It’s Thursday and we’re going to review the recent Kain Friends and Family event in Lexington, KY. We’re also talking about the continued pricing pressing on car insurance, as well as a revealing look at a teardown of the Tesla Cybertruck
Show Notes with links:
Kyle to give summary of what he observed, learned at Kain Friends and Family
Just as car buyers breathe a sigh of relief from decreasing vehicle prices, a new hurdle is emerging—skyrocketing insurance rates. Darin Davis's experience epitomizes this shift, as his insurance for a 2024 Cadillac XT4 nearly doubled upon renewal.
Car prices drop as pandemic-related supply chain issues resolve, but insurance costs surge due to repair complexities and climate-induced damages.
Auto insurance rates have soared by 22.2% over the past year, marking the largest increase since the 1970s, contrasting with the stabilization of vehicle prices.
Darin Davis, a 56-year-old from Dallas, felt the sting of rising insurance costs when the rate for his new 2024 Cadillac XT4 nearly doubled at renewal. This unexpected increase dimmed his excitement over the car, making him reconsider his vehicle choice due to the financial strain.
"It takes the fun out of owning a new car when you’re paying so much money," reflects Davis on the unforeseen hike in his car insurance rate.
The Tesla Cybertruck's design continues to both intrigue and baffle, with a new teardown revealing a massive but oddly half-full battery pack. This discovery raises questions about Tesla's engineering choices and the vehicle's efficiency.
Sandy Munro's preview of a Tesla Cybertruck teardown unveils a surprisingly empty battery pack, despite its large 123 kWh capacity.
The Cybertruck's range has fallen short in tests, with independent evaluations showing only 254 miles, and potentially as low as 200 miles under certain conditions.
Speculation arises on whether this design choice aims to reduce weight or reflects Tesla's cost-cutting strategies, with an upcoming bed-mounted range extender expected to add significant range at the expense of cargo space.
One lead Cybertruck engineer responded to the findings on X, responding “Looks half full to me.”, yet.
Morning It is Thursday, April 11. Kyle is still on site. He's wrapping up the kid families and friends events can tell us about that. But we're also going to talk about a little Tesla surprise on a deconstruction and insurance costs for cars. Still going up your houses going up?
Kyle Mountsier:
No need to repeat. I apologize if you know who Fred and Lou are. The Car Guy coffee guys, they're over here doing a podcast, they might break through the gate every once in a while. There's all the energy here on the last morning of the King cup.
Paul J Daly:
And these previously were kinda low energy to begin with. Yeah,
Kyle Mountsier:
they're not really hype, you know. So hopefully, that'll be nice and quiet.
Paul J Daly:
I know, I know, I really hope they can make it out to a soda con. I didn't last too. I don't know if you've talked to them about I sent him a text message. But maybe we could put some pressure on it'd be there. I can do that. I'm gonna twist their arm in just a moment. Okay, perfect, perfect, perfect. Hey, ASOTU CON is coming in hot, you know about it. If you've heard the show once in the last three months, go to a soda con.com Get your tickets. At this point, I don't know, we may be sold out of hotel rooms in the first block. And I haven't even checked no yesterday, four rooms. And like a week ago, we're at 30 rooms. So momentum is definitely picking up we have some new sponsors that have been signing up a hydrology is the latest one super excited to welcome our friends at hydrology and Adam Robinson back, we go way back, actually. And it's gonna be fun to introduce a lot of our community to him at a soda con. But just go to the site, check out the list of speakers, check out the list of sponsors that are on there. If you want to be at with us, with all of these dealers, and all of these practitioners and all of the sessions and the keynotes and the workshops and the swag. Please buy your ticket now. So that we can make sure we're ready for you. If you still want to be a part of it. From a sponsorship standpoint, we still have a couple spaces left. But it seems like that's also picking up quick and they're disappearing. But you should be there our audiences. I was actually talking to
Kyle Mountsier:
someone this morning about the event. They're excited about coming. They will remember being there last year and just the types of conversations that happen both on the panels and then immediately after them. They said that's what they were most excited about. Right? We have fun stuff. We did production, the whole nine yards. But that's what they were most excited about. They came to me that with that this morning. So I'm pumped. We're just a month out. And it's like the next thing big thing on my calendar. So I'm ready. I
Paul J Daly:
love it. I Kareem from a shout out from Huffman Auto Group in Hartford, Connecticut this morning on the life we see you here. I'll tune it in on YouTube as well. Let's go. We live streaming if you're just hearing this podcast on LinkedIn, Facebook, YouTube, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera, up all right, Wednesday night, the rooms are sold out. Nathan's telling us right now. The rules have now sold out but they're still rooms Thursday night, Friday night. There's other hotels and you can still booked rooms. I think in the hotel. They gave us most of their rooms. I think they have like 240 rooms they gave us 200 200.
Kyle Mountsier:
So it'll be it'll be raucous. Well, yeah. So
Paul J Daly:
when you're in that hotel, you know who you're gonna see, you know who people you can see your people. It's gonna be great. Yeah, it's gonna be so much fun. So we hope you can join us there, check it out, go check it out. And if not, we'd love you still just as much just as much What else we got going on.
Kyle Mountsier:
There's, like, I love these Auto Collabs podcasts. And particularly this one, we did this with Bobby goodrow, activated dealer services. And he's actually here and we were chatting about just that conversation. And so you've gotta go check it out. It's Auto Collabs. You can search it anywhere podcasts are. But I think there's some things that people just don't know about companies that have seemed to be around for a long time and auto. And this is one of those kind of expose all podcasts. So you're gonna want to check it
Paul J Daly:
out. Oh, I love that. Auto Collabs. If you can't hear it, co ll ABS just search it up on YouTube, or Spotify or Apple Music, et cetera, et cetera, QA before we get into the stories, you have spent the last few days with David Cain and company at the Kane, family, friends and family event, obviously a very close knit community where people are sharing, talking, spending some time together, both what's happening on the stage and off the stage. Give us a few points for all of those of us who could not be there. I'm jealous. Well,
Kyle Mountsier:
I'll tell you this. You know, I Mike Stanton was here and was able to talk just about, you know, kind of went around the house of everything that's happening on Capitol Hill, which is EVs tax credits, things like the cars rule that is still being discussed on Capitol Hill, even though we've kind of stopped talking about it since it's being stayed right now. And then the big conversation with dealers I've had three separate columns recessions in different timelines about, again, the impact of the change in profitability on vehicles, hurting their employees income, and how they're managing that conversation and the change in particularly on the variable upside, the change in income, and how they're navigating that that weird part of our industry now and supporting their employees through the change in what they bring home every so well. And
Paul J Daly:
that's a very, I mean, obviously, you want to take care of your people, you also have to take care of the business. And, you know, for those people who got used to that, or maybe even came into the industry, like this is a massive shift. And like, there's nothing like when when a situation hits your pocketbook, to make you like rethink things and try to shift the major problem and dealers are very empathetic, and I'm sure trying to solve it. Sure, there'll be a lot of conversations around this set of soda con, because people talk about the most pressing things when they get together. Who is I with? Oh, yeah, I was did a little preview with Don hall yesterday. And he was just talking about the power of being together and what happens and the speed at which communication happens and problems get fixed and solved. And you find these like impromptu, we'll call them mentors, or coaches that are a little bit in a different place, maybe a little bit ahead of you, maybe ahead of you doesn't mean older, right? Maybe you've just taken on a new piece of software or a new process or new idea. And that person has been doing it for a year or two, and you're just starting. And so those are the things that you learn, I think when you're together, that just exponentially impact your business and the first day when you get back. So that's cool. It's great. And I know a lot of those people that were there are going to be with us in 33 days from now. And so we hope to see you there too. Thanks for giving us the feedback. Let's talk about some news. Just as car buyers are breathing a sigh of relief from the decreasing vehicle prices, a new hurdle is quickly emerging skyrocketing insurance rates. Darren Davis experienced we're going to talk about in a minute from this Reuters article kind of epitomizes the shift, as his insurance on his Cadillac went up quite a bit. So car brass prices have dropped. Obviously, we're all paying attention to that. Now what's happening is insurance rates have gone up on average 22% Over the past year, which is the largest increase since the 1970s. So vehicle prices stabilize, decrease insurance prices going up. We're still talking about the center point of affordability. So this this gentleman Darren Davis fixed 56 years old from Dallas. Basically, his insurance costs for his 20 24x T for nearly doubled when he renewed so he bought the car Wow. Think about he bought the car a year ago, prices were high.
Kyle Mountsier:
Here's my budget. Right?
Paul J Daly:
Now the insurance price doubles. He says it takes the fun out of owning a new car when you're paying so much money. And without a doubt like this is impacting new buyers who are in the dealerships. And they're saying okay, great, here's a payment I can afford. They might be in for a surprise when they renew their insurance. Well,
Kyle Mountsier:
that's what's nerve racking to me, because most dealers actually don't force that car to get insured before it goes off the lot. Because in most states you have, the insurance will cover you for 10 to 14 days, depending on the state. And so this, this buyer is going to come home and then change their insurance and kind of have this buyer's remorse without you being in the room to kind of coach them through that. And so may just be a heads up, especially for those that are on tight budgets are looking at the affordability of the vehicle and very focused on payments to go ahead and walk them through the insurance process in the showroom. So you can manage that expectation right then and not have that kind of recoil effect two or three days later, potentially,
Paul J Daly:
right? Because I mean, that's bad for everybody. It's bad for the consumer. It's bad for the the sentiment around the purchasing experience. Even in states like New York, you have to have the car insured before it can be played in and leaves a lot. You typically don't have a premium conversation. It's like we've added the vehicle to your policy. And you don't usually get the premium adjustment for a little bit after that. So I think it really doesn't matter. You know, and so it's definitely something I'd be curious on how some dealers are approaching this especially those who are I think the front runners in considering affordability issues like Matt lash, I'd love to ask them about it and seeing what they're doing or what they're seeing on the on the front lines. Speaking of what people are seeing on the front line of engineering, finish my sentence. So the Tesla cybertruck The design, it kind of continues to intrigue a lot of people and baffles some people but there's a new teardown video, revealing a massive but oddly half full battery pack in the floor pan. So Sandy Munroe they have a an engineering channel where they disassemble things so they took it cybertruck They're gonna release the full video. So the tear down and veils up a battery pack and you can see it in the video where you're like worrying about the rest of the batteries, which makes a little bit of sense. So now the cyber Chuck range is falling short and tests to under 54 Miles potentially as low as 200 miles of range under certain conditions. So, you know, people are saying like, did they do this to cut cost, they are selling an expansion pack to becoming, it's supposed to go in the bed, but there's still a lot of room in the floor battery pack. As far as what it looks like, one lead cybertruck engineer commented on their post, you know, they say, hey, the battery, the battery pack looks empty, and he said, looks half full to me. So little play on that half of the half full. glass half full. That's very, very Tesla, right?
Kyle Mountsier:
You know, you never know what goes into this. Maybe it's vehicle weight, maybe it's like, you know, some some way to buted the balance, right? But it does stand to reason, hey, maybe there's some more out there, right, maybe there's more range there to be had. And who knows how Tesla's playing the long game of that, it would seem strange that they would make a battery pack that's double is big.
Paul J Daly:
It's not quite well, if you look at it, and you can, you can click, we'll link it up in the show notes you can pick and they have like a little teaser video, where they have to guys like lift the top off the floor pan. And you can see into it and see if you've ever seen inside a car battery pack. It just looks like a bunch of circles from the top right, a bunch of little like think giant double A batteries. And you just see all these empty spaces. And you can hear somebody off camera say Well, that's a little different. Right? So they usually are probably full, if he was surprised by seeing was different. And like what we'll see what they say Tesla usually doesn't talk about their engineering decisions too much. But again, having read Elon Musk's book, I can definitely like they're always he's always trying to say what can we remove? What can we remove? What can we get by with to meet the minimum requirement? Like they were talking about their solar panels on roofs and these brackets? And he was like, Can we do that with one screw instead of two screws? Right? And he's like, Well, hurricane force winds, he's like, maybe we'll lose a few solar panels. But for the process efficiency and cost measures that would save it's unlikely trade off. So I wouldn't be surprised if they were like, Hey, we can put 15% of the cells out of this and still get acceptable range. But also maybe they do have a very well thought out engineer reason for it. Like it will actually feel a fair balancing. It's so precise, because this components on this side of the who knows. And it's but I can see it going either way. Oh, interesting.
Kyle Mountsier:
And I just love the fact that like a car is the center of pop culture. Yes, having a conversation like that, you know, like people are ripping apart a car because they're interested in cars as culture. Right. So that's a good thing for all of us. I think that carbohybrid trip was getting that, that type of visibility. I love that. Well
Paul J Daly:
look, we hope you are excited about cars a little bit more after the show than you were when you started because it's worth it because you get to deal with so many people and take care of people. Kyle safe travels home say hi to all of our friends there and we'll see you back in the office tomorrow.