Automotive State of The Union

Toyota Helps Out In Texas, EV Battery Reboot, Government Deepfakes

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Episode #1090: Toyota leads with heart in Texas, Redwood supercharges old EV batteries for AI, and deepfake fraud hits a chilling milestone. 


Show Notes with links:

  • Following catastrophic flooding, Toyota is stepping up big for its home state, pledging over $600,000 in aid to support the Kerr County Flood Relief Fund and various on-the-ground recovery efforts.
    • TMNA is joining forces with Toyota Financial Services, Gulf States Toyota, Southeast Toyota, and dealers nationwide.
    • On top of the $600K, TMNA will match contributions up to $10,000 for eligible Toyota and Lexus dealers donating to flood relief charities and will double all U.S. team member contributions directed to disaster relief.
    • Relief includes financial assistance, donation drives, and payment relief for impacted customers.
    • “When disasters like this occur, it’s important to help our neighbors and communities in their time of need,” said TMNA CEO Ted Ogawa.
  • Redwood Materials, led by former Tesla co-founder JB Straubel, is giving EV batteries a second life—this time fueling the AI revolution with renewable power.
    • In the Nevada desert, Redwood built a 12 MW/63 MWh microgrid from 792 repurposed EV battery packs from automakers like Toyota, GM, and VW, which is enough to power 4,000 homes continuously for about 5 hours.
    • The system powers an AI data center using only a 33-acre solar array—no grid connection, no permits, no backup generators.
    • With AI data centers projected to consume 12% of U.S. electricity by 2028, second-life batteries are gaining traction as scalable, fast-to-deploy storage.
    • Redwood expects to deliver over 5 GWh of repurposed storage capacity in the next 12 months.
    • “You can deploy this very fast,” said Straubel. “We’ll absolutely see much larger deployments of this.”
    • (Since they are powering an ai data center…speaking of ai)


  • A new wave of AI voice cloning fraud has hit an alarming milestone: impersonating a U.S. Secretary of State. The attack duped global leaders—and required just seconds of audio.
    • In June 2025, a cloned voice of Marco Rubio was used to contact five officials via Signal.
    • Victims included a U.S. governor, a member of Congress, and three foreign ministers.
    • FBI warnings have cited a surge in AI-driven impersonation scams since April.
    • Past heists include $243K from a UK energy firm and $35M from a UAE bank.
    • Deepfake losses could hit $40B by 2027. Humans detect fake voices only half the time.
    • “It’s not a matter of if, but when,” security experts warn.

0:00 Intro with Paul J Daly and Kyle Mountsier
1:22 Announcements
3:05 Toyota Donates $600K To Texas Relief Efforts
6:40 Redwood Materials Recycled EV Batteries Powers AI Data Centers
11:26 Marc

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's Wednesday, July 9. This is the automotive State of the Union. I'm Paul Jay Daly. This is Kyle Mountsier. Today we're talking about Toyota helping out with this tragedy in Texas. EV battery reboot and a really impressive, slash scary government level deep fake that actually happened. Spoiler alert. Elon Musk isn't a real person. I'm just kidding.

Kyle Mountsier:

Nor is Steve Greenfield, no, actually, I've met him in person. So he's a real person. Absolutely,

Paul J Daly:

really convincing. Humanoid robot, very convincing.

Kyle Mountsier:

That's true. Yesterday, there was something in the you know, we have a LinkedIn newsletter that's, you know, similar but different, to our our daily email. But there was something about how, like Steve Greenfield and sleep and things like that. And I just said, you know, I've heard that he only sleeps on planes, actually, doesn't actually go to sleep. So, which is Pro I wouldn't sleep with a house full of cats either. I would be afraid for my life. Can Never

Paul J Daly:

trust a cat. You can't trust a cat like you can trust a dog. Just saying, oh, today, at 2pm eastern today, we have our next so to edge webinar coming up. This is smart customer transportation management with Uber for business. We're sitting to talk with Steven Chapman, talking about, we've said this, how you can leverage this platform to move people and items in and out of your location without investing a single dollar in infrastructure. I don't, I can't think of a better value proposition than that, like why you wouldn't try it, and why you wouldn't implement it, but, uh, come check it out. Go to asotu.com sign up for the webinar so you can be with us live, or you can get the recording to follow up on it. And I hope, hope some people find some really good solutions to help solve a little bit of that service drive pain. When people are standing around staring at there's like, that should be the real value proposition. What would you pay to not have a customer staring at your server waiting for the work to be done? That's the real value

Kyle Mountsier:

prop. That's the real question. He goes through the roof. It's the it's the most hilarious thing, like that customer that keeps, like, peeking over, you know, just like this, and you're like, are you gonna fall over? Actually, just waiting for my entire rotation, waiting for my entire rotation. That's all

Paul J Daly:

it is. What else is going on today? I don't know. We

Kyle Mountsier:

released yesterday, the new Auto Collabs episode with Thuy adamitus of MIA probably one of the most fun conversations we've ever had on Auto Collabs. You can search for Auto Collabs on any podcast platform. It'll be the first thing that comes up, or in the Google machine or on the YouTube if you want to check out the video version. Those are always a lot of fun if you got a few minutes to kind of drop it up on your second screen on the computer,

Paul J Daly:

yes, yes, yes. All right, let's talk. Let's get into it. Come on today with a really great example of the power of the retail auto industry. When tragedy strikes following the catastrophic flooding in Texas, Toyota is stepping up big for its home state, pledging over $600,000 in aid to support the Kerr county flood relief fund and various on the ground recovery efforts. Toyota motors North America is joining forces with Toyota Financial Services Gulf states, Toyota and southeast Toyota, as well as a Toyota dealers nationwide. On top of the 600,000 Toyota motors North America is going to match contributions up to $10,000 so anyone who contributes to this, they're matching up to 10,000 for eligible Toyota and Lexus dealers donating to flood relief charities and doubling all US team member contributions. Come on now so they are re relief is including financial assistance donation drives, payment relief for impacted customers, which is so easy to forget in situations like that, right? Like everyone lost their cars, their houses, and everyone guess what's coming in the mail or on the email, right? Your next payment is due. So payment really super practical. Here's a quote from Toyota motors North America, CEO Ted AGAWA. He said, When disasters like this occur, it's important to help our neighbors and communities in their time of need. And by the way, that 600,000 was raised over Fourth of July weekend. That's over a holiday weekend,

Kyle Mountsier:

folks, come on, it's so good. I mean, here's the thing, if you're a Toyota dealer and you didn't know about this, make sure and get involved. Obviously, S E, T, G, S T, are both involved with Toyota Motor North America, the Toyota Financial Services side of stuff. It's an easy way to get involved. Hey, and if you have a group that has a Toyota dealership that can make this a lot easier, right? Like, funnel all your funds through that donation profile, because that duplication of funds in the match, that's like an easy way. Like, even if you're not a Toyota dealer, and you have a group that has a Toyota dealer in it, go to that general manager, go to the dealer principal, and ask, how can you help this? This is like you. You would have actually surprised me more if you would have said, nobody's doing anything about it. And without a doubt, and you know, it's fun, because in all. So this is just like the norm, you

Paul J Daly:

know, and this in auto it's the norm. Texas, it's the norm. Anne Marie on our team, over the weekend, was helping to put together relief packs. They were driving them down to where they were needed, like not just the auto industry, but Texas, but the auto industry leading the charge. No surprise, but it's good for all of us to remember it and good for us, to remind ourselves of who we are, what our obligations are to this country and our neighbors and the communities that you know really support us. Support them. You can't separate it. You can't separate the auto, retail, auto industry from the community. Impossible. It's literally impossible. You're

Kyle Mountsier:

gonna have You're gonna make me start preaching. Let's go and we're gonna be seven minutes in to this show. I mean, this is we are integrated into the very fabric of this this country, the second largest, largest industry in the country, largest retail industry in the country, and it's like one on every street corner type thing, more than Walgreens. So we're just so deeply integrated, like, get involved, and I'm telling you, people will, people will ask if, every if dealerships ever went away, they would wonder why they went away. And it just won't happen because we're too deeply, yeah,

Paul J Daly:

delivery centers, franchise, that's not going to cut. It doesn't matter. Need a dealership. You need a dealership, all right? I was gonna say, speaking of needing a dealership, not a good segue

Kyle Mountsier:

for the story, not a good segue. But I'm just we did

Paul J Daly:

talk about this story. So we covered this company when they were first getting going regarding EV battery recycling, and it was fun to see this pop up today. Like, oh, that's what they've been up to. Redwood materials, led by former Tesla co founder, JB struggle is giving EV batteries a second life, this time fueling AI, the AI revolution with renewable power in the Nevada desert, Redwood built a 12 megawatt. What is this? I can't even read the 12 megawatt over six.

Unknown:

Let's uh, hold on. I'm trying to 63, megawatt hour, microwatt hour. Okay, great,

Paul J Daly:

that. So you think of 792 repurposed EV battery packs from automakers like Toyota, GM and VW, which is basically enough to power 4000 homes continuously for five hours. So that's just in the battery storage represented by these. They're not recycled. They're repurposed. Battery packs. You take it out of the car, you put it into their little system here, so they've used it now to power an AI data center using only a 33 acre solar array. No connection whatsoever to a power grid, no permits needed, no backup generators. It is all Sun turning the energy stored in battery packs that came out of cars that are now powering an AI data center. Ai data centers projected to consume 12% of all US electricity by 2020. Wow, oh my goodness. Second Life batteries, what they're calling these, are gaining traction as a scalable, fast way to deploy storage. Redwood expects to deliver over five gigawatts of repurposed storage capacity in the next 12 months. The CEO said you can deploy this very fast, and will absolutely see much larger deployments, since they're powering well at you. What do you think about Yeah,

Kyle Mountsier:

I mean, this is amazing, because one of the questions has been, what do we do with these EV batteries when they receive, when they reach like half life, or when a vehicle is in an accident that maybe the battery isn't isn't impacted, and the battery can still be used, repurposing these things and then targeting them toward the thing that is grabbing up the most of our, of our grid right now, which is AI data centers, absolutely savvy play, and all the a lot of automakers are utilizing AI. So you kind of have this, like, full circle, you know, recognition of like, we need power. We can repower these things. We can recharge these things. It Right? Because, people will be smart, man, and

Paul J Daly:

there's this com, this combination of like, there's all these technologies and people working on, how do you recycle the battery materials? And in the article, he's talking about how the actual step towards moving toward a more carbon neutral or a more sustainable energy source, we can't go right to recycle. We have to go to reuse first. And you think about this in every area of life, even like clothing, right? If you can give clothing a second life, it takes way less energy and effort than it does to recycle what's recyclable and then manufacturing that into something new with batteries, if you I think that the real kind of important dynamic is space, right? How much space does it take? Because you figure battery comes out of a car, maybe it has 60% Yeah, right. So in order to get back to, like, what that battery would have produced, you would need to add more space, right, more of those batteries to. Equal the same storage capacity. If you have space, which they do in the Nevada desert, it takes that out of the equation. Little space, no, little bit, but it's, I think it's really interesting that this space, I think about how I lost you, Nick askew. And all the things, right? I think that the reason, the fact that this isn't connected to the grid. There are no backup generators. For me, that's amazing. Like, there's no connection, because you think of a decentralized power grid and how actually beneficial that is to overall energy security, right? Like you're not relying on a power grid, or you start to have these battery centers all over the country where they're just charging via solar. They're putting power into the grid. No,

Kyle Mountsier:

we should be going into other countries, finding batteries that are dying from all these Chinese manufacturers and creating energy independence with their repurposed batteries. Come on, that's a silly idea.

Paul J Daly:

Well, since they're powering an AI data center, speaking of AI, segway, today's main event, story,

Kyle Mountsier:

main event, AI, the new wave of AI voice cloning fraud has hit an alarming milestone impersonating a US Secretary of State, the attack duped global leaders and required just seconds of audio in June 2025 a clone voice of Marco Rubio, was used to contact five officials via signal. Victims included a US governor, a member of Congress and three foreign ministers. FBI warnings have cited a surge in AI driven and person impersonation scams since April past. Heists include 243,000 from a UK energy firm, 35 million from a UA bank. Deep fake losses could hit $40 billion by 2027 the stat is crazy. Humans can only detect fake voices about half of the time. This is wild. It's not a matter of if you're gonna get scammed, but when security experts are warning,

Paul J Daly:

okay, so I think it is definitely getting harder. We have a pretty attuned to ear, because I think part of our profession, right, it's like we just listen to human voices. So everybody does all day, but we critically listen to human voices all day, and so it's probably a little easier for us to pick them out. And I have to say, like, I've been seeing stuff now where I'm like, I'm, I'm, actually, I'm like, Oh, that was AI. I start to question it. It's gonna get, I mean, and think about this, you couldn't even do that seven months ago. No, not. Oh no. And now you're wondering if it's real or not, right? And so it's not gonna be. Arm is just gonna be. And so the way this boils down to, I think, everyday operators, so auto dealers, and even in your own family, safety and security, yeah, is like, how do we find a way to two factor authentication, someone's voice and one of the suggestions. And Kyle, you and I have talked about this, and even you know, me and my family talked about having a code word that if anyone is suspicious, right, it's like, what is the code word, or what is the phrase, or what is the thing that you say that everyone knows? Like, okay, this is it in your business, especially if you're a leader, your people are going, they've probably already gotten emails from you saying, like, Hey, I'm in a meeting. Can you get some gift cards for me? Right? And that's just out of character usually. So people are like, I don't know, but if it's a phone call, a voicemail, whatever, it's like a video call, like, literally, a zoom setup, right? Yeah, yeah. One of these scams that they talked about in UK energy firm, they wired $35 million of payments because the CFO showed up on a zoom call. That wasn't the CFO and so and so. Like, having some kind of protocol for saying, like, if it involves money, if there is a layer of financial investment, like, what is either a word that you use or a protocol that you use to make sure that it's verified? Or just tell your people, if you're ever, like, if I ever ask you to send money, you need to send me a text message and I have to confirm that it's me, right? There's very simple, low tech versions of to FA on the voice, but this is coming. It's only a matter of time before we hear about this, like messing up a car deal or fraudulently getting a car approved, right? There's just enough of that.

Kyle Mountsier:

Yeah, I would say, like, if your IT department isn't figuring out how to send more and more phishing style scams, not just email phishing into into your workplace, you should ask them about that you should be figuring out how to send, like, actually replicate these levels of scams into your organization so that People understand. And yeah, and stress test it. Yep. It's not just about email phishing anymore. Phishing is happening across different mediums. That's

Paul J Daly:

it. I'm making one. I'm gonna, I'm gonna try to phishing attempt. Kyle, oh boy. Me something, but it's actually, but it's actually gonna

Unknown:

be me. It's gonna be you, a

Paul J Daly:

LinkedIn user. We don't know who said this, because. Didn't come through on the stream. It's not the voice you have to listen to. It's tone, inflection and cadence everyone has a manner of speaking that AI can't fully replicate. So there you go. A little tip from the community. Kyle and I were jumping as someone who tried to deep fake, deep fake our voices, and they use like the podcast, like, yeah, we talk a lot different in meetings than we do in a podcast. We would show up to this meeting asking people to wire funds or something urgent, and we'd be like, All right, so here's we're gonna do everybody, you're gonna wire me some money, and you're gonna do everyone. Would know everyone, like a meeting, like, we're very kind of, actually a lot more reserved and quiet. Yeah, we do a lot more listening in meetings, lots

Kyle Mountsier:

more listening. Oh, man, I think we didn't know. I can't wait till we do our own phishing scam on each other. It's gonna be

Paul J Daly:

fun. Great. It's gonna be fun, and we'll record it all and show you, show the world. So look, whatever you're doing, whether you're helping people, whether you're watching out for fishing, fishing scams, you can do one thing, and that's, take care of one another. Focus on that you can move the route.

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Kyle Mountsier

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Paul J Daly

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