant features coming into those mass market vehicles, where
they actually saw degradation of sixteen problems per one hundred
year over year, So huge shift, and that's really what

(29:17):
we saw drive the industry up as a whole was
come from those mass markets. So maybe these premium buyers
are starting to overcome some of these opticles, maybe they're
getting used to some of these technology features within their vehicle,
and now they're shifting into mass market vehicles, so we're
starting to see that.

Speaker 3 (29:33):
You know, the split that I found fascinating was between
electric plug in hybrid hybrid and ice right and doves
showed a big improvement, but you found that peavs had
the biggest problem.

Speaker 4 (29:47):
Exactly.

Speaker 5 (29:48):
Yeah, we briefly touched on it a little bit before
this before going live, but a lot of it is
like you're almost getting a little bit of both negative worlds,
so you're getting some of those problems that you're seeing
within the industry for the ice side of it, we're
also getting those top problems that you're seeing from the
BEV side of it. So you know, overcoming those obstacles
is difficult. Where a lot of focus right now for
the auto industry has been on all electric vehicles, so

(30:10):
addressing those issues. But we know PABs are still going
to be very prevalent moving forward, so I think the
industry will start tackling those as well.

Speaker 3 (30:17):
But a lot of it, we found that hybrids were
the best of all. Yeah, which you know, because hybrids
are not exactly simple, you know, compared to ice or diesel,
pure ice or pure diesel, and yet hybrid scored better
than pure ice or diesel. Well, how do you read that?

Speaker 5 (30:33):
You know, it was an interesting finding, of course, But
I think a lot of that is coming down to, Okay,
now I just have this vehicle that it has longer range,
I don't really have to mess with going to the
electric charging ports and different things like that. So it
has become easier for a lot of customers just not
to deal with all these issues that they want to
have from the from the ice side of it. But
they're getting now within the hybrid, so I think a

(30:54):
lot of it is driven by reducing some of those
issues when it comes to plugging in the vehicle, and.

Speaker 3 (30:59):
Jason were getting down to the end of the segment.
But who else did well? If I remember off the
top of my head, Mazda, Honda, Worsha.

Speaker 5 (31:08):
We're all, you know, really towards the time, they all
had really good years this year. I mean, there was
big improvements in the industry for some models, of course,
but you're really dominated by the GM and the Toyotas
this year, so you think twelve awards just from those
two alone. Maza Nissan had a couple of awards as well,
so the Morono and the Kicks had good final out right,

(31:28):
But there were some good stories in the models that
were able to call. One of the big stories this
year were the model launches. So there was twenty seven
new model launches this year within our study for twenty
one model or twenty two model years. So you think
of that time during COVID there was chip shortages, there
was disruption and production. So all these twenty seven models
that were launched, only four actually performed better than that
segment average.

Speaker 4 (31:48):
So It just shows.

Speaker 5 (31:49):
That difficult time to launch a vehicle, especially with these
new mpertainment systems, new driving assistant features in the vehicles
as well. So a lot of problems across the industry
when it came to launching vehicles to be expected, though,
So we saw within our ninety days of ownership at
twenty two model your vehicles there was an eleven percent
increase in problems as well, so you know, they got

(32:11):
a little bit better. Three years of ownership is still
still problematic.

Speaker 3 (32:14):
Real good. We're gonna have to wrap this up, Jason,
thanks so much for coming on the show. Very interesting,
great good data there.

Speaker 4 (32:20):
Yeah for sure.

Speaker 5 (32:21):
Yeah, we got a lot of data points at JD Power.
So that's happy to be here.

Speaker 4 (32:24):
So thank you.

Speaker 3 (32:25):
We're going to take a quick commercial break and we'll
be back talking about news in the industry this week.

Speaker 8 (32:32):
Knowing that a little rain won't slow down your day,
that's what really matters. Reach down Toronto, quiet track tires,
confident control in wet conditions.

Speaker 4 (32:45):
Happy, It was nice to meet it you.

Speaker 3 (32:46):
Yeah, okay, here's some.

Speaker 1 (32:54):
Can see again.

Speaker 7 (32:54):
Yeah, nice meeting you.

Speaker 3 (32:59):
So we're back talking about news of the week, and uh,
I guess you didn't want to get into politics. I
don't know how we can avoid it.

Speaker 1 (33:08):
That's fine. I didn't want to talk about politics in
the context of power.

Speaker 3 (33:12):
Yeah yeah, but you know, boy, you know, Tesla's just
a spate of bad news sales creating around the world.
Stock price taking a huge, huge hit. And then yesterday
we saw President Trump out in the yard of the
White House with a bunch of Tesla's.

Speaker 1 (33:34):
And uh, he apparently can't drive.

Speaker 3 (33:37):
Well, you know, Secret Service will not allow a president
to drive.

Speaker 1 (33:40):
Except they let Biden and Obama do it.

Speaker 3 (33:43):
So yeah, just stay in a very controlled circumstance, right,
But what'd you make of it? I mean, Elon needs
that kind of publicity.

Speaker 1 (33:52):
So I did a fairly deep dive on wards. That's
on the website today, not just rounding up what we know,
but making the point there's a reason why CEOs of
publicly traded companies don't get overtly involved in politics until

(34:13):
maybe they're after they're they're outside of their role as
a CEO. And there's an I cited you know, these
studies and about why you don't do it. You know,
you alienate a bunch of your consumers. You can alienate
a bunch of your employees. Nothing good comes of it
is basically what these studies have long said, which is

(34:37):
why you know, if you look at FEC records, which
I've done from time to time, you hardly ever see
big you know, big donation trails of CEOs of publicly
traded companies. They channeled their contributions through the company's pack.
And now because of the the way the Supreme Court

(35:01):
ruled on this, they can give money to packs and
their names won't be released and things like that. But
this is unprecedented in the US at least what Musk
is doing.

Speaker 6 (35:15):
And always think of that word unprecedented. I've heard it
many times in the past five years.

Speaker 1 (35:21):
But I mean, and often you'd have a board if
a CEO is doing things to hurt the company, you'd
have a board react. Not the Desla board. I means
the board is is his friends and people he's richly rewarded.
They aren't going to tell very few people are going

(35:44):
to tell Lelan Musk he shouldn't do something. You know,
we saw on the isaacs and book. There's a galaxy
of people it's telling him not to do the cyber
truck the way he wanted to do it. It Matter
just went ahead and did it, and it's a fiasco.
They're going to have severe capacity problems next year and

(36:05):
the year after because demand is just dropping off the cliff.

Speaker 3 (36:09):
Jackie, your read of the situation Trump with Musk on
Primetime TV. I mean essentially selling cars.

Speaker 6 (36:18):
That's something that we've been asking the Detroit Three pretty frequently.
How do you feel about the potential for another competitor
to have such close ties with the president, to have
such obvious and overt perceived views of conflicts of interest?
And I think it kind of got to that point

(36:38):
when the cuts were happening, and we saw what happened
to NITSA in particular, and when I was trying to
drill into which roles were lost at NITZA as several
investigations into Tesla were ongoing. There was a very small
team at NITZA that focused specifically on advanced driver systems
or autonomous vehicle tech. There was like six people on
this team. Three of them lost their jobs. So if

(37:01):
half of the team that's investigating the CEO of a company.

Speaker 7 (37:05):
Is lost, of sensibly due.

Speaker 6 (37:09):
To a project, he may or may not have been
very much in charge of that.

Speaker 7 (37:15):
That's a little bit alarming.

Speaker 6 (37:16):
That's a little bit concerning what is church and state
in this environment. And again I'm not as old as
I might actually.

Speaker 7 (37:26):
Be or appear to be.

Speaker 6 (37:28):
But in terms of just during the bankruptcy, obviously we've
seen what happens when the Michigan contingent needs to go
to Washington to plead their case, to make it clear
what value the auto industry has to the economy and
to not just our state, but several others that are
dependent on vehicle manufacturing and supplying, and the entire nexus

(37:51):
of building and selling vehicles and financing them is so
much more complex than people realize. That there's a danger
to introducing an element when someone considers, well, this does
seem complicated, what if we just got rid of it.
Disruption is one of my favorite words. And when they're like, well,
we got to disrupt this market, all I hear when
they say that is there's a lot of money here,

(38:13):
how can I get some? And it's just something that
it's very bizarre that dealers and auto people in the industry,
when they're looking towards government, it's typically to say stay
away from us, get out of our business unless it
can help us make money, and which case, come remember us,
please help us get involved, invest or protect. So I

(38:38):
think it's bizarre and unprecedented, though I have much less
experience with which to say that. But again, I've been
covering the auto industry since twenty seventeen. I started on
the cusp of the Donald Trump presidency, and I've returned
to the auto industry covering it on the cusp of
the Donald Trump presidency. So it's been a fascinating bookmark.

Speaker 1 (38:59):
Well, I forget you or you John who used the
phrase that we all know what it means conflict of interest.
I have covered Donald Trump since, you know, in one
fashion or another, for a long time. He doesn't recognize
the concept. He literally doesn't recognize the concept of conflict

(39:22):
of interest. If it's in his interest, it's in everybody's interest.
And I'm not saying that to be you know, political,
I'm saying that's a fact. I've watched and covered this
guy for decades. This is the way he is, and
it's a clear and obvious conflict of interest. What's happening

(39:47):
with him and Musk and the money that pours in
and getting rid of you know what is the first
thing he did. He wanted to get rid of inspector generals.

Speaker 9 (39:57):
The first thing he started to try to get rid
of the whistleblowers whose job it is to blow the
whistle on wait for.

Speaker 1 (40:07):
It, conflicts of interest and corruption and stuff that doesn't
make sense, malfeasans. This is what the inspector generals do.
They were the first to go at least he's trying
to get rid of them. It's, you know, the the
last the bastion of normal democracy are the courts that

(40:32):
are trying to slow them up.

Speaker 3 (40:33):
Okay, back to automotive, not ofcessarily out of Pomis Day.

Speaker 4 (40:37):
We're not We're not.

Speaker 1 (40:38):
A field of automotive because we're a wash. The automotive
industry is a lot in what's going on.

Speaker 3 (40:44):
He also saw the EPA come back, and it's going
to roll back a bunch of stuff. Now, I got
to say for automotive, there's a lot of stuff that
I agree here. I think that the EPA standards says
they were set under the Biden administration were unattainable by
the industry. They where it was a moonshot efforts that
was really going to hurt the industry. So I like

(41:06):
the fact that they're pairing back, but maybe it's going
a little too far or I don't know, have you followed.

Speaker 1 (41:12):
This tracking well.

Speaker 6 (41:13):
A lot of the automakers like to say that they
make changes and they don't need to be regulated, that
they're trying to make their vehicles more sustainable, more fuel efficient,
energy efficient, all of those things, and that these regulations
either they're outdated or the people in charge don't even understand.

Speaker 7 (41:29):
The process that goes into them.

Speaker 6 (41:30):
So I think another important point is that vehicle product
cycles aren't as truncated as people imagine them to be.
You know, a lot of the decisions that the automakers
are making happened ten years ago, fifteen years ago, and
they're coming to bear now. So we talk about how
flexible and durable the industry and is. There's not a
lot of flexibility when it comes to billions of dollars

(41:52):
of investments and planned products and ideas. If they're trying
to push ahead with infrastructure, with deal education and consumer
adoption of electric vehicles as a way to meet these standards,
the changes in the standards, it's almost too little.

Speaker 7 (42:07):
Too late.

Speaker 6 (42:08):
So if the EPA is going too far, A lot
of the people involved might think, well, we've come this
far to make these changes already.

Speaker 7 (42:16):
We can wait three more years.

Speaker 6 (42:19):
Seven months or so, and then we'll see what happens.
But a lot of these if the auto industry can
turn on a dime. We had an article this week
about that at the Free Press, and the answer is, no,
it can't turn on a dime because the dimes are
already invested. People are driving around those dimes right now.
They're filling them with electricity, and it doesn't matter who's

(42:40):
in the White House for a long period of time.

Speaker 3 (42:42):
Great point, great point. Here we are sitting in twenty
twenty five. Everything for twenty twenty eight is already done. Yeah,
so talk about, you know, the inability to spin on
a dime like that. It's like I said, everything's been set.

Speaker 1 (42:58):
The one thing I'll say is that cars would not
be as clean burning today, nor would they be as
safe for crash safety or occupancy safety if the government
didn't regulate it. We just wouldn't be anywhere near here.
I was working on a story when I came on
your show, just you know, kind of researching like exactly

(43:24):
how much cleaner vehicle tailpipe emissions are now versus like
you know, nineteen seventy five, and it's enormous. It's enormous
ninety nine points, Yeah, exactly, it's it's amazing. And that
was done by government regulation because there's a social benefit

(43:47):
that's kind of been agreed upon, and because of the
cost of taking it further to combat climate change. There's
been a big four worse. It's didn't happen yesterday. It's
been a big force of opposition in the last ten
years because we cost benefit. Let's you know, it's going

(44:10):
to cost as much, it's going to increase our costs
as much. What is the actual benefit and things like that.
So but disruption, disruptions, okay, you know, disruption's okay, but
the speed of it that these folks are expecting in
this nonsense with the which is pure nonsense. These companies

(44:36):
have been playing by the rules. They've been making massive
investments on either side of the border. They had no
expectation that and shouldn't have had that. The deal that
they've been working on, which was struck in the first
Trump administration, was going to be essentially repealed. You know,

(44:56):
it's not fair and it's.

Speaker 3 (44:58):
Stupid because we don't know the final results yet, but
at least the threat.

Speaker 7 (45:03):
Who knows the final results?

Speaker 1 (45:05):
Stupid, right, the threat.

Speaker 3 (45:07):
Well, but you know, going back to your point on
government regulation, I agree cars are cleaner and safer today
because of government regulation, and that's where the government should
step in when the marketplace is not going to fix
this on its own or is going to take too
long to do it, you know. But I will say
the Biden administration fuel economy rules and emissions were way

(45:32):
too stringent. And I would also argue that nitza's safety
mandates have not done anything to reduce highway motor vehicle
fatalities and injuries. I mean nothing, It's gotten worse in
the last decade.

Speaker 1 (45:47):
Well, my only pushback on that is that they can
do everything that they can do under the sun to
make the car safer, but what they can't do is
keep people from staring into their phones when they should
be driving. And that I don't know about you, John,
but man, when I see so many cars acting weirdly

(46:12):
on Route ninety four, which travel all the time, and
every time I pull up, literally there's a there's somebody
with a phone up like this while they're trying to drive.
I mean, that's not on the OEMs. That's I mean,
in fact, someday we're gonna have to figure out a
way to prevent that. I'm not sure exactly how, but

(46:36):
but you.

Speaker 3 (46:36):
Would think with things like you know, forward collision warning,
automated breaking, blind spot detection, you know, you would think
that that would have overcome some of that stuff.

Speaker 7 (46:48):
I think becomes standard.

Speaker 3 (46:50):
It's all standard now, it's on every vehicle parked. Like, yeah, well.

Speaker 7 (46:56):
That's a good point.

Speaker 6 (46:56):
But I mean, obviously something they can do is not
make flat screens that are this big that I have
to take my entire face away from the road in
order to change the climate or the song that's playing.

Speaker 7 (47:08):
But there's the element of yes, people are people.

Speaker 6 (47:10):
They put their makeup on behind the wheel, they text,
they get drunk and try to drive, and there are
catastrophic consequences of that. And obviously the automakers can do
what they can. They can make those investments and standardize them.
But I talk with our auto critic all the time,
Mark Feelin, about these specific peaces and functions that the
vehicle can have these features, and the first thing we

(47:32):
ask is, well, can you shut them off? That's bored.
I hate that the buzzing, it's annoying. I don't know,
like when the car's trying to drive for me, leave
me alone.

Speaker 7 (47:42):
I know what I'm doing.

Speaker 6 (47:43):
And that is the hubris that can start a lot
of these incidences on the road. And obviously we dream
of the utopia where my car can communicate to the
one behind it and the one behind that, the one
behind that that there's an object on the highway and
I need to break suddenly. But until we get to
a place where the software can be integrated across vehicles

(48:03):
that they're all working in harmony and doing better than
the humans can, you know, that's that's something that's going
to take time and investment and regulation and regulation and
cooperation between automakers that are competitors, and possibly regulation. So
it's just it's hard to think of the utopia that

(48:24):
you know, the ideas of which maybe or may not
be coming from Silicon Valley. But there is a threat
to that in a way, that long termism concept that
you know, to get to this mobility future that we're
all striving towards, we have to do the testing, we
have to try this out and the market and there
will be and already have been fatalities. So there's no

(48:45):
easy way. Do I trust a robot? Do I trust
a person? Depends on the person, depends on the robot.

Speaker 7 (48:50):
Where are we?

Speaker 1 (48:51):
So?

Speaker 7 (48:52):
I just I think it's crazy. But going back to
your idea of like what the marketplace can decide? What
is the marketplace? I go back to the courts comment
we made. You know, it's up to us.

Speaker 6 (49:01):
The onus has always been on the US citizen to
determine if the product is dangerous, and.

Speaker 7 (49:06):
We usually do that by litigation.

Speaker 6 (49:08):
We have to prove the roundup causes cancer, or that
the weird orange dye in the craft mac and cheese
it's probably not for human consumption. But when it comes
to vehicles and safety, we know we have historical evidence
that there are rooms in these automaking companies that they
discuss these things.

Speaker 3 (49:25):
Well, we could fix.

Speaker 7 (49:26):
It, or we could pay out the lawsuits. So what's
the choice?

Speaker 6 (49:30):
What's the You know, whenever people ask me what it
is to be a business reporter, I say, there's literally
one thing you ever have to think about, which is
the goal of a company to take in more money
than it puts out.

Speaker 7 (49:41):
That's it.

Speaker 6 (49:41):
Every decision every decision centers around that concept alone. So
where are they saving money? Where are they spending money?
And well what happens?

Speaker 1 (49:52):
You're reminding me of a memory I have from my
middle school journalism class.

Speaker 7 (49:57):
Oh god, when.

Speaker 1 (49:58):
The teacher asked the the class what is the purpose
of the news media? And because my father was a
newspaper man, I knew it's to make money. Everybody's to
inform the public.

Speaker 3 (50:14):
And no, no, I know, Okay, switching gears a little bit.
Nissan got a new CEO. I don't know if you
guys have followed. This guy's name is Ivan Espinosa and
apparently from Mexico.

Speaker 1 (50:29):
We're born in Mexico. First first Mexican born ceo of
a global other companies so far as I can.

Speaker 3 (50:35):
Tell, really, wait a minute, where's uh Josse Munio? Oh
he's Spanish? Okay, so but still I found it very
interesting that Nissan once again went to a non Japanese ceo,
you know, Carlos going being the one that you know,

(50:57):
decade ago or whatever they went with. But I found
it very interesting that they went from somebody outside, you know,
the the Nissan Japanese fear to run the company.

Speaker 1 (51:10):
I think it's uh. I thought it was interesting too,
I think, is my guess, and I have talked to
some people, but about this, it's hard. It can be
hard to get too close to the workings of a
Japanese company's board and et cetera, et cetera. But done
the best I could. He's a really good, well thought

(51:33):
of guy internally, so, you know, hats off to the board,
which is also not all Japanese for for it looks
like just choosing a meritocracy that this guy is up
and coming. He knows the company through and through. He's
not uh, he's not a disciple of Uchio Acha put

(51:56):
his arm around him. But he's going to be his
own guy and recommend to the board where to go
with the Honda or an equity investor like fox Kahn
or some sort of partnership like that. I mean, it
looks he looks like a very solid choice. He's a

(52:18):
product guy, which is good, rather than a finance treasury guy,
because Nissan's got some serious lineup issues globally, a lot
of deficiencies that they have to fix. But it looks good,
I have to say, and I'll just plug you know,
our stuff. We said in December that this merger was

(52:41):
unlikely to happen with Honda the way it was laid out.

Speaker 3 (52:45):
Well, Honda wanted nothing to do with it. Was the
body language that they were given off.

Speaker 1 (52:49):
Yeah, and and and gave all the reasons why. I
think with Uchetah out of the way, the door is
at least unlocked and cracked, you know, to maybe get
back to that, but we'll have to see exactly what
this guy and what the what the board really wants
to do the The original structure was to have Nissan

(53:13):
and Honda operating under a newly formed holding company, almost
like the thing that it feels most similar to is
the Nissan and Renault alliance. Frankly, it looks very similar
to that, except for a true common ownership through a

(53:35):
holding company. So I would like to see the murder
happen the way Honda wanted to do it, steering the
steering the train, because obviously Honda is a much much
much better managed company in every measurement you could imagine,
from product to shareholder return.

Speaker 7 (53:55):
So I always go back to the dealers.

Speaker 6 (53:59):
The dealers like that's all that matters, because they know
their business, they know what they need from the product standpoint,
and if they think this person's going to help write
the ship, and if they fall in line behind them,
then you know it's going to work out.

Speaker 3 (54:12):
Be fascinating to see what the dealers have to say
about this guy. They probably don't even know them yet,
so you know they're probably going to have to get
to know them. You know another thing that I saw
this week, uh in China, this company Chipang is getting
into humanoid robots. In fact, they said they might invest
as much as fourteen billion dollars in them. Tesla's doing

(54:36):
humanoid robots. BMW is already using them in some of
some operations in its plants, and they're like, what do
you guys make of this robots coming into the plants.
I mean there's always been like spot welding and painting robots,
but these are robots that get up and walk around,
pick up parts and do things. What do you think, Jackie, they're.

Speaker 7 (54:56):
Going to turn on us?

Speaker 6 (55:00):
I thought, wasn't Tesla was that really a robot? Or
wasn't that just a person operating the view.

Speaker 4 (55:05):
In a suit?

Speaker 1 (55:06):
Yeah? Suit?

Speaker 3 (55:07):
I mean my thing is we're remotely controlled to a degree.
But you know where this is going where it's not
going to be remotely controlled.

Speaker 6 (55:15):
I have a very specific view on this because when
I was at Automotive News, one of the biggest and
first projects I worked on was the intersection of the
opioid epidemic and the manufacturing industry. And it wasn't very
difficult for me to find a worker at a Ford
plant who had an umbilical hernia that he suffered working
on the line and ended up getting drug addicted because

(55:36):
of that. And this was the time where they were
over prescribing opioids, and obviously with the EUW benefits, he
had amazing coverage.

Speaker 7 (55:43):
But this began this cycle of addiction.

Speaker 6 (55:45):
And when he explained to me how he got the
umbilical hernia, it seemed ludicrous. He's like, well, you know,
for twelve thirteen hours a day, I would have been
completely in half, pick up a very heavy part, stand
up and put it on a vehicle. It was in
one of Fords, Kentucky truck plants, and I was thinking,
that's ridiculous, like, why would they do that, Why would
any person think that that was okay for human body

(56:07):
to undergo. And so when you think about a robotic
assistance on the line. Now, a lot of these investments
are to protect workers rather than necessarily replace them. I
don't know if we're going to end up quickly on
like a sort of Star Wars clone Wars situation, or
like those androids that are just completely doing everything robots

(56:28):
making robots. There's a little bit there's still human oversight
the software. If we have trouble connecting phones to cars,
I don't know if we can trust an entire robot
to build it without supervision. But there's still something to
be said for the safety features that certain technology allows
and the protections it offers to our rail organic bodies
that have a very difficult job to do. Even if

(56:51):
it seems simple, that mental strain and that physicality of
just doing one thing over and over again for hours
and hours.

Speaker 7 (57:00):
Assembly line work is no joke.

Speaker 6 (57:02):
So my thoughts are, if they're willing to invest in
something that helps their workers and protects people saves lives,
that's overwhelmingly a positive thing. However, at the same time,
how effective it is, and if companies are going to
jump the gun and make some of these changes before
they're ready, which we've seen companies do time and time again.
I mean, there's plenty of people out there who think

(57:23):
a robot can do my job pretty easily. And time
will tell what happens with that mentality, but I think
it's a possibly positive change.

Speaker 7 (57:31):
But as always, we've got to see what actually happens.

Speaker 1 (57:35):
We're in a massive reckoning driven by artificial intelligence, I mean,
and the reason that they'll do it, the reason why
they'll do a plant that produces vehicles, is somebody is measured, Okay,
what are our costs over x number of years putting
in robots, reducing our line worker needs, having supervised, having

(58:01):
people who who are trained at guiding the AI tools
in factories and things like that. We're in it. I mean,
that ship has sailed. Every company that manufactures with an
assembly line is dipping. Is either ankle deep or knee
deep in this right now. And to your point about

(58:24):
replacing us, that's already happening, I mean, you know, I mean,
there's a lot of websites that there's one person who
one or two people who were just deciding what the
AI content is going to be, that they're going to
load up on the site and get their clicks in traffic.
However it comes through tactics and whatever and it's cheaper

(58:48):
than having a staff of fourteen people, you know, and
just take that to the factory. I mean, one of
the reasons that we've seen the entire calls their business
in the US go to India basically is that. And
I looked at those years ago when I was working

(59:08):
at BusinessWeek, the call out rate at a call center
in the US can be higher than twenty percent on
every day, every day, twenty percent, you can be looking
at they were twenty percent of your workforce called out.
It's and that doesn't happen in absenteeism, yes, and so

(59:34):
and and to your point, people get hurt, people get
uh drug addicted, people use drugs. People, So all kinds
of people problems you can have at a factory. And
uh Also, I'm just gonna say, I don't mean to
make anybody angry. Last time I checked, the robots weren't

(59:54):
going to have a union, you know, and there weren't.
They'll need maintenance, but they're not going to need healthcare.
And they don't have families that have to be covered
on healthcare. So I mean, that's for another day. But
the elephant in the room about all of whether how
much manufacturing is here versus Canada and Mexico. It a

(01:00:16):
lot of a lot of it boils down to hourly
wage and healthcare costs, and you know, until they fix
those things, we're just going to be hitting the ping
pong ball back and forth across the table with you know.

Speaker 3 (01:00:31):
So yeah, well, look we're gonna wrap us up. I
want to thank the both of you for being here,
Jackie Charniga from the Detroit Free Press, David Kylie from
WARDZ Auto. Great to have had Jason Norton from JD
Power earlier on the show, but we're gonna wrap it
up here, and I want to thank all of you
for having tuned in.

Speaker 2 (01:00:51):
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