GM Backpedals Subscription Plan, Used Cars EDU, Chat GPT Looking At Pics

The Automotive Troublemaker w/ Paul J Daly and Kyle Mountsier

Welcome to Wednesday as we talk about GM reversing course on a subscription and their CMO taking Barra’s buyout. We also talk about the major wholesale/retail used car gap, as well as the new version of Chat GPT that can tell you what a meme means.

• A reversal in a subscription sales decision after less than a year and a departing CMO have GM is in the news today.
  • Last summer GM began adding a $1500 line item to every new Buick and GMC vehicle for a mandatory On Star subscription
    • Now, they are reversing course for the 2024 year and only including it on premium Denali and Avenir models and making it part of the purchase price
      • The service includes crash detection, remote features, and unlimited data streaming
    • All other models will receive OnStar Remote Access Features for free
• After GM’s announcement of voluntary retirement via a buyout incentive, one of the highest profile exits will be from General Motors Global Chief Marketing Officer Deborah Wahl who started with the company as Cadillac CMO in 2018 and was promoted to Global CMO in 2019
  • Wahl was an auto industry outsider coming from McDonald’s North America and was one of Automotive News’ 100 Leading Women in the North American Auto Industry list in 2000, 2005 and 2020
  • Our friend Dean Evans, EVP at cars.com and former CMO at Hyundai and Subaru encouraged replacement from outside auto: “while we've been sitting here in an archaic industry that needs to move forward, why would we put a retread into that?”
• EDUCATIONAL MOMENT: Wholesale Used car prices are crazy. We’ve personally seen evidence of this in several vAuto accounts and there are experts across the industry talking about it.
  • Wholesale valuations going up and retail values (book value) not keeping up meaning Dealers are buying used cars for thousands more than they can sell them for meaning a front end loss
• Just as you were getting used to the idea (or maybe not) of the Chat GPT AI language model doing your kids homework and writing your next job cover letter, Open AI has announced the new version, GPT-4 which is more advanced and nuanced…and it can look at pictures.
  • The company claims the model is “more creative and collaborative than ever before” and “can solve difficult problems with greater accuracy.” It can parse both text and image input, though it can only respond via text.
  • One way improvements are benchmarked based on the systems performance on standardized tests such as the Uniform Bar Exam, LSAT, SAT Math, and SAT Evidence-Based Reading & Writing exams on which it scored in the 88th percentile

Hosts: Paul J Daly and Kyle Mountsier
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