Senior Editor of Auto Remarketing & Auto Remarketing Canada, Joe Overby
Mar 13, 2019
EP002 - Senior Editor of Auto Remarketing & Auto Remarketing Canada, Joe Overby
http://www.vehicle2.getspiffy.com
Episode 2 is an interview with Joe, Senior Editor of Auto Remarketing & Auto Remarketing Canada; recorded on Wednesday, March 6th, 2019. He and Scot discuss a variety of topics, including:
- Joe’s position at Auto Remarketing
- Vehicle lifecycle - how people are buying and selling cars
- How changing ownership models (car-sharing, subscriptions) are influencing rental car agencies and dealerships
- The evolution of automotive auction, both physical and digital
- The progression of technologies for more connected cars
- Affordability of electric vehicles, as well as the availability of used EVs
- Slow down in autonomous vehicle hype
- It looks like dealers, auto auction companies (KAR/Cox) and rental car companies are on a collision course around the fleet maintenance/reconditioning/remarketing space
Be sure to follow Joe on LinkedIn! Check out the multiple events hosted by Auto Remarketing and Auto Remarketing Canada, such as the Auto Intel Summit and Used Car Week.
If you enjoyed this episode, please write us a review on iTunes!
The four pillars of Vehicle 2.0 are electrification, connectivity, autonomy, and changing ownership models. In the Vehicle 2.0 Podcast, we will look at the future of the auto industry through guest expert interviews, deep dives into specific topics, news coverage, and hot takes with instant analysis on what the latest breaking news means for today and in time to come.
This episode was produced and sound engineered by Jackson Balling, and hosted by Scot Wingo.
Transcript:
Scot:
[01:01] Welcome to the vehicle 2.0 Podcast. This is our second episode and it's being recorded Wednesday, March 6th, 2019. In this episode we have our first guest and I'll give you a little background. So here at Spiffy we are doing a lot of work at automobile auctions. It's a whole industry I've always heard about but never had experienced. So I was, I was reading online at a great site called Auto Remarketing and I kept seeing some content there by a guy named Joe Overby. And I said, "Wow, I've got to meet this guy some time" and went to his bio and discovered he is here local. So Joe is going to be our first guest here on the show.
Joe:
[01:37] Scot, thanks for having me.
Scot:
[01:38] Yeah. When we have 500 shows out, you'll, this'll be, you'll put it on your resume.
Joe:
[01:42] That's right, first ever guest on Vehicle 2.0.
Scot:
[01:43] Yes. We really appreciate it. And you're the senior editor of Auto Remarketing and Auto Remarketing Canada. So that's interesting. So you speak Canadian apparently as well as English.
Joe:
[01:56] I try to. My southern accent, a little bit, gets in the way.
Scot:
[01:59] Is that on your title? So you can go get some of the delicious Canadian beer or?
Joe:
[02:04] You have delicious, delicious Canadian beer and they have the gravy fries, which are out of this world.
Scot:
[02:11] Yeah. Yummy.
Joe:
[02:12] Going up there in two weeks for that.
Scot:
[02:15] Cool. Let's start off and kind of orient every, all the listeners about your background. How did you get into the industry and where you are today?
Joe:
[02:23] So I went to went to NC state and I majored in political science, did a minor in journalism and had worked in for technician for a few years. And the student newspaper and then had a job in sports writing at a newspaper in Georgia right after college and worked there for two years and decided I want to try something different and get into magazines and applied for the job back here in Raleigh at our S&A Cherokee, which is the parent company of Auto Remarketing. And I've been covering the auto industry for about 12 years now.
Scot:
[02:54] Awesome. Cool. Yeah. And NC state. Awesome. Go pack.
Joe:
[02:59] Yes sir.
Scot:
[02:59] Tell us more about Auto Remarketing. So is it print and online? Just online? And what kind of audience do you guys have? We'd love to know more about the publication.
Joe:
[03:14] So we're print online and we have a digital edition are online. You know, we have our website obviously, and then we have a wide range of e newsletters that we send out, kind of that's how we get our stories out. Our largest e-newsletters, a daily morning one that goes out to about 22,500 subscribers. And then we have, you know, various other daily and weekly newsletters. They're about the same size or smaller. And then we have a print publication that goes out to 36,000 subscribers and then a digital edition of our same, of the same magazine. It goes out to 50,000. And then we have the same another publication Auto Remarketing Canada for our Canadian audience. And that also has a weekly and daily newsletters, and also a digital edition as well along with print. And then a colleague of mine, a guy by the name of Nick Zulovich, he heads up a couple of automotive finance publications. So we have one kind of specializes in the fin-tech space and then one that specializes in kind of the subprime lower tier financing in automotive as well.
Scot:
[04:28] Yeah. And then the broader Cherokee, are all their publications automobile-oriented or do they go into a lot of different kinds of B2B verticals?
Joe:
[04:35] Most of it actually is automotive B2B. I think we have four prints, automotive publications, but then we've also got two local lifestyle magazines. Folks here in the Triangle area, probably know Cary Magazine and we just launched a magazine for Holly Springs and Fuquay called Main & Broad. And then our company also has done several custom publications where, you know, maybe it's a, an association or a, you know, company that will publish a custom custom job for them. But mostly, yes, our bread and butter is the automotive space.
Scot:
[05:11] Very cool. Yeah, it's interesting. The, you know, you read the headlines, print is dying out, but I think that's the daily newspaper. But it seems like where there's a lot of vibrancy is in kind of hyper local. So people want to know a lot more about what's going on with their community. And then also in, in kind of a lot of the B2B verticals, seems like you have those bases covered.
Joe:
[05:30] We've got a, we've got a captive audience, so to speak for the, for the B2B as well. Yeah.
Scot:
[05:35] Well, cool. We've got a ton of stuff we want to talk about. Let's start with what I call the vehicle life cycle. It seems like you guys got financing and then then kind of like, you know, the, the used car side, the remarketing refurbishing side. What are you seeing there, you know, around behavior around how people buy and sell cars. Is that changing or it's kind of the same it's been over the time you've tracked it?
Joe:
[05:59] Certainly. Probably since about 2013, well, 2014. It's become a lot more digital in terms of the actual transaction. I mean, you had, you know, back then you had a lot of companies like Carvana, you know the BPs of the world, the rooms that have launched in the last five years. And more consumers, even if they're not maybe signing on the dotted line and buying completely online, they're doing, if there's five steps to car buying, they might be completing four of 'em online and then going and picking it up at the dealership or, or, you know, setting up the deal online. So I think you're seeing a lot more movement to completing some or all pieces of the process online. And, and, and it's not just these, the startups that are doing it, dealers are getting into the game as well. And you know, using software providers to get in the game themselves in terms of online buying and selling.
Scot:
[06:56] Yeah, I think one of the Superbowl commercials that was my favorite was, I can't remember if it was Kia or Hyundai. Bt they had the commercial where the guy was in the elevator and it was Jason Bateman, and there was like root canal. And you know, like all these things and then like the bottom kind of the bottom level was buying a car and they were that company that, oh, that OEM was rolling out a model that was very Carvana [inaudible] will come to you, you have a return period. That kind of a thing. So I think it's been interesting to watch that.
Joe:
[07:25] Yeah, for sure. I mean the automakers are doing it and they're, they're doing it through their dealers. I mean partly obviously cause a franchise dealer laws that they have to go through their dealers. But you know, they, they've got the infrastructure of, of these large dealer networks that they can set that up. Yeah.
Scot:
[07:40] How about, I'm kind of staying on the topic of the vehicle life cycle. You mentioned your sister publication around finance. What's, what's new there? I know I've seen some data that leases are, are quite kind of, you know, continue to be the most, one of the increasingly popular ways to, to, to finance a car. What else are you seeing in that?
Joe:
[07:59] Well, I'm one of the, one of the alternatives now is some of the cult subscriptions and they, you know, instead of in one of the, one of the models that has launched recently is one called Fair, which was launched by a guy named Scott Painter who was the CEO and founder of True Car. And he brought in a guy named George Bauer who's a former executive with the German automotive. And I believe, you know, it's had a lot of, a lot of experience in, in that, in that space as well. But you know, they models like that kind of had, I've taken on the approach of, you know, why jump into a 60, 66, 72 month loan when you can subscribe to a vehicle for, you know, a year if you want it at three months, if you want it. And then kind of get out and move on to the next one. And it's, you know, not to get in the weeds too much, but it is a different little bit different model than say, you know, a rental or a lease. But it just gives another flexibility for, for someone who doesn't want to set up financing for the next six years of their life.
Scot:
[09:04] Yeah. Yeah. That, that's a good segway. So part of the reason we started this podcast is we at Spiffy. We've put out this framework, we call the vehicle 2.0 framework and it's got four components, changing ownership, connected car electrification and autonomous vehicles. And you know, Fair is a good example of kind of the changing ownership going from kind of long leases to kind of micro leases. Then you've got Getaround, and Toro. That's more Airbnb kind of like, you know, sharing almost car sharing. And then it's really topical because I'm sure you saw Lyft filed their IPO and it's kinda caused this whole raft of in there, you know, Lyft talks about long-term, they don't think everyone's going to own a car. And then now I've seen like six top level articles about, you know, what's happening with car ownership. Any other interesting car ownership trends you're seeing?
Joe:
[09:53] Well, I just, I think that the, in terms of car ownership, there's just such a variety of alternatives. Now, I mean the, you mentioned Lyft, I mean one of the stories we had this week was Lyft has partnered with Cox Automotive, which owns kind of a variety of different vendors in this space. And they're on the service side. You know, when, when you, there's a dealership service department platform where, you know, when you take your vehicle to get serviced, they've got an automatic partnership with Lyft. So instead of having a, a loaner fleet, that dealership can just get set you up with the Lyft vehicle for that, you know, for the time period that you're, your vehicles in the shop. And, you know, you've seen those Enterprise commercials with, I think it's Joel McHale where he says, you know, you can rent a car from enterprise, you can, you know, car share with enterprise or you can buy it from enterprise. So I think companies are realizing the, the amount of variety of, of different ownership models and the way people want to interact with their cars these days.
Scot:
[11:00] Yeah. So sometimes you know, the articles kind of doom and gloom for kind of the traditional dealer. Do you think the dealer is kind of a dinosaur in this model or did they, they have to kind of just pivot and become more of like the service center? So if we kind of go to the extreme, right, and we, we kind of, I think, you know, we believe car ownership's going to be more of kind of fleets owning cars and people kind of, you know, using them on a smaller kind of timescale. It's not, all these things are never going to be 100% either. I come from the world of eCommerce and we're like 15% of the city of retail is on the commerce. We've been at it for 25 years. So, but you know, imagine there's a day where more like 20% of cars are, are kind of a fleet kind of a model. Where do you think the dealer falls in that spectrum?
Joe:
[11:45] Well, I think at this point there's still, there's still very much in the game. I mean, a lot of these models that we talk about Fair and, and some of these subscription models, they, they worked through the dealership. So, you know, you may, the end consumer may go to their app and, and you know, subscription program or some sort of alternative ownership program that they access through an app. That company, a lot of times we'll still buy the car, you know, the delivery of the vehicle still through that dealership and a lot of the dealerships are offering these services themselves. So I think that they, I think it's more of a pivot that a dealer, you know, may shift part of its business from, you know, 100% retail sales to portions of it being, well part of our inventory is going to be first subscriptions or car sharing, you know, for a ride hailing drivers and that sort of thing. I do think there's an opportunity as well for dealers to be in the service business. I mean, for these vehicles, the service business of, of a dealership has long been the most profitable anyway. So, you know, they're, I think they're very excited about, you know, the ability to change their model. I mean, I was talking to a dealer recently who said that it's in dealer's nature to sell what the consumer wants. I mean, it's a simple statement, but, you know, dealer, a dealer wants to sell, however, you know, whether it's an electric vehicle and autonomous vehicle or, or an alternative method of ownership, a dealer wants to be the person selling that car and they're going to do it.
Scot:
[13:25] Yeah, absolutely. How about, and this may be out of your purview, but we were doing a lot of work now with rental car companies and I had kind of assumed that they would be on the decline because I've gone through a phase where if I go to a city now, I kind of do some math and figure out am I just gonna kind of Uber around or am I going to rent a car? And you know, that that bar is kind of increasingly leaning towards more ride sharing. But I was surprised to find rental car companies that are actually growing pretty nicely. What do you think, you know, are they kind of going to start competing? The other argument could be maybe rental car companies are better equipped to manage these kind of future fleets than dealers are. Do you have any point of view on that?
Joe:
[14:06] That's, that's interesting. I mean, I think they certainly have the, if you think about what they already do, you know, a lot of them already sell cars. Just like dealers, you know, they have, they operate in many ways like dealerships.
Scot:
[14:21] Yeah, and they have more flexibility because like, you know, dealers get kind of locked in, if you bought it here, I want you to service it here and you know, and they're locked into one type of vehicle. Like I'm not going to take my, my Honda to a Lexus dealer for now. They may actually, sometimes you talk to dealers and they would actually do that, which always surprised me. I never knew that was a thing. Yeah. But most consumers don't think that way. Whereas whereas Hertz, Avis, etc. Are, you know, manufacturer agnostic.
Joe:
[14:44] And they do have, I mean, you know, a dealer, a dealer wants to get that, that new car sales there. They are going to take a trade in and then, you know, either use it on their own lot or, or take it to auction or, or you know, dispose of it via wholesale. But, as far as rental companies, I mean, I think, you know, they certainly have the type of infrastructure, national footprint that automaker or franchise dealership system has. They also recently, I mean, if you'll notice that a lot of these companies, either their, you know, the, the large rental car companies are either outright buying some of these smaller alternative, physical ownership platforms or they're working very closely with them to partner, you know, cause they know that they know that, you know, when, when you go, when, when somebody goes to travel there, they're doing the math that you just described. You know, it actually be cheaper for me to take a Lyft to and from a hotel rather than, you know, renting a car. And I think, I think those companies are doing the math and partnering with some of those companies. And, you know, they, I know that they're even getting into the connected vehicle space as well, these rental companies. You know, I think they're just as progressive, you know, in terms of this technology as the dealership and automakers are.
Scot:
[16:22] Yeah. And I mentioned at the top of the show that, you know, you guys put a lot of great content out there about auto auctions. That's when, as an eCommerce guy, it's kind of interesting to think about, you know, I haven't visited one, but a lot of people at Spiffy have, and then they seem to be these giant fields full of cars. And you know, there's, there's a point in time like a Wednesday morning and three days before Wednesday, you know, tractor trailers are showing up with cars and unloading them and then they're getting washed and they're putting them through an auction process and they're loading them back up. It just seems like a hugely physical analog kind of a thing in today's world. Is digital hitting auto auctions and, and what's that look like and give, give listeners that maybe they don't even know the industry, like maybe a high-level overview of and what's going on.
Joe:
[16:57] Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I think the, I mean, first of all, the physical auction space definitely is still happening. I mean that, physical sales, you know, are still going on every single week, every single day. But you do have where the two, the two largest corporate physical auction companies in the US, Manheim and Adesa, Manheim is owned by Cox Automotive, which is part of this global huge company, Cox Enterprises, Cox Automotive. And then you have Adesa which is owned by Clorox and services, which is a publicly traded large company. Both those companies are pushing more and more on their auction side to digital. I mean, I don't have exact stats in front of me, but it's about 50/50 of their auction sales involve some digital element, whether it's somebody buying via simulcast or you know, somebody sitting on a computer and buying through an online auction. They're pushing, those two large companies are pushing more of their business to the digital side.
Scot:
[18:08] But digital, is like an overlay on the physical or, or is it actually a separate digital thing so I could buy one and it's not actually in a physical auction?
Joe:
[18:15] Right. So a little bit of both. Actually. The, for example, car and services, which owns Adesa also owns a online auction company called Trade Rev. And that is completely digital and you think, oh, it's kind of cannibalizing. But no, it's, it's really a compliment to their existing auction business. Cox Automotive has, you know, dealer to dealer sales platforms. They have online auctions. So you know, these companies, the approach that I've seen them take is they want to sell however the buyer wants to buy. I mean, and dealers are just like consumers and that a lot of them are moving more towards making purchases digitally. That said, I mean, there's still a huge role for these, for these auto auctions. I mean, there's, some of them, for example, at Manheim, there's a former Manheim location that now has been turned into a mobility fleet servicing center. So what they do is they, you know, they do all of the things that need to happen with a fleet of, of mobility vehicles. So gassing them, washing, reconditioning. All of this sort of services you might think have to happen on the backend, this former auto auction does. And I think you're going to see a model where you know, an auto auction might do a little bit of both. They might still have those physical sales in the lane every Wednesday morning, but also sell vehicles digitally and act as a service center for all kinds of, you know, they already do a lot of ancillary services anyways. Now they have a new client and these large fleets of, you know, ride sharing, car sharing, you know, subscription services that it's a new clientele that they can serve as those vehicles as well.
Scot:
[20:15] Yeah. So it kind of sounds like we've got three factions fighting for this future of, of you know, fleet management. So you've got the dealers and the OEMs kind of aligned on one side. And in the eCommerce world, it's interesting. So, you know, you have kind of brands and retailers and, and those guys have fractured themselves because there's been a lot of channel conflict where the brands are starting to go around kind of their traditional channels. So it'll be interesting to see if that happens. But that's one faction do, we had the rental car kind of faction and the now it seems like the auto auction guys kind of also want to put their hat in the ring for managing this.
Joe:
[20:48] Yeah, absolutely. And, and even then, you also have a, aside from the, the large kind of corporately owned auctions, you have a lot of independent independently owned auctions. I mean there's, I don't know the exact count, but there's hundreds of independently owned auctions and they're, you know, they're just as innovative and then getting into the same type of a, the same type of play that, that these, you know, large corporate auctions are as well.
Scot:
[21:16] Yeah. And I saw a company called ACV Auction, am I saying that right? And they just announced, I forget the amount, but it was like a big raise. Was it 70 million, a hundred. It was like a, it was kind of eye popping. Let's see if I can find that. But that's more of just kind of a new new entrant. Right. So just pure digital if I understand?
Joe:
[21:35] Yeah, absolutely. They are a digital dealer to dealer online auction and they have been, I mean it seems like for a while there, almost every other store we had was about them than raising capital. I mean they, they have been, they hired a relatively new CEO I think has somewhat of a Wall Street background and funding background. A guy named George Simone and they have just been raising money and raising money and then, you know, Trade Rev, which I mentioned earlier is I guess it would be a competitor to theirs. And they're, they're owned by, you know, one of the publicly traded large company in the auction space. And then you have, there was a new, a company from Canada called Eblock, which they just launched in the US in Burlington, Vermont. And then you have just tons of other companies into this, in this digital, wholesale space where if you think about Carvana and Vroom and some of those companies and just think about, you know, those they're in customers or retail customers like you and me, ACV, Trade Rev, their customers are, they're doing essentially the same thing, but their customers are dealers. Yeah. And there's just, they're well capitalized. There's lots of them. And you know, I think it's a growing space. And then you, and then to add to that, there's, you know, a company like a Smart Auction, which is a piece of Ally Financial. They'd been around for 20 plus years doing this. And there's, it's, it's a growing space.
Scot:
[23:09] They're coming at it from the financial side?
Joe:
[23:11] Well, they're an online auction, but they, you know, it's, it's a similar concept to me as it were. Dealers can go in and buy car wholesale cars online for their inventories. Yeah. Got It. Does Cox so, so noticeably absent for that was kind of Cox, do they have a digital auction platforms? They do. They have OVE. They have Manheim Express, which is a dealer to dealer platform. And you know, they're, they're very much involved in digital wholesale. Yeah. Cox Automotive.
Scot:
[23:42] Cool. And while you were talking, looked it up. So they raised a ACV auction, raised 93 million in December and they've raised 150 million total. So that's a pretty considerable. It's interesting because watching, so I come from the marketplace world and they've, they've kind of gone through this kind of touchless to high touch. So, so kind of the famous example is a lot of people use Open Door. I don't know if you've ever shopped for a house now, but they'll go in and buy the starter homes and a whole area of, so here in the triangle they've bought like any house, but between kind of 102k, they'll go buy it and then they'll run a marketplace. So, so imagine like, you know, Zillow went out and bought all the houses and was selling them. So it'll be interesting to see if we kind of go full circle and see someone like an ACV actually taking some inventory risk or something. You would imagine with raising that much capital there, there's gotta be something going on there that's all that it's a lot of engineers behind the scenes deal for $200 million. Okay, cool. So changing ownership, some interesting trends there. How about connected car? What, what did, what do you think happens in a world where our car is kind of connected to the cloud and, you know, it lights up a lot of nice new features for, for the consumer, but what else does it mean for the future of cars?
Joe:
[24:56] Well, I think that this number one, it's sort of been progressively happening already. I mean with, with Onstar, with General Motors, you know, having the, having that kind of feature. And then, you know, on the way over here I had my, how to podcast and music and directions going through my phone. So there's already a level of connectivity in cars and, and I think that is a bigger, not worry, it's going to be here faster, I guess, than autonomous vehicles. Yeah. I've, I've heard that, I've heard that in the industry that, you know, that's, people aren't talking about that as much as they are autonomous cars, but I think there's a greater chance that we have connected vehicles much quicker than we have self driving vehicles. It'll be interesting it, you know, what's the, you know, what are some of the purposes to that, you know, is it safety? I mean, that, that would be a, to me, you know, cars communicating with each other, you know, could be a big help for safety is that, you know, when cars are too close together or, you know, does it help avoid accidental oil, you know, or accident avoidance. I think that's a potential play there. I mean, obviously the infotainment is, we're already there. Yeah. But I think there's a lot of, a lot of room for growth there and I think you're going to see that quicker than, than you are autonomous cars.
Scot:
[26:26] Yeah, it's been interesting. So a lot of, a lot of companies kind of went with their own kind of, you know, app, App store thing and now it seems to be kind of standardizing on a, you know, the Apple system or the Android and kind of Amazon. It seems to be having some legs with Alexa, kind of, in the car. Yup. It's interesting to see what happens there.
Joe:
[26:46] And another point to that. There's a, there's been a couple companies that have come out with basically devices that you plug into the onboard, got an onboard diagnostic port. And so as long as the vehicle is something, it's either sometime in the 80s or sometime in the 90s that if your vehicle was made after a certain point, you can turn it, you know, 1995 Toyota Camry into a connected car by plugging in their device to a, to the onboard, the OBD two sensor. So it's, it's really interesting. Even used cars are becoming connected cars.
Scot:
[27:21] Yeah. And some companies like a Verizon has Hum where now that not only do you plug that in, so sometimes you can plug the sensor ended, it'll talk to your phone and get to the cloud, but sometimes it will have its own cell phone connection in there so it can, you know, to your point it can, it can add retroactively add connect to capabilities. Yeah. Electrification. So there, there's a, you know, avi is a autonomy is like the shiny bulp, but in the industry, but electrification seems to be kind of grinding out a lot faster. What do you think about that?
Joe:
[27:51] Well, I think the biggest issue I see is affordability. I mean, new car affordability in general is already an issue. And it's driving a lot of people to the used car market right now. And that is partly as a function of consumers more interested in trucks and SUVs and crossovers than they are sedans. It's a, naturally the price goes up on those vehicles. But you know, I, I think you look at it like the Tesla's of the world and some of these, you know, electric vehicles or are too far past a price point where they don't make up for the gas savings. But I think there, there are people working on that. I mean the, actually the next, next couple stories I'm working on, one of them is about a, a company called Current Automotive and they are a used electric vehicle dealership that sells primarily online. They're actually one of the co-founders is part of the, or has families that the built Jacobs Automotive Group up in Chicago. And then the other co-founder I believe is a former Tesla executive, but they are, you know, having, having the point now we're where there's enough used electric vehicles that are hitting the market. Having that infrastructure of a, of a dealership type of organization that can sell them, you know, I think should help some of the affordability around electric vehicles.
Scot:
[29:23] You don't think a $35,000 Model 3 is, we think we have to go lower than that?
Joe:
[29:29] Well no, I mean I don't think so cause I, I think that the way new car prices are now, that's probably about what average for a new car now.
Scot:
[29:38] Yeah I think average is between 30 and 40k. Right?
Joe:
[29:39] So, you know, I don't know there has to go lower than that, but I do think it is a positive sign that there are going to be used vehicle options for people that, you know, don't necessarily want to shell out 35 grand at the low end for an electric vehicle. And then, you know, you had another, another kind of story we're looking into is the the former House majority leader Richard Gephardt,is signed on as an advisor with Fisker Automotive. And they're in that same kind of electric vehicle space in there. They're looking to basically solve the pain point of, you know, creating a, a workforce for people to build electric vehicles. And so I think with more options I think the price will come down on, on electric vehicles. And again, going back to the kind of the different types of ownership models, there's several different iterations of electric vehicles. You know, you have your hybrids, you have your-
Scot:
[30:44] Different plug in hybrids.
Joe:
[30:45] Exactly. Yeah. I know a lot of people that are doing the plug in hybrid thing kind of helps with the range anxiety to have an internal combustion engine there. So I think there's, there's more options come to the table. I think you'll see the price come down and more people get into them. I don't think we're going to get it go away from internal combustion engines. I mean, not only because of the infrastructure challenges, I mean there's, there's political challenges do it as well. I mean, there's entire industries that would lobby against that. So you know, I think, you know, I know certain countries are probably will go 100% evs, but I don't think that's going to happen in the US.
Scot:
[31:26] Yeah. China seems to be very aggressive. So they're, you know, they've got massive pollution problems and they're pushing for that big subsidies. And they're building out of the, all of the infrastructure will be interesting to see what happens there. Do you guys cover electrical infrastructure at all? Like, do you know how many chargers and companies like Chargepoint? There's a lot of startups trying to dissolve the charging challenge.
Joe:
[31:46] Not yet. I'll say, we, you know, our focus has mainly been in the the used car retail and you wholesale space and sort of the, that side of the industry. But in the past, you know, three or four years, we've really ramped up our, for lack of better word, automotive technology coverage, whether it's mobility, whether it's, you know, EVs online buying eCommerce as become a huge part of the industry. And so it's kind of been a huge part of our, of our coverage. So I think as, as more of those models gain traction, that that'll be something we'd probably open, open ourselves up to a little bit.
Scot:
[32:24] Yeah. I think the industry is not really ready for electric cars because when we visited an auto auction and they had almost a whole, there were helping Tesla do a kind of a bunch of refurb kind of stuff. And their biggest, one of their biggest challenges was having so many Teslas there, they couldn't charge them all.
Joe:
[32:41] Yeah.
Scot:
[32:42] So they would like, you know, they had a line of a hundred Teslas and over, you know, over a period of time the batteries, you know, they're, they're using some electricity and they would kind of brick the, the vehicle and have to go figure out like once it's bricked, it's hard to get it to two power. So, so, you know, it's interesting to like, you know, the, the infrastructure we always think about on the consumer of the retail side of charging, but it kind of flows through, you know. Imagine a rental car company trying to do this and you know, having to add, you know, they're going to have to charge hundreds of vehicles overnight and the infrastructure, on that side, I don't think a lot people think about that. But that's big too.
Joe:
[33:15] And there's probably companies out there that eventually if they're not already, would go and work with the rental car companies and the auto auctions that they can set up charging stations. You know, if they say we've got too many Tesla's here at the auction, the charge, all of them, you know, at this company as I'm sure it could come in and do that.
Scot:
[33:34] Yeah, they're expensive though. Each one of those is like, you know, a hundred to 200 k and like with, when you put it all in with the, the backend electrical plus the wiring and the head unit. Yeah. It's expensive. Yeah. Cool. And then the, the shiny bulb in the industry is autonomous vehicles. What do you think about that?
Joe:
[33:52] I think it's going to be awhile before they gain a whole lot of traction. I think there's, you know, what I've seen mainly is that it will be like as a staged rollout where it's, each level is kind of staggered I guess. But you know, I think last year the, the much publicized, you know, unfortunate, you know, the accidents that resulted in fatalities involving self driving cars. I mean I think that kind of slowed it down a little bit. I think the, there's too many, too much safety concern right now. Whether that's overblown, it's still there. I mean I think, there's a lot more testing that needs to be worked out before those gain any kind of real, you know, measurable market share.
Scot:
[34:40] Yes. Yeah. It's been interesting to watch it CES. I haven't been to CES in a while, but I watched the coverage. And this is the beautiful thing about social media, you don't have to go to these things anymore. Save a trip. And it seemed like the last three CESs is prior to 2019 we're all a lot of autonomous vehicle hype and then this year it was kind of like the reality of more of the things they were showing were, you know, really constrained public transit kind of thing. Just so you know, these vehicles are going to go in a very predetermined route with its own lanes and a very safe kind of approach and they're only going to go 20 to 30 miles an hour and they'll have a human in there. And so really kind of pulling back from that, you know, I'm just going to hop in a car and it's gonna drive me coast to coast and I won't, I can sleep or something like that.
Joe:
[35:22] I think it's more of a pragmatic approach. It's cities looking at how do we solve these mass transit issues, you know, whether it's a or, you know, even even companies, I mean who were, you know, if it's a, if it's a self driving a shuttle at a company or something that it goes around the campus or, or you know, helping cities out, solving those, solving those issues, more of a pragmatic approach rather than a retail consumer just wants a self driving car, like, you know, on the Jetsons or something.
Scot:
[35:51] Yeah. So any other trends in Auto Remarketing that, that are kind of top of mind with you?
Joe:
[35:58] Well, I think going back to the, just the increasingly digitize digitalized presence of, of the auto auction industry. I mean I, I think there is, it's an interesting time because so much of it is, is going digital, you know, and despite there being still the need for the physical auto auction because you're moving these large assets and it's, you know, there's a lot of physical movement. It's still needed in the industry. It's interesting to see how you'd mentioned the ACV investment. It's, it's been really fascinating to watch how much money and how much attention is, is getting paid to, to that side of the business. And I think it's a, it's only going to grow from here. You know, that the digital wholesale environment.
Scot:
[36:45] Cool. Awesome. And you guys have, you mentioned earlier that you spend more time on kind of, you know, some of the future vehicle technology stuff. And I noticed that you'd put a lot of events on this seem to be kind of anchored around this. Tell listeners about some of the events you guys host and how they can learn more about this.
Joe:
[37:02] Sure. So we do, we have four automotive conferences each year. Two of them were actually coming up in Canada. I'm heading to Toronto in a week and a half. That'll be for the Toronto used car industry. But this summer in Raleigh we have the Automotive Intelligence Summit. This is our second one. It really, it focuses on just the, you know, a lot of what we've talked about today, you know, autonomous vehicles, the connected vehicles, digital retail, the use of big data and data analytics and artificial intelligence and the, you know, things, you know, what role does blockchain management have in, in automotive. So a lot of these tech driven changes in automotive. This conference, you know, we'll address, and again, it's our second year of doing it. It's going to be July 23rd through 25th in Raleigh at the Marriott Crabtree right across from the Crabtree Mall. But if, if people are interested in learning more, they can go to autointelsummit.com. That's autointelsummit.com. Or they can holler at me on Twitter @AR_JoeOverby and I can share more information there as well.
Scot:
[38:25] Cool. So I think you said four, so two in Canada, Auto Intel, is there a fourth one?
Joe:
[38:30] Yeah, absolutely. Our signature event. I'm glad you reminded me. Our signature kind of flagship conference is Used Car Week and each year we host that in the fall and it's typically in the southwest. This year we're going to be in Las Vegas at the Red Rock. Last year we were in Phoenix or Scottsdale, Arizona. And what it is is it's four separate conferences that are all kind of part of the used vehicle life-cycle. So we have a retail focus conference on pre-owned. We have a finance auto finance conference, we have the repossession and recovery space. And then we have our National Remarketing Conference, which is the kind of wholesale, the auto auctions, that sort of thing. And we're actually going to be celebrating our 20th anniversary of that National Remarketing Conference. But that's going to be November 11th through 15th in at Red Rock in Las Vegas. And folks who are interested in that can visit usedcarweek.biz. And that and that again, you know, it is kind of an overall auto industry conference, but given the nature of, of automotive these days, it is going to be tech. You know, there's going to be some tech focus, some innovation, some, you know, talk about digital and that sort of thing as well.
Scot:
[39:55] Yeah. So just kind of reading the between the lines sounds like the Raleigh one is maybe like hundreds, low, hundreds, a couple hundred folks. Anything in Vegasis going to be at least single digit thousands if not tens of thousands. T
Joe:
[40:08] Yeah, the Auto Intel summit, we had about two or 300 last year, very kind of boutique conference, but you know, everybody there was very engaged and there to, you know, be in the sessions. And again Used Car Week is a broader, larger, you know, we've been doing it for a couple of decades, it is in the, you know, I think last year we had about, attendance was about 1600, I believe. Yeah.
Scot:
[40:36] Yeah. Cool. Yeah, it's fun to go to kind of both cause you kind of, you know, the smaller shows are more in a minute and literally deep on something but maybe not as actionable sometimes. And then the networking is good and then the bigger ones you can kind of go and have a list of here's five vendors I want to meet. And it a lot more to kind of tactical get, get business done. So it's good to kind of go to both, I think.
Joe:
[40:57] It's like going to a basketball game at Cameron indoor stadium versus going to a football game at Carter Finley. It's just, one's a big crowd and loud and once you know, it's small intimate atmosphere, so, yeah.
Scot:
[41:09] Absolutely. Cool. Well Joe, we don't want to take more of your time. Appreciate you coming over to Spiffy to record the podcast. Excited to have you as one of our first guests. You mentioned your Twitter handle. If folks want to, that's one way to kind of get in touch with you. Are you active on Linkedin or other social media and maybe let's definitely kind of bring them to the website too.
Joe:
[41:28] Yeah, absolutely. Certainly active on Linkedin, just Joe there. And my email, if anybody has any questions about our conferences or about our publications. It's at joverby@cherokeemediagroup.com. The website for all of our publication is Autoremarketing.com.
Scot:
[41:53] Great. Thanks for coming and thanks Jackson on the audio engineering side.
Joe:
[41:59] Well thank you Scot. This has been fun!