Ford’s Farley Discussed Plans, Rivian Opens More Service Centers, NBA is winning NFTs

The Automotive Troublemaker w/ Paul J Daly and Kyle Mountsier

Welcome a fresh, shiny new month as we kick off the last full month of Summer with news about Ford CEO, Jim Farley’s comments on a recent shareholder call, Rivian’s service center plans, and the reason NBA fans are helpling the adoption of Web 3 move forward.

• Ford CEO Jim Farley discusses battery and sales model plans in earnings call
  • In March the company announced plans to build 2M EVs annually by 2026. There have been many skeptics on how this could be achieved
  • In the July 21st call, Farley said the company has nearly everything it needs to make 600k vehicles in 2023 and 70% of what it needs to hit the 2026 goal
  • Farly says the company will focus more on upgrading tech and motors and less on body-style upgrade similar to Tesla
  • When discussing the franchise model, Farley said it puts Ford at a $2k per car disadvantage and will look to made-to-order model, and changing the way they market vehicles, pushing dealers to focus on delivery, education, and service to bridge the gap
  • Take away: Body style…you mean like BMW. Also, dealers could do well to lean into delivery, education, and service. Is there a revenue model here?
• Rivian expands service centers in US and opens its first in Canada
  • "Post-sale support is a consistent challenge for startup automakers, as it's always more demanding, resource-intense and costly than startup CEOs can conceive," said Karl Brauer, executive analyst for iSeeCars. "This is one of the reasons the franchise dealership model has worked so well for traditional automakers — it allows the automaker to design, engineer and build vehicles, while dealers focus on selling and servicing them," Brauer said.
  • Rivian’s South San Francisco service center has become more than a service location as customers now show up to see the vehicles and even test drive
  • Rivian has 21 service centers open in the US, in larger metros such as: Atlanta, Chicago, Denver, Houston, Las Vegas and Orlando.
  • 6 more are planned by the end of the year as recent layoffs have not affected service operations. A second Bay Area service station will open soon in San Jose
  • Rivian is focusing on delivering 25k vehicles this year which is far less than it’s production backlog of almost 100k vehicles
• NBA puts on a full court press w NFTs as the most progressive Web 3 Sport
  • Spencer Dinwiddie says locker room convos less about cars, girls and more about blockchain, tech, and investment
  • The NBA has built in collector mindset and lots of tech savvy owners like Steve Ballamer (Golden State Warriors and Mark Cuban, (Dallas Mavericks)
  • Another major turning point was a partnership between the NBA, its players association, and Vancouver-based Blockchain developer Dapper Labs in 2019. That partnership resulted in NBA Top Shot, an NFT marketplace where fans buy, sell, and trade highlight-worthy digital clips of NBA moments.

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Hosts: Paul J Daly and Kyle Mountsier
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