All right, so with that said Andrew, kick us off. Can you give us your background? Just tell us a little bit about yourself, you know, and also what you went.
Well, I'll let you start down. We'll go from there. Sure, sure. Well, first and foremost, you know, thank you for the opportunity to come on your forum and talk to you about this very important issue. And share my thoughts as well as some of the details and facts that I was made aware of yesterday before the announcement at the LA Auto Show. I was there in attendance before flying back a home east here to my home base in alan town, Pennsylvania.
But before I get into that a little bit about me, I've been in the car business my whole life full time about 25 years. Before that, you know, I started in the business. I'm a second generation dealer. Started washing cars, working for my dad, that kind of thing. I'm sure it's a story that you hear quite often and kind of worked my way up from there and now the rest is history became became a dealer principle a little over five years ago and I operate Acura Honda Hyundai Mercedes Benz and Porsche franchises in alan town, Pennsylvania, the Lehigh Valley of Pennsylvania, which is about an hour north of Philadelphia and an hour west of New York City.
You know, growing up being in this business, you know, my dad started from scratch with his business partner and was always an ardent proponent of the franchise system, protecting the franchise system and also making sure that he was engaged in the dealer council process. He was always a very big believer in the importance of the manufacturer having the type of working relationship with the franchisees that is most conducive to us achieving mutual success. There's always obviously going to be areas where we're going to have disagreement, but there's going to also be areas where we are going to have an opportunity to collaborate at a high level and enjoy mutual success.
And so I've always been involved in dealer council related projects, initiatives, processes, whatever you want to call it. So I've been a member of Hyundai's National dealer advisory council now for a little over two years. I was recent.
Andrew, what does that mean for the audience? What does that actually mean? Sure. So all the manufacturers have a little bit of a different approach to it, but in theory it's largely the same. So every manufacturer has operating regions or territories throughout the country. And there are a number of representatives appointed or elected to represent the dealers in each operating region throughout the country.
So in the case of Hyundai, they have the eastern region, they have the mid-Atlantic region, they have the southern region, they have the south east region, the middle states region, western region, and so on and so forth. So the way our process works is we have a regional dealer council, which meets quarterly and is comprised of representatives from each of the districts in each of the regions. And then the regional council will elect two representatives to represent dealers at the national council.
And then we go from there and then we have four meetings a year with HMA management as well as various touchpoint calls throughout the year, subcommittee calls. And the topics can range on everything from sales to after sales, which is parts and service to finance, to customer experience, certainly dealer development, technology, things along those lines. And so basically any areas where there's opportunity for collaboration, that's how the committees and the working groups are structured, which ultimately informed the agenda that is discussed at the national meetings, which in Hyundai's case happened quarterly. Some OEMs will do them every two months, some OEMs will do them every month. But again, it's just an opportunity for representatives from the OEMs leadership team to meet with representatives on behalf of the dealer body and talk about the issues that are of most importance at that time for the brand, the industry, the market, so on and so forth.
Does that make sense? Got it. So it does. Now, can you tell us why you flew to LA the over the last couple of days? Like what were you doing there? What was the agenda there?
Yeah, sure. So, you know, it's funny, I was down in Florida in Palm Beach for Brian Pash's modern retail conference the first couple of days of this week. And my wife went down with me, we took a long weekend and right before I left last Friday, I got a call from my primary liaison at Hyundai, who is responsible for coordinating efforts with the dealer council or with the officers of the dealer council, of which I was one as vice chairman now incoming chairman and said, listen, we'd like you to fly out for the LA Auto Show for the debut of the 2024 San Jose and attend the press dinner the night before, and then also get an opportunity to meet with some of the executive management team on Thursday before the festivities really kicked off and earnest. And of course, you know, when the leadership team asks you to meet, you know, I try to drop everything because I believe in the power and the importance of our relationship and of the process. So myself and our outgoing chairman Kevin Riley, we hopped on a plane and flew out and met with the senior leadership team on on on Wednesday, had the dinner, got up the next morning, thought we were going to the press conference and then that's when this announcement about the Amazon partnership was was presented to us shortly before it was made public. So that was how this this thing kind of played out and how I was made aware.
So you did not know about this until you were already there. No, not not the extent that not the extent that was announced yesterday.
所以你直到已经在那儿的时候才知道这件事。不,至少我并不知道昨天所公布的那种程度的情况。
I think it's important to I think it's important to note that what most people don't realize is that Hyundai has had a relationship, they've had a a partnership, whatever you want to call it with Amazon. I think since 2018 or 2019, I forget how far back it goes. But dealers have had their inventory listed on Amazon's marketplace for several years now. And it's sort of operated similarly to how we do things on the automotive endemic sites, the sites where people would go to shop for a car like cars.com or auto trader or car key ruse, stuff like that. It wasn't identical, but it was very similar in how it was structured. Basically, the inventory is listed and the consumer has an opportunity to reach out to the dealer through the Amazon platform or through a link to the dealer's website and the VDP page, the actual listing page on the dealer's website and start the process of attempting to buy the car if they were so inclined. So the functionality was very similar to what consumers experience on other third party automotive endemic sites, the sites like I mentioned cars.com, auto trader, car gurus, things like that. So that's been around for a while. So Hyundai being in partnership or in a relationship in a strategic alliance, again, however you want to characterize it with Amazon is not new. That is not new news that has been around for several years.
What was news was the announcement that was made yesterday about their enhanced collaboration, their enhanced relationship, which really touched three fronts. Obviously, first and foremost was the announcement that we're talking about today, which is the ability for consumers to purchase cars through Amazon. And I want to elaborate on that more in a moment. But in addition to that, there was an announcement made about Alexa being the voice recognition technology that will be in Hyundai products in the future, which is obviously a very big deal. And then the other one was a a transition, if you will, for Hyundai to utilizing Amazon Web Services for a lot of their cloud computing needs across the entire company. So not necessarily a consumer facing or necessarily even directly dealer facing piece of news, but significant nonetheless. I mean, that's a big deal for them to be migrating their technology platforms to Amazon's cloud. So, and I think that'll ultimately be a good thing.
But as far as, I'm sorry, go ahead. Yeah, go ahead. No, I was going to say, can you give us a breakdown of each of those sort of one by one? I think what a lot of people are trying to understand is like, what is actually different here? Is this just a big, just PR hype cycle? I think that's the first question. I think there's lots of follow-ups of why is Hyundai working so closely with Amazon on this consumer front? Or is that like a derivative or it's sort of an added bonus for Amazon? It's like, hey, you work with us on the B2B front, we'll work with you on the B2C front. So just give that one, you could break it down for us, and explain each of those different elements on this deal. Because I want to get to the, ultimately, I want to get to the point of like, what does this actually mean, right?
Does our friends or whoever in 18 months, are they buying a new Hyundai on Amazon? Is that real or is it not? So the actual functionality of how it's going to work and play out is really going to be ultimately curated, if you will, through the pilot program that's going to transpire over the course of the next 30 days.
So over the course of the next 30 days, a select group of dealers, I think the total number is 16 or 18 or something like that, are going to have an opportunity to participate in the pilot, whereby they will have the ability to sell cars to Amazon employees only. So this won't even be a full fledged, full public facing program until after the pilot period, because they need to learn the nuts and bolts and work out the kinks in the partnership that Amazon has formed with a third party company, who in essence is going to serve as the intermediary that will connect the Amazon platform to the digital retailing tools, the certified digital retailing tools, that Hyundai dealers across the country are required to use.
I think there's three or four of them now, Roadster, Taekyon, I think there's one other one, if I'm not mistaken, it might be Gavagoo or a car now or one of the, I think it might be Gavagoo, I can't remember what the other one is, forgive me, but basically Hyundai, like most other OEMs, they have these programs where they require dealerships to use certain technology vendors. And whether those in the dealer space in the dealer world agree with the philosophy and the strategy behind those types of programs, we could probably do an entire show about that alone, their car dealership guide, but that's for another time. The reality of it is, is that they do it to achieve the economies of scale in terms of how their systems integrate with the software tools and technologies that dealers are using to execute processes at retail.
So what Amazon has in essence done is, is they partnered with a third party intermediary that is going to serve as the conduit between the dealers digital retail system and the Amazon platform. So now, in theory, once this all will come to fruition, the customer that finds the vehicle, the, the, the, the in stock vehicle that is on a dealer's lot, but they're finding it on the Amazon.com marketplace or on the Amazon.com platform. Whereas before they would get redirected to the dealership website to start the transaction, they will be able to initiate the transaction on Amazon.com. And in essence, what's going to happen is, the, the, the transaction will happen on Amazon.com, but in the background, it will be happening inside the dealer's digital retail tool.
Now with that comes some addict. I think that's a really important point. It is. It is the point you're making is yeah. Keep going. Yeah. This is why this is why I wanted to make sure that I had an opportunity to talk about this because first and foremost, the dealers have the option to participate in this program or not. That's number one. Number two, the dealers set the price. Amazon's not setting the price. Hyundai is not setting the price.
Number three, there are some things that in the initial stages are going to need to evolve and get worked out that could actually serve as challenges or hurdles to making this process seamless for the customer. And by that, I mean number one, there is as of, as of this date and they are working on resolving this, but as of this date, there is no mechanism within this process on the Amazon.com platform for a customer to trade in a vehicle. So if you have a car that you want to trade and you have an aspiration to buy a car through from a Hyundai dealer through the Amazon platform, there's no mechanism for you to input your trade information, receive a value, facilitate the pulling of a payoff, all that type of stuff. So that's a big hurdle because as you well know, that's 50 sometimes, 60 sometimes, you know, north of 70% of the transaction.
So that's a big hurdle that they're going to need to work out. Did they allude to anything? Did they make any references or did anyone ask them about how are you going to handle trade-ins? They didn't have an answer for us at this time. That's still sort of TVD. So that's. Who's running this process? Is there like a lead on this? Is it the CMO?
So the Hyundai marketing team in conjunction with the folks at Amazon have been coordinating on how this partnership is going to be taken to market. And then some of the digital retail people inside Hyundai are working with the intermediary that was selected and the digital retail tools to set this whole thing up and facilitate it. So. But there's a couple other things that I think are important to note here as well.
So I mentioned the trade. Go ahead. Initially, financing will only be able to be arranged through Hyundai Finance. So, you know, that's problematic because if there are better opportunities for consumers to secure more favorable financing terms through other lending institutions or whatnot or their credit union or whatever, they're not going to be able to take advantage of that through this platform in the initial stages. So financing will be exclusive to Hyundai Finance. So some may view that as a positive, some may view that as not a positive. I do it as a limitation. And, you know, it's important to note.
The next important piece is going to be the F&I portion of the transaction. So finance and insurance. So how dealers right now assist customers with arranging for financing and then arranging for the purchase of ancillary protection products like extended service contracts, warranties, tire and wheel protection, things along those lines. Every dealer, whether it's at the state or the federal level, has responsibilities for compliance, for 100% disclosure, things along those lines. It's very important. It's critical to our business. It's an area where no one wants to get into hot water in on. So how that's ultimately going to be handled is also TBE because we, of course, want to be transparent and we want to be compliant. So I'm giving you these scenarios and these exceptions because they are important nuances that are to be determined and yet to be worked out. So I'm going to be interested to see how this plays out and obviously following closely and be doing everything I can to help facilitate a resolution to this that's beneficial to the consumer, the dealer and all parties involved.
Andrew, first thought is on here, he follows Tesla extremely closely and on just on on X on this platform sharing lots of insights. He has to run in 10 minutes. So I want to give him the opportunity to ask you a couple questions and to share his insight. Sure. So that floors yours.
Awesome. Thank you. Thank you. CDG for hosting. Thank you so much, Andrew, for all the awesome information you're sharing. This is super valuable stuff and I'm learning a ton. So I may have missed it because I did join about five to 10 minutes after the space started. But so so the Amazon integration here, it just sounds like it's a sort of like a layer on top of the current the model where the dealership essentially has stopped and then somebody can go on Amazon and use that platform versus saying going to the dealer lot and purchasing a car. It's basically just an additional layer. So can so are the prices fixed? Can the be negotiated? Can you talk about that a little bit?
Yeah, great. I'm glad you brought that up. That was actually one of the other talking points that I was going to try to get to.
是的,非常好。我很高兴你提到了那个问题。那其实正是我接下来要讨论的其中一个要点。
But yeah, so the other thing that's important to note here is that and this is especially important for the non automotive folks that are on the call today to understand that in the in the franchise dealer world, most OEMs have policies that speak to minimum advertised pricing.
And basically what that means is is they establish rules and guidelines that the owners must follow for when they go out to the marketplace and engage in advertising whether it's online, digital, traditional, whatever you want to call it. There are certain rules and guidelines that stipulate that we can't advertise a price below a car below a certain price.
Okay, the only way for a consumer to realize a price that might be below that would be to engage the dealer in a two way dialogue. Once that happens, then you know, sort of the rules go out the window and dealers are free to sell the car for whatever price they would like to sell the car for and and handle the transaction accordingly.
So the way that the Amazon arrangement was presented to us was that dealers that elect to participate in the program and list their inventory online on amazon.com will be subject to MAP pricing guidelines. So it's important to note that while the pricing is not into what's MAP. It's a minimum advertised price, minimum advertised price.
So dealers will be subject to minimum advertised price guidelines. And so if they elect to participate in the program, that will apply. And the consumer in exchange for the desire to transact in accordance with how they'll be able to transact on amazon.com. That's the price that they will be ultimately transacting at. Again, it won't be set by Amazon. It won't be set by Hyundai, it's set by the individual dealer.
So if the minimum advertised price on on a car is $20,000 and the list price is $25,000, one dealer might want to sell it on Amazon for $24,000, one might want to sell it for $23,000, one might want to sell it for $22,000. But no one can list it on there for less than $20,000. And that's how that works. So that will definitely be part of how this go to market initiative is executed. That's an important note.
So the dealer sets the price, they can't go below a floor. And once the person goes online and sees the price and they click buy, that's the price, that's it. So there's literally no negotiation. It's just whatever the dealer sets and the customer agrees to online, that's the price. Is that a great way of, okay, cool. So that's helpful.
And so if I make dealer, if I make dealer that, let's say I'm in Northern North Carolina and I'm a customer that's in New York, would the, and that dealer in North Carolina decides to list the car on Amazon, would the person in New York, would they see that listing?
It's conceivable that they could come across that listing, depending on how this revised marketplace is constructed and established by Amazon. The consumer might be able to search by proximity to their location. They might be able to search by price, regardless of proximity to their location. They might be able to search by specific vehicle criteria.
So I'm looking for a particular 2024 Hyundai Tucson SEL with package two in white with tan interior. You know, they could, they could get very specific and granular in terms of what vehicle they're searching for. That's all, that's all TBD. I'm going to be interested to see how that is set up. I have not seen any wireframes or any screenshots of what this new marketplace is going to look like.
All we've been made sort of aware of is the process, how it's going to flow, and the fact that dealers will still be in full control of transaction prices, of delivering the car, and of processing the actual transaction behind the scenes via their DRS tool that connects to the Amazon platform through this third-party intermediary.
So I just want to reiterate those very important points for all of our dealer friends on this call that may have misinterpreted some of the headlines like those that were published on automotive news yesterday, which stated Hyundai will sell vehicles on Amazon in 2024. Completely misleading, it should say how big dealers will sell vehicles on Amazon in 2024.
And that's the important takeaway that I want everybody on the call to have here is that this is still very much a dealer-centric process that will in essence be facilitated by the Amazon.com platform. Gotcha.
And then one more question if I may. So, you know, when somebody buys on Amazon, everything shows up at the door. And again, I may have missed this. So if I buy, I'm in North Carolina, North Carolina dealer, let's say they're 40 miles away, I place order and buy. Do I have to go pick up the car? Does the car come to me? Dealers will have the option to offer delivery services if they'd like.
And of course, just like, you know, I do business right now in Eastern Pennsylvania. But, you know, we deliver cars. I'm from Bethlehem. Yeah, I'm in Allentown. We had Allie. We had Allie Hyundai. Yep, that's where I am here. So, 17 years, I'm in Austin now. But yeah, there you go. Small world. Yeah. So, but yeah, I mean, we have delivery services that we offer our customers, but there are certain thresholds or mileage caps, radiuses, things like that that, you know, we will offer to our clients at no charge. And if we have to go beyond that, then obviously we talk about different delivery fees or things along those lines. But that's free for the dealer to say.
Andrew, Andrew, I do have a question. Yeah. Did they share with you? I don't know, like, how confidential this is, but did they share anything about like the economics of this? Like, how is this better for consumers? And I mean, Amazon has to make some money here. Did they share anything or that you can tell us?
So, you know, the economics of it are really this. It seems to me that Amazon has a desire to expand their platform to allow people to shop for cars. And we were told that several other OEMs are going to be getting on board with Amazon here, most likely in the second half of 2024. Okay. So this is not an exclusive arrangement that Hyundai is entering into. Hyundai is just going to be first to market with this relationship.
And I really think that, you know, if there's a key takeaway on that front here that people should have, it's that, you know, Hyundai is a progressive company. They want people to be able to shop for vehicles where they're most comfortable shopping for vehicles. And at the end of the day, though, they want their dealers servicing the customers. They want their dealers being the people that when, if there's a problem, if if if service is needed, we are the local representation. And it's incumbent upon us to service our mutual clients so that they have a great buying and ownership experience and want to come back and buy more Hyundai's and send their friends in the family room to buy more Hyundai's.
So I don't think there's anything wrong with wanting to have a presence on one of them on the lural on arguably the world's largest e-commerce platform. Just like I think it makes sense for Hyundai to have a presence on the other automotive and dynamic websites like cars.com and car gurus and all these other places. You want to go where the shoppers are where people want to shop where they ultimately want to transact. But it's important to note and to reiterate that the transaction will ultimately be processed and get catered by the dealers, the dealer network, the franchise dealers.
I think one of the thoughts that came to my head was if Amazon has a desire to really tap into the smart game, I don't have any data or stats to back to some. And I can only imagine that the average customer on Amazon is likely making or not spending as much time as they would otherwise spend on an automotive listing site. And it makes me wonder like is the right strategy to offer one OEM at a time, Hyundai, this, that kind of go one at a time where you're not really bringing the most options to the customer versus going out and acquiring a listing site that has, and I've spoken about I'm an investor in cars commerce has other listing sites like there's car gurus and there's other listing sites as well. But like doesn't make more sense to work with one of these listing sites. Assuming that they have more of a captive audience that is already in the market, they're coming to that site because they're clearly in the market to buy a car versus Amazon. It feels like it's not the fact of destination for where I go to if I'm going to buy a car.
我在思考的一个想法是,如果亚马逊真的想进入智能游戏领域,我并没有任何数据或统计来支持这个观点。我只能想象在亚马逊上的普通消费者可能没有花费他们在汽车销售网站上的大部分时间。这让我开始思考是否正确的策略是一次只提供一个OEM,例如现代、这个、那个,一次只关注一个,这样你就无法为顾客提供最多的选项。相比之下,去收购一个已经存在,并且我曾经讨论过我作为投资者的car commerce, 还有其他的汽车销售网站,比如 car gurus等。或许与这些销售网站合作会不会更有意义。假设他们已经有了一个更稳定的受众基础,并且明确在市场上购买汽车,而不是在亚马逊。我感觉这并不是我将要购买汽车时的首选目的地。
Mind you, I don't buy a car every three days. I buy a car once every five, six years. And so what's the thought process behind that? Or, and I'll say one more thing, is it that Amazon has all these other arrows in the quiver with AWS and all these other embedded advantages that they bring to the table. And so it puts Hyundai in this position where like let's just sign up for this because there's other advantages as part of a deal.
Like how do you think about this? I think that Amazon's done a great job diversifying their e-commerce platform. They're in so many different spaces and so many different verticals now. And I mean, whether you look at their forays into prescription drugs and other areas where I mean, I don't know about you, but there's certain aspects of their business that I would have never thought. I mean, they started as an online book retailer. And then their third party marketplace business has evolved so much. I mean, there's a ton of car dealers. I'm sure many of them that are listening in today that are selling parts and accessories on Amazon's platform. And basically, some are even having Amazon fulfill those parts and accessories orders for them. So they're actually shipping parts to Amazon for customers to buy. And then Amazon will fulfill the orders, take their fee and pay the dealers the balance.
You know, I don't do that at my stores. We sell parts on Amazon. We pay them their fee, but we fulfill all the orders. We control the stock. And we are ultimately responsible for the transaction. So, you know, this notion that they would have to go out and make an acquisition of a third party platform in order to begin to build a presence in this vertical. And the automotive, in the new car or the certified pre-owned vehicle vertical, I just don't think that that's their, I don't think they're predisposed to do that. I think they're predisposed to sort of pursue it on their own. I could be wrong about that. That's just my own opinion. But I think, again, this is sort of the opening salvo in how they're in the continued evolution of the auto sales platform. And I think, you know, Hyundai sees the opportunity here to take a leadership position. I agree with that. I think that positions them well to build their brand and to convey to the public that, you know, Hyundai is a progressive company that wants to help people buy cars and transact in any way that they possibly can.
But at the end of the day, the transaction is ultimately going to be handled by the 850 plus Hyundai dealers across the United States who do a great job representing this brand, who are fully invested in their communities, in their team members. We have something like 80% of Hyundai facilities are going through their remodel program right now. So this is not your father's Hyundai. This is a completely different company. It's technologically progressive. It's design aesthetic. If anybody saw the release of the all-new Santa Fe yesterday, the truck is fantastic. It's functional. It checks all the boxes. It's just I've had Hyundai. My family's had Hyundai since 1990. We've seen the company go through peaks and valleys, ups and downs like any OEM. But I can tell you right now that this company is on the ascendancy. They are on the verge of being in the same conversation as the likes of Honda and Toyota for all the right reasons. And you just got to look at their actions, not their words. And they're doing things right now. And they've remained committed and steadfast in their commitment to their franchise dealer network. So that's encouraging.
Andrew, let's take a couple questions from the audience. One second. See, Eddie. If anyone has any questions, just send a request. I can bring you up. And you could ask your question.
Eddie, can you hear us? Do you have a question?
Yeah, I have a couple of questions. If you don't mind, thanks for putting this. So I did post a question on here. And I'm not accusing anybody of anything. But could this be the end of my enticing customers with an internet deal? But selling them on something else? I can't say that I completely understand the context of your question. I think that, again, I think it really just boils down to it's another marketplace to present your products. I mean, if you think about it in physical terms, I mean, for years and years and years when I first got into this business, we used to pay to have our cars on display at the local shopping mall during the holiday season so that people could see the latest product. They might be presented with whatever year in sales offer there was. And they may or may not be compelled to drive over the dealership, take a test drive, take a look at the products. And if they walk in intending to pursue the model that they saw on display at the shopping mall, and instead to their right, it's something that they like better, and they end up pursuing that and purchasing that, at the end of the day, they've raised their hand as a shopper, as an entender. And the fact that we had a product on display in a physical marketplace, in this example, the shopping mall, led them to ultimately pursuing the purchase of one of our products. I think that's healthy. I think that's a great way for people to make sure that they are considering all their options. And I don't think there's anything wrong with that. So again, it's just another marketplace that's display products.
Can I rephrase my question then?
Sure. So what I'm getting at is, if, let's say I complete where I start the purchase of that car on Amazon, and I logged in with that car, and I get it at that price with that car in inventory, or will I go in there? And they say, you know, that car's already been sold. And then now we have this other car that's more expensive and such. I mean, we've heard about like kind of like the bait and switch tactic to have some dealers and I'm not accusing anybody of anything. But that's kind of where I was getting at.
Yeah. Well, I think I think conceptually, I think in theory, no, that shouldn't happen. Could it happen? Should it happen? You know, could it happen? Yeah, it could happen. But should it happen? Absolutely not. There should be full transparency into availability and into pricing and things along those lines. And even if a consumer does decide to pursue the purchase and then fails to take delivery and decides that they want to back out of the transaction, there's certainly within their rights to do that. You know, there are state laws throughout the country that speak to rights of rescission and things like that. So all that will be into play. It's really no different than the way it is now if you came in and bought the car in the fiscal dealership. Thank you, Eddie. Thanks for your questions.
We just brought up a shot. Do you have a question? That's right. Thanks. Thanks for all the color here. I just had a question on like the FNI process and you mentioned that you will be just Hyundai financial in this case and does Hyundai give the dealer like a flat fee or commission? If it's sold through Hyundai, like does the dealer make any money on the financing like they do at the dealer? And then how do the warranty products attachments work here? Thanks.
Yeah, so just to clarify and reiterate, the initial stages of this rollout will be exclusive as it relates to FNI will be exclusive to Hyundai Finance. Until such time as the system is built out to handle the offerings from other banks and lending institutions and certainly aftermarket protection product companies. So, but in the context of just looking at it through, you know, HMS Hyundai Motor Finance exclusivity right now, Hyundai will have the exclusive opportunity to offer finance and lease terms to customers as well as protection products like service contracts, warranties, tire and wheel protection, things like that. But from there, how a dealer is compensated or not compensated, it's our understanding, it's the typical relationship. So there are certain fees paid to dealers for arranging financing, things like that. There's obviously a profit margin on protection package sales and things like that. So all of that will will continue. That's very helpful. Thanks for doing this.
Thank you, Richard. Hey, Andrew, I do have a quick question on this. Do you not think that this signals or this is like the first step of the OEMs potentially heading down like dealership disintermediation or, you know, cutting out a dealer?
I mean, if you think of let's fast forward for a second, five years, 10 years, and let's, you know, of course, we know there's franchise laws, but let's paint this picture for one second where if customers are transacting through Amazon.com, they're financing through the an OEM's lender, captive lender. And by that point, they're selling themselves on the products. Right? Like, does that not threaten the dealership network?
What do you, how do you think about that? Well, I think there's two ways you could look at that. I mean, I think I think an academic argument could be made for that, but I just think that once academics go out the window and we start to look at practical realities, I think that there are more reasons than not for them to not go that route and continue to invest in the franchise system.
So, you know, franchisees are ambassadors and representatives for these companies in our local markets. We're the face of the company. We are the people that are in the trenches on the ground helping our customers when they have challenges and giving them options to transact, whether it relates to buying a car or servicing a car, doing all that type of stuff.
So, you have, there are numerous economic reasons for the preservation of the franchise system, not just the philosophical reasons that I just stated, but do they want to assume that financial responsibility for the real estate? Certainly the inventory argument right now, when that car rolls off the assembly line and gets wholesale to the dealership, the factory is in essence paid for that vehicle.
So, you know, if they're having to retain those vehicles until such time as they are retailed, I think you'd be hard pressed to find a CFO at an OEM right now that would be in favor of tying up that type of cash while cars are, you know, sitting waiting to be sold.
So, there are economic reasons why I think the franchise system makes sense and will continue. There are philosophical reasons that I think I just stated and there are practical reasons. So, I don't think there's, but with all that being said, I think there's opportunity. And again, this is why I believe so strongly in the dealer council process.
I do think that there are areas of common ground and opportunities for collaboration where we can align our business processes so that we're delivering on the promise of a better customer experience while preserving the integrity of our business models and the things that make the franchise system the single best delivery mechanism that I think the world has ever seen for retail automotive.
So, there's arguments for both, but I think the franchise system is here to stay. I want to wrap up in 10 minutes and just go through like winners and losers. Like, who wins here? Who loses here? How much? Let's take three more questions and then we'll get to that. Nikhil, Nikhil, you're up.
Thank you. So, thank you for the spaces where informative. So, I have a question for Andrew. Andrew, could you talk more about traditionally a buyer would go to a dealer, a local dealer, perhaps learn through a friend or just like seeing the dealer and just walks into the dealership or perhaps goes online, looks at the inventory and then goes to the dealer, takes a test drive and then make a purchase decision.
With this new partnership, what are the key benefits from the user perspective or the real customer perspective that the solves? Could you talk a little more about that? And then the second question is, there are multiple different parties in this transaction. There is the Amazon marketplace, there is a customer and there is a seller, manufacturer. How does this help? Each of these different parties, what are the key benefits for them? Thank you.
Okay, so I'm going to actually answer your second question first. I think it's important to note that this is still a two-party transaction, the customer and the dealer. The Amazon platform is really nothing more than a shopping marketplace that is facilitating the connection.
They're facilitating the connection by virtue of their existence and then by virtue of the mechanisms that they are employing to connect that customer with our platform here at our dealership with our digital retailing tool.
So it's really a two-party transaction. The manufacturer is really not party to the actual sales transaction. They were party to the transaction of wholesaling the vehicle to the dealer who in turn will retail it to the customer.
So again, it's a two-party transaction. Your other question really revolves around what is the evolution of the shopping process in retail automotive. So forever in a day, the only way to shop was to visit multiple dealerships, go out in a lot, kick tires, do test drives, talk to salespeople, do all that type of stuff. Well, obviously with the advent of the internet, all that change, people can do a lot of the shopping process online now. They can search inventory, they can read reviews, they can look up product specifications, all that type of stuff.
But when COVID hit, there was a big push into digital retail. The traditional car dealers got to be more like Carvanner and they got to do the transaction 100% online or even Tesla. We got to do it 100% online. Well, I think as COVID obviously began to go by the wayside. This whole notion of an omni-channel retail experience began to become a lot more pervasive. And I think it is the future for how people will shop for vehicles.
And for those of you that are on that don't understand what the omni-channel retail concept is, basically it means in short, if a customer wants to transact 100% online, 100% in store for a combination of the two, we're going to have the tools, the technologies, and the processes that enable exactly that to happen. Any one of those three things.
So if you start the shopping process on one of my websites and you decide you want to finish up in the store, we can make that happen. If you want to do it 100% online and have the vehicle delivered to you, we can do that. If you just want to quickly search my inventory to see if I have a car in stock, that you want to buy, you never reach out to one of my sales consultants or one of my call center team members, and you just decide to show up at the dealership and say, I want to buy this car, we can make that happen 100% in person.
So I think that this is just an extension, this Amazon partnership, is just an extension of what is the future of automotive retail, and that we want to go where the customers want to transact, and we want to deliver the type of experience that they want on their terms from the standpoint of again 100% online, 100% in store, or a combination of the two. Sounds good. Thank you, Andrew.
Just a quick follow up. Does this is this limited to new cars or certified beyond cars, or it could be open to like use cars as well? The Amazon partnership initially is new car exclusive. I believe there are plans to introduce Hyundai certified pre-owned vehicles to the marketplace in the second half of 2024, but that's filled PVD based on how the pilot goes, and how the process of working out the kinks goes, and things like that. Thank you.
All right, two more questions, and we'll get into winners and losers. Let's bring up Benj. Hi, Benj. Hi, thanks. Andrew, I am a current shopper for a new 2024 Elantra, and I actually have deposits down at three separate dealerships, and I have done extensive searches to make sure that I'm at the ones that present the biggest issue for me, which is Markups. How is this product going to disincentivize Markups on new cars, which I think is the current biggest issue for new car buyers?
So I don't know as though the platform itself will disincentivize Markups if a dealer is just inclined to mark up the car. If it's going to serve the purpose of disincentivizing, it's because the platform is going to be a repository for all this inventory to reside so that people can shop and compare. And I think, again, it's just another mechanism to promote transparency, and to promote the ability for a customer to compare pricing, compare options, all that type of stuff. Just like one could do right now on a platform like cars.com or an auto trader or one of those online marketplaces that are endemic to the automotive space. So I don't.
Andrew, let me just add something there. You're basically saying, you're basically saying, by simple virtue of having dealers compete on this global marketplace, the free market will work itself out, and the prices will just align with supply and demand. In theory, yes. And in practice, yes, because, and this is not revolutionary, this already exists, and so many other places around the internet. It's just so happens that now it's going to exist on arguably the largest e-commerce platform in the world. So, again, this is not a new concept. It's not revolutionary. I just think it's more evolutionary to the process of shopping for and purchasing a vehicle as we get into 2024 and beyond. I'm going to appreciate your answer. Thank you very much. Thank you, Benj.
All right. One final question, and then, Andrew, let's wrap up with winners and losers.
好的。最后一个问题,然后,Andrew,我们就总结一下谁是赢家,谁是输家。
Greg Troy. Hey, thank you. Andrew, thanks for clarifying that this isn't exclusive to Hyundai.
格雷格·特洛伊。嘿,谢谢你。安德鲁,感谢你澄清这并不只是现代公司的专属问题。
Two questions. Who do you think is the next one to fall in line behind the Amazon Web Service AI capability? And to the degree that this is evidence of a fear of missing out on the space race into AI inside of cars? Who do you think wins that between Amazon, Google, Alphabet, Apple, Siri, or Tesla?
Wow. Two great questions. The first one, who's next? Goodness gracious. Your guess is as good as mine. I don't know. It's tough to say. I really would be just taking a stab in the dark. I don't know. I really don't. So, I'm unfortunately going to have to take a pass on that because I wouldn't want to get in trouble for speculating and being completely off base or whatever, but not that I would get in trouble, but I just think I want to stay away from that one.
And as far as your second question about, you know, in-car voice recognition, AI, infotainment compatibility, it's sort of an all-encompassing term, you know, I think right now Google and Apple are in a fortuitous position to ascend to a position of dominance. Having said that, this Amazon announcement does change things. So, it's really going to be, I think, a race to see who can partner with the most OEMs and collaborate and integrate at a level that drives value for both the OEM car company, the technology company, and ultimately the customer. And I think we're still in a bit of an arms race there to see how that all shakes out. You know, personally, I think Apple's doing some really great things, but I'm really interested to see where Amazon and Hyundai go on this partnership because Hyundai of the brands that I represent, they do an outstanding job with in-car infotainment. I mean, if you look at the JD Power reports and so many of the other reports that speak to Hyundai's leadership position in in-car technology, infotainment, things like that, it's just they tend to make good decisions when it comes to this stuff. So, it's going to be interesting to see what happens.
关于你的第二个问题,即车载语音识别、AI、信息娱乐兼容性,这些都是全方位的话题。我认为,目前 Google 和 Apple 处于一个有利的位置,有望占据主导地位。当然,亚马逊的这次声明确实改变了一些事情。因此,真正的问题将是,看谁能与最多的原始设备制造商(OEMs)建立合作关系,实现真正对汽车公司、科技公司,以及最终的用户都有价值的集成。我认为我们目前仍处在一种竞争态势中,看最后的结果会怎样。个人来说,我认为苹果正在做一些非常出色的事情,但我真的很想看看亚马逊和现代这个合作会怎样发展,因为在我代表的品牌中,现代在车载信息娱乐方面做得非常出色。如果你看一下 JD Power 的报告,和很多其他指出现代在车载科技,信息娱乐等方面处于领导地位的报告,你就会发现,他们在这方面的决策往往是正确的。所以,看到最终的结果将会非常有趣。
Hey, thank you. And I didn't mean to leave out Microsoft. You just to follow up, you think that there's a chip on board similar to what Tesla manufacturers for its vehicles that Amazon will be manufacturing?
Great question. I don't know the answer that, sir. I'm sorry.
很好的问题。对不起,先生,我不知道答案。
Thank you, Greg. Thank you, Greg.
谢谢你,格雷格。再次感谢你,格雷格。
All right. So, I do want to take one more question, but before that, just a quick note for anyone listening. This is recorded and it's going to be the full podcast, this full live podcast will be uploaded to the CDG podcast. So, if you don't follow, if you don't listen, check it out on any platform, please subscribe so you can get, you never miss an episode, but we will upload this over the next day or two. And so, if you do want to refer back to anything, listen again, it's going to be available.
Hey, thanks for bringing me up. This is a question for you, car dealership guy and anyone else who may have insights here. I have a close relative who works at a large car dealership in California. And admittedly, it's one dealership, but his commentary to me over the past several months has been that it's been much harder to sell, not just the Tesla cars, but the EV cars overall. And just taking a step back, all the data that we've gleaned thus far, just from Tesla because that's the company we covered, but it's suggesting that thus far in November and even in October, the demand has been far less than expected. So, maybe you already discussed this. If you did, I apologize. I just got on the call, but just wanted your insights into those two dynamics if you're seeing that and or not. Thank you.
So, we're actually, what we're discussing here is we're sticking to the Amazon and Hyundai announcement about selling cars online. And so, that's been the topic of conversation. With respect to EVs, I did just put out a tweet about this the other day about legacy EVs, day supplies rising. Demand is really significantly cooled. I think Tesla is an exception here, but Tesla also has some levers that legacy manufacturers don't. They have stronger margins and the ability to reduce their pricing to stimulate demand. Needless to say, it is also the preferred EV product in the market. Over 50% market share. There's no doubt about that. Happy to Gordon, I'm happy to discuss this further. I don't think this is the right form right now. I do want to wrap up with Andrew and us stay on topic here, but it is a concerning trend right now. And we have been discussing a lot of it. So, thanks for that.
Andrew, let's wrap up winners and losers. So, let's go out three to five years, just place out who actually wins here, who loses here, go.
安德鲁,我们总结一下赢家和输家。让我们向前看三到五年,看看谁是真正的赢家,谁是真正的输家,开始吧。
So, another great question. I think the clear winners are obviously the consumers who have yet another marketplace that they can go and shop and collect information and have everything they need at their fingertips to make an informed decision. I think that's, I just think that makes them a clear winner.
I think an argument could be made that obviously Hyundai is a winner here in assuming a leadership position in terms of this relationship with Amazon. Because again, I think it's indicative of their progressive outlook, their desire to be a leader when it comes to technology, both mechanical technology that propels vehicles, to digital technology that will dictate how we communicate, how we interact, how we process information, and how we go about the process of buying a vehicle, of maintaining a vehicle, and all that type of stuff. So, I see Hyundai as a clear winner here as well.
Losers, I'm sure there's some people out there that think that dealers are losing here. I don't see evidence of that. Not in how this has been presented to me over the course of the last 24 hours and as more details have come out. I think again, not Hyundai, Jose Munoz, Randy Parker, the leadership team there. They've been adamant about their commitment to the franchise system and to their franchise dealer partners. They've not only said it, but they've acted on it. And so, I take them at their word, but also based on their actions. And I think that that that bodes well for dealers and consumers as well.
So, stuff to pick a loser here. I'm not letting you. I'm not letting you. I'm not letting you. I'm not letting you.
所以,选择一个失败者的任务,我不会让你去做。我不会让你去做。我不会让你去做。我不会让你去做。
I was going to say, listen, listen, listen, listen, listen, listen. I got, I think if there if there could be one loser here, it could be one of the other marketplace platforms that is maybe exclusive to automotive. If they could see a dramatic decline in shopper activity on their website. You know, there's a lot of players in the space in that space right now in particular that were that are struggling now that were pretty substantial players back in the day. And, you know, now they're struggling. So, some, but then yet some are thriving. So, I think if there is a loser, it's probably going to be other online marketplaces, particularly those that are automotive exclusive.
Andrew Wright, thank you so much. Thank you. Awesome. Love the impromptu nature. Thanks for coming on. And like I said, you know, we'll get this, we'll get this uploaded to the CDG podcast, if anyone wants to re-listen or share with anyone else. And Andrew, we got to get you on the CDG podcast. I'm sure people would want to listen to that. I love to. There's so much I love about this business. And, you know, I have every, every desire and I always take every opportunity to share what I can because it's the greatest business in the world. And I'm thankful to be a part of it.
I will. I'm in Mexico. I took a little break to do this. Time for me to go eat some some breakfast tacos. So, I'm going to let you go. Enjoy. Thank you. Thanks for everyone for tuning in. And this was awesome. All right. Talk to you soon. Thank you.