Reimagine Mobility Podcast: Customer Experience Through Automotive Technology w/ Chris Reed
Welcome everyone to the latest podcast series, of Reimagined Mobility. I'm here with Chris Reed from Nissan. Thanks, Chris, for joining us. Really appreciate it.
Maybe to start out, give us a little background of what you're doing at Nissan, what your current role is, and then we'll jump right into it and start the discussion here on how how you see mobility changing and how you see from your perspective and the corporate perspective obviously reimagined as mobility of the future. Great. Stephan. You have this great, great chance to have a talk. Yeah. Just quickly. Kind of mechanical engineer. Went to Virginia Tech came up to Michigan to work for Nissan and I actually was the first first U.S.
engineer to work for Nissan when they decided to kind of transplant the operation into the U.S.. And, you know, I think Nissan's a company where they're a little bit different, you know, a little more trendsetter as far as like reaching out in the regions and powering the regions and not just having the core control with with downstream execution, but try to get more upstream in the regions as well. So I got lucky to start on that. And I was never to be a young engineer sitting with like, you know, 15 or 20 Japanese engineers in at that time who had, you know, kind of introductory English capability. And I was just sitting there trying to learn and it was like they're speaking to Japanese. And I was like trying to stay awake, basically. So.
So that was the beginning. And then but the fun part was, is that all of the people who came to start up the organization were kind of the hotshot future talent of Nissan, but yet they were young. So it was like their first assignment, of course, because it was the beginning of fleet of foreign assignments.
And later, you know, you didn't know it then, but those guys ended up growing up to be the top of the organization. And so now when I look at the very top of the hour, not just R&D, but R&D at business and quality organizations globally, there are people that I've worked with over the years, so I had that kind of fortunate chance, right, to be kind of trained by the the people that are at the top now. So at least I know the way they think. And I know a lot of, you know, the the pros and cons of the way they are as well. But so I kind of grew up as an engineer working in body design, and I kind of went through my career and I took a little detour for eight years to start a construction company. So that's a different story.
But I did that for a while in 2008. Wasn't a great time to be building houses, so I came back to work for Nissan and I've had better back over that. So lucky enough to kind of go through the testing side of the organization like Safety and Crash and restraints and things like that, and then all of the testing areas. And then I went to Japan as a chief engineer for the Murano, got the chance to see the full upstream from the kind of steps phase all the way to launch and then come back to the U.S.
and follow through the lifecycle in our massive Mississippi plant. And I kind of have ownership from the very creation to the very end of the project. So that was a fun experience.
And then I got lucky enough to kind of be in the right place at the right time with the right performance and got to be the head of the organization. Now in the Americas, which we kind of merged over the last few years to take over North and South America from from here. And of course, we're still a satellite of Japan, but we're kind of executing the vehicles. And basically what that means is lost the cars maintain the lifecycle of course, for upstream as much as we can, although we're like 1/10 the size of Japan. So for global models, they're going to be kind of platform design and the Japan and then they'll be carried to a certain level, then transferred to the regions. That's for ...
But of course in the U.S. we're fortunate because deep platform where the bigger cars are going to be the ones that are more region specific. In that case, we will take basic capacity.
You know, we have a lot of cars we manage because we got, you know, I don't know, six, seven plants in the North and South America. So we can't do it all. But where, you know, cars like the Titan or the or the frontier or others where we can actually have ownership from the, you know, the sourcing and digital and then, you know, physical in launch type phase. So a little bit of that. And then we do a lot of the other which is going to managing the global products as well.
So that's kind of how we integrate with the globe. And then what I've been doing to get me to where I am now. What a great story.
This is good. I knew about your construction thing. I think you when we first met years ago, that's that's the one thing that always stuck with me, which I think is great. So maybe let's, let's jump right in and then I'm going to I'm going to throw something out and then allow you to either confirm or maybe disagree a little bit. But I believe Nissan oftentimes is not really mentioned when you were talking about EVs.
Right. Because you guys were in my opinion, you guys were one of the first ones with the Nissan Leaf. Yet it seems to be conveniently oftentimes forgotten by industry and industry experts. All everybody's talking about Tesla. Obviously, we're talking about Honda and ... I mean, sorry, Toyota, maybe mainly with their with their Prius line, which is really hybrids.
But I think you guys have been at the forefront of pushing the future of mobility, trying to reimagine mobility. And I think the Leaf has been there all along, so to speak. What is your perspective on that? Yeah, it's interesting.
One time I was actually I was the chief engineer at only Regional for the Leaf at some point when it did the minor change. So we, you know, we launched it as a cute little bug looking car for a while and that, and that that was that was the beginning in 2010. Right. And then it came and we did a refresh. I forgot what year was, but it was something like, I know 17, 18, something like that. And I was in charge of the execution of that. And so that was one where, as I mentioned, where it was kind of started in Japan.
And then, you know, we've worked out the kinks, got it figured out with the plant, launched it. So I did have a lot of familiarity with the project at the same time. So I had a chance to go up.
I think I was up at the out of the car thing, the automotive research Briefing seminar up north, and I was speaking a bit about the, you know, the future of Nissan and things like that in electric space. And I think the same sort of flavor comes up in the conversation. And so at that time, I remember making a statement and I'm sure that our comms people were not so happy with me, but they were like, I was like, you know, we're kind of the wallflower of the EVs, you know, type thing.
And that probably wasn't the message that I was given, you know, But it was really that what you just said. I mean, this guy, like, everybody knows that. And so like I said, as kind of a in my my casual speak speaking way, and then it turns out that got quoted. Yeah, who knew there was media people in the audience, But so that was my famous quote. But but yeah, I mean, it's kind of interesting. So, I mean, as a ...
you know, to be I was really proud of Nissan in general to take that plunge because, you know, we're we're very good at developing, refining and tuning. And we've been doing cars for hundred years. And it's like the car is always going to be one inch bigger, average, shorter to be read a better drag or whatever it is, and a little 25 more horsepower. And then we we have great execution and good quality and and nice, you know, perceived quality things. This is great.
And then, you know, we work on our durability and all the things, but it's like, does that stand out? Well, it does to a degree. And that's where we have, you know, between six and 10% market share with our EVs. This was a breakthrough for the company where we actually decided to go for something as ahead of everyone, not just benchmarking what the others are doing.
So this real proud about that at the same time, because we didn't, you know, we didn't wreck and, you know, of course you were first. So then you have to take decide what you want to do. So we decided to go with kind of a maybe the the niche type people or that people who were like, wanted to do something. They weren't sure. So we decided to be different than the rest of the cars. And obviously maybe that or and then is kind of value based proposition.
So I'm always very sensitive now when I talk to my engineering teams or marketability teams or everybody, and they're always like they're overthinking it from an engineering standpoint. And this what happened on the Leaf, I think it's like we had data from, you know, from all over the world about how many miles everybody drives per day and the distribution is less than 70 miles and everybody should be fine. And 30 miles just don't want all this other stuff. And then the car would have had like 90 miles or, you know, range on a on a like 24 kilowatt hour battery. And of course, we had to create this supply chain and the manufacturing process and everything that had to be done with it in the entire ecosystem and create a charging network, which at the time when you didn't know about customer acceptance now and some companies were throwing billions of dollars into it, we were sowing tens and tens and tens of millions. And it's not like a lot of money.
And it was a gamble. And yet and then we had our own. We had to create a protocol chademo So there was so many headwinds in that thing. Proud of the company.
But in the end of the day, I think what got us was this kind of trying to be perfectly value placed. And, you know, our customers are they're emotional, they're very emotional. And we know that the design of the car is a part of that. The experience of the car is a part of that. And yet we had a car that was well-executed and did what it was supposed to do. And you would you would be fine.
You know, 99% of the time you're going to be good to go. But then every customer is like in my wife included, because we got one. And she was like, Yeah, but I have to go to Michigan State and what if my daughter needs something? You know, like, so that whole we know this whole story, right? This ran it started with that it didn't have the the wows-pizzazz factor of course. Yeah. It was a car that was trying to be reasonably priced and accessible to all.
So all those great ideas, which was very like pragmatic because it was like a pragmatic approach in a breakthrough new market that didn't really didn't didn't build momentum and magnify, you know, so so and then, you know, we took that, you know, and then of course, we're working with the platform where we're trying to decide the customer, except that wasn't really there for the second gen. And so we were like, okay, well, we understand this thing. We're going to go up to 150 miles of range. That should be that's kind of within the capacity of the platform that we had. We'll make it look a lot more car like instead of a little bit unique, like and then we did that and so it was like a cute little Sentra car and and it looks good has got the all the styling characteristics of Nissan the emotion and all the good stuff has a lot of 50 mile range.
You almost eliminated the the range anxiety thing and I think there was two versions of the later that was wanted you know to ordered whatever and and even my wife started driving it and she eliminated the whole range anxiety that was great of the car. And we had two of them. Everything was great. Well, again, now you've eliminated the range issues, but you've kind of now you're in the world of it's just a normal looking car. And now the people who are in the market who are driving and of course we know what happened with tussle and all that is like, we want a sex appeal, we want something that's amazing.
I want more power than I would ever need and I want all these things. So then it wasn't that we completely missed that. I mean, we kind of we just we decided to got to fix the problems. The PDCA, you know, of the things that we had.
And we did a good job at that. And it built up some momentum. But again, market acceptance may be okay.
The people that drive it love it, but not widespread. Right? Didn't have the I never had the volume. It should have hit. So so now we lost that momentum. In the end of the day, even though it's a good car build, smart.
We manage the battery, we do all that stuff. And my wife was incredibly disappointed when I had to turn it in recently waiting for the next. Now, of course, Arias is a huge, monumental step up. But then I look at data in the market, right? I mean, you're so right, you know, and we ran surveys, you know, like, okay, high tech knowledge, you recognition, EV leadership, blah, blah, blah, blah.
You can get the data on the market. And it's like Nissan was like number seven and number eight right in the EV especially now. And in Japan, it's like number one, right? Because it's like the customers a little more recognize. And then Nissan is number two and you know, they got the top three over there. And so there's recognition of that. And then we're like Eve leadership.
We have a different kind of a solution for our hybrid, which is we go E power is very successful there and all it all is good stuff. It's funny how we're way above Toyota in that sense. But here, I mean, like you said, Toyota was like number two or three. And when it was asked like, who's the leader? And they give, you know, of course, because customers are not really sure what exactly EV means, they probably go to the degree that everybody knows a Prius, you drive an Uber on the West Coast, you find a Prius is so so this whole momentum thing that they had kept that thing. So then we have like the recognition there from the dealers, from the customers, from this. We lost that momentum.
And of course we were like, hey, we sold a million of these cars, you know, between Aria and and Leaf across the world. And so in a lot of miles is successful in Europe and all that. So it's like we know we have it, the technical capability, you know, we can we're bragging, of course, or or let's say, confident about our track record in the market. We have, you know, whatever. I forget all the numbers, but it's like 6 billion miles traveled or something.
And we had no thermal incidents. We've got no issues like that. We traded respects in the beginning. There probably there may be like overly, incredibly severe because we were trying to set the bar high. Good is our first time and there was no other work in the industry.
So so that's kind of where we are. And, and that s what happened. And so now it's about taking that foundation, which is broad and maybe below water just a little bit, and then say like, what we can do is take all of our good skills now to, to do better and improvise and meet the customer need and then jump out of the water. And so that's what the Aria is the first step on. And now are working on a whole slew of products, which is kind of our 2030 ambitions.
And we've talked about, you know, roughly 40% in the U.S. market for penetration or 50% globally or whatever. And of course now we know all the regulations are changing that and the IRA is changing that. Everything's going to make that even more challenging and severe for Tier four and for CAFE and all the things we know is that are coming. So the good news is we're bright, we're poised for that know it knowledge and background.
We just kind of can predict or can accept what the reality is for what happened. And then it wasn't like we had made, you know, bad technology and bad quality and that it was just a slight mismatch. And the customer need an experience that we know is a lot more emotional than pragmatics. And we just now and we recognizing that and we're just kind of poised to going to accelerate.
Cool, cool. You mentioned something very interesting, Curtis, you're talking about and you just mentioned at the end you transformation that the industry is in, right? Regulations, a societal pressure, government intervention, so to speak. IRA would be an example. Europes working on their own.
China does their thing. So we see all these different things now. Now we see the Chinese OEMs really coming on strong and really focusing on infotainment on on on lower cost EVs, pushing heavily into Europe. So there's all these different dimensions of of private and public intervention or guidelines and all this stuff. Societal pressure, company strategies.
You just mentioned the 2030 goals you guys have that then suddenly all we have to maybe change it again. We see the same thing with individual right supporting all of the global OEMs and the large suppliers and exactly see the same thing. We see Asia going this way, we see Europe going that way. Do you see US going this way. As Nissan, all that said, us as as Nissan is truly one of the few truly global players right? North America, South America, Europe, for sure.
Asia, obviously. What is the most interesting thing that you see, Chris, and I know your response for for the Americas, but you have overview, obviously on all the different things that's going on. What is the most interesting few things that you see? Nissan is challenged with trying to figure out how to suffice all these different does different or similar directions that the different markets or different regions are going as it relates to reimagining mobility And what you have to do because to customers is is really driving you what they want with with decisions right. Now I think there's I think two points that stand out for me. And one is changing the company from a transactional relationship to an experience relationship.
And I think we've seen other companies that have that are doing a good job at that. We we want to be the same. And the other is like a trend to more regional well because experience now is becoming transaction to experience experiences. There's cultural and regional differences. So the customers now are had different requirements because if you think about, you know, obviously we have autonomous, we have EV and connected as our main pillars like everybody.
And the connected side obviously is very, you know, very customer, region, customer specific. And there are probably be some similarities and I think some other companies are trying to make more similarity across the globe. But we're seeing a very more of a unique customer needs. So that's one of the things that's customer customer focus because you're going from transactional experience and then that experience needs to be and then the speed, of course.
And that's the thing where when you try to make a global level leaning between multiple different brands or, you know, arms within the company globally, like your speed will never be there. So then because speed is a priority and customer is maybe could be common, but probably reasonably unique, it starts there, then we that speed and customer uniqueness starts to create a tendency towards regional behavior and that highly you have the supply chain challenges that we've gone through the last three or four years and then the things you just talked about, which is the different regulatory environments and they're kind of converging. I mean, you know, obviously three or four years ago, it looks like we were diverging on that in the U.S. and now we're getting back on track and now we might even get more severe. So, of course, you know, from any auto company, especially the powertrain planning teams, which are now I've played teams as well and but yet ICE is still going to be there. So how do you do both with your with the resources that you have? And then you have incredible uncertainty in the area that used to have the most certainty, right, The road map for powertrain development and things, you know, and I and IPC that we used that we've joined together so many times and has really seen that change.
You know, five, six years ago it was all about ice and this and emissions and what have you. And then it was about kind of mobility. EV And now to EV, I mean, so are that environment has changed dramatically in five years. And so you've been to I've been talking to our powertrain leadership as well constantly of obviously and then you know, you know, that kind of pink-black scenario concept where you have the worst, the best, you know, the pink is the good scenario, the black is the bad scenario and the powertrain community, that's usually the black black scenario you have to guard for because you can't shift gears very easily. And the reality is in today's environment, we have uncertainty.
I mean, you know, there's like all your tier four regulation, let's eliminate fuel and let's do this. Let's have cafe, let's have gas grab greenhouse gas. Is it going to change next year with new administration? Oh, my God. You know, like, that's the environment. That's very easy. Right? And if you pick the blackest scenario every single time this most of your case, you might miss the entire market if things change. So now we're trying to talk to and it's like, well, we don't really have the resources to be able to go with like three different paths, you know, for fundamental powertrain development paths at the same time.
So, you know, that's I think those challenges all come together that so regionalization that that kind of proliferates the powertrain complexity at the same time regionally unique regulatory environment differences and then the things that are kind of chopping up the globe from a supply chain viewpoint are just huge. And then you match that with customer uniqueness. It's like the most complex environment you could possibly imagine, and especially if you're the powertrain team tried to paint the scenario and ask how much money you're going to need in the next five years. Clearly, clearly, you mentioned it used a very interesting word, speed.
It's a it's a word I quite often use in our organization as well, Right? Because to us, I see the industry not just in the U.S., but globally. Right. Different players move at different speeds. But the fundamental common denominator, everybody talks about speed.
Everybody talks about it's no longer accepted. It takes three, four years to come out with a new powertrain, with a new platform. It's now two years or less, right? In some cases, maybe overly aggressive.
In a lot of cases, realistic doesn't matter. But I think speed I think we all agree is the industry is moving faster than it ever has. Probably pushed a little bit by some of the startups that showed us that we can do it right or it is doable.
But nevertheless, I think we all agree. Question for you is what I've noticed over the last three, maybe five years is this this mindset of technology leadership, as I call it, which is design, is, I think, still important. The feel of of a car when you sit is still important.
But I feel like I see more and more companies focusing on maybe what the newer generation of customers are looking for, which is technology, right? I look at a Tesla, I look at some of the newer vehicles you talked about, right? The Leaf. You said good feedback on technology. I feel like the technology component and how OEMs like you and this is where I want your feedback I would like to have your feedback are focusing on is is moving more and more to include also technology, not just design, not just quality, not just reliability, but really enticing the buyers with, hey, this is a high compute platform on wheels that is fun to drive that essentially moves you from the office, from the living room seamlessly also into the car. So interesting to see your perspective on this technology leadership becoming more and more important and a driving force. Well, you're absolutely right. I mean, it is. And it's a pillar of what we're also talking about.
But I also have my I guess, like not only concerns, but just things to think about in my mind. And that is we're seeing transaction prices go up. Right.
That was a supply issues is technology is raw materials. There's lots of things there and then the industry as a whole and then we're also seeing the pressure, you know, on on the lower end of the market. Right. So we have a lot of great well, you're seeing people leave the lower end of the market right into the sedans.
And it's a it's a tendency of the consumer anyways that used to be 60% sedans. Now it's whatever 70 80% truck and as you saw but the affordability issue is why they get concerned about because we can make amazing technology is and it's like you know we're going to you know we're going to have things like LIDAR and we have this and that in the future I mean, all these great things are going to be amazing for autonomous hands free. Well, I was out of Silicon Valley this week and then review with my team out there as far as what we're doing. And, you know, obviously driving on the streets and we were doing hand-to-hand free tours and then you got the Googles and the Waymo's driving around in the you know, in in the things you read about in the news in San Francisco. So
which is great. And then you have then you have this the the EV side which we know in that in the transition before you get to the next generation of batteries it's going to it's clearly I don't know it's triple the cost of the powertrain or something like that between an engine ice engine to a battery in a in a but in a motors in combination. So and then you have the technology that we're all striving to be more of, you know, software defined vehicle and in interactive things, which by itself doesn't cost a lot. It's an architecture issue. Of course, the development teams that are behind that stuff is something that we're going to growing and learning about the size of the teams because I think with the in the past it was more fixed like, okay, we decide today, four years later, we're going to have a cross car line plan for this technology. This is whatever we go spend $100 million.
All the teams that make, you know, 300 billion lines of code in the thing and then we're kind of locked down. The wireframe is all there. It's like, Oh, let's change it all really quick. It's like, No, we can't do that it like four years and make the thing. So it's like, that's where the speed's eating us up.
I think it's conventional automakers, not just the automaker, but the supply base. And everybody use the validate that's needed. You know, this careful like, you know, we have internal policies about having, you know, kind of perfection in our first production build and you can't have anything is not off to a process. And all these things. And it's like and yet the others are like doing like a run fall run strategy or we're doing like a crawl, a crawl walk, get ready and then good to go. And I think we'll be careful about running.
We're going to have knee pads on. So it's like, you know, there's this thing about that's the speed factor, right? So it's like the commitment to technology, which we want to do, which is we're used to doing that in a long term basis, need to do on a fast, agile basis, of course, and it changes the architecture and changes everything and then finally come back to, you know, for me it's like, I love Nissan because we're kind of like pushing technology for all. And it's not just a tagline because, you know, like I remember watching our, our, our, our propilot assist technology, which is now pretty widespread in the market, but we were one of the, you know, one of the early adopters and we put it on not our high, super expensive Infiniti, we put it on the road.
Right. And why did we do that? Because we wanted to have it accessible to people and we didn't just put another super premium platinum plus that no one could afford. We put it down that line and we put out Altima and Rogue and we said, you know, so it's like we our strategy is to develop technology for kind of, you know, for all or make it accessible. So then that was our propilot assist. And yeah, of course that market's going very quickly and we have our ARIA, which is our propilot assist, you know, 2.0 and it's got, you know, hands free, eyes on and all that good stuff.
And so now we're looking at the next level, the next level, the next level. So obviously were fired up for more technology. Also thinking about how do you make that accessible for all or at least more accessible to the regular models that you have yet you're seeing transaction prices going up now. And I'm talking to our sales and marketing experts and they're like, well, people are going to be shifting to just used cars so they will be afford it.
So what are we going to do about that? Well, this is the challenge back to us as an industry, right? It's like we need to we really need to get, you know, this parity concept of power train or because that would be nice. It's great to say everybody would like to do that. And then we have customers that are uncertain and it's like 300 miles range and not really. I'd really like to have 500 miles range. Okay, great. Make it two times bigger. Battery. So we need that technology to evolve.
And then there's then there's the tech that the software defined vehicle and over-the-air updates. And I know that everybody's making a lot of strides there so but anyways it all comes back to me in the discussions that we're in about, yeah, we're pushing the envelope for these things, but how do you do that? And also make it accessible and do it fast and have it up to updatable? I mean, you know, it's like the challenges that we didn't have that five years ago. We don't have any of that now. We have all of that. Right. Right. I mean, this is something I've noticed over the last 15 years, right? When I first got into telematics and infotainment. That was about 15 years ago.
And we already felt there is a lot of consumer electronics pushing into the vehicle and making it more complex. And now software defined vehicle, which an entire architecture has to change, all your control modules have to change. You may go to now domain controllers. The central compute platforms and all sounds great, but that's just a tip of the iceberg. What's below? It's what you're saying costs a lot of money, requires a lot of change and at the end of the day, it's just becoming more complex.
Right. Interesting point. You mentioned about your system putting it into all types of different vehicles, not just the high end. I think this is something I don't know who pioneered it, but I always remember Ford Sync when they did it right. The hands free system they came out with not just on the high end, putting in the low end.
And that really to me started this hands free module or hands free system pushed by everybody which everybody did loft and today I'm still amazed how many people have their phones in their hands on the drive driving around. But more or less every car now has it today which I think is great. So we have a couple of more minutes left.
Chris, I want to ask you one final question then. Please feel also free to share some of your own thoughts you had. But what's to you? The one defining thing that's got to happen to truly reimagine mobility going forward is it to the truly capable software over the air upgrades, sort of how we're all envisioning it's going to be, but it's not yet, is it? EVs for everyone? Again, it's not just your average sales price is 60,000, but exactly as you said, it comes down to the whatever, 30, 35, maybe 40,000. What is one of the things that you feel it needs to happen for us to really use this technology that we have today, But putting into products to now make reimagined mobility a reality? Yeah, I see. I think there's probably a there's there's got to be a collaboration element there that that the way that even Nissan's traditional relationship with our supply base probably needs to change and that this is the speed factor too that there's a trust factor speed communication there's that but it's also just about how to be nimble where it's like, here's a desire. You quote this, you make it, you make it very clear we got 55 pages of very clear requirements and all this other stuff and then it like, then the change it Werner on.
I always I were nervous as like, well this is going to wait for change orders and you know, whatever, you know, And so that's kind of old school, right? And so how are we going to be nimble and, and make a half the development time, which we are going to have more problems or to have to solve at the last minute and be nimble to make this great experience for the customer without making costs go crazy. So, yeah, it's like that's what I think about anyways. It's like we need to think about think differently. I mean, we're not going to be able to just say, okay, everybody take half the time out of what they used to do this kind of in series process. And yeah, there's a lot of parallel paths that we always have had in manufacturing, but as a Korean build ability and all those things.
And then but I think the relationship with the supply base is back a little bit, a little more in series, or at least it's kind of like you do it, you do will do it, we'll do it. We do. And I think it's something we should have to think about because in the end of the day, you know, we know that there's going to be transition of of ice in the market. You know, is the person you talk to a friend probably that's just like, you know, that you'll find half your people that are like I don't really you know, they don't really buy into the concepts. And so that's experience based that, you know, we know as an industry we're going to solve these problems, right? We're going to get to the right amount of range.
We're not going to have range anxiety. We're going to have infrastructure that's that's going growing by leaps and bounds. And eventually that speed of charge will be we're going to solve these problems as an industry. But the transition is the hard one when you bet too much on one thing and customer acceptance again, this is that this is the trump card that we all have to work with because like we said, we had a product that as if you if you took the time to evaluate it and love it with the leaf and use it and realize that it was functional, it works and it wasn't too it was a Goldilocks, I guess I'll change it for a wallflower. The Goldilocks, just the right rates, just the right cause, just the right everything. Just the right experience. It was spot on.
Now, how do you get the same feeling like that? And so now we got all these new things. We're going to invest all this time and effort in the right ev balance, the right amount of connected, the right amount of autonomous. And then and yet, you know, you can hear articles that were kind of exaggerated and all this stuff like, oh, autonomous is moving way too fast and putting traffic cones on cars in San Francisco.
It's like yet that is moving very fast as well. I mean, that's not that's going to keep going. And it's got to be the comfort level changes because customers kind of look rearward.
They're not sure what they want to look forward. There's always going to be the front of the curve for people who are early adopters. Yeah, that's fine, but that's not the main market.
That doesn't support us as a support supplier OE relationship to invest, you know, all our future money into this direction. And so it's just a balancing act between the two of us. So I think that's collaboration between us is the thing that will make a successful.
We're going to have to gamble on some of the customer acceptance and and work together to kind of educate and teach and a good experience based stuff. So I think that as have been the paths I mean, who likes to go to the dealership and take a test drive now it's like worries are just picking and going and so we're going to have to kind of work together to solve those problems and I guess to be successful. And, you know, I know it's going to work. I know we're going to solve these problems, but we got to pick the right gamble so we all have enough money to get to the end of the rainbow. Tipping You picked the right gambles and you pick the right team members and again, change that supplier customer relationship that you talked about, which I completely agree. I think this is this is something that we've been dealing with for 20 plus years and we always talk about. But I think now at this point, we need to do it because we see how many OEMs and suppliers collaborate, right? How many we collaborate with us.
As AVL, you have your partners collaborate with. If I go back ten, 15 years, collaboration was like, no, unless I absolutely have to. Today it becomes much more standard because I think it's a need as well. And I think this is where where you're hinting at. I think it's very, very accurate.
Thank you very much, Chris, for your time. And thank you very much for tuning in and helping us reimagine mobility together. I love the podcast. You guys put a lot of energy into it, so congrats to get the good visibility and conversation going. Great. Chris, Thank you. Thanks for listening.
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2023-09-20 10:26
