Automotive State of The Union

EV Credit Countdown, Toyota Goes Flex, Prime Day Plus 4

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Episode #1089: The federal EV tax credit countdown is officially on—and startups like Slate are feeling the pressure. Toyota’s new “K-flex” line is redefining manufacturing versatility in Georgetown, while Amazon kicks off a four-day Prime Day aimed at cautious consumers and stocked-up sellers.


Show Notes with links:

  • The countdown has started. EV tax credits vanish after September 30, 2025, slamming the brakes on what was once a key driver of electric vehicle adoption. Dealers are already seeing signs of a demand surge—and the next 84 days could be chaos.
    • Buyers are rushing to act before the deadline, with analysts predicting a sharp uptick in showroom traffic.
    • Barclays expects a pre-deadline demand spike as shoppers try to capture incentives before they disappear, and dealer inventories of qualifying models may dry up quickly.
    • Researchers Elaine Buckberg and Cassandra Cole estimate a 6-point drop in EV share by 2030 as a result
    • Slate's highly anticipated sub-$20K electric truck, backed by over 100,000 reservations, has quietly had its price bumped to the "mid-twenties" after losing eligibility for the now-defunct EV tax credit.
    • Check out our panel from ASOTU CON on this topic


  • In a corner of Georgetown, Kentucky, Toyota is quietly completing one of the boldest manufacturing upgrades in recent memory. A decade in the making, “K-flex” is turning a 40-year-old assembly line into the most flexible—and possibly most advanced—Toyota line in the world.
    • The $1.8 billion Line 1 overhaul allows for hybrid, plug-in, and full EVs to be built alongside ICE vehicles on the same line.
    • Automation is everywhere: car-size autonomous skillets, part-delivering robots, and robotic glass installers fill the plant floor.


  • Amazon's Prime Day has evolved into a four-day price frenzy—just in time to collide with fresh tariff concerns, shifting consumer priorities, and more cautious spending behavior. Retailers are leaning in hard, but shoppers aren’t splurging quite like they used to.
    • Prime Day now runs from July 8 (today) to July 11, with deals dropping as often as every 5 minutes and new perks aimed at Gen Z shoppers.
    • Adobe predicts $23.8B in U.S. online sales this week—up 28% from last year—but analysts warn of front-loaded demand and early fatigue.
    • Retailers like Walmart and Target are running competing promotions with sharper, more selective discounts.

0:00 Intro with Paul J Daly and Kyle Mountsier
0:45 Nathan doesn't have an Amazon Prime account
2:15 ASOTU Edge Webinar tomorrow with Uber For Business
3:05 New Episode of Auto Collabs with Thuy Adomitis of Mia
4:40 EV Tax Credits Go Away in 84 Days, An

Join Paul J Daly and Kyle Mountsier every morning for the Automotive State of the Union podcast as they connect the dots across car dealerships, retail trends, emerging tech like AI, and cultural shifts—bringing clarity, speed, and people-first insight to automotive leaders navigating a rapidly changing industry.

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Paul J Daly:

Good morning. It is Tuesday, July 8. This is the automotive State of the Union. I'm Paul J Daly. This is Kyle Mountsier. Today we're talking about the EV credit countdown. Toyota going all flex and Prime Day plus four. If you didn't know already, the people really want to know. How many people in our audience do you think don't have an Amazon Prime account?

Unknown:

Man, uh, percentage wise,

Paul J Daly:

seven? Yeah, I was gonna say seven people, but you said 7% is probably more accurate. I know this is kind of weird, figuring out, like, what do people do if they don't have Amazon Prime, where they buy their stuff?

Kyle Mountsier:

What I you know someone, my wife, was telling me that she has a friend that doesn't have Amazon. And I was like, how do you how are you friends? What? How are we friends? I mean, I guess, wait a second. Nathan. Nathan Southwick, producer, come into this show right now? Oh, no, you, you don't have prime.

Nathan Southwick:

I mean, I have an Amazon account, but I don't have prime. No, I

Paul J Daly:

guess his business stuff, he orders, like, through business account, no prime. That just kind of blew my mind. What happened, just from, from someone who has no idea what are your shipping times like,

Nathan Southwick:

I mean, like, I mean, do you pay for shipping if I want it fast, but like, most of the stuff i i You don't actually need fast.

Paul J Daly:

Most of the stuff is free shipping. Still, it's still free shipping,

Nathan Southwick:

and I can get it in, like, you know, the five to seven days usually work.

Paul J Daly:

Kyle just clutched his pearls.

Kyle Mountsier:

I'm like, I'm like, the guy that goes into Amazon Prime is like, same day delivery looks good,

Paul J Daly:

all except for

Kyle Mountsier:

purchasing power, because it's only, it's only was,

Paul J Daly:

thank God you're Nashville. If you were in Syracuse, you wouldn't have anything in your life. Now, we're good, we're good. Speaking of being good, we have a webinar coming up tomorrow. Our next ASOTU Edge webinar is smart customer transportation management with Steven Chapman with Uber for business, and we're going to talk about how you can move stuff to stuff and people to and from your business, keep them happy without spending or investing a single dollar in infrastructure. Wow. It's pretty Come on now. I mean, it's pretty compelling case. So go to asotu.com register for the webinar. You can be there with us live, or you can get the recording. You know how webinars work, and we always try to keep it fun, keep it zippy. 2530 minutes, and you're out of there. Back to your day. Hey, and while you're doing other things in your day. Oh my gosh. This was such a fun episode. This is, oh my gosh,

Kyle Mountsier:

probably one of the best Auto Collabs episodes. Nothing against all the other people that have no

Paul J Daly:

Collabs. The new one is kind of our favorite. Yeah.

Unknown:

I mean, okay, so it is what it is. I know. Toy with Mia. Tweet, I'm sorry. Tweet, tweet, Dominus.

Paul J Daly:

Tweet, Dominus of Mia is like, was one of those people that you get on a call with and you're like, Why do I feel like we've been friends for

Kyle Mountsier:

a long time? We've been friends forever. We could talk forever. It was wonderful. We talked about to go check it

Paul J Daly:

out, overcoming the Franken systems dealerships have cobbled together to try to get AI to work. And, I mean, she's such a baller out of you know,

Kyle Mountsier:

like, let me, let me actually, just take an aside real quick, three, four or five years back, actually, actually, before the pandemic, I was talking about the data infrastructure of a dealership and how important it is. And I thought, and I was talking about three years ago, about how M and A factors should include the data proficiency of a dealership. It's interconnected data, it's cleanliness, the volume of it, and when it comes to AI, like, if we'd have seen the writing on the wall three, five years ago and started really, really working on our data, it would have been a lot better, because if AI is trained or doesn't have access to the right level of data, kaboots, not gonna

Paul J Daly:

help you. Lots of work. Give some generic stuff that Kyle doesn't like to say, I told you so, but I said it for oh, let's get down to some news. The countdown has started. EV tax credits vanish as of September 30, 2025 if you did counting, that's less than 90 days slamming the brakes on what has been what's a key driver of electric vehicle. Adoption, dealers are already seeing signs of a demand surge, and the next 84 days could be chaos. Buyers are rushing to act before the deadline, with the analysts predicting a sharp uptick in showroom traffic. Barclays expects pre deadline demand to spike as shoppers try to capture incentives before they disappear, and dealer inventories of. Qualifying models are probably going to dry up quickly. Research researchers Elaine Bucha and Cassandra Cole estimate a six point drop in EV share by 2030 as a result. Now here's a little other side note. Slate. You know the the company that Jeff Bezos is, you know how big investor in it's not come on company, they released this highly anticipated, sub $20,000 electric truck. It was super cool, very customizable. Made a big splash, backed by over 100,000 reservations. How much was a reservation? I can't remember. It's like, 50 bucks or something.

Kyle Mountsier:

Oh, maybe it was 100 you might be right, yeah,

Paul J Daly:

has quietly had the price bumped on the website. Now it says mid 20s, like literally the words mid 20s, which is, ironically, their target market after losing eligibility for the now defunct EV tax credit. So you know that that literally increases the price of the truck by a third.

Kyle Mountsier:

Actually, what they should put is expected price Gen Z, right, just like this goes full on ton. Ton, look, if you're not training for and expecting a significant amount amount of EV interest over the next 60 days, 90 days, then you're crazy. Talk. Talk about it in your showrooms, in your stores. Help people understand why people are coming in going, how do I get an EV right now? Because the excitement is going to be insane around this thing and and then not just that, but like, watch out in your purchasing. If you got 120 days of ground stock, you're probably going to sell that out in 90 days. Don't go buying a whole bunch of this stuff post 90 days. So kind of crazy there. We've also got a panel. We'll make sure and link it in the show notes, in the comments of out of souu con on how to sell EVs, once the rebate is gone, it's already done. Content already exists. For you. Already exists. There's already people thinking about this before it was even coming, people that know how to sell EVs, that are doing it already. So take a look at that.

Paul J Daly:

I mean, how they gonna find that? I'm not typing it in right now. Or Nathan can look if you type in how to sell EVs ASOTU CON into YouTube. You get it how to price use EVs in a fluctuated market with Alex Lawrence, there you go. Just go to YouTube and search how to sell EVs ASOTU CON, and you will get there. Look at that. How's that for unbelievable YouTube. We appreciate you so strong. I know. But YouTube never works. Never better at time, never better time to buy an EV in my opinion, dealers are going to want to get rid of this dead stock that they are over leveraged in and wait for the new stuff to come in that the manufacturer obviously has to go. Have to figure out how to adjust some prices, add some new incentives. So if you're on the bubble, get it now. I mean, maybe the deals will get a little sweeter next month, as they're trying to but obviously selection will go down. Yep, I don't know. I think get some people in some EVs, that's gonna happen quick. I like it all right. Speaking of happening quick segue, this feels like something out of like a Lego movie in a corner of Georgetown, Kentucky, Toyota is quietly completing one of the boldest manufacturing upgrades in recent memory, a decade in the making. They're calling it K flex. It's turning a 40 year old assembly line into the most flexible and possibly most advanced Toyota line in the world. It's a $1.8 billion line one overhauls. The overhaul is allowing for hybrid plug in and full EVs to be built alongside ice vehicles on the same line. Automation is everywhere. Car size, autonomous, skillets. What's a skillet? It's like a, it's like a, I think it's the

Kyle Mountsier:

it's like a palette, but like, there it is, right there it looks like a pallet that that is also a car that's also, I

Paul J Daly:

don't know, it's like a car body on top of a like a moving palette, yeah, basically like a little

Kyle Mountsier:

autonomous vehicle palette

Nathan Southwick:

and and the, if you follow the link in the show notes to the automotive news article, they did a great video walking through the plant and showing all this stuff. It's very cool.

Paul J Daly:

So they have these autonomous skillets, parts delivering robots, robotic glass installers all over this plant floor. Vehicles are moving sideways through the line, reducing space needs, cutting walking distance and improving automation efficiency. Despite the tech infusion, no employees were laid off. Love to hear that, boosting retention and morale while prepping the workforce to build battery packs. Instead, the entire system runs on a custom built WiFi network so precise. Steven Brennan, who is Toyota's SVP of manufacturing and the project's originator, joked, you can't believe how important it was to get the Wi Fi right, like that. It's so fast and so important with all this coordination. Like how I believe it?

Kyle Mountsier:

Yeah. I mean, look, leave it to Toyota to quietly do something in the back. Round that nobody knew was happening, that's going to totally change the game on manufacturing. And they just like, come across the table and slap you in the face, like, hey, we were working on it the whole time. Don't worry, we'll be fine. Um, kind of you know, the fact that they're going to be able to manufacture these multiple power trains in a single plant, I think, is that's the win, right? They're really thinking, multi modal, multi power train.

Paul J Daly:

It's amazing, yeah, to think that you're making an Ice Vehicle and EVS and hybrids all on the same line. So one's coming down the line, it's got an ice engine. One's coming down the line, it's a hybrid. One's coming down the line, it's an EV. My kind of Brian Ortega comments, skillet sir at Denny's. I kind of now have this picture in my head, because it's how my brain works. Of like some guy sitting at a control panel eating a Denny skillet, and then, like a car picture pops up, like a new order, and he just, like, presses the button right, like, Oh, that's a highlander hybrid. Is on the skillet skill it goes into the assembly line.

Kyle Mountsier:

He's speaking of going on the assembly line. Here we go. Thanks. I

Paul J Daly:

could have gone on that all day. You

Kyle Mountsier:

could have gone on that you'd have been sideways. Amazon's Prime Day repeat number 33 has evolved into a four day price frenzy just in time to collab with fresh tariff concerns, shifting consumer priorities and more cautious spending behavior. Retailers are leaning in hard, but shoppers aren't splurging quite like they used to. Prime now. Prime Day now runs from today, July 8 to July 11. So it's prime days, with deals dropping as often as every five minutes and new perks aimed at Gen Z shoppers. Adobe predicts 23 point 8 billion in us. Online sales this week up 28% from last year, but analyst forms of Front Loaded demand and early fatigue. So watch out for that. Retailers like WalMart and Target are running competing promotions with sharper, more selective discounts. Some Amazon sellers are actually sitting out to protect margins amid tariff uncertainty. Brett rose, CEO of a wholesale distributor said they're not going to buy more everyday items, no big ticket stuff, but what they already need so that they are they're going to buy, not, not going to buy people just like, doubling down on the things they need that might be

Paul J Daly:

lower priced. So I understand, like these retailers holding on to this stock that they purchased pre tariff, right? Why are we going to blow this out? Because this still at the price it is, might be the cheapest thing on the market once tariffs, right? And have to affect inventory. You know, Prime Day has just become a cultural, kind of a cultural phenomenon. And, like, I guess it's, you know, every company is going to try to squeeze as much as they can. Like, will it become Prime week? I don't know. That takes some of the urgency out of it, though, even though it's prime week, I don't know what, what's prime serving you up. Let's, let's do a little exercise. Oh, do you want to real time? It real time. This is going to be embarrassing. Nathan can't play this game. What do we got? It's going to be like smoothie powder, fun animation. What does it want to sell me? It wants to sell me. Prime starts now up to 40% off. Oh, it's health and household recommend. Oh, it's categorized. And what's the security cameras I already have and wants to sell, actually, after it is crazy, like five or six things in this Prime Day deals for you I already have. Yeah, what's up

Kyle Mountsier:

with that? What is up with that?

Paul J Daly:

I mean, lots of headphones, as expected. Ah, see, I've been looking this is, oh, okay, I think it might

Kyle Mountsier:

work. There we go. Little little coaching spec for me, it's got a little soccer board there. I don't know if you can see it. Yeah, I think, I think

Paul J Daly:

I might do, do a new backpack, because I've been looking at backpacks, because mine is, like, it's actually an Amazon brand backpack that I got probably five years ago, and it's kind of, yeah, it's kind of falling apart. And I want to get one of those backpack slash suitcases, because we do a lot of, like, one nights. I know I haven't seen those. The problem is, before I leave, Nathan always hands me 17, sure, estimate, seven, beat microphones,

Kyle Mountsier:

shirts and mics, and the whole nine yards the

Paul J Daly:

cables. Is,

Kyle Mountsier:

like, some of those backpack things are like, but I'm just worried about my back giving out. Maybe I

Paul J Daly:

get one with the wheels. See, once you get one with the wheels,

Kyle Mountsier:

you're proud of that backpack. Paul, do a little unboxing, you know. Nathan, just

Paul J Daly:

typed in the comments. Welcome to QVC. Well, let's get some pictures up. Then let's open up. Tick tock. Let's sell some stuff. Kyle,

Kyle Mountsier:

let's sell some stuff. Full Day. Live Stream.

Paul J Daly:

Liza, the only thing we're actually trying to sell you on is that you should pay more attention and care about the people more than you do the stuff. If you haven't gotten that yet, you should get that. That's what we're trying to sell. We hope you're buying.

Unknown:

You.

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Kyle Mountsier

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Paul J Daly

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