TOGETHER WITH:
Howdy, Fam!
Somebody just did the math on car ownership: $5,851 a year on top of the loan payment. That number is already circulating in your customers' feeds, which means the dealers who know it cold, and can talk through it calmly, walk in with a real advantage over the ones hoping the topic doesn't come up.
Also in today's email...
What happened when a platform manager handed Claude the keys to a dealership's inventory system
BYD's plan to become "a European company" before tariffs force the issue
A few quick hits, including oil's jump past $108 a barrel and AI leaders spooking tech stocks
Keep Pushing Back,
Chris with Paul, Kyle & Kristi
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Someone Else Is Telling Your Customers How Affordable Cars Are(n’t)
New CNBC reporting puts the cost of owning a car, on top of the loan payment, at $5,851 a year. That number is circulating in headlines this week, landing right on top of slipping dealer sentiment and looser, riskier credit.
The math:
Insurance: $2,237/year (up 50% since 2019)
Gas: $2,126/year (up 55%)
Maintenance: $1,488/year (up 23.5%)
That's before the loan itself, averaging $765/month new, $542/month used.
The Anxiety Is Real. The Information Gap Is Where Dealers Can Win.
Insurance is climbing partly because newer vehicles carry pricier-to-repair electronics, and insurers price that risk directly into premiums. Most shoppers have no idea that connection exists until they're signing paperwork. A customer walking in already primed by a scary headline isn't a lost sale. They're a customer who needs real numbers instead of anxiety doing the talking.
So when a customer brings up the ownership-cost headline they saw this morning, does your team have real numbers ready, or just reassurance?
What Happens to Your Calls After 6pm?
Every dealership has hours it can't fully staff: nights, weekends, after the service department closes.
Those calls used to go to voicemail, or a competitor. Until McGovern Automotive put Mia on them:
800+ after-hours appointments booked every month
13K+ after-hours appointments since April 2025
$1.4M+ in RO revenue that didn't exist before
"That's a lot of ROI for times we didn't have people available to answer the phones," said Danielle DaSilva, McGovern's Service BD Director.
What's happening on your phones right now?
Who Should Own AI at Your Dealership?
That's the question one dealership's IT lead brought to Kyle Mountsier fresh off NCM Friends and Family. The answer arrived fast, and it wasn't good.
🎙️ Full story on today's Automotive State of the Union episode.
A platform manager built an automated used-car pricing dashboard across several stores. Asked how, the answer: "I gave Claude my IMS credentials." A dealership's inventory system, handed to a frontier model, with zero IT governance in the loop.
The dashboard worked. That's exactly the problem.
Kyle's three other takeaways from the week:
Community (20 Groups and peer relationships are more valuable than ever),
Context (institutional knowledge, not just data, is what makes AI useful to a specific store), and
Confusion (vendors used to agree on what's next; that alignment is gone).
Consider this
Ask whether any employee has ever shared login credentials with an AI tool.
BYD Is Racing to Become "a European Company" Before Tariffs Force the Issue
BYD unveiled a heavy-duty electric truck built specifically for Europe this week, but the real news was Executive VP Stella Li's announcement that BYD will manufacture everything it sells there locally, calling it the path to sidestep tariffs already hitting Chinese EVs.
Volkswagen's New Concept Set an Aerodynamic Record, and the Internet Nicknamed It Instantly
VW's Mission Efficiency concept hit a record Cd of 0.158, using a solar roof and clad wheels to cut consumption to 6.89 kWh/100km. The r/cars crowd nicknamed it "the XL2" before VW said the word, and debated whether "near-production" means anything reaches a dealer lot.
Inventory Is Tightening as Financing Gets More Expensive
New-vehicle days' supply fell to 73 days in August, the lowest since spring 2025, even as the average listing price held at $49,486.
Meanwhile, new-vehicle loan APRs have risen 35 basis points since July, and the Fed is now seen as 86% likely to hike rates this week.
🚘 Car Stuff
Stellantis CEO Says the World Is Splitting Into "the US and Everywhere Else." Antonio Filosa said Stellantis relies on domestic engineering in the US while partnering with Chinese automakers like Leapmotor and Dongfeng everywhere else.
Toyota's New CEO Is Cutting Seat Materials to Fix a Rising Breakeven Point. Kenta Kon is targeting parts complexity as Toyota's operating margin has fallen from 11.9% to a forecast 5.9%.
Boston Dynamics Won't IPO Next Year After All. A Hyundai executive says the humanoid robot maker remains unprofitable and hasn't deployed Atlas robots at scale, pushing a stock debut years further out.
🛢 Not Car Stuff
Oil Prices Surge After Drone Strikes Hit Saudi Pipeline. Brent crude reached $108 a barrel, its highest since May, after attacks forced closure of Saudi Arabia's East-West pipeline, a key route bypassing the Strait of Hormuz.
AI Leaders' Slowdown Call Sends Tech Stocks Tumbling. Nasdaq fell as much as 1.8% Monday after Dario Amodei and Sam Altman both called for pacing AI development, though a late rally in cybersecurity stocks pared the losses.
A Space Station That Fits in One Rocket Launch. Florida startup Max Space unveiled the Thunderbird Station, an expandable module reaching 350 cubic meters in orbit, aiming for a full-size launch by 2029.
1965: Ford Motor Company became the first American manufacturer to offer factory-installed 8-track tape players as an option on select models like the Mustang and Thunderbird.
1978: boxer Muhammad Ali defeats Leon Spinks at the Louisiana Superdome in New Orleans to win the world heavyweight boxing title for the third time in his career, the first fighter ever to do so.
1997: Founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin registered the Google.com domain name after moving away from their original "BackRub" project name.
Thanks for reading, Friend!
