Talk Your Book: Need to Have Cars With Car Dealership Guy

Welcome to Animal Spirits, a shell about markets, life, and investing. Join Michael Batnik and Ben Carlson as they talk about what they're reading, writing, and watching. All opinions expressed by Michael and Ben are solely their own opinion and do not reflect the opinion of Redholtz Wealth Management. This podcast is for informational purposes only and should not be relied upon for any investment decisions. The clients of Redholtz Wealth Management may maintain positions in the securities discussed in this podcast. You're joined today for the second time by car dealership guy. Our favorite car person, the worst out of the scene, I don't know, a year ago, two years ago, how long have you been doing it for? Something like that. I'd say really, really blew up in about a year ago. Okay. Last time we talked to you, Michael talked about his new experience getting a Jeep and I wrote in it. It's a nice car. Top that sort of fades away in the summer. Pretty. Michael doesn't like the EV, I guess, part of it, something wrong with it, right? I'm not quite regretting the purchase because I do, I like how it looks and I love the electric top, but the electric part of it isn't great. It's shut off one time on the road and I was like, I was starting sweaty. I was very anxious. People were honking. Probably not the greatest vehicle, but I like it. It looks nice. Thank you. So I think I actually, so my lease is coming up in early 2024. I lease a Ford Explorer. I need the room and I have kids. It's like the Honda Accord of SUVs for me, basically, right? I think I should call it in. It's possible. Wait a minute. Wait a minute. Wait a minute. Before we get it, tell him your take. What's my take? If Ben could have any car in the world, he would have a Honda Accord. I'm an A to B guy. If I could, if I could just pick a car, I would drive an Accord. That was a basic BT. No one drives a sedan anymore. I want to drive a sedan, but I have three kids and they have sports and so I can't fit it. That's my goal one day. So I think I actually looked into ending my lease early and looking for deals because of one of your tweets. I think you said, here's the biggest deals right now and you have a list and I saw Ford is on it. You were saying Ford is offering some rebates. So two months ago, I reached out to the dealership and said, hey, I know my lease doesn't end yet, but can we look into something? So they looked into it for me and they said, yeah, bring it, come on in and we'll talk about it. We talked and they said, it's actually cheaper for you right now to like build your own car through Ford and it would be more expensive for you to buy a car that's already here in our lot than it would be to assemble a car through Ford and have them make it and then send it here. All right. So they did that and you've been tweeting the fact that like auto rates are like 9% and saying fewer people are leasing because of this. So I'm thinking, crap, my payment went up, I think 12% or something from 2.5 years ago. It was negligible. It was up like $30 a month. I was shocked. They gave me a bunch of rebates and so I got it. So I said, give me the same car I have now. Just a different color but like all the same features and it was like $30 more a month. So I asked the guy when I was checking out of my lease and I'm like, why did I get such a good deal? What's going on here? Because I keep seeing how new cars are so much more expensive and the rates are so much higher. And he basically said, you kind of got lucky. It's the end of the month. They're offering a bunch of rebates and it's just luck of the draw basically. That's enough luck. Yeah, I mean, I think overall, if you just look at the industry right now, the domestic manufacturers, they're oversupplied. They produce too many vehicles and- So is that because they're playing catch up or what? I don't know the specific. I mean, there's many factors. It's always supply and demand, right? So you may be producing too much and demand starts falling. But you're in an increasing interest rate environment, right? The average auto loan rate in the country is like 9.5% right now. It's the average. It's the highs it's been since the early 2000s. Does that impact leases as well as- Of course, of course. Yeah. It impacts leases in several ways. I mean, number one, leases are made up of like four major pieces in the equation, but one of them is called the money factor, which is pretty much a fancy term for the interest rate. And so it impacts that. Hold on. It wasn't sorry. Can you- It wasn't you. It was somebody else who told me, when you go into a dealership, and listen, I'm going to a dealership, but he's my broker. And if you do go into a dealership, you want- You want to know that you're not f***ing around the person who's negotiating with you, ask him what the money factor is. And then he'll be like, oh, shit, I can't see this person over. He knows about the money factor. So what is the money factor? I don't have the technical definition for you. I'm sure the audience can Google it better than me. Exactly. Exactly, but it's so technical. It's essentially- You don't even know it. No, no, but I'll tell you what it is. It's essentially the interest rate. And then they divide it by like, I forget it. I think it's like divided by 365 or something. You essentially get the interest rate and like- Yeah, just the discount rate, basically, right? Yeah, and like decimal format. That's what I'm saying. It's dumb. Like everything, it's just like the finance world. I talk about it all the time. People make things confusing so that other people just like, don't get it. Like finance like all these derivatives and all this crap, right? You're just trying to get an edge on someone else. But the bottom line is, so yeah. Look, interest rates are seriously impacting leases. Leases are down. If we were leasing in 2019, like, one out of every three new cars. Today, it's one out of every five, right? That's a big difference. That's almost, you know, that's- You're talking about almost, you know, just half as much, right? So you've really seen that a massive drop in leasing. But it's also due that, look, the manufacturers that don't have that much supply, they prefer to sell the car, right? They can get- they can sell that car upfront. And so it's also, you know, an incentive thing. Because, you know, you get all those upfront economics. And so, you know, leases are just down across the board. And you're seeing that the manufacturers that have supply right now and are doing more rebates and offering sales and discounts are the domestic manufacturers for- Of course, it's just like a balanced GM. Intuitively, you would think not knowing anything that given interest rates that people would prefer to lease instead of to buy, to finance it. But you're saying that leases are just as impacted by interest rates as owning, as purchasing? It's tricky because on one hand, the average lease payment versus the average monthly payment, if you compare the two over, like since like 2019, leases have gone up. They've actually increased 10% more than a normal monthly payment would have a purchase. What drives that? So again, like I said, it's, you know, manufacturers are disincentivized to lease the car. They're more incentivized to sell you the car. And so, you know- You know, the other piece that- The other piece that helped me is I had more equity in my use car prices are up. So they're saying that's a big piece of it too, that the trade-in of my old one, the equity, was still pretty high. So I- It was worth more- Yeah, I mean they figure- It's kind of dumb because like you do have more equity, but then you're also paying more for another car. Right. Yeah, kind of buying and selling a house right now, yeah. Yeah, the average use car is up like 45% since 2019, from like 1819 grand to 28,000 now. So I mean, yeah, it's like- It's cool. Like you feel good at the moment. Oh yeah, my car. I drove this thing for 50,000 miles and it's only worth 5,000 less. Right. And then you're like, oh shit, I gotta pay $55,000 for Toyota Sienna. So the other thing they told me, I asked, I said, so how are you guys normalizing? Again, this is- This is one dealership in West Michigan, so take it for what it's worth. And they said the biggest difference between now and pre-pandemic is- Their- Their lot is never going to be full again. They're like, we're- We're not going back to those days where we have a full lot of cars and you can choose- Yeah, that's not sure. You don't think so? That's not sure. Okay. No, who said this a four dealer? This is like the guy selling my lease papers. Was he bald? He just- He just said he thinks that- Was his name Michael? They're not going to fill their lot like they used to and just have all these cars. And maybe that's just a decision that they made to not hold all the inventory. I'm just curious. Because I feel like I still see a lot of empty lots places or not empty but they're not full anymore. Look, I think that's like a utopian perspective. Like, yeah, like we're not going to have- Look, I'm not saying that lots fine. I'll give him some benefit of the doubt. I'm not saying lots will be as full as they were, you know, five years ago. Fair. But at the end of the day, it's a free market. And, you know, I think that things will continue normalizing. I think lots will continue to fill up. Again, it might not be like it used to be but I do think they're going to continue to fill up. And so, I don't necessarily buy that like, you know, we're going to this like, you know, very minimal inventory. A lot's type of gig because I just don't think that's the case. I don't think a free market is going to function that way where, you know, you're going to tell someone, hey, you can- You have to order this car online when my competitor down the street is offering to me right now. Right, because most people want to see it first, right? Yeah. And look, brand loyalty is at an all-time low. That's a super important point to note, right? Because if I am out of four dealer who only has five cars on this lot, and then the GM dealer right next door has a thousand cars or hundred cars, whatever, and I need a car like, I don't want to wait two, three weeks a month. Who knows how long? Maybe I'll just go. That's the thing I had to wait two months to get mine. There we go. So I don't think that's a practical perspective. It's nice dealers. A lot of dealers, you know, think that it's a utopian perspective. Yeah, let's get to that point. Like, you know, just in time, you know, you save on floor planning costs, you save paying interest on the inventory blah, blah, blah. But I don't think it's that practical in an environment like this that's more normalized. So interest rates for- you tweeted interest rates for use cars are 11%, which is higher than the overall market, which is higher than that. Actually, average is average across the countries around 13 and a half, 14%. And so if you've got- if you have not great credit, obviously, it's even worse. So you also tweeted about the percentage of loans that are 60 days to liquid. Now, if you're not paying your car loan, that's like the last thing to go, right? Like, you need your car to get to get from A to B. Are we worried? Are you worried about the implications of higher interest rates impacting people to the point that they can't service their debt? And that they're going to have to just give their car back? Hmm. Well, first of all, you know, cars are not floating rates, car loans, right? So, you know, these are like simple interest loans. They're- I'm not worried that interest is impacting people that currently have vehicles or anything like that. I think if anything, it impacts you- it impacts your daily life in other ways, right? Like, just general inflation across the board, you know, you're priced out of, you know, someone you can buy a house, things like that. I think that's where how it actually impacts the, you know, the American consumer. I'm not an economist, but I'm close enough to this info that, you know, I have sort of that compost. And so, anyways, I think that you're going to get squeezed. People are getting squeezed in other areas of their life, you know, student loan payments, being resumed, all these things. And I think then that then impacts your ability to pay your loan on time. And I think that's why we're seeing- we're seeing, you know, defaults. I want our delinquencies specifically. I want to say that like 60 plus state delinquencies for asset-backed security loans are like 5% or so plus minus, which is, I think it's the highest since 09. Now, that's on the public side. I know Cox on a motive also put up some data, put up some data, and they said that around 20 basis points of all loans are- You know, I don't want to completely quit this because I forget if it was fully delinquent. But the point is that the benchmark that Cox on a motive put out with respect to repossessions specifically states that we are back to 2019 levels. Okay. Yeah, which exactly. It's not like too concerning. So what I've been saying about this is like, look, something to watch. The delinquencies are rising. Repos are clearly rising. We're also, you know, stimmies aren't being thrown around left and right. But I also don't think that we're, you know, it's at a crisis point or anything like that. Yeah, I mean, there's still plenty of money in the market. You know, unemployment is low. If we see unemployment start to rise, that's when we should start getting- Does this, I think you've tweeted this data before, but you can kind of give me a feeling on it. Are people just holding their cars on for longer now? Is like the average holding period of a car just extending now because of all this? Yeah, people are definitely holding the car. I mean, we're at an all-time high. I think it's around like 13 years for an average car specifically. That's an all-time high. You know, it's been a tailwind for service facilities, repair shops. They're booking, you know, record, record profits. There was a bit of a dip in July specifically. So it seems like maybe like the summer law or something. It could also be that people are just opting into going to more independent shops. And you have to remember that, you know, throughout the last three years, we've undersold roughly 8.5 million new cars. And so those are all cars that would otherwise be on the road today. And would go be, you know, using their warranty at the new car dealership. And when you don't have a warranty, you might not go to the new car dealership because you're just going to go to a lower-cost vendor. And so it's tricky, you know, we've seen this increase in service. And then now we're seeing this dip. But nonetheless, I mean, it's still overall, I'm still very bullish on the whole service side of the business because you got to remember that, you know, people don't want to buy a new car. They don't want to lease something for $750 a month. That they could have leased for $400 a month a couple years ago. And they just, you're trying to kind of, you know, extend the lifetime of their current vehicles. So let's talk about how expensive cars are getting. Better than I spoke about your tweet a couple of weeks ago, that some people are paying mortgage payments for fancy cars. And I really, I'm struggling for words because these numbers are so astronomical. In Florida, somebody is leasing 2022 Accra NSX. It's a three-year lease for $5600 a month. I said no one drags an Accra and people corrected me on that saying, no, no, it looks good for us. It's great car. I mean, go ahead with these cars. It's crazy talk. Yeah, well, look, I think you'd be surprised. This is actually kind of funny, right? Like those cars, those loans actually perform better, typically, than the lower end, because those are people that have money and they can afford it. And those are clearly, like, just, you know, I saw this data. I was like, what the heck? I was like, this is crazy. I want to tweet about it because it's very, it's aggressive. So, you know, it's obviously a very kind of, you know, strikes out of you. But this is the thing, right? People are still paying crazy, you know, crazy amounts for cars nowadays, right? Like when you look at the average, the average new car today is around like 50 grand, just a little bit under. Right? We have no more cars under $20,000. Right? You can find cars that are for sale under $20,000, but not one transacted in July under $20,000. What are the cheapest cars? Is it like a Honda Civic? Is it kind of that range? Yeah, I mean, it would be that class, not Honda Civic to be specific, you know, like maybe like a Chevy or something. But you have to also remember Nissan, but remember this that Mitsubishi, the Mirage, which has been the cheapest car in the market. They just, they just announced discontinuing it like a week or two ago. So, we are entering an environment where we've been this environment where, you know, a new car is becoming more and more of a luxury good. And you have no choice but to go used to go higher mileage, to go a bit older. If you look at the, if you look at the supply on used car dealer lots, and you look at just the assortment, you see that dealers are carrying older cars with higher miles as a percentage of their total inventory today than they were four years ago. You just have no choice as a dealer, right? Like there's a lack of supply on the use side. You need cars to sell after you're not making any money. And so you're going deeper, you're going older, you're going higher mileage, you have no choice. The average, you tweeted this, the average escalade sold for around 70 grand in 2010. And it's just been almost straight line up until the right, since O2, since you have this data, was 50 in O2, 70 in 10, crossed 90 in 2020 and now it's 115. I mean, what is, it's like a college tuition or something like what's going on? I'm sorry, but isn't an escalade suburban with a Cadillac on it, Cadillac symbol on it? Come on, right? I think you're going to offend a couple of people with that one. No, look, escalates are hot. And so if all the full size SUVs are hot, pretty much all of them, I would say, you know, like all the GM full size SUVs, super hot. Yes, I can't fit into parking lots anymore because these cars are too big now. Yeah, it's, you go to a suburban parking lot, a suburban strip ball. I mean, you see like a wagon here next to an escalade, next to this, next to that. It's true. I actually, I actually tweeted that as well, like a couple months back. But look, here's the thing, escalated. All these full size SUVs are still super in demand. Like, again, people that have money, one of them, they were the newer ones. And it's, they're still hard to get, believe it or not. Like, you're still paying markups on some of these things and you just can't get them. You know, there, it's, it's funny because like where we're seeing the supply kind of crunch is we're seeing it on the high end with these full size SUVs and whatnot. And then we're seeing them on the low end. But then the kind of in the middle is where you have all these like, you know, cars and stuff that are, you know, moving up and they supply specifically. I would say like luxury vehicles that are not full size SUVs. We're seeing those that are. I mean, look, I'm just going to make up an example, right? Throw like, I don't know, like an Audi Q7 or something, right? Like, it's not a full size SUV. It's like a nice to have. It's not a neat to have. Again, I'm not saying an escalade's a neat to have. But if you're a mom and you have like three kids and you need a big truck and you don't want a minivan, you're going to go for like a suburban or like, you know, a Yukon Denali or something like that. So it's a bit of, you know, like the Audi Q7. Again, I totally just like, you know, I'm picking on that one because I have one. And that's my wife's car and we're very on the water. I just, I just, that's why I didn't do it. I just looked this morning because I got a call from my added dealership because last time I went, all right. So last time I was going to be a BMW X5. You know what I mean? Like that class. It's like, you know, they're still selling. I'm not saying they're not. Of course they are. But you just seen those prices come down a bit faster than the full size SUVs and stuff like that. So the Audi dealership called me yesterday coincidentally. He's like, hey, Michael, last time we spoke, it didn't make sense. We have some new deals. I'm like, all right. Well, I still have 36 grand on this car and how much is it worth? He's like, yeah, all right. Maybe, maybe you're screwed. Well, get back to your, your affordability stuff. No one wants to drive them. But many vans are still relatively affordable if you're comparing to the big SUVs, correct? Depends what type of mini hand, you know, like I said, the Seattle right now, fully loaded. You're, you're going to run you, you know, 60K plus minus. Really? That much? Yeah, at all. I would totally get a mini fan. My wife won't. Like a Honda Odyssey. Can you still get for like 40 problems? Well, I think, I think I mentioned you, I think I mentioned you last podcast. We got, we just bought a mini van. So here, right, let me preface this for a second. So my wife was against it initially. She was moving from an Audi. I've been a dealer in my whole life. I know that many vans are, again, like the Rolex. Like we love mini vans. They sell super quickly. People want them. It's again, it's a need to have. It's not a one to have. Whenever you're selling a need to have product, it's an easier sell, right? People want it. People need it. They come. You know, it's just easier a car to sell. So we got it. We got the Seattle. We got a platinum fully loaded. And it's pretty badass. I mean, I can't believe I'm saying this right now. But Michael's looking at me like, get the hell out of here. So I want one. And they're very practical. No, but listen, I'm, you know, the quote unquote car dealership guy, all this hoopla. And by the way, I had to order it from across the country. I had to get a chip. Like it was hard. It wasn't easy to get it. You know, I had dealers that I spoke with. They're like, yeah, I mean, I can't help you. They're all pre-sold. So it was not easy. So I can only imagine for the, you know, everyday consumer how difficult it is. If you had to break down the average, it's hard, obviously, to come up with the attribution. But how much of the average car price seemingly going to the moon in the last 10 years is because of bigger SUVs and not selling as many sedans. Because what is it now? Two thirds of all cars are. Yes. How much is it? How much is the average being pulled up because of that? And how much is it because prices have just really gone higher? I don't know the exact split there, but I can tell you that look consumerism, just a, you know, the taste of, you know, the American consumer for an SUV, a bigger, a bigger vehicle, a more well-equipped, more technology, more features, you know, that impacts. It's expensive. You need more chips. You need more this. And so, you know, we are not selling these base models anymore, no one wants them. And so, yeah, I mean, it's had a massive impact on prices. I can't quantify that for you exactly how much, but I can tell you that, you know, like, I think the number one most requested feature from, like, moms in the country is carplay, apple carplay. Yeah. You know, by the way, like, my wife, huge test, like, she was like, I won't carplay, right? So you just see it's these features and technology. People want to know. So how much, if you did get the base model, like, percentage wise, how much could you save if you just said, I just want no bells and whistles. I want it just to straight whatever. Give me it off. Like, you could sell. You could save, I don't know, 15% something like that. I think so MSRP on a CNI am looking as like 46,000. So maybe like 10,000 less than IPAD or so. I think getting all features and stuff. So we're, you know, it's not, it's, it's a lot, but it's not like 20 grand, 25 grand. You know, it's not that big of a swing. Right. Let's talk about Tesla and electric vehicles. All right. So you said, electric vehicle market share has been on the market since 2020. So we're going to buy a year from 2020 today. 1.7%, 3.1%, 5.5%, 6.9% nice. Is this, is this new sales or cars on the road? This is new sales. Okay. So 7% of new sales are electric vehicles. You also tweeted for the first time ever, Tesla, outsold Toyota in California. But then I also saw a tweet over the weekend that was making the rounds on Twitter showing that at the start of the year, the Model S was 105 grand. Then it went to 94 in January, 89 in March. It's been coming down, down, down, down. Today it's 75. So again, 105 to start the year, the Model S. Now it's 75. What the hell is going on with these Teslas? I think Elon Musk is either putting on a masterclass or he is, I don't actually, I don't know what he's doing. I have zero idea what he's doing. But here's the thing. He's definitely doing stuff that's unprecedented in this industry. He is taking goods that are $100,000, $120, $150. He's discounting it by 10, 20, 30 grand with one swing. I don't think many companies can't even do that. Elon Musk, he has that autonomy, he has that power to pull off these moves. He's clearly a long-term thinker. His goal is clearly to put cars on the road over short-term profits. So you have to be, you know, you can't underestimate this guy, man. I mean, he's just, he's being very aggressive and we don't even know the ramifications of this. Like he just lowered prices the other day. How is that going to impact dealers? You know, I can tell you one thing. Every dealer that had Teslas in their inventory, again, just lost a ton of equity on that. Everyone just took a big L. Just imagine, right? Like your neighbor, your house is worth a million. Your neighbor just sold his for 700,000. It's the exact same house, hypothetically. Your house is not worth a million anymore. So I just think that what he's doing in the industry, we're going to know over the next couple quarters how it impacted hindsight. But he's just putting a ton of pressure on prices. Tesla Bulls would say, this guy is moving so quickly. He's a genius. He's not letting anybody else enter the market because these prices are so low that competitors wouldn't dare do it. And then, or bears would say, well, yeah, he's lowering prices because there's more competition and maybe less demand for Teslas. Do you think it's somewhere in the middle or? Yes. Look, both are true. But I think that, you know, having been, you know, being a CEO and having that, just going through your head and thinking, like, do I want to, you know, am I optimizing for top line, am I optimizing for bottom line? What is most important? What am I incentivizing? Elon is clearly going as aggressively as possible after the top line. At the expense of some of the bottom line. And I think that he's going to continue winning market share that way. He wants to be top of mind. He wants Teslas to be everywhere. He doesn't want you to go down to street and buy from a competitor. He doesn't even want you to think about it. And so I think that net net, I think it's a smart move. Are competitors following suit, though? Are they lowering prices in their EVs already? I mean, we saw it earlier this year for immediately lowered prices on its vehicles to a loss. So Elon and Tesla, they're actually not losing. So I think, again, I'm here on the sidelines. I don't own stock in any of these companies. I'm just literally observing. I'm accommodating. I'm looking at the chest moves and, you know, I'm a student. And I think that, you know, I'm overall, if I was a Tesla shareholder or whatever, I would be happy. As long as my time horizon for my investment was like over five years. If I'm a ball, Tesla ball, this would make me very excited because everything is constantly in flux with this guy. And you can't, you can't value this company at any sort of steady state because it's still so early. And look at the insane moves he's making. So you can't do any sort of discounted cash flow because who the hell knows? Is he going to have a monster market share? It's possible. He's definitely, you know, increasing the range of probabilities here. You're absolutely right. And so I think it's a good move for Tesla. I mean, I just do like they need to fight right now. And they're, they could potentially bring some OEMs, you know, car manufacturers to their knees, especially those that have invested a lot in EVs. Look at Toyota, right? They've been very like EV shy. They haven't really made any investment there. They've kind of stuck to their hybrids. They're kind of letting everyone kind of fight the war, kill each other. And then they're going to step in. Well, Michael mentioned that the EV side of his Jeep maybe is not up to snuff quite yet. Which other car, which car manufacturers do you think are like getting close to being like Tesla in terms of quality or any of them. There is a Ford. Is that the simple one? Who's there? You know, I'm not, I'm just, I'm more into business side. I don't do these like crazy reviews of the car. I don't really know. I find detail to give like a good educated opinion. I can tell you that Ford is investing the most, almost out of anyone. They're just, you know, investing billions in EV manufacturing and improving their technology and all these things. Again, it's, they're not at, they're not at Tesla's level. But they are investing a lot. I can tell you that other manufacturers like, for example, Nissan just announced that they're going to go for like this, like, you know, hybrid model of, you know, some EVs, you know, some hybrids, some internal combustion, like they're kind of, you know, staying more, they're not kind of choosing a side. I think Ford just, I think Ford's making very risky moves, you know, I just do. I think to go to, to be a legacy manufacturer to put all your eggs in the EV basket, especially, you know, you're not the first to market. You don't have the strongest balance sheet necessarily. I just, I think it's a, it's a risky move. And, and your consumers are not necessarily asking for it. Go to the Midwest, go to any Ford dealer. Ask him how his EV businesses. Come back and tell me the results. I get you, I guarantee you it won't be great. Again, coastal cities are a bit different. But still, like, you know, I don't know if they're following the consumer that closely. I think it's a lot of politics. You mentioned business that you're a business guy. And I want to get to your business in a second. But before we do, just two more things. Sick with electric vehicles. I saw this tweet from at whole Mars blog. Lucid 2022, revenue, $608 million. Lucid 2022, CEO pay, $379 million. That doesn't sound great. How what was the pay? $379. You mean that's got to be stock options, right? Revenue with $608 million. Yeah. I'm sure that was mostly not cash. You're right. But never the last. Yeah, who knows. Yeah, I mean, look, there's all these EV companies. It was like, you know, it was the EV bubble. And you know, Lucid is, I'm not saying, you know, they're a Mickey Mouse company. Maybe like others, but, you know, they actually have real cars. Start to see ribbons, by the way. Yeah. I have to. I'm also starting to see them. Yeah. You're right. They're starting to kind of. But they're not. They're not lowering prices to follow tests later. I haven't followed every note that closely. But Rivian is still. Because Rivians are pretty expensive, right? They're very expensive. Yeah. They're pretty slick looking though. All right. What the? Yeah. Yeah. I don't know if you follow this company. Yeah. Stocks up like almost a thousand percent this year. What's going on here? You know, from what I understand, a lot of short covering. You know, the company has bought itself some time with, you know, the recent deal they did. They did some, you know, some restructuring and whatnot. So they have bought it themselves some time. They still, you know, have their balance sheet. It's not still. It's still not in great shape. To say the least, they're still facing lots of headwinds. You know, like you can go on Corvana right now, by the way. Fun fact. Look up. Look up. Corvana's testless. Like they still haven't this again. This is all just happened. But it's, but you see like this stuff is just crazy, man. The pace to things are moving here. It's become like a stock market and it's the car market. And so if Corvana, yes, they, you know, they do, and I'm sure they're going to adjust these or I'd hope they will. I'm assuming they're going to adjust these. Maybe not. But the point is, look, it's, I think Corvana's, they've built a very strong consumer brand. There's no doubt about it. They've scaled these vertically integrated, you know, use car operation logistics, reconditioning, tremendously. And so, you know, they definitely have their place with a consumer. You know, what is good? What are they going to look like in five years? I don't know. Will they shed some business units, outsource certain things to, you know, become leaner and to lower their, their, their, their improved their cost structure? Maybe. But I think, I think we're seeing a lot of cost, a lot of short covering right now. And you know, it's kind of, it's kind of been trading with a meme stock. So it's kind of talking about where it's going to go next. Sometimes it's just that simple. All right. So car dealership guy, you came on the scene. I don't know, two years ago or so and has had a meteoric rise in the content industry. You're doing car content better than anybody else. What has your journey been like? What's on the road map? What do you got going on? Yeah. So first of all, I appreciate that. Yep. On, on X or as they say now, I'm at guy dealership, GUI dealership. So you can follow me. Look, so, you know, it's been a very interesting journey. Like I came into this as just for fun. I was literally, I remember this day, I was just sitting in head with my wife, it's like, whatever, 9.30 p.m. or something, I'm on my phone. I'm like, you know, let me just create this account. I know a lot about this industry. I've sort of been on the ground floor, you know, like started just as a lot porter selling cars that I've also been in the boardroom, you know, raising capital, doing all that side of things, you know, institutional investors blah, blah, blah. So I have a way to kind of see the stuff that the car person will see, quote unquote, but then to like distill it in a way, in a more sophisticated way, share it with the audience. Anyways, long story short, it's grown a lot. The account has, you know, 400,000 followers now. Amazing. Not too thrilled about that. I, you know, I think someone called it like the algorithmic deflation on Twitter right now, or X, you know, like you're, you know, like 400,000 followers, you tweet something like 50,000, see it's kind of annoying. But it's definitely opened up tons of doors, you know, needless to say, overall, like X Twitter has been, you know, huge. I'm just amazing thing that happened in my life, you know, sort of building this brand of, you know, just raw, candid, automotive insights that you couldn't really find a year and a half ago. You know, the industry has some news outlets, you know, much respect to many of them, not all of them. Most of them are stuffy, but the reality is they're more like old school. I want to say their average, their average reader or listener is like 50 plus. And then it was big to normal people. Yeah. And like my audience is, you know, 28 to like 44. And so, you know, I have a lot of just a younger generation, you know, the PhDs, as they call them, the Papa has a dealership. That generation of leaders is following me. And so that's great, right? You know, ushering in all these new dealer principles. So look, overall, just having fun with it, sharing valuable knowledge and data. And just seeing where it takes me next, I think there's massive opportunity here to build a very large, valuable brand around this, you know, content engine of just sharing info into the car business. So you, you seem pretty skeptical that like things are going to change in the car dealership world in terms of like just in time. Is anything really changing from business perspective? Is this the kind of business model that is relatively static over time and kind of hard to change? I mean, it's a loaded question because I don't think like, look, there is, we are seeing the industry continue to evolve, you know, manufacturers are kind of poking their nose in this. They call it the agency model, right, which potentially is like the idea of like, you know, disintermediating dealers, right? Kind of buying direct from, from the manufacturers. I think that, I think people miss a really big point here. Like, I think that dealers are going to evolve. They're not going to stay the same, the dealership model. There's certain things that you don't need dealers for. There's certain things that you will need dealers for and you want good dealers for. And so, you know, I, I recently had a guy on my podcast, I'm his name, Brett Morgan, he's the eighth largest dealer in the country. And I think he made a really good point, right? When you see a dealer that's outperforming in their market, there's a reason for that, right? Like, this doesn't just happen miraculously, right? They, you know, have a very good system, great customer experience, good processes, whatever the reason is, I mean, I think the good dealers are adding lots of value. I think it's clear, you know, by their performance. And so, you know, I think that all these kind of maneuvers are just going to weed out the bad operators, you know, the bad apples, they're going to get bought out. They're going to, you know, whatever is going to happen. I mean, million different potential outcomes. But I think that the reality is we're just going to, we're also, we're going to see more consolidation, but consolidation just continues, you know, increasing, accelerating the industry is, is moving away slowly, but surely from like this mom and pop industry like it used to be to more of a, you know, just, you know, mega, these mega groups that have, you know, lots of stores, some of them public, some of them not. And it's also the other part of that is just, you know, consumer demands are higher than ever. People have, people want more, you know, an easier car buying experience. They want to know more before coming to the dealership. You need more sophistication, right? You see dealer groups now have chief information officers like these terms that, like, who would have thought about that in like a dealership, a chief information officer? What do they even mean? So, you know, I mean, things are changing. And I think net net's going to be better for the consumer over the long run. Awesome. Great place to leave it. We're talking with at guide dealership on Twitter. That's car dealership guy, CDG. Thank you. Thank you guys. It was great.