Acquiring the domain, Pulse on the car market, EVs, DTC, Disrupting vehicle trade-ins | Alex Vetter
发布时间 2023-05-30 12:34:58 来源
摘要
In this episode, I’m speaking with Alex Vetter, co-founder and CEO of Cars.com.
00;00 - Intro
01:25 - Acquiring *the* domain
02:44 - 25th year anniversary
05:13 - Company background
09:08 - Keeping up with the pace of tech
12:03 - Tailwinds & headwinds
13:24 - Where are we headed as an industry
18:38 - EV search share
21:38 - Direct-to-Consumer
26:07 - Wholesale and Retail
36:31 - Leaning into AI
40:13 - The Future of Cars.com
Find Alex on Twitter: https://twitter.com/tavetter
Check out https://dealershipguy.com for more and follow me on Twitter @GuyDealership!
Interested in advertising with CarDealershipGuy? Join the sponsor waitlist here: https://cdgpartner.com
This podcast is for informational purposes only and should not be relied upon as a basis for investment decisions.
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So I'm going to warn you right now that your brand may be irrelevant if I do my job because we're trying to move the industry away from being a dealership and being a retailer, right? So car retail guy, you need to register that someone probably already bought the domain by the time you said that. Pay it, pay up for it. Just like they took car dealership guy.com from me.
我要提醒你，如果我能够做到我的工作，你的品牌可能会变得不相关，因为我们正在努力把这个行业从经销商转变为零售商，对吧？所以作为汽车零售商，你需要记住，当你说出那句话时，可能已经有人买下了相关的域名。赶快买，付款吧。就像他们从我手中拿走了“汽车经销商.com”一样。
What's up everyone? This is car dealership guy. You're listening to the car dealership guy podcast, which is my effort to give you access to the most unbiased and transparent insights into the car market. Let's get into today's episode. Alex Vetter is CEO of Cars Inc. at Founder of Cars.com. One of the original.com's and online automotive marketplaces that has grown to over 28 million monthly visitors. In this conversation, we spoke about how Alex acquired the domain cars.com, how car dealers are evolving in this environment, the unique edge cars has as a business, the things Alex is doing to keep up with a rapid pace of change in tech, electric vehicle interest on cars.com, direct to consumer car sales and leveraging the power of AI and automotive. This was a very special conversation.
大家好，我是汽车经销商。你正在收听我的播客节目《汽车经销商先生》，我希望以此让你们了解最公正透明的汽车市场信息。下面进入今天的节目。Alex Vetter是Cars Inc.的CEO，也是Cars.com的创始人之一。Cars.com是最早的在线汽车市场之一，现已发展到每月2800万访问量。在这次对话中，我们谈到了Alex如何获得cars.com域名，汽车经销商在这个环境中如何发展，cars作为一个业务的独特优势，Alex正在做的事情以跟上技术快速变化的步伐，cars.com对电动汽车的兴趣，直接向消费者销售汽车以及利用人工智能在汽车行业的力量。这是一次非常特别的谈话。
I think Alex spoke very candidly about the state of automotive and I'm excited for you to listen. Oh, and by the way, this was the first live podcast in my home studio. Alex thinks we're making the trip out here. You're a true legend. Here's my conversation with Alex Vetter. All views of car dealership guy and guests on this podcast are solely their opinions. None of the views expressed should be treated as financial advice. This podcast is for informational purposes only.
我认为亚历克斯非常坦诚地谈论了汽车行业的现状，我很期待你们听取。顺便说一下，这是我在家里录制的第一期直播播客。亚历克斯认为我们很值得前来参观。你是一个真正的传奇人物。下面是我和亚历克斯·韦特的对话。本播客中，车辆销售员和嘉宾的所有观点都只代表他们个人的意见。任何表述的观点都不应被视为财务建议。这个播客仅供参考。
Alex Vetter on the pod, Alex Cars.com, probably one of those epic domains of all time. How did you get that? Look, one of the best moves we've ever made was securing that domain name. I got to tell you it was owned by a proud Corvette owner. He had a picture of his orange Corvette in his front yard. I called him and asked him how much he wanted for it. He thought I was talking about the Corvette. I was willing to buy the domain name. He registered on internet for probably 15 bucks. We offered him five grand for it initially. He accepted. The next day his attorney was on the phone, which I knew was a bad sign. And long story short, we settled about a month and a half later for $70,000. And at the time, there were so many domain names that were available for 15 bucks. People, you know, our investors were like, what are you doing spending $70,000? But we felt if we're going to be the authority for the industry, you have to own the domain. And so in hindsight, it was one of the better investments we've made. You got you good at the time. I have 15 bucks to $70. If that guy's out there listening, I would love it. It's our 25th year coming up this year. I would love to find him and bring him on stage at our company event. Just to thank him. But I don't know where he is these days. I got to find the files and see if we can track him down.
Alex Vetter在节目上说道，Cars.com这个域名可能是有史以来最经典的域名之一。你是怎么得到的呢？看，我们做出的最好的一步决定之一就是确保了这个域名。我必须告诉你，它曾经是一位引以为豪的Corvette车主的所有。他在前院里放了一张他橙色Corvette的照片。我给他打了电话，问他要多少钱。他以为我在谈论他的Corvette，但我实际上是想买域名。他在互联网上注册的这个域名可能只花了15美元。我们最初向他提供了5000美元。他接受了。第二天，他的律师打了电话来，这意味着事情可能不太妙。长话短说，一个半月后我们以70,000美元达成了和解。当时，有许多域名可以花15美元购买。投资人问我们为什么要花70,000美元。但我们觉得，如果要成为这个行业的权威，你必须拥有这个域名。回顾过去，这是我们所做的较好的一项投资。我觉得当时你一定很爽，从15美元到70,000美元。如果那个人听到了我的话，我很想在我们的公司活动上把他请上台，向他表示感谢。但我不知道他现在在哪里。我得找找档案，看看能否找到他。
25 years. How many years have you been with the company since the inception? 25 years. And how many years have you been CEO? 2014. So what is that coming up on almost 10 years? How do you do it? I mean, that's a hell of a 10 year. How do you do it? You know, look, I don't view it as work. I mean, at times, it can be difficult. But we've got a great company culture. The people that work at cars are amazing, both past and present. And I drive a ton of satisfaction seeing other people grow in advance. And that's been one of the more exciting things. I mean, when I look at our business, not only we've done well, but I'm really proud that we've got at least 15 leaders in other companies, technology businesses that have grown up at cars. And they've moved on, but they're now running other tech companies. I think that's incredible. And I love that that we've seen so many people matriculate through our business and go on and run other businesses. It's really rewarding in that sense.
你已经在这家公司工作了多少年了？25年。那你担任CEO多长时间了？从2014年开始。那就快10年了，你是怎么做到的呢？我是说，这十年实在是太了不起了。你知道的，我不认为这是工作。虽然有时可能会很困难，但我们拥有一家伟大的企业文化。在这家公司工作的人们都非常出色，无论是过去还是现在。我从其他人的成长和进步中获得了很大的满足感。这也是最令人兴奋的事情之一。当我看着我们的企业，我不仅为我们所做的贡献感到骄傲，更为我们至少培养出了15位在其他科技公司成长起来的领袖感到自豪。他们都已经离开了，但现在正在经营着其他科技公司。我认为这是难以置信的。我喜欢看到我们公司的许多员工通过我们的企业，走向了其他的事业，这在某种程度上也是非常有成就感的。
I mean, I can't even begin to fathom just growing one company for for so long. It's really admirable. What have been the OSHIP moments for you? You know, you didn't think you'd make it or that, you know, you're really concerned about the future. What were those? And like, what was that like?
我的意思是，我无法想象只为一家公司持续那么长时间。这真的很令人钦佩。对于您来说，有哪些关键时刻令你感到不确定，甚至担心未来的走向？你都经历了什么？
You know, first of all, it's interesting. I don't think it's been one company. I mean, we've had three phases of ownership. Each one is head. It's pluses and minuses and different challenges to navigate. So that has been intellectually stimulating to figure out, you know, in its latest form being publicly traded, even that's head.
首先，这很有趣。我认为这不仅是一家公司。我们经历了三个所有权阶段。每个阶段都有其利弊和不同的挑战需要应对。所以这让人在智力上得到刺激，需要弄清楚该如何应对。最近的形式是公开交易，这甚至更加复杂。
It's it's elements. I think the holy shit moments, boy, there are a lot. You know, when we first started the business, myself and others, we would have to go carry AOL discets into dealerships and help them install AOL on a PC. If they had a PC in the store over a 14-4 modem, and I bet many of your listeners don't even know what a 14-4 modem is, but like we had to create email addresses for dealerships as part of the first generation.
这是它的元素。我认为，太神了的时刻，哇，有很多。你知道的，当我们刚开始创业时，我和其他人需要把AOL光盘带到经销商那里，并帮助他们在PC上安装AOL。如果他们在商店里有一个14-4调制解调器的PC，我敢打赌你们很多听众甚至不知道什么是14-4调制解调器，但是我们必须为经销商创建电子邮件地址作为第一代的一部分。
There are many days where I said, there's no way this thing's going to work. And you were just trying to get internet adoption. We were getting trying to get them internet adoptions that we could access their inventory files and post them online. And so, you know, having to get up every day and put 10 new AOL discets in your backpack was like a humbling experience, but you learn that like, you know, you've got to teach the industry new new skills.
有很多天我说，这个事情肯定行不通。我们只是试图促进网络的普及。我们试图通过让他们采用网络技术，从而可以获得进入他们的库存文件并将其发布在线上的机会。所以，每天早起要把10个新的AOL光盘放进背包，这是一种谦卑的经历，但你学会了，你必须教会这个行业新的技能。
And that's always been part of our ethos, I think, is that we're always pushing the industry forward. Give us a sense for listeners. What is your scale? Deal or count? Annual revenue website is a very good thing.
这一直是我们的理念之一，即推动行业向前发展。可以为我们的听众提供一些了解吗？你们的规模是什么？交易或计数？年收入是多少？网站是一个非常好的东西。
Well, look, we have over 20,000 dealers as clients. Our website, just cars.com alone, reaches roughly 30 million people every month. If you look at our website business, we got over 6,000 dealer websites that we're powering, about 10,000 dealers that use our various technology solutions. And so back to the evolution, like it's not the same company it was when we started because today, you know, we're an enabler of technology solutions across the industry.
看，我们已经有超过2万个经销商作为客户了。仅我们的网站car.com每月就能触达约3千万人次。如果看看我们的网站业务，我们提供了6000多个经销商网站，有大约1万个经销商使用我们的各种技术解决方案。所以说，回到演变的主题，我们现在变成了一个跨行业的技术解决方案支持者，和我们一开始的公司已经不同了。
People here, cars.com and they think about the website. But if you peel back the onion, we've got a lot more layers in depth to the business than ever before. So your first product was a listing site that we all know, like super ubiquitous, right? Everyone's heard cars.com. And then from there, you've now you're saying you're involved and you're offering other stuff that's complementary to the dealer.
这里的人们谈论cars.com这个网站。但是如果我们深入探讨，我们会发现我们的业务比以前更加多层次和深入。所以你们的第一个产品是一个列表网站，我们都知道它，它是非常普及的，对吧？每个人都听说过cars.com。从那里开始，你们现在正在提供其他与经销商相辅相成的服务。
Yeah, I mean, if you think about our strategy, like, Amazon came first, but AWS is the bigger business that Amazon, because they took the infrastructure that Amazon built to run its its marketplace. And then they started enabling other businesses to run on that backbone. That effectively is our strategy. We want to give the infrastructure that was built for cars.com to the local dealership to run their website off our platform, the technology and tools they use to run their business.
是的，我的意思是，如果你考虑我们的策略，亚马逊先成立，但AWS是比亚马逊更大的业务部门，因为他们使用亚马逊构建的基础设施来运行AWS。然后，他们开始让其他公司在这个基础设施上运行。这实际上也是我们的策略。我们希望通过我们的平台，将为cars.com建立的基础设施提供给当地的汽车经销商，让他们运行自己的网站，并使用我们的技术和工具来管理他们的业务。
And by doing it that way, we can enable the dealership to operate digitally at a fraction of the cost if they try to build it in house. And so we're all about enabling technologies that help the dealership run their business more efficiently and stay relevant for consumers who clearly are digital first. Yeah, Shopify has a nice saying that I like to say like arming the rebels.
通过这种方式做，我们可以使经销商以更低的成本进行数字化运营，相比他们在内部建立数字化平台来说，这是更划算的。因此，我们致力于提供帮助经销商更高效地运营业务并保持与数字化第一的消费者保持相关的技术。是的，Shopify有个我喜欢说的好口号就是“武装叛军”。
It's I've used that line at many town halls. The analogy at Shopify, open tables, another one, right? Open table started as a lead gen platform for restaurants, but now the bulk of the revenue comes in through software that runs reservation systems in the actual restaurant. So I think owning both sides of the marketplace is quarter our strategy and it allows us to bring solutions to market at a much better path because we're not just giving the dealership technology, we're embedding consumer demand into that tech.
这句话在很多镇厅会议上我都用过。在 Shopify 的另一个比喻是，开放桌子。开放桌子最初是一个为餐厅提供潜在客户平台的生成器，但现在大部分收入来自于运行实际餐厅预订系统的软件。因此，我认为拥有市场的两个方面是我们的策略之一，这使得我们能够更好地将解决方案带入市场，因为我们不仅为经销商提供技术，同时把消费需求嵌入到技术中去。
So what's your actual website visitors per month? 28.5 million last month. We've been number one in total users now for I think 16 months. According to ComScore, we've got the highest most rated app and most downloaded app in the category as well.
你们网站每月实际的访客量是多少？上个月有2850万次访问。我们一直是总用户量最高的网站，大概已经有16个月了。根据ComScore的数据，我们的应用是同类应用中最受欢迎和下载最多的。
So why is that? Like why do you have to most download it? What are you doing? I'd be remiss if I didn't credit it back to that domain name. I mean, you're only in the most consumers early in the market once every seven years. And so they're not waking up every day thinking about car sites. So when they do enter the market, cars.com is a pretty easy domain to type in.
那么，为什么会这样呢？为什么你要下载得最多？你在干什么？如果我不把这归功于该域名，我会显得有失职。我的意思是，你只有在市场上的最初几年中拥有最多的消费者。因此，他们并不会每天都想到汽车网站。所以，当他们进入市场时，cars.com是一个相当容易输入的域名。
We get the majority of our traffic directly and organically, which enables us to really invest in other things like product innovation as opposed to what a lot of our peers have to do is they just have to keep spending marketing every dollar every day just to stay relevant. We also though, we're one of the few sites that employ a pedigree team of automotive experts.
我们的大部分流量都是直接和有机获取的，这使得我们能够真正地投资于其他事情，例如产品创新，而不是像很多同行那样，每天都不得不花费大量资金在营销上才能保持相关性。我们还是为数不多的拥有一支资深的汽车专家团队的网站之一。
We have the community by that. Well, we have an editor and she employs a staff of automotive experts that we get the cars directly from the manufacturer before they're put on the retail floor. And so we're test driving cars. We will critically assess them best bets and what we like, what we don't like. We're not shy. If our editors think a car cut corners on anything, we'll call it out. And I think that also leads to why consumers come to us because we're truly unbiased. We will we see the good and the bad and everything and we approach the industry with the curators mindset.
我们得到了社群的支持。我们有一位编辑，她雇用了一支汽车专家团队，我们直接从制造商那里得到车辆，还未上架零售。因此，我们会进行试车。我们会对车辆进行严格的评估，包括优点、缺点等，如果我们的编辑认为某辆车在某个方面有问题，我们会指出来。这也是消费者来找我们的原因，因为我们真正客观无私。我们看到优点和缺点并以策展人的心态对待行业。
Is that important, Tenant, for you to educate the consumer? I can tell you for me personally, like if you look at my Twitter handle, I actually A, B tested this. I used to put a ton of different words at the top. I said, well, you know, what means a lot to me? And I put transparent insights into the car business. And then I added unbiased and transparent insights into the car business. And follower growth started rising. And they just showed me that I think it's very in nowadays with all this like in media and left, right? And whatever, all these, you know, politics, like people are waving and unbiased source of truth anywhere.
对您来说，教育消费者很重要吗，租户？就个人而言，我可以告诉您，就像您看到我的 Twitter 博客名一样，我其实进行了 A/B 测试。我过去会在标题上使用很多不同的词语，例如，“对我来说意义重大的是在汽车行业提供透明的见解。”然后我加上了“公正透明的汽车行业见解”，然后我的关注者增长开始上升。这表明我认为，在当今媒体纷争和左右之分方面，人们正在寻求一个无偏见的真相来源。
And I, you know, I think we can all agree the car business can be very opaque at times. And so I just think it's very interesting. You said the word unbiased because that's just something that is, you know, it means a lot to me. And I think people really crave it nowadays.
我认为我们都可以认同汽车业有时候非常不透明。所以我认为这非常有趣。你说了“不偏心”的话语，因为这对我来说非常重要。我认为人们现在非常渴望这种不偏心的态度。
The every great business has a secret. And if you wanted to know mine, it's that, you know, this is the second largest purchase in most people's lifetimes next to a home, buying a car is a big deal. And there are so many choices in product. We know that there's tons of choices in terms of the seller. And so consumers are overwhelmed with, with information. They need an unbiased trusted advocate that's going to help them navigate what is truly one of their bigger financial decisions of their lives.
每个伟大的企业都有它的秘诀。如果你想了解我的秘诀，那就是：在人们一生中，除了买房子之外，买车是他们第二大的开销，这是一件大事。市面上的汽车品牌、型号繁多，选择困难。我们知道，在卖家方面，选择也很多。因此，消费者会感到不知所措，需要一个公正、可信的倡导者，帮助他们在人生中做出重要的财务决策。
Technology is changing so fast. As a dealer, I've just seen what's happened in the last five years. And since 2013, which we know online carbine was really around since early 2000s with eBay Motors, but it really became a thing into early 2010. So with all these cons and change, you know, you being a tech company, how are you keeping up with this? And how do you protect that lead, especially web traffic?
科技变化如此迅猛。作为一个经销商，我刚刚看到了过去五年发生的事情。自从2013年开始，我们知道在线汽车交易的真正兴起可以追溯到早在2000年代的eBay Motors，但直到2010年初真正成为流行事物。因此，面对这些挑战和变化，作为一个科技公司，你们是如何跟上时代的步伐的？你们是如何保护自己的领先地位，特别是在网站流量方面？
Well, I think you have to constantly invest in innovation and growth. And, and it always says, and been that way. I mean, cars.com's been around for 25 years, but we've, you know, had to climb our way up the food chain in terms of traffic leadership. And I think it's taken deliberate investment in product innovation.
我认为你必须不断地投资于创新和发展。这一点一直如此。我的意思是，cars.com已经存在了25年，但是我们必须不断努力以提升我们在流量领域的地位。我认为，这需要投资于产品创新。
You know, we were the first to launch on a mobile device. We were the first to launch an app. We were the first to, to, you know, do many things in the category that were at the time pretty controversial. We launched invoice pricing when it first, you know, came in, and the argument was, wait a minute, you're going to put invoices out there.
你知道吗，我们是第一个在移动设备上推出的公司。我们是第一个推出应用程序的公司。我们是第一个在当时有些争议的类别中做出许多创新的公司。当价格发票首次出现时，我们推出了它，有人提出反对观点，认为你们会把发票公开。
But, you know, if you know any about technology, it will disrupt the market. If so, you either have to participate in it or it will disrupt you. And so I think we've had a culture and a DNA that's always been willing to push the envelope. I know when we bought dealer rater, there was controversy there that we were going to rate dealer experience.
但是，你知道的，如果你了解科技，它会打破市场。如果是这样，你要么参与其中，要么它会打破你。因此，我认为我们一直有一种文化和DNA，愿意推动极限。我知道当我们收购了经销商评价者时，有争议，因为我们要评价经销商的体验。
But let's face it, you're not going to go buy a car from anybody if you can't get insights on the seller. And so I, and I think there was a Twitter account for that, right? And, and, uh, well, look, and then putters I'm here, I love what you're doing to push, you know, further ahead. And so I think we've always had a DNA that says, look, experiment, bail fast, try new things. And if you continue to do that, you're going to hit a lot more hits than you, than you'll, than you'll, then you'll with what are some tailwinds for your business?
但我们得面对现实，如果你无法了解卖方的情况，你也不会从任何人那里购买汽车。我觉得有个专门的Twitter账号，对吧？而且，嗯，瞧，Putters在这里，我非常喜欢你推动业务向前发展的做法。所以我认为我们一直有个DNA，它说，试验、迅速放弃、尝试新事物。如果你继续这样做，就会取得比事实上更多的成功。那么，对于你的业务，有哪些有利因素呢？
And also, what are some headwinds tailwinds that inventory levels are coming back, right? I think that, you know, in this more recent period, inventory levels have been so depressed. In some respects, that's, what made people flock to my site because they can now search market wide and find inventory that's hard to find. But at the same time, you know, dealers and manufacturers haven't need to compete as much for vehicle sales.
而且，库存水平的回升面临哪些阻力和助推因素呢？我认为，在最近的一段时间里，库存水平一直很低迷。在某些方面，正是这种情况使得人们涌向我的网站，因为他们现在可以在整个市场范围内搜索并找到难以找到的库存。但同时，经销商和制造商不必为车辆销售竞争。
And so when inventory levels return, I do think you're going to see OEMs have to get back in the game. And that's been a headwind for my business. We've had very little OEM participation over the last, called two and a half, three years. And, and they've been, you know, having fewer cars to promote. And, and so OEMs are just advertising because I mean, business used to be over a hundred million dollar business with us.
因此，当库存水平回升时，我认为你会看到原始设备制造商(OEM)不得不重新加入游戏。这对我的业务来说是一个障碍。在过去的两年半到三年中，我们几乎没有OEM参与，他们的汽车宣传也较少。因此，OEM仅仅是因为我说过的原因才进行广告宣传，因为我们的业务曾经是一个超过1亿美元的市场。
And it's a fraction of that today because OEMs aren't needing to spend more money on limited supply. And now that that's coming back, I think dealers and OEMs are starting to step up. I don't think OEMs need to go back to the big incentive pushes that they used to. I think they can start with the marketing lever first and, and help make sure their cars are seen, found, and compared before they have to start providing steep discounts.
今天，由于OEM厂商不需要在有限的供应上投入更多的资金，价格已经降低了很多。现在这种情况已经改变，我认为经销商和OEM厂商正在开始采取行动。我不认为OEM需要再去使用过去那种极大的激励推动策略。我认为他们可以先从营销杠杆开始，帮助确保他们的汽车被看到、发现和比较，然后再提供大幅度的折扣。
You know, I talk about this a lot right now. The cocks just put out, they put out a stat to the average new car that was sold in like a month or so was actually at MSRP or below, which hasn't happened in two years or so. So we're definitely seeing that it's very much just like many things nowadays, a K-shaped recovery where, you know, you have like Stellantis and their inventory levels are like shooting through the moon right now. And then you have Toyota Kia, whoever where they're still super low supply.
你知道吗，最近我经常谈论这个。母鸡公司发布了一个统计数据，平均新车的销售价在一个月内实际上是按照建议零售价或以下售出的，这在过去两年中没有发生过。因此，我们正在看到像很多事情一样，现在是一个K形的复苏，即你有像STE补贴和他们的库存水平正在飙升的情况，然而像丰田起亚等公司，他们的供给仍然非常低。
Of course, it's a function of, you know, demand and supply always, but you still can't get them. You know, Toyota Sienna waiting list, which I just ordered one, yes, them. I'm joining the Minivan Gang, but there's like a one-year wait. You know, I had to use my connections to get one, but it's crazy. I never thought I would have to use connections to get a Toyota Sienna. I used to use connections to get into clubs. And I were using that to buy Minivan. So life moves fast. I wouldn't say change.
当然，这取决于需求和供应，但你仍然无法获得它们。你知道的，像丰田西耶那那样的等待名单，我刚刚订购了一辆，是它们。我要加入迷你货车帮派，但要等待一年才能拿到它们。我不得不利用我的人脉关系才能拥有一辆，但这太疯狂了。我从来没想过要用人脉关系才能买到一辆丰田西耶那。以前我是用人脉关系去参加俱乐部。现在我用它们去买迷你货车。所以生活变化很快。我不会说改变。
All right, so I want to dig deeper into this point. I was thinking about this conversation. You have like a hell of a pulse on the market. You mentioned 28 million visitors per month, which is crazy to have, you know, that kind of access to information. What are you seeing right now? And this is very open. I'm just curious, supplied the man pricing EVs. What are just like some notable things that you're noticing in the market of where we're headed as a car industry?
好的，我想深入探讨这个问题。我在思考我们的谈话。你对市场有着非常敏锐的洞察力。你提到每月有2800万访问量，这种获取信息的方式简直让人疯狂。你现在看到了什么？这是非常开放的问题。我只是好奇，关于供应的人对电动汽车的定价，你正在注意到什么行业走向中的显著特征？
Well, look, the average user comes to cars.com with about a six month purchase horizon. Even more so 90 day window where they're actively shopping, quote, digitally kicking the tires. So we do see ahead of the market. And for your listeners out there, I know there's another business model for us to explore where showing search trends by brand, we can predict the market.
嗯，听着，平均用户在购买汽车网站的时间跨度大约为六个月。在90天的时间窗口内，他们会积极地进行线上选车，引用一句话来说，就是“数字踢轮胎”。因此，我们可以看到市场的前景。对于您的听众来说，我知道还有另一种商业模式可以探索，那就是显示品牌的搜索趋势，从而预测市场。
Because if I look back at actual sales history, our traffic trends correlate to those sales trends very, they're very much aligned in terms of what we see in the market looking out ahead. But I'll tell you right now in Q2 is that the traffic signals remain very robust and strong. There has been a little pullback in terms of conversion, meaning people contacting dealerships ready to buy, but they're absolutely out there shopping and looking at product. That's suggesting me that Q2 is going to be a very healthy market for those that are continuing to embrace technology as the primary way that they move inventory.
因为如果我回顾实际销售历史，我们的流量趋势与销售趋势非常相关，从市场前景来看，它们非常一致。但我现在告诉你，在第二季度，流量信号保持非常强劲和强大。在转化方面，即联系经销商准备购买的人们有些减少，但他们绝对在购物和寻找产品。这表明对于那些继续将技术作为他们移动库存的主要方式的人来说，第二季度将是一个非常健康的市场。
To that point, we're seeing a similar thing where that customer traffic has been very stable, but conversion is down. For us, it's a use car dealer where we skew a little bit heavier on the near prime sub-prime side. It's very much driven by lending. Lending is just kind of got tighter and tighter and tighter. And so people are still looking for that car, but at the end of the day, if you're going to have to pay some crazy interest rate, and the payment will just be exorbitant, you're just not going to buy that car. So that's at least what we're seeing.
目前我们发现有一个类似的情况，即顾客的流量保持稳定，但是购买力下降了。我们是一家二手车经销商，我们的客户基本上是中档次或次中档次的消费者。这种情况与借贷市场有很大关系。随着借贷条件不断加强，顾客们虽然仍在寻找购买汽车的机会，但如果最终他们需要支付高额的利率和贷款额度，那么他们就有可能放弃购买。这至少是我们目前所观察到的情况。
Well, the new car market and the use car market compete. So as new car inventory levels come back, you're going to see that pull people from the use car market because if you can get the brand new technology, even if you have to spend a few more dollars, you're getting the latest and greatest tech versus tech that could be three, four years old. And what we see in our shopper data is more and more consumers are focused on is this car equipped with the latest and greatest technology. And so I do think as you see new car markets come back into the picture, that's going to put pressure on use car pricing.
新车市场和二手车市场竞争。随着新车库存水平的回升，你会看到人们从二手车市场逐渐离开，因为即使你不得不多花几美元，你也能得到最新和最棒的技术，而不是三四年前的技术。我们在消费者数据中发现，越来越多的消费者关注的是这辆车是否配备了最新和最棒的技术。因此，我认为随着新车市场回归，这将会对二手车定价施加压力。
And so I do think you're going to see some softening on the use car pricing trends over the course of this next year, just because there's going to be more product on the shelf. So you're saying that what you're seeing is that features and cars is what people are looking for. That's one of the top things that would be more searching for a car. Technology relevance is only getting more and more important to younger generations. They want to make sure that their devices connect dynamically. You've been reading about Apple CarPlay.
因为市场上会有更多产品，我认为你会看到二手车价格趋势的软化，这可能会在接下来的一年内出现。你的意思是人们更看重汽车的功能和特性，这是人们在购买汽车时要考虑的主要因素之一。对于年轻一代来说，技术的相关性变得越来越重要。他们想要确保他们的设备能够动态的连接。你可能已经听说过苹果的CarPlay技术。
I'm certain that some of the main brands and consumers are searching on those attributes more now in use cars than they were five years ago. I'm laughing because my wife said she's like, if the car doesn't have car play, I don't want it. You know, when it doesn't matter, the four wheels engine, I just want my phone to connect and have my navigation show up. You look at the trends of work from home. You know, what COVID did is like people, the car is an extension of your home, right? Your home office goes with you when you go on the road and people are viewing their accessibility to their or their continuity.
我确信现在一些主要品牌和消费者比五年前更注重二手车的这些属性。我笑了，因为我妻子说如果车没有车载播放，她就不想要了。你知道，当四轮引擎无关紧要时，我只想连接我的手机，让我的导航显示出来。你看看远程办公的趋势。你知道，COVID所做的就是将人们的车作为家的延伸，您的家办公室随行随地，人们正寻找他们或其连续性的可访问性。
Yeah. Going from my home office into my car is like running errand. Yeah, makes sense. They're still connected. And so they do want technology. It's going to enable that. All right. So let's sum that up for a second. In terms of demand, you're saying that six-month time right that people are still shopping and it's been pretty stable. What are you comparing that to? Just over time. I mean, you know, we measure this stuff daily. We see the same signals that I'm sure you can see in your own dealer website.
是的。从家庭办公室到汽车里就像是跑腿。没错，这两者仍然有连结。所以人们需要科技来实现这一点。好的，让我们来总结一下。关于需求，您认为在过去六个月里，人们仍然在购物，情况一直很稳定。您和什么进行比较呢？就是随着时间的推移。我们每天都在衡量这些东西。我相信您的销售网站也可以看到同样的信号。
We look at our 6,000 dealer websites. We see that conversion is softened both on dealer sites. And so that gives me comfort to know it's nothing we changed on our marketplace. But the traffic levels are persisting. People are looking, they're configuring loans online. They may not convert, but they are looking at affordability. And so, you know, we constantly are measuring these signals to help us inform what's going on in the market.
我们查看了我们的6000个经销商网站，发现经销商网站上的转化率都有所降低。这让我知道我们的市场平台没有进行任何改变，这让我感到放心。但是流量水平一直很高，人们在浏览网站，并在线配置贷款。他们可能不会购买，但他们在注重可负担性。因此，我们不断测量这些信号，以帮助我们了解市场情况。
Okay. And then EVs, I'm super curious to know what your insight is into that realm. Did the man that we're going to should expect for use DVs, new EVs, what do you see now? You know, chicken and egg, but I'll tell you just we don't see the demand curve the way the industry sees it. I mean, EVs search share on cars.com is around 3, 4% at its peak. It was 8%, but only in California. When you had government incentives at $7,500 per EV sale. So even with big government stimulus, you know, California got to 8% search share.
好的。接下来，我非常好奇您对电动车领域有何见解。我们将要见的这位人应该期待使用的是传统汽车还是新型电动车呢？您现在看到了什么？你知道，这是一个先有鸡还是先有蛋的问题，但我告诉你，我们并没有像行业看到的那样看到需求曲线。我是说，cars.com上的电动车搜索份额在其高峰期仅占3%至4%。当时政府对每个电动车销售给予7500美元的奖励时，加州的电动车搜索份额曾经达到了8%。所以即使有大规模的政府刺激，加州也只能达到8%的搜索份额。
And so these projections of getting to 50, I think it's a hard pot. Infrastructure is holding back. What do you see in a near term? Like, what's the slope right now? Are we seeing this like rapid growth of searches on your website? Yeah, look, it's rapidly going, but to get to 50% sales volume, I think is a little bit of a bird song. I don't see it happening in the modern era. I think it's going to take a lot longer time. I think you have a lot more infrastructure being built.
因此，我认为要达到50%的销量预测是非常困难的。基础设施是制约因素。在短期内，您观察到了什么趋势？现在搜索量是不是有快速增长？是的，看起来是在快速增长，但要达到50%的销售量，我认为是一种美妙的幻想。我不认为在现代社会能够实现，需要花费更长的时间并进行更多的基础设施建设。
A lot more competitive priority. You know, just this week, I know one of your biggest fans, Elon announced that he's going to be doing. Shout out to Elon, right? But like, he's got a market EVs. He used to have this, you know, halo effect. And the good news is that every company is now putting more product in the market, which I think will help the overall category. But there's got to be more product before the search share or the sales share grows to the levels that are being projected.
竞争的优先级变得更高了。你知道吗，就在这周，我知道你最大的粉丝之一埃隆宣布他将要做。向埃隆致敬，对吧？但是像他有市场份额的电动汽车一样，他曾经有这种荣耀效应。好消息是，现在每个公司都在市场上推出更多的产品，我认为这将有助于整个类别的发展。但是，在搜索份额或销售份额增长到被预测的水平之前，必须推出更多的产品。
Yeah, look, I think that I've been reading, you know, several companies have put out stats that EV searches on their website are growing, specifically on the use side. I'm just learning a lot about it. And I'm seeing that, like, in the beginning part of the year, EVs prices started tanking when Tesla lowered their prices. And since then, you know, dealers were kind of gun shy initially. People held, you know, all these EVs that lost all this value. Then I've been noticing that now there's some stability, or at least it feels like, and dealers anecdotally have been buying more of them. So, you know, I do think that the lower prices now help with a bit more affordability and ultimately sales. But EV search share is going to correlate mostly to gas prices, right? We saw this as gas prices were running up, getting north of $5. EV search share was doubling. Really?
嗯，我觉得我一直在阅读，你知道，一些公司发布了他们网站上电动汽车搜索量正在增长的统计数据，尤其是在使用方面。我正在学习很多关于它的知识。我发现，今年年初，当特斯拉降低价格时，电动汽车的价格开始下跌。自那时以来，经销商有些谨慎。人们持有了那些价值大跌的电动汽车。然后，我注意到现在有些稳定，或者至少感觉是这样的，经销商叙述性地购买更多的电动汽车。所以，现在的价格下降确实有助于提高可负担性，最终促进销售。但是，电动汽车的搜索份额主要与汽油价格相关，对吧？我们看到在汽油价格上涨时，超过5美元时，电动汽车搜索份额翻了一倍。真的吗？
And so, which by the way, that surprises me because I feel like the average EV customer today is still a luxury shopper, or maybe, maybe not even luxury in the traditional term, but above average. And so if I were to buy EV, I don't know if like, it would directly correlate to gas share. But I don't know. That's my, that's my, if you look at our search trends correlate more to gas prices and how they have been flow. And so as gas prices have come down in the more recent period, we've seen a cooling off on EV search share. So, look, everybody, whether you're on the wealthiest spectrum or, or, you know, more focused on, you know, affordability, let's face it, you want to take into account what does it cost for me to, to own this product. And even luxury shoppers or cognizant on gas prices being a big driver to move to EV.
因此，这让我感到惊讶，因为我觉得现在普通的电动汽车用户仍然是奢侈品消费者，或者可能不是传统意义上的奢侈品，但是超过平均水平。 如果我要购买电动汽车，我不知道它是否会直接影响汽油份额。 但是我不知道。 如果您查看我们的搜索趋势，更多与燃油价格及其变化相关。 因此，随着燃油价格在最近时期下降，我们看到电动汽车搜索份额正在降温。 所以，无论您是最富有的人还是更注重经济实惠的人，让我们面对现实，您希望考虑拥有这种产品的成本。 即使是奢侈品购物者也会注意到燃油价格是转向电动汽车的重要推动因素。
Let's talk about another hot topic that I've been hearing about, D to C direct consumer. What does this look like? What's your overall take on direct consumer right now? Well, look, so, so I'm dating myself here. My, my favorite athlete growing up was Bo Jackson. I don't know if you're, you're a ship with no Bo, Bo Jackson, Google him. But, but, uh, there aren't many two sport athletes anymore in the world. I know my teenage kids were sort of conditioned that they had to pick a sport by like, death grade, they coaches were like, you got to choose your path.
让我们谈谈另一个热门话题，即直接面向消费者的D到C。这是什么样子的？你对直接面向消费者的整体看法是什么？嗯，看，我要承认我自己有点老了。我成长期间最喜欢的运动员是波·杰克逊。我不知道你是否了解波·杰克逊，请搜索他一下。但是世界上现在很少有两项运动的运动员了。我知道我的十几岁的孩子们被灌输了这样的思想，他们必须在初中选择一项运动，他们的教练们会告诉他们选择自己的道路。
And I think this notion that manufacturers are going to build cars and then service customers is a little bit like trying to be a two sport athlete. It takes a lot to build an automobile. It takes extraordinary focus, precision, and obsession about getting it right. Right. Equally, taking care of customers, not easy sledding, right? They have all kinds of ownership issues. They have, you know, service and care needs. And I just think the two tiered system works really well. Dealerships really help curate the market, making sure the customer satisfied and the manufacturer builds the cars to the best quality. And I think the two tiered system works.
我认为，制造商建造汽车并为客户提供服务的想法有点像试图成为两个领域的运动员。建造汽车需要极其专注、精准和对完美的执着。同样地，照顾客户并不是易如反掌的事情，他们有各种各样的车主问题，例如维修和保养需求等。我认为双层系统非常有效。经销商真正帮助挑选市场，确保客户满意，制造商则建造最优质的汽车。我认为这个双层系统效果很好。
So I'm not a big fan of the D to C model because I don't think it's the best consumer model. That, I mean, that was what I was going to say, like from the consumer perspective, if we put everything aside, ultimately, is it a better experience for the industry to adopt this? Will it even get adopted? No, I mean, look, you've seen examples of this with, with, you know, Tesla, you know, changing the prices on cars to people that had reservations. You know, they, when you're a one tiered system, there's too much control at the top. I think when you've got a two tiered system, the market naturally drives a much more level playing field, both on product and on price and on service, which, you know, let's face it, these are machines. They're going to have problems. They're going to have issues. And having somebody local who can help care for your product in an expedient manner is far better than waiting for a monolith in, you know, a distant state to take your, take your ticket.
我不是D到C模型的忠实拥护者，因为我认为它不是最好的消费者模式。我的意思是，如果我们把一切都抛开不谈，从消费者的角度来看，采用这种模式是否会为行业带来更好的体验？它会被采用吗？不会。你们看到过这种情况的例子，比如特斯拉向已经预定的人改变汽车价格。当你只有一个层次的系统时，权力控制太过集中。我认为当你有一个两个层次的系统时，市场自然会推动出更加公平的产品、价格和服务。毕竟，这些产品都是机器，他们会有问题和故障。有当地的人能够迅速帮助您维护产品，比起等待遥远州份的巨头来接受您的服务申请要好得多。
So with that, how do you think dealers are going to evolve? Because there's going to be an evolution here, no doubt about it. But the dealer in five, 10 years, do you think it's the same type of service and experiences today? Do you think there's some core differences?
因此，你认为经销商将如何发展？因为这里肯定会有一个变革。但是在五到十年内，经销商的服务和体验是否跟今天一样？你认为是否存在一些核心差异？
So I'm going to warn you right now that your brand may be irrelevant if I do my job, because we're trying to move the industry away from being a dealership and being a retailer, right? So car retail guy, you need to register that. Make sure someone probably already bought the domain by the time you said that. Pay it, pay up for it.
我要在这里警告你，如果我做好我的工作，你的品牌可能会变得不重要，因为我们正在努力使整个行业从经销商向零售商转变，对吧？因此，作为汽车零售人员，你需要注意这一点。确保有人可能已经在你说这话的时候购买了该域名。付款，支付它。
Just like they took our dealership out of the company. Well, I think dealerships have got to evolve and become much more like other categories in retail and be much more transparent and forthright creating a great experience.
就像他们把我们的销售点从公司中踢出去一样。我认为销售点必须发展，更像零售领域中的其他类别，变得更加透明、直言不讳，创造出出色的体验。
The internet has gotten us away from worrying about the price of the deal, which is where the name came from. But it's really more about creating a great retail experience. And I think the industry is adopting technology in a very rapid fashion. And by using technology, dealers are becoming retailers and creating these wonderful experiences that go far beyond the sale, but really get at the heart of ownership.
互联网让我们不再担心交易价格，这也是这个名字的来源。但它实际上更多地关注于创造极佳的零售体验。我认为业界在非常快速的速度上采用技术。通过利用技术，经销商正在成为零售商，并创造这些美妙的经验，这些经验远远超出了销售，而是真正涉及到拥有权的核心。
And I think that's the right model and the manufacturers that wrap their arms around their dealer partners and focus on working together to create that great ownership experience. They're absolutely going to take market share. And I believe that in my heart, dealers today, I think they've done such a great job of evolving their businesses. We always hear about the bad stories, right? They're easy to post and share. But when you look at what we see every year, 10 million reviews coming from consumers, they're enormously satisfied the retail experience happening all over this country. So I really believe that the local system can win.
我认为这是正确的模式，那些与经销商伙伴紧密合作，着重于共同创造卓越的车主体验的制造商，绝对会夺取市场份额。我深信，今天的经销商已经做了很好的业务演进。我们总是听到那些不好的故事，对吗？它们很容易发布和分享。但是当你看到每年从消费者那里收到的一千万条评论时，你会发现他们对整个国家的零售体验非常满意。因此，我真的相信本地系统可以获胜。
Yeah. Yeah. Look, I think that dealers have long had a stigma. I mean, we all know the stereotypes and just like anything, there's both sides, every story. So I try to show just the reality and not show one side or the other and anything I tweet, but I do agree with you that, you know, there's a lot of really good people in the business. And you know, it just like anything, just some bad actors. And I feel like I'm trying to help get to a point where everyone they experience is better for the consumer. And we bring more transparency as well into the business.
我认为，毒贩的社会形象长期存在污名化。我们都知道这些刻板印象，但就像任何事情一样，每个故事都有两面。因此，我试图展现现实，不偏袒任何一方。但我同意你的观点，业界确实有很多好人。就像任何行业一样，有些人是不良分子。我希望能帮忙改善大众对这个行业的体验，并推动带来更多的透明度。
What about wholesale and retail, right? So for the audience listening, you know, wholesale traditionally, dealers would, you know, there'd be a certain pocket of dealers that would be just selling cars to other dealers. And you know, they would do that very with various mechanisms. And by the way, that's actually the next episode. We're doing a deep dive into wholesale. It's going to be really, really cool.
零售和批发又是怎样的呢？为了观众的理解，传统上，批发商们会有一些与其他批发商联络的方式出售汽车。顺便说一下，下一集我们会深入探讨批发的话题，会非常、非常棒。
And then of course, retailers as your dealership, you know, I think the lines have really gotten blurred over the last couple of years. You know, as we're seeing like this vertical and a great shame in companies and whatnot, what do you see on that side? And like what's happening there in the business?
过去几年，像您这样的经销商变成了零售商，这当然不可避免。我们看到公司层面上如垂直一体化和集团化的趋势，这导致了明显的界限模糊。您认为这些趋势对业务产生了怎样的影响，零售行业又发生了哪些变化？
Well, look, I think the, if you want to get the essence of what we're trying to enable here, it's that dealerships, you know, while they compete fiercely for sales volume and customer loyalty, they absolutely are an incredible brotherhood of colleagues that really work well together. And we want to use technology to enable that community of operators to work together, to trade inventory that isn't right for one store, but is best suited at another.
嗯，看着，我认为，如果你想要了解我们想要实现的核心，那就是，虽然经销商在销售量和客户忠诚度方面存在激烈竞争，但他们绝对是一个非常团结的同行群体，他们能够相互协作。我们希望利用技术来使这个经营者社区能够相互合作，交换库存，使那些不适合某个店铺的货物在其他店铺发挥最大价值。
And technology can be that enabling force to enable dealer to dealer trading. And today the system is sort of, you know, old school. It's like, we all come, lick our wounds on cars we can't sell to a big, you know, virtual or physical lot and then trade them like baseball cards to each other and to see if somebody else locally could could could trade it better.
科技可以成为推动经销商间交易的推动力。但现有的系统已经有些过时了，我们都在等待在大规模的虚拟或实体场地集聚在一起，来交换卖不出去的车辆，就像交换棒球卡片一样。我们能够看到是否有其他经销商能够更好地交易它们。
I think technology can absolutely better optimize the fleet using the dealer network as a distributed infrastructure to enable this retail system. I mean, we're one of the few industries that has four tiers. You got the manufacturer building the car, you got the dealer retailing the car, you've got the technology platform being where people shop, explore, learn, and then you've got the wholesale segment.
我认为技术绝对可以更好地优化车队，利用经销商网络作为分布式基础设施来实现零售系统。我的意思是，我们是少数几个拥有四个层级的行业之一。你有制造商制造汽车，你有经销商零售汽车，你有技术平台是人们购物，探索，学习的地方，然后你有批发细分市场。
With our AccuTrade acquisition, we're enabling dealerships to more accurately get to the health of the vehicle to know exactly what the car is worth, which will make it much more easily tradable to other dealers who also are trusting that technology.
通过我们的AccuTrade收购，我们使汽车经销商能够更精确地了解汽车的实际价值，从而更容易地进行交易，其他经销商也会信任这项技术。
What's AccuTrade? Can you explain that for a second?
AccuTrade是什么？你能简单解释一下吗？
Sure. So AccuTrade was built by one of the nation's best wholesalers, Robert Hollen said, and he'd been buying cars profitably for years and built basically the best technology to. I bought tons of cars from Hansen. Yeah, and he absolutely loves his dealer partners as well.
当然，AccuTrade是由国内最好的批发商之一Robert Hollen建立的，他多年来一直盈利购买汽车，并基本上建立了最好的技术。我购买了许多来自Hansen的汽车。是的，他也非常喜欢他的经销商合作伙伴。
And so when Bob and I started talking a few years ago, you know, it was about basically, how do we bring your secret, your buying secret and unlock that power to the dealer community? And he's at a life stage where I think that too would have been part of his legacy was that he was going to give power back to the retail system and enable them to do what he's done profitably for years.
所以，几年前，当鲍勃和我开始交谈时，主要在探讨如何将您的买家秘密带给经销商，释放这种力量。他处于一个人生阶段，我认为将这种能力返还给零售系统，并使其像他多年来以盈利的方式做的那样发挥作用，是他遗产的一部分。
So basically for the audience, this guy is considered a legend in the car business, very good at wholesale cars to say the least. And I guess one day has this idea and he's like, hey, let me. I know I have this secret sauce. I've made a shitload of money already, you know, I'm super successful. Hey, by the way, I can take this, put technology behind it. And like we said before, arm the rebels. That's basically the thesis here. Correct. And we want to turn retailers into professional buyers.
基本上，对于听众来说，这个人在汽车行业被认为是一个传奇，至少在批发汽车方面非常优秀。我猜有一天他有了一个想法，他说，“嘿，让我试试吧。我知道我有这个秘密配方。我已经赚了很多钱，你知道的，我非常成功。顺便说一句，我可以加上技术，像我们之前说过的，武装反叛者。这基本上就是这个论点。是的，我们想要把零售商变成专业买家。
Dealers today are going to auction. They're using things like MMR, which is historical, you know, daily rate data, right? I wasn't able to retail this car, so therefore, I'm going to hold so this level. What Bob liked about, you know, our platform vision was that we were going to use predictive forward looking data, retail demand data. So not only the cars.com data we see looking out in terms of where cars going to be worth over the next few months is their persistent demand.
今天经销商们将参加拍卖。他们会使用历史上的每日费率数据，如MMR等。我没能以零售价格把这辆车卖出去，所以我将会按照这个价位持有。鲍勃喜欢我们平台的愿景，即我们将使用预测性的前瞻性数据，如零售需求数据。因此，我们不仅可以看到cars.com的数据，还可以看到未来几个月汽车价值将会持续需求的数据。
But also we can see that across 6,000 dealer websites. So we can predict what a car is going to both sell for and how long it will take to turn in a forward looking fashion. So we want to move the industry from using historical data to trade towards predictive data. And how are you doing now? Like what are you specifically?
但我们也可以看到，在6000个经销商网站上，我们可以预测一辆汽车的销售价格和需要多长时间才能进入前瞻性。因此，我们希望将行业从使用历史数据交易转向使用预测数据交易。你现在怎么样？你具体在做什么呢？
So I could trade today. We ingest all of cars.com's retail demand, supply and demand data signals. So you can see what the car is fetching at auction. You can see what it's it's fetching in the retail marketplace. And therefore we can guide the buyer of the car on what the car is actually worth. What's important about this is that you know, the average consumer when they go to the dealership is spending 40 minutes to get their car praised. That's pretty conservative too. Many, many surveys are showing consumers spending up to an hour waiting for a appraisal.
为了能够进行交易，我们利用了cars.com所有的零售需求、供求数据信号。因此，您可以看到汽车在拍卖市场上的价格以及在零售市场上的价格。我们可以据此引导汽车买家了解汽车的真实价值。这一点很重要，因为普通消费者去汽车经销商，通常需要花费40分钟来评估他们的汽车。这仅是相对保守的数字。而许多调查显示，消费者等待评估的时间长达一小时。
And then when they get that number, it's a black box. There's no data behind it. It's just you know, the buyers were versus the customer and we all know the customer as an inflated sense of self worth for their vehicle. And so data is the truth broker there. So with AccuTray dealers can print a condition report that takes the intrinsic signal from the car you plug in an OBD scanner into the dash of the car, sends the data signal to the cloud. We then feed that data right back to the dealer so we can print out a report that says here's exactly what work needs to get done in this car.
当他们得到那个数字时，这便是一个黑匣子。它没有任何数据支持，仅仅是买家与顾客之间的区别，而我们都知道顾客对车辆有过高的自我价值感。因此数据是真相的经纪人。因此，使用AccuTray，经销商可以打印出一个条件报告，该报告从插入OBD扫描仪到汽车仪表盘中获取车辆的内在信号，将数据信号发送到云中。然后我们将数据反馈给经销商，这样就可以打印出一份报告，说明此车需要进行的确切工作。
How much those repairs cost. So when you're giving the customer the number, it's broken down into their parts and therefore it eliminates the distrust. It eliminates the back and forth, you know, over value. And what do you mean by it's broken into parts? So like, you know, we'll tell you that if you don't have two sets of keys, it knocks down the price by $75 and we'll do that by brand. We'll know on a Mercedes as worth $90. So the customer will say, wait, I have another key. I can bring you the other one. Okay, we'll give you 90 bucks for that.
这些修理费用多少钱。因此，当您向客户提供数字时，它会按他们的部分分解，从而消除不信任感。它消除了来回讨论，你知道，关于价值的问题。那么，你说它被分解成部分意味着什么？就像，你知道，我们会告诉你，如果你没有两把钥匙，它会把价格降低75美元，我们会根据品牌进行这样的操作。我们会知道一辆奔驰的价值是90美元。所以客户会说，等等，我还有一把钥匙。我可以给你另一把。好的，我们会给你90美元。
Second, make it like very like Alicar like itemizing it very itemized in detail. So that the customer sees the breakdown of the cost of the car. And it's also generated by the cars.com AccuTrayed system. So the consumer isn't saying that this person made the number up. It's coming from a trusted unbiased third party. And so dealers that are using the AccuTrayed system is like, look, it's eliminated so much back and forth time where people are leaving the dealership frustrated. They're going to get another price or another dealer because we're giving them all the data they need to know on what the cars truly worth.
其次，让它像Alicar一样非常详细地细分项目。这样顾客就可以看到汽车成本的详细分解。这也是由cars.com的AccuTrayed系统生成的。因此，消费者不会认为这个人编造了数字。它来自一个受信任的客观第三方。因此，使用AccuTrayed系统的经销商就像是：“看，它消除了来回耗时，人们因为我们为他们提供了他们所需的有关汽车真正价值的所有数据而离开经销商感到沮丧，他们会去找另一个价格或另一个经销商。”
And so they're speeding transactions. They're bypassing auction fees. They're now able to inspect a car in four minutes as opposed to 40. And by cars off all their service lane customers. And so dealerships are going to start working more with technology to lower their overall operating costs. But speed the rate of transactions running through that platform. And that's the key to profitability in this industry. You've got to be able to move more units both buying and selling with greater operational ease and at tremendous efficiency and velocity if you want to run a very profitable business in the future.
因此他们正在加快交易速度。他们正在避开拍卖费用。他们现在能够在四分钟内检查一辆汽车，而不是40分钟。他们也从所有服务车道的客户那里购买汽车。因此，经销商将会开始更多地与技术合作，以降低他们的总体运营成本。但是要在这个平台上加快交易速度。这是这个行业盈利的关键。如果你想在未来经营一个非常有利可图的企业，你必须能够以更高的运营效率和速度，更容易地买卖更多的单位。
Yeah, look, we everyone remembers that trades was used to and I'm sure in some places it still is, but it was very opaque. You know, you'd get a trade and the use commander, whoever would try to get a steal the trade or get a great deal of trade and not educated consumer would obviously lose in that sense. Whereas an educated consumer would come out pretty well because the dealer would still pay up for it because they don't need to transport it from the auction.
是这样的，大家都记得以前的交易方式吧，我相信在某些地方还在使用，但是它非常不透明。你会得到一个交易，使用的指挥官或其他人会试图获取更好的交易或者以更便宜的价格获得交易，如果顾客不了解情况，显然会吃亏。而一个受过教育的消费者会得到更好的结果，因为交易商还是会支付原价，因为他们不需要从拍卖中运输商品。
They don't need to bid against other dealers and so it's still worth it. But I think that's I think it's fascinating to hear you say like that level of a key. I know because I mean, I know these keys. I know that if you're missing an Audi Q7 key versus a Honda Civic key, it's a very big difference. You know, we made a lot of keys. So I didn't realize it's at that level, but I think it's pretty well.
他们不需要与其他经销商争标，所以这仍然值得。但我认为，你说出了一个很深入的关键层面，这让我觉得很有趣。我知道，因为我了解这些汽车钥匙。如果你失去了奥迪Q7的钥匙，与失去本田思域的钥匙相比，是有很大区别的。我们制作了很多钥匙，所以我没有意识到它是达到了那个层面，但我认为这很好。
Well, the thing about retail experiences, right? You know, many progressive retailers have these, you know, no hassle return policies and just wild customers with support and dealerships know this that they want. If they can take care of a customer getting them out of a car, the chances of them buying the next car from them are through the roof. And so they want to keep that customer relationship use data, trust and transparency as creating their brand identity. And by doing that, they're going to win customer loyalty.
关于零售体验的事情，你知道吗？很多进步的零售商采用这些无麻烦退货政策和为顾客提供支持的方式，经销商也知道他们想要这样做。如果他们能照顾好顾客的购车过程，那么下一辆车他们就有很大机会从这位顾客那里购买。因此，他们想要保持这种客户关系，并利用数据、信任和透明度来塑造他们的品牌形象。通过这样做，他们将赢得客户忠诚度。
Yeah. And I think that's why, you know, people ask me like, oh, you know, car dealership guy, where should I go buy a car? Well, I say, well, I, you know, I can't tell you that, but what I should look for is look for, you know, a brand or someone a dealership has been around for many, many years. And that's just one of the many things. And the reason I say that is because I know how we function having been in business for, you know, very, very long time, you know, when you play the long term game, I, I, I've tweeted about this, but I say it's not an hour best interest to try to collaborate customers because at the end of the day, they're going to come back to me.
恩。我认为这就是为什么人们会问我，比如说：“你是卖汽车的人，我应该去哪里买车？” 好吧，我回答说，我不能告诉你具体去哪里，但我会建议你找一些品牌或经营多年的经销商。这只是众多因素之一。我这么说是因为我知道我们作为一家有很长历史的公司是如何运作的。当你玩长期的游戏时，我曾在推特上说过，对于我们来说，诱骗顾客并不符合我们的最大利益，因为归根结底，他们最终还是会回到我们这里。
They're going to buy another car. They're going to bring their family. They're going to buy another car. And it's only if you play the long term game. If you're just playing a short term game and, you know, you have bad reviews and all that, of course, you're not going to care. But at the end of the day, if you want to build a long term business, you got to, you know, actually, you want to deliver a good customer experience because ultimately those people are going to come back to you. Reputation matters.
他们要买另一辆汽车。他们要带上家人。他们要买另一辆汽车。只有当你在玩长期的游戏时才需要这样做。如果你只是玩短期的游戏并且收到了不好的评价，那当然你不会在意。但是归根结底，如果你想建立一个长期的业务，你必须提供良好的客户体验，因为最终这些人会回到你这里。声誉是很重要的。
So I'll give you a little hint what we're working on right now that will be releasing this year. You know, through dealer rate, we're now serving cars.com shopper experiences in real time. And then we're taking that dealer feedback and posting it directly into the algorithm on cars.com. And so over the course of the next year, we're going to start waiting down the dealerships that are generating a low net positive score for the user. And we, how are you measuring that?
那么，我可以给你们一个小提示，我们现在正在开发的东西会在今年发布。你们知道，我们现在通过经销商费率实时提供cars.com购物者的体验。然后我们会把经销商的反馈直接发布到cars.com的算法中。在接下来的一年中，我们将开始优化那些为用户创造低净积极分数的经销商，你们是如何测量这个分数的呢？
So we'll survey consumers based on, you know, leads that send into dealerships, phone calls, we're even using geolocation technologies so we can survey people that we know are physically at a store to rate the dealership experience. And over time, we want to reward, you know, the world class retailers. And frankly, we don't want to help the bad actors that are creating a bad identity for our industry. So we're starting to use reviews more as currency in our smart algorithms, which is just going to reward the best players and continually make it harder for those that are, you know, not really helping our industry's reputation.
因此，我们将基于进入汽车经销商、电话咨询以及使用地理位置技术调查那些我们知道身处店铺的消费者，以评估他们的经销商体验。随着时间的推移，我们希望奖励世界级零售商。而且，我们不想帮助那些给我们行业带来恶劣形象的不良分子。因此，我们开始将评论更多地作为我们智能算法的货币，这只会奖励最优秀的参与者，不断让那些没有帮助我们行业声誉的人变得更加困难。
On another big note, things something that's been going through my head and just try to think about myself and your shoes, AI, you know, there's a lot of it seems like from what I'm reading and on the street and just general within the investor community, seems like this is something that people are, it's not like Web 3 or crypto, like people are really taking it seriously that this may be like a big inflection point. You are around the dot com era and all that. I wasn't, or at least I wasn't in this business at the time. What are your thoughts about that?
另一个重要的问题是，有些事情一直在我脑海中盘旋，我试着从自己和你（AI）的角度进行思考，你知道的，从我所阅读的信息和从街头和投资者社区普遍的观察来看，人们似乎认为这可能是一个重要的转折点，不像Web3或加密货币，人们真的对此非常重视。你经历过点com时代和所有这些。我没有，或者至少当时我不在这个行业。你对此有什么想法？
Is there, you know, conversations in the company? Like I'm just curious to look what it's like to be in the head of Alex Vetter in the world of emerging AI right now. Well, look, our company DNA is to lean into these technologies, right? We want to be first to explore, experiment and use.
公司里有交流吗？我只是想知道在新兴人工智能领域中，身处于Alex Vetter的位置是什么样的感觉。我们公司的基因是积极采用这些技术，我们希望成为最先探索、实验和使用的人。
And so if you look at our website business, you know, we're taking thousands of calls from dealers every day to create content for them for their own website. So now we can use AI, generative AI to build that content in a fraction of the time that we were manually creating it. So immediately we see a huge savings potential to increase our throughput. We're now launching websites and building websites faster than ever before.
因此，如果您看看我们的网站业务，您会知道我们每天接听数千个来自经销商的电话，为他们创建自己网站的内容。现在我们可以使用人工智能，生成式人工智能来快速构建这些内容，节省了大量时间。因此，我们能够立即看到巨大的节省潜力，以增加我们的生产率。我们现在可以比以往任何时候更快地启动和建立网站。
I think on the content side, you know, we're harvesting tens of millions of reviews every day or every year on the, on the industry, building that into word clouds, sentiment analysis, not only around stores, but brands. Huge opportunity for us to be a first mover there. So, you know, again, we're going to continue to lead by being involved in this tech. And I don't think it's ever going to replace the need for actual expertise as opposed to computer-generative expertise.
我认为在内容方面，我们每天或每年都在从行业中收集数千万条评论，将其转化为词云和情感分析，不仅涉及商店，还涉及品牌。这为我们提供了成为第一批行动者的巨大机会。因此，我们将继续通过参与这些技术来领先。但我认为它永远无法取代实际专业知识，而不是计算机生成的专业知识。
But give me the badass ideas. Like I want to know, I want to know the juicy stuff. Like what can you do with this to really wow dealers and consumers with AI? Well, look, I definitely think that we can run our reviews database against generative AI to really basically better catalog cars and classes of what what they're who they cater to and who likes them and who doesn't. So I do think you're going to see personalization take off a lot more. If we know you're a luxury shopper, we're going to be able to gravitate you towards luxury brands that are more aligned with what you're looking for. And conversely, data payments.
给我一些不错的想法吧。我想知道，我想知道那些刺激人的东西。你能利用这个AI做什么来让经销商和消费者觉得惊艳呢？好吧，我认为我们可以利用生成式AI运行我们的评论数据库，使得汽车和它们所属分类更好的被分类，以这些分类为基础，我们可以更好的了解到汽车适合哪些人群，有哪些人喜欢，哪些人不喜欢。因此我认为将来我们会看到更多的个性化服务出现。如果我们知道你是一个奢侈品购物者，我们可以更好地推荐更符合你需求的奢侈品牌。当然，我们也可以利用数据来支付款项。
We're going to take people that are struggling on affordability and guide them in terms of which banks can lend them money and use generative AI to guide people to the destinations that are going to convert them at the highest rate. Is there any innovators dilemma when you think about AI and just the opportunities there? I mentioned on a previous pod that I did about, you know, a future where I just go to a website and it's like, you know, hey, what can I help you with? You know, from a car standpoint, I say exactly what I want, you know, where I live. And it just all happens behind the scenes.
我们将帮助那些在经济实力上遇到困难的人指导他们选择哪家银行可以借款，并使用生成式人工智能来引导人们达到最高的转化率。当你考虑人工智能和其中的机会时，是否存在创新者困境？在我之前的一次播客中，我提到过一种未来，我只需要去一个网站，然后会提示我“我能帮你什么忙？”从汽车角度来说，我会告诉它我想要什么，我住在哪里。这一切都在幕后发生。
Like, is there any of that that you're dealing with? Yeah, well, you want to index your data so that generative AI can actually leverage it and create new experiences. So again, we're all in here experimenting with it, learning how to use it, empowering our teams to fail fast with it and try new things. And how do you do that? Just create a culture that encourages experimentation, right? We want to be first to market on things. So if we can, you know, recognize an employee who's who's developed a prototype for something that we can release to either our 30 million users or our 20,000 dealers, like those people are getting promoted. We want to reward those people for for for experimenting with new technology and helping us run a more efficient business.
你是否遇到过这样的事情？是的，你想要对你的数据进行索引，这样生成式人工智能才能真正利用它并创建新的体验。所以，我们都在尝试实验，学习如何使用它，鼓励团队快速尝试并尝试新事物。那么如何做到这一点呢？只需要创造一种鼓励实验的文化就行了，对吧？我们希望在某些方面率先进入市场。因此，如果我们能够认识到有员工开发出一个原型，我们可以为其发布给我们的3000万用户或2万个经销商，那么这些人将会得到晋升。我们希望奖励那些通过尝试新技术并帮助我们运营更高效的业务的人。
Yeah. Now, I think just to end on a more high level macro note or big picture, cars.com, the car suite of products, you've done a lot. You've really expanded and it's very, very impressive how you've grown. But I'm really curious, like, five to 10 years, how does the business evolve? Again, you've been around for a while. You've sort of evolved in multiple phases, which I didn't know the way you described it today. So I definitely learned something new, but how does the business evolve over the next five to 10 years?
是的。现在，我认为就在更高级别的宏观层面或者大局上结束，cars.com的汽车产品套件，你已经做了很多工作。你真的扩展了这个业务，你的成长非常令人印象深刻。但我真的很好奇，未来的五到十年，这个业务将如何发展？你已经在这个行业里有一段时间了。你发展了多个阶段，这是我今天所不知道的。所以我绝对学到了一些新东西，但是在未来的五到十年，这个业务将如何发展？
Well, look, I think our business is, or are you in a rubah laying on the beach, right? No, no, no, look, it's a phenomenal industry that that's always evolving. You know, I will tell you that dealerships hold the keys there. If they use technology to run their operation, they're going to increase their throughput and they're going to enjoy record profitability. But we have to build this industry to be technology first.
嗯，听着，我认为我们的业务就像你躺在海滩上一样，对吧？不，不，不，看着，这是一个非常棒的行业，它始终在不断发展。你知道的，我要告诉你的是，经销商掌握了这个行业的关键。如果他们利用技术来管理他们的运营，他们将会增加产量，获得创纪录的盈利。但我们必须将这个行业建设成以技术为先的。
And you ask me the question about headwinds and tailwinds in my business. I'll tell you one of the tailwinds is that generationally, younger and younger owners are taking over stores being passed on through generations. And what they're doing now is they're not questioning whether or not they should be working with cars.com or dealer-inspire or Accutrade. They are merely wanting those tools and they're putting them to work. And so as I look at dealerships trusting the next generation of leaders that are going to be running the industry, I'm really pleased to see how much they are leaning into technology first because they know that every customer coming in their store has been on their device, has been able to sell that. You don't need to convince that. It's obviously a given.
你问了我关于我的业务中头风和尾风的问题。我告诉你其中一个尾风是，随着越来越年轻的业主接管代代相传的商店，年轻一代正在成为尾风。现在他们所做的是，他们不会质疑是否应该与cars.com或dealer-inspire或Accutrade合作。他们仅仅想要这些工具，并且他们正在使用它们。因此，当我看到经销商相信下一代将成为行业领袖时，我非常高兴地看到他们首先依靠技术，因为他们知道每个进入他们商店的客户都使用他们的设备，并能够做到这一点，你不需要说服他们，这是显然的。
Yeah, but well, you'd be surprised. We only have 20,000 dealers in the universe of 40,000 today. So I sit here and I say, boy, until we get to that 100% market share where everybody's using our technology to run their store, we don't have a lot of work to do. But I think the industry's embracing tech now more than ever, sure it took a pandemic to kind of push our industry forward. But the number of operators that are now using technology and their day-to-day operation is so exciting to see and the industry's got a lot of upside still to go and creating a great retail experience.
是的，但你将会感到惊讶。目前我们宇宙中的经销商只有2万个，而宇宙总共有4万个。所以我坐在这里说，直到我们达到100%的市场份额，每个人都使用我们的技术来运营他们的商店，我们还有很多工作要做。但我认为，该行业现在比以往任何时候都更愿意采用科技，当然，这需要一场大流行病来推动我们的行业向前发展。但现在每天都使用技术的经营者数量是如此令人兴奋，该行业仍有很大的增长空间，以创造出一个极好的零售体验。
Yeah. And I think, and to your point, great retail experience, I just think that it's really good for the consumer ultimately because all that transparency and it's a hard pill to swallow at the time for many dealers. And I got to speak to a lot of dealers. I've experienced it myself in certain cases. I think ultimately, you know, like you said, it is good for the industry, creates a better reputation, good for consumers, and I think elevates everyone together. So I think it makes total sense.
是的，我认为你说得对，提供良好的零售体验是对消费者非常有益的，因为它增加了透明度，尽管对于许多经销商来说，这是一颗苦药。我了解到许多经销商的经历，我自己也曾在某些情况下经历了这种情况。但是，最终来说，正如你所说，这对整个行业都是有益的，有助于塑造更好的声誉，对消费者也有好处，能够提升所有人的地位。所以我认为这是完全有意义的。
Car retail guy, I appreciate you elevating our industry conversation and doing what you're doing. It's great to see the industry be put in such a positive light and your voice out there matters. So keep up the great work. And I appreciate you coming out the bumble f**k over here in the middle of the forest to record this podcast. This is awesome.
汽车销售员，我很欣赏你提升我们业界的对话并且做你正在做的事情。看到这个行业被放在如此积极的光线下并且你的声音很重要，这太棒了。因此，请继续保持出色的工作。而且我很感激你来到这个位于森林中心的隐蔽地方录制这个播客。这太棒了。
Last but not least, working everyone learn about you cars. Obviously cars.com. I think that's a given. My email is easy. It's Alex, Aliex at cars.com. You can also follow me on Twitter as well.
最后但并非最不重要的是，每个人都应该学习关于你的汽车。很明显是cars.com。我认为这是理所应当的。我的电子邮件很简单。是Alex, Aliex在cars.com上。你也可以在Twitter上关注我。
Good. Good. Love it. Alex, dude. Thanks so much.
好的。好的。真喜欢它。亚历克斯，兄弟。非常感谢。
Alright. Hope you enjoyed that episode. Please give the podcast or rating. Consider subscribing to the show and check the show notes for links to what we talked about. Thanks for tuning in. I'll see you guys next time.
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