The future is here, consolidation is already happening. The middle-level shops will now be at the bottom end of the bell curve. What are the trends at the OEM level? Is Uber/Lyft the fleet of the future? What is the outlook of the changing service aftermarket? Recorded Live at the 2022 Institute Summit, Michael Smith, Brian Bates, and AJ Nealey discuss the future; it is happening sooner than we think. Michael Smith, Managing Partner, Herzberg Smith and Co, Michael Smith’s previous episodes HERE Brian Bates, Eagle Automotive Service, Littleton, CO, 9 locations. Brian’s previous episodes HERE AJ Nealey, Nealey Auto Service, Edgewater, MD. AJ’s previous episodes HERE Show Notes
- Trends- what's happening at the OEM level? What are the automotive companies doing now and what are they planning to do? How fast they're planning to do it?
- What they do now is what we will experience three to five years down the road.
- Dealership service department- struggling to retain and hire technicians
- As a manufacturer, dealerships are a necessary evil in their world because they have to have somebody distribute the parts, distribute the cars, interact with the customers, etc.
- Car buying experience- is the salesperson/car lot necessary?
- Do we have an opportunity to manage/repair fleets? Imagine Uber and Lyft are the fleets of the future.
- The emotion is the connection- how do we accept self-driving vehicles? Your identity?
- There's a global movement around ESG, Environment, Society, and Governance. And the concept of it is to have this green movement, which is being sold through the media.
- If the auto companies can have their way and they dominate all of it, the connectivity, the autonomous, if they have control of all that at the auto company level, they estimate it's a 34 billion a year profit for the automotive industry versus if they lose touch with this and Uber's shared mobility and all this gets distributed, 5 to 6 billion a year in profit.
- Baby boomers want out of the industry- buyers market for shop
- In the future, there will be fewer competitors who are bigger. And more sophisticated, and many of the marginal shops will have been long gone. The middle-level shops will now be at the bottom end of that bell curve. And so the whole industry has taken giant leaps forward