Nissan Reassures Dealers, US Adding EV Chargers, Google’s AI Gen Video

We’re coming to you live from Bozard Ford Lincoln as we’re finishing up our More Than Cars shoot. Today, we’re talking about how Nissan is trying to reassure its dealers that the sky isn’t falling, how the US added 12,000+ new EV chargers in Q3, and how Google’s Veo, a generative AI video model, beat OpenAI’s Sora to market.

Show Notes with links:

• Nissan Motor Co. is under pressure as financial challenges force the automaker to cut jobs and slow production. Activist investors and speculation about its future as an independent company are adding to the turmoil.
  • U.S. dealers received a memo from Nissan Americas Chair Jeremie Papin outlining turnaround priorities: product competitiveness, business stabilization, and growth.
  • Nissan has slashed its full-year income outlook by 70%, cut $2.6 billion in expenses, and laid off 9,000 workers globally, including 500 U.S. salaried employees.
  • Market share has plummeted, dropping 25% over five years to just 5.6% in the U.S., with dealership profitability hitting a 15-year low.
  • Production reductions include a 17% U.S. output cut, fewer assembly shifts, and an anticipated 100,000-vehicle drop in fiscal year production.
  • Papin reassured dealers of Nissan’s liquidity, stating, “Our $9 billion in net cash allows us to prioritize future investments in research and development.”
    
    
    
• The US added 12,000 new EV charging ports in the past three months, bringing the total to nearly 204,000 marking a doubling of chargers since late 2020, pre-Biden administration and NEVI Program launch.
  • NEVI (National Electric Vehicle Infrastructure) Formula Program contributed 126 ports across 31 stations in nine states this quarter, an 83% increase in open NEVI ports since Q3.
  • Coverage of DC fast chargers on major corridors grew from 38% in 2020 to 59.1% in 2024; expected to reach 70% by late 2025.
  • 41 states have announced charging projects under NEVI, with 35 awarding agreements for over 3,560 fast charging ports across 890+ locations.
  • Rhode Island became the first fully built-out NEVI state, while states like Kentucky, Hawaii, and Maine opened new stations, advancing access nationwide.
  • The program has allocated nearly $2.4 billion in funding across two rounds to all 50 states, Puerto Rico, and the District of Columbia. 
  • $586 million has been set aside for a third round of funding for fiscal year 2025.

• ​​Google’s Veo, a generative AI video model, is now available via Vertex AI, beating OpenAI’s Sora to market. Veo offers powerful tools for businesses to enhance content creation pipelines.
• Veo generates realistic 1080p videos over a minute long from text or image prompts.
• Text-to-image tools also roll out to all Vertex AI users next week, with features for brand-specific editing.
• SynthID watermarking prevents misinformation and copyright issues, rivaling Adobe’s tools.
• Google reports that 86% of AI-using businesses are seeing revenue boosts

Hosts: Paul J Daly and Kyle Mountsier

Get the Daily Push Back email at https://www.asotu.com/

JOIN the conversation on LinkedIn at: https://www.linkedin.com/company/asotu/

Read our most recent email at: https://www.asotu.com/media/push-back-email

Transcript

Paul J Daly: 0:00

Good morning. It is Wednesday, December 4, and we just realized that we just blew past our 900/900 episode. Whoops, like how many episodes ago? I don't know, but we're gonna celebrate 1012, Nathan doesn't know he's sitting over there. Nathan, show him the Becam. Look how relaxed This man looks.

Kyle Mountsier: 0:18

Man, as he's producing a show looks like he's at the beach just right

Paul J Daly: 0:22

there he is. Okay. He is Brian Ortega. If you can put Nathan on the beach,

Kyle Mountsier: 0:26

we would highly appreciate Thank you. Please, please.

Paul J Daly: 0:29

We are. We're finishing up our final day of shooting at Bozar Ford Lincoln here in St Augustine, Florida. It has been an amazing, beastly Ford Bronco, and lands Ford Bronco. Right behind us. We are in the showroom of Ford right now, which is a big, spacious showroom. Lincoln was amazing. The Ford's garage restaurant in between the two is amazing, but

Kyle Mountsier: 0:51

garage, you should just come to St Augustine and eat it. This

Paul J Daly: 0:54

fourth girl, without a doubt. You know, I've eaten at four garages before, and I don't know if it's just because I'm in the ether right now, because this place is so amazing that the food tastes better, but everything was on point, everything, or maybe they knew this was going to be on TV. So like these guys in the back, give them the good strategy, if you want excellent treatment at a restaurant bringing cameras, and tell them you're making a docu series. Everyone steps up a little bit. What are we talking about? Hey, we do have a webinar coming up two days from now, this Friday, it's part two with our friends at stream company, building your 2025 advertising strategies. Part one was reviewing your 2024 results. And the few podcasts are few few webinars before that, all about marketing, planning, executing, 2025 grab your marketing team or your marketers, get them on this webinar. Go to asotu.com, ASOTU and just register so you get the recording or be with us on the live stream. And this is a great way. And Kyle, you said it yesterday. You're like, if you're just thinking about it right now, you got some

Kyle Mountsier: 1:51

catching up. Yes, exactly. Also, go to nada parties. Com, our party is already listed there. It's Friday night at nada also. And, and if you haven't got your tickets, literally, we only have a limited amount of space at our party, so if you want to come to it, you have to have a ticket. So you're going to want to go there. It's not like, oh, we'll let you in. If you show up, like, they will not let us have

Paul J Daly: 2:15

it fire it's a fire marshal issue. Also, there's going to be a very cool piece of limited edition swag that everybody that has a ticket gets is going to be it is going to be neat, and there's going to be little bragging rights. It's something that you you could just kind of put out there for the rest of nada as you're walking around the floor. And people were like, Yeah, it's pretty awesome. Alright, let's talk about some news. Today, Nissan is under pressure as financial challenges are forcing the automaker to cut jobs and slow production. Activist investors and speculation about its future as an independent company are definitely adding to the turmoil. Dealers did receive a kind of post Thanksgiving Day memo, I guess a good time to send it. Timing Nissan America's chair, Jeremy papen, outlining the turnaround priorities, asking for a little patience and understanding, I believe, were the words that were used. He says, we're working on the turnaround. We're focusing on product competitiveness, business stabilization and growth. They have slashed their full year income outlook by 70%

Kyle Mountsier: 3:18

Yo, that's a lot. Okay, cut

Paul J Daly: 3:20

it by 2.6 cut expenses by 2.6 billion. Laid off 9000 workers globally, including including 500 salaried employees in the US, their market shares dropped over 25% over five years to just 5.6% now in the US and profitability is hitting a 15 year low. Wow, production reductions include 17% of US output fewer assembly shifts and an anticipated 100,000 vehicle drop in fiscal year production paper and reassured dealers, though, of Nissan's liquidity stating, quote, our $9 billion in net cash allows us to prioritize future investments. So like, we got some cash still

Kyle Mountsier: 4:00

Well, I mean, and it's going to be important for them to to spend some of that in this R and D effort, because it's clear that they haven't prioritized the market, understanding what the market needs, what the market wants. And you know, when I talk to dealers, like, honestly, we were talking to Letty yesterday about their relationship with Ford, like, I haven't met a dealer that doesn't want to be included and involved in the process and planning for what it looks like to stay profitable, to have the right inventory, to understand the customer. And I think that if Nissan's really, really smart, to create multiple dealer focus groups, with multiple consumer focus groups, and really understand how the market is interacting with the dealer inventory, with the dealers to kind of turn the ship around at this point, because you got to do something different than you're doing right now. I

Paul J Daly: 4:46

know our friend Dan banister. He was the chair of the Nissan dealer Advisory Council for a while, and it did seem like during that time, that was a few years ago, when I talked to him about this, but it really seemed like they did have. A pretty dialed in listening ear to what dealers wanted. I don't know if that's changed over the last few years, but the bottom line is, dealers are on the front lines every day. They're seeing how the market is, you know, reacting to the product. By the time it gets to Nissan Corporate, it's gone through surveys and questionnaires and feedback loops and all that, more dealers in the conversation is going to help them fix the problems faster.

Kyle Mountsier: 5:19

Yeah, and hey, look, if you want to come to Nashville? I'll show you around. We'll hang out. Yeah, Franklin, be at the Nissan headquarters. Like, well, I'll show you all the good places. If

Paul J Daly: 5:27

only we did the show in front of the headquarters today. Oh, that would have been strong. Remember, remember when Carvana, it was one of the times where they were having a big problem, and we happened to be in Arizona at the time? Oh, yes, yeah. Oh, that's Carvana. We should do the show in front of the headquarters. It make us seem like real

Kyle Mountsier: 5:43

big deal. But we did. We didn't do it. Maybe I'll do that. Maybe I'll run down and like, Yeah, let's see who walks by.

Paul J Daly: 5:50

I don't know, speaking of who walks by, if nature was sleeping over there. Yeah, the US. The US added, get this 12,000 new EV charging points in the past three months, bringing the total to nearly 204,000 that marks a doubling of chargers since late 2020, which is the pre Biden administration, and after their nevi program launch nevi stands for n, e, v i, national electric vehicle infrastructure formula program contributed to 126 ports across 31 stations in nine states this quarter. So of the 12,031 of those came from this program. Okay, yeah. I mean, we'll note that the program did allocate 2.4 billion in funding. If you treat dollars, if you divide by the 12, it's, it's a lot per charger. 41 states have announced charging projects, though, under this program, with 35 awarding agreements, being awarded agreements for over 35,030 500 fast charging ports across 890 locations. Okay, a lot of numbers we're throwing out there. The bottom line is this, we've added 12,000 but that's not level three chargers. That's level two chargers.

Kyle Mountsier: 7:08

That's the big deal, you know? And

Paul J Daly: 7:09

it so the story is, like, on electric and talking about it growing, but the question is, how fast is the growth really? Can it keep up with demand? Yeah,

Kyle Mountsier: 7:17

the real question here is, you know, the dollars that are being poured in, are they sufficient for, and are they being appropriately placed for the type of charging infrastructure that's necessary? You know, you we talk, you know, we've got great relationships with people like Alex Lawrence and John Foley that are paying attention to this, from a deer level, Jimmy Douglas and Elena Cirillo that are paying attention to this at, like, a broad scale level. And the reality is, is there, there are plenty of people that are kind of like that have a feeling like, oh, we can go charge, but it's still not even close to the infrastructure that's needed for mass adoption. It is interesting, though, like, I was at a buckies, uh, little around Thanksgiving, okay, like 15 Tesla chargers, one plugged in, and I'm talking, you had cars everywhere around this thing. So, you know, some of it is, is, is just like, are they in the right place for the people that are driving them? Right? A lot of chargers are going in at these places with larger land area. You know, places on traveling, traveling stops, but it's like the regular places, like, is it at the grocery store? Is it at the the place where I can stop and be for 30 minutes on a regular habit?

Paul J Daly: 8:34

I mean, all those chargers too, are level three chargers. Yep, exactly right. Level two charges. Not good for anything, unless you're parking there for three hours, at least, at least, yeah, right? Because you can add 20% charge maybe in three hours. And so when I look at all these level, level two chargers going in, the only places they're really going to be effective is like shopping malls, right? Maybe, maybe, maybe apartment complexes. Well, yeah, apart public parking where people work, yep. But aside from that, level two chargers are for, like, homes, right? Like, the bottom line, so it, I think how many level three chargers are being installed, it makes a big difference. I was going to rent an EV coming here, because I drove from Orlando to St Augustine, where we were. But, you know, like, the range is like under 300 on most of them, it's like 260 and it's, you know, it's like an hour, it's like a two hour, two and a half hour drive. And then I'm like, am I going to be able to charge when I get there? And then if I'm a little further, and we have to charge in the so there's just not enough, too many questions, too many question marks. I'm going to Hyundai Tucson. I was going to run a Mach E because we're coming to the Ford dealership. And then what else do you have? Tucson, okay, how many miles is there about it?

Kyle Mountsier: 9:43

Speaking of what else do you have? Oh, segue, he wasn't gonna miss. Look at him. He was helping. Gave us a little eye bump. Uh, Google is VO a generative AI model is now available via vertex. Ai, beating open. Ai, Sora to market. Uh. VO offers powerful tools for businesses to enhance content creation pipelines. So,

Paul J Daly: 10:05

so what you're saying is Google has a generate video generation AI

Kyle Mountsier: 10:09

tool map, exactly, yeah. So they've so obviously Gemini is kind of like their their project for, you know, chat based support, but now they have this generative AI video model. It generates realistic 10 ADP videos over a minute long from text or image prompts. So they're like long, like fairly long form videos text image tools also roll out to all vertex AI users next week, with features for brand specific editing. So hey, like, throw your brand on it. The there are some things like synth, ID, watermarking. The really interesting thing is, Google is tracking revenue boosts aligned with people using AI, and they're saying that 86% of businesses that are utilizing AI in some way are seeing revenue boosts, which is kind of like an interesting stat. What an indicator? I don't know if it's my thought is is actually not directly related to AI. I think there are some help. Oh, yeah. I don't think it's true, but I think it's like, oh, the most progressive businesses that are doing the best in business are utilizing AI. It's like a it's like an indicator that that business, yeah, leading

Paul J Daly: 11:19

indicator. There's and we see this firsthand. You know, we use AI tools a lot. We try a lot of the new ones. You try them in your tech company. I try them in my agency. And the people it's, I mean, it happens 10 times a day when people say, Oh, I have to do this or I need to figure this problem out. And you and I are like, let me open this up. Let me open GBT, let me open another tool. And just show you how you can get a better output in five minutes than you would have gotten in two hours. And

Kyle Mountsier: 11:53

the other part of this is, is, especially when it comes to generative AI for video, is, if you're not experimenting with it right now, the prompting necessary for video to work is much more detailed than it takes to, like, be involved in the chat box. It

Paul J Daly: 12:09

takes, well, it takes, I think it just takes more specific knowledge, like, because everyone knows how to use the English language, but the language of video is, you don't think about it when you see it, but camera angles and coloring and the way things move one way to another way, and descriptors, it's, it's definitely there's a learning curve there. But if you get the basics down, you can be, you can be, you know, have some real efficacy, even if you're not creative.

Kyle Mountsier: 12:33

Yeah, one of the creators that we follow, Roy Flynn, if you follow him on LinkedIn or any socials, and then he has some some tools for that is a great person to follow if you're trying to figure out how to use video and AI, yeah, because with

Paul J Daly: 12:46

AI in general, it I've been telling people, it's just the biggest hurdle is you even understanding that's something it can help you with, right? Can even do that. And once you start broadening your horizon to say, like, oh, it could help, your mind automatically starts connecting dots, and that's when it really gets dangerous. Yep, right, exactly, in a good way. Well,

Kyle Mountsier: 13:05

and we're just so you know, if you listen to this and you and you haven't signed up, this

Paul J Daly: 13:09

isn't even Kyle and I. These are two AI bots having a conversation. We

Kyle Mountsier: 13:13

have a weekly email and place where you can go to, kind of like, figure out what's going on, figure out some prompts that you can be using. It's auto industry.ai. And we're just trying to share the best practices, the information, the knowledge that we have internally, because we've been using these tools to kind of like, give you access to what is possible out there. That's right. Well, I

Paul J Daly: 13:34

think that'll do it for today. Thank you so much for joining us. We're gonna get along. We're gonna be shooting the rest of this episode for season two. If you haven't seen Season One, you're missing out. You know what? You can go on Prime Video Search more than cars, and there we are. Pay the dollar 99 to get the whole season.

Unknown: 14:02

You