Bant Breen:
I recently moved to Miami and was trying to purchase a vehicle myself and I didn’t get the sense that they had to do a lot of customer service right now. I got the sense that all the aces were in their hand, and I had none. They basically said, here are the cars we got, that’s all we got. Don’t ask too many questions, customer, because there’s just no inventory right now. Do you think that’s gonna be shifting?
Stephan Woessner:
Yeah, I do. Because I think you went from a 17-18 million industry down to about a 12 million industry with this closed down. And the interesting thing across this whole industry has been that this has affected everybody equally. Toyota isn’t the better off than Ford and GM, and everybody is short of these chips that now are absolutely critical to running cars, which in many cases are run by a bunch of minicomputers. Those chips are very integral to the vehicles being able to do the things that people expect their cars to be able to do. So everybody was equally impacted by it. And what you’re going to start to see is there’s plenty of demand. The industry is still there. And the reality is they just don’t have enough production to meet that demand. But as this stuff starts to improve, and I would say probably over the next 12 months it’ll start to get significantly better, the manufacturers are going to ramp up production. So then the question becomes, how are you handled, how you treated. And that’s where I look at the customization when it comes to handling the customers. If you look right now the technology in cars is amazing. If you look at the technology in the manufacturing facilities, also very amazing. I mean, it’s like a spaceship in there. But you walk into your average dealership, and the technology is basically what it was 20 years ago. And in many cases that technology has to catch up. And the ability to work with it has to catch up. So I think you’re going to find a very different experience in the future.
Bant Breen:
Yes, I think you’re hitting on something, which is kind of the roller coaster ride that we’ve been on. I just think that this whole electric thing has created such excitement with customers, but I don’t know where we are. I mean, do you see this happening quickly? How’s this gonna shape?
Stephan Woessner:
I think you’re gonna start to see things happening quickly because a lot of the battery technology has gotten a lot better, they have much greater range, they’re smaller, they take up less room, they last longer, a lot of that technology change that I was talking about has affected electric vehicles and made them much more of a real viable proposition.
I think the biggest delay you’re going to see is the infrastructure to support it. And what that means is having charging stations pretty much at every gas station, and you have accelerated charging, so it’s almost the time it takes you to charge your car is what it would take you to fill up your car. So there’s not a huge difference. And again, that technology is there. But when you start to take a look at the infrastructure across the country there are huge stretches of the country that literally have no charging station, so you can’t drive for 4000 on this thing. And I think that’s going to take time. But I do think that this is gonna happen from a time standpoint relatively quickly. I think you’re going to see in the next 10 years, and probably the next four or five, a significant number of electric vehicles coming out like the Lightning, like these other vehicles.
Bant Breen:
Yes, absolutely. I think that probably is the decision set with the electric car buyers right now, which is they’re looking for those charging stations and where they can get them and if it’s expanded, that’s going to offer tremendous opportunities going forward. But let’s go back to the dealership stuff for a second because some of the things that you were talking about in terms of the reinvention of that dealership give me a sense of as a customer what my experience might start to evolve to be like.
Stephan Woessner:
Well, I think first and foremost, the transition between the sort of digital experience that you have now where you go on and look for vehicles is very smooth. And then a lot of times you go to the dealership, and the experience there is more challenging, shall we say. And I think what we’re going to find is that the connectivity and the similarity between those two experiences are going to be much greater.
Bant Breen:
You’re absolutely right. I think the winners over the next five years are going to be the companies that find a way to partner their talent with machine learning and tools that can enhance the capabilities of the offering.
Steve, thank you so much for taking us through all of that. We’ve been speaking with Stephan Woessner. He’s the CEO and founder of Blue Oceans Global Consulting. He’s an automotive business consultant and expert on the future of transportation. Thanks so much for being on the show today, and we look forward to talking to you again.
To see the full interview on the Uncaged Youtube channel, go to: