Bringing back the stick shift, Tesla’s “Investor” Day, Toyota’s EV March

The Automotive Troublemaker w/ Paul J Daly and Kyle Mountsier

Welcome to the month where spring begins! Today we’re covering Toyota’s march toward EVs, Tesla’s investor day, and a resurgence of the manual transmission.

• Incoming Toyota CEO, Koji Sato is preparing to take the baton from long time CEO and industry icon Akido Toyoda on April 1st and he is making his intentions clear that Toyota will be taking a BEV first approach moving forward while maintaining its holistic and measured approach.
  • "To deliver attractive BEVs to more customers, we must streamline the structure of the car, and — with a BEV-first mindset — we must drastically change the way we do business, from manufacturing to sales and service. Now that the time is right, we will accelerate BEV development with a new approach.”
  • Sato is an experienced engineer who leads the Lexus International premium division as well as Toyota's Gazoo Racing motorsports arm.
  • The company recently executed a full tear down of a Model Y and seemed to be impressed with the elegance and efficiency of its design with one executive saying "Taking the skin off the Model Y, it was truly a work of art. It's unbelievable."
  • Toyota plans a strong continuation of its hybrid, plug-in hybrid and hydrogen-powered cars in addition to its development of EVs.
  • Toyota owned Lexus, for example, already has a goal of going fully electric worldwide by 2035 and selling 1 million EVs globally in 2030
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• Today at 4pm EST the much anticipated Tesla Investor Day will begin at the company's Gigafactory in Austin, TX. On Feb 13th, CEO Elon Musk tweeted "Looking forward to Tesla Investor Day on March 1," "By this, we mean the broadest definition of investor, as in the people & life of Earth. It will be a message of good hope & positivity for the future." Musk said he will present Tesla's "Master Plan 3" for "a fully sustainable energy future."
  • Expected announcements include progress toward a low cost Tesla often referred to as the Model 2, news on the company’s plans to increase sales, and also on a variety of topics from its solar business, battery materials, a revamp of the popular Model Y (code named Juniper) and potentially a revamped Model 3 (code named Highland)
  • Anyone can watch the livestream by going to livestream.tesla.com
    
• With all this talk about an EV future, the kids are doing what they do best…pushing back. Just like widespread digital music adoption spurred on a resurgence of the vinyl record, all this EV talk is bringing back the stick shift according to demand data
  • After a 30 year decline, JD Power reports manuals made up 1.7% of sales, over 1.2 in 2022 and .9 in 2021
  • Autotrader is showing a 13% rise in pageviews of manuals over last year
  • 26-year-old ​​Lucas Marcouiller, an engineering salesman in Warwick, R.I., who has purchased three manual vehicles said, “It’s not a statement against electric cars so much as I’m going to try to enjoy the type of driving that’s the most fun to me until I can’t anymore.”

Hosts: Paul J Daly and Kyle Mountsier
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