What dealers think about when they wake up is, I gotta get something done today. Okay. So you gotta apply yourself and get something done. So every day I want to apply something, get something done, or something moving to stop moving. A new FTC rule is threatening dealerships nationwide. But this former NADA chairman believes he can stop it. Today I'm speaking with Jeffrey Pohanka, chairman of Pohanka Automotive Group. We discuss the 38 billion potential cost of the FTC's CARS rule. Breaking down Tesla's direct to consumer model. When will Chinese cars come to America? And much more. Don't forget to click subscribe so you never miss an episode.
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 transparent insights into the car market. But before we get into the show, this episode was brought to you by the AutoHauler Exchange. AutoHauler Exchange is changing how people who send and carry cars work together. Now, if you need to send a car, you can directly work with carriers all over the country. And if you carry cars, you don't have to look through broker's list to find good, fair jobs anymore. By eliminating the middleman, all shipments on the AutoHauler Exchange come directly from the owner of the vehicle being shipped, with carriers receiving real shipment opportunities at direct pricing. AutoHauler Exchange helps shippers and carriers work together easily and clearly adding transparency and making better partnerships. Get off the AutoHauling Roller Coaster by getting on the AutoHauler Exchange. To learn more, visit autohaulerexchange.com or click the link in the show notes below.
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Basically, everything working together, not separate, one system to run your dealership as opposed to 10. CDK developed it with an outside-in approach listening to dealers every step of the way. You can learn more about CDK's dealership experience platform by visiting CDKGlobal.com slash DXP or clicking the link in the show notes below. What's life as you're transitioning out of being the NADA chairman? What's life like nowadays? A little less travel, but I'm still very connected. I got pulled back in a week ago on some big issues. I'm here in DC, I live nine months, I'm in the ADA building and so I will stay connected for a long time.
It's not like I'm from Arkansas, a note slide on an Arkansas. I'm not going back to Arkansas. It'd probably be different if I live far away from Washington, but I'm still here. I love it. Jeff, I want to start with your background. You are a third generation dealer. Pohanka, it's just a notorious dealer group to say the least. I mentioned you on our last call. I've actually bought cars from Unipast, so very, very familiar even though I'm not from the DC area. Take us back to your early beginnings in this industry and getting into the car business through the family. Well, it's a great story. My grandfather, Frank Pohanka lived in the Bronx and he was a late grower. He ran away from home in eighth grade when he come to Jockey. He got a job on a horse farm with a stable boy in Long Island, a famous horse farm, and was able to become a Jockey and was very successful.
Race all over North America made a lot of money. Eventually, he couldn't keep weight. He outgrewed the job. So he decided what to do the rest of his life and he was good with his hands. So I've come in auto mechanic. So I went back to New York, I went to the New York Public Library, I read all the books I had there were on cars, which there probably weren't that many. He worked in different garages to learn different technologies. He got hired by Channel Motors as a service rep and they moved him to Washington DC as a service manager of factory on dealership and became his own Chevrolet dealer in 1919 in downtown Washington.
So now my father started working for my grandfather at the age of 13 like I did, you know, summers. And then, you know, I got into the business after college and there was no pressure to go into business. I have an older brother who's now deceased, a younger sister. He was a historian, a writer, she's a scientist, had no interest in the business and that's fine because my father's brother, older brother, they were partners in the dealership.
And now here's interesting, my grandfather ran away from an eighth grade, but yet his two children, my father and my uncle went to Princeton at MIT. He said, tell us something. And my father's more the salesman and his brother's more the engineer. So he wasn't really suited the engineer for the car business. My father bought him out and he ended up working on nuclear submarines, which was what he was good at. So there was no pressure on me to enter into business.
And my plan was to, you know, I work summers, but it's different working summers and working full. I was going to go to business school and figure out what to do the rest of my life. And my dad goes, why aren't you working the dealership full time? A year in sales service, a year in sales and then go to business school, you know, really learned some business experience versus being a car jockey or whatever I was doing. Okay, that probably makes sense. I went to night school. It's hard to work 12 hours a day and then go to night school.
I tried for a while and I just stayed in the business. You know, I think probably more from hands on business and from hypothetical and from school, you know, it's I call it the infamous stepping stone that turns permanent. Everyone, everyone says, yeah, it's the stepping stone and no one ever leaves. That's what happens. Yeah. It's funny because I was when I did my undergrad, I was really involved in the marketing aspect of our dealership.
I was, you know, uploading pictures to the website and having all that fun. But I know the feeling of, you know, balancing the two and to your point, right? Like, I remember people were like, this is now going to talk about college time. Do people are like a French, like, hey, you should join this, you know, frat and whatnot. And at the time I said, I'll be honest with you. Like it just doesn't make any sense. Like I would much rather be at the dealership now. It's just a much more productive use of my time.
And, you know, I think it worked out, but it's funny how, you know, that lifestyle, it's especially with the dealership, you know, retail business long hours. I mean, there's always something to do. Did you want to be a dealer? Right. So I know you weren't wasn't even of pressure, but did you want to be a dealer? Did you desire that? Well, there's a lot of pride because of the generations, you know, involved in the dealership.
And I knew there was no pressure to do it. I'm sure my dad would like me to have done it. And but because kind of happened, there was a time where he was going to get out of business and I explained that. So we had Oldsmobile and we were one of the biggest Oldsmills dealers in the country. And Oldsmobile is gone. It's gone for a reason. Quality control was not very good. And put me in the service lane and I know and trained me, you know, it's put me out there.
I was a fourth writer and people, the other writers are pretty smart. They'd let the car go back to me that they didn't want to work on, you know, like a warranty job or something like that. And I had molasses technicians and it was, you know, we sold like 2000 diesel engines. They all blew up, you know, it's just, there was no like tech line like we have. There was no parts inventory like we have now, just some time.
Didn't have all the tools. We had computer command control, a lot of the new emission things. The factory didn't know how to fix these things, transmission issues. It was all happy and all at once. I had really no training. I figured, I think he must know what's going on. And then I went to sales and I was okay sales versus I felt guilty selling these cars into the shop because we sold a lot of cars but didn't have a good CSI. And that was really frustrating for me. You got the point where I saw all the problems.
Now we were making a lot of money. We had Honda too. We were making a lot of money. And that was good but it's not all about money. And I said, I can't handle this anymore. I'm not, get out of the business. So my father goes, you have a month. I said, yeah, I'll give you a month. He goes, how about I say you're in Michigan to General Motors Institute, they have a month long program for dealer sons, dealer daughters.
And will you do that and then come back? Okay, sure. So this is like the early 80s. It's a recession, a really bad recession. I go to Michigan and unemployment is 23%. And they're fishing in the Flint River for sustenance night and day, not for sport. And half the town is abandoned and boarded up. It's really a horrible time. It's winter time. And I'm like, man, it's pretty bad here. We're doing pretty good back home. At least owed my dad to write a report when he needs to fix his business. So I wrote this to tail report, you know, you need to align the machine. This person's a maybe problem. And I'm going to give it to him and how old were you at the time? I'm 23, maybe 24. And so I go back in this and page reporting is, this is pretty good. Why don't I put you in charge? You implement these things. So yeah, go walk the talk. Okay. So I'm in charge of two parts, farmers, two service farmers in a big body shop. And I fix the things that were a problem to me. So here I am.
You mentioned the Institute of GM, right? And you mentioned sons and daughters. Why is the car business? Why has it remained a pretty local business? Yes, we have massive groups nowadays, but still for the most part, it seems like local groups really do excel in many ways. And I mean, there's still thousands across the country. As you look at, you know, any other type of retail, it's really moved online. What do you think that what do you think it's driven that? Right? Why is the car business historically a very local kind of family business type deal? Well, you know, I think, I think pride is somewhat growing up into it is another. We're very many businesses under one roof. You can never become an expert at all of them. So there's always something new, something new to learn, some new challenge. We're going to work and get a job like that. We're involved with so many different things from operations to marketing to computer systems to data to real estate to, you know, I mean, there are many jobs like that that require so many different hats.
And I think it may be, you know, it's nice to have your kids working your dealership and they kind of get attracted to it. And obviously it's a challenging business. If you work hard, you can make a good buck, make a good living and make a real contribution to society. So we're also going to get a job like that. And then you eventually become your own boss. Yeah. So on that note, right? I agree with you that again, so many different elements in, you know, auto retail, but let's talking only about Pohanka for a second. You're in a very crowded market, right? DC market. I mean, just naming a couple of names. Shihi, Rosenthal, Mile One, Darkhears, Orzeman. I mean, there's a lot of players there. What do you think you've done that has allowed your brand, your company to really excel and continue to grow through these years? Well, we have an excellent culture that's been built up over lots of years. I mean, there's three ingredients for success, a good product, good location and good people. Okay. And obviously culture is part of that. So we've really worked hard as we've expanded methodically and smartly to make sure those things were still, those ingredients were there, you know, good location and good product, good people. And I think that's been successful for us. And you know, I can't speak for other families. We do have a lot of car families in Washington. Washington is an affluent market, generally.
You know, some areas aren't as affluent as others. It's an interesting market, it's a very competitive market. But I think it's been a good one for the people who've been here. Now, what's funny, not funny, back in the teens where my grandfather worked, there was an Orzeman and a Rosenthal working in the showroom and became dealers a few years after my grandfather. So this is like the epicenter just exploded, you know, the little. The bohem, the bohem come off you. So this obviously there was this little group that expanded, you know, and we all get along with each other. It's a good thing, competition is friendly competition. We all get along with her. We just want to kill each other and win. Nah, I'm just kidding. We can friendly companies and our managers.
You know, here's the. You know, the problem is we really compete with ourselves. The problem is multiple dealerships, generally the dealerships compete with themselves, each other. They should be competing. Here's an example. We should be competing like our stores are competitive with each other. They should be competing with the. You don't beat up your sibling, beat up the neighborhood kid, you know, as a situation. But it's been a good ride and we look forward to a lot more years of this. There will be some challenges ahead of us coming as you know, in the auto industry. Oh yeah, we'll get a lot into legislation, electrification. I have a lot of topics here that I want to discuss.
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Tell me a little bit about behind the scenes. Like what does your role at Bohenka look like today? And specifically, I want to know how do you allocate your time? Like what does a week or a day in your life look like nowadays? Look, ours is a team effort. I couldn't do all this myself. And we have a lot of long term staff that now have ownership in the dealership. In the past year and a half, two years, I've taken on the NEDA role, which is a bigger role shepherd in the industry.
And here's the background of NEDA. I'm a 2020 through chairman is that my grandfather died when my dad was 29. He was pretty much riding the dealership. And he wasn't really equipped to run the dealership. In fact, back then, we had also built, they had a dealership three blocks away, saw in the same brand. Talk about competition. My dad at 29 was not really equipped to run the dealership. He didn't have quite all the experience he needed, but he found NEDA was located just down the street like three blocks. At that time, NEDA headquarters, three blocks. We were located on 23, eight blocks in the White House. And eight days were down the street. Scovered NEDA took classes, joined the third 20 group of the United States.
And that really helped him to survive that period. So he wanted to get back, became a director, later president of NEDA in 76. So I kind of grew up with NEDA. We've a 50, 60 year relationship with them. So that's kind of NEDA connection, which is probably what we talked about. What's my average day? Look, we got to sell cars and we got service cars. Okay. And that's the root of our business. And if we don't do that, nothing else works. So what's different between working, say, for your own business, a dealer and say a public company? Okay. Or say outside the dealership, you're working for a big firm.
A lot of those people work for a big firm. His name's not on the building. They figure, what am I going to do when I get off work today? The dealers think about when they wake up is, I got to get something done today. Okay. So you got to apply yourself and get something done. So every day I want to apply something, get something done or something moving that's not moving. And a lot of it's educating your people, you know, education, so giving them the tools to get the job done because I can't do it. It's like a coach. I talked to managers, said, look at the football.
The coach can't make the tackles. He can't go out and tackle. Sometimes they try to get in trouble. They can't. They got to teach people how to run the play. So you got to run the play. The problem with, you know, what's interesting, I read something, you know, in the United States, we do horrible and standardized testing. We're like 25th in science and math. It's horrible. Yeah. Like something like 90% or 95% of the major discoveries come from America, the pharmaceutical medicines, you know, Google, Apple, you know, Microsoft, they're all American invention.
There aren't similar companies. They're look a lot around the world. Now why is that? Why are we 25th in standardized test scores? Because we're entrepreneurialists. We're entrepreneurial. The next big discovery is somebody's garage, you know, and other countries are not. We don't have a caste system. You're not limited. You're limited by your bill, by your desire, by your knowledge. And the carb is like that too. And so we got to get something done every day, you know, and that's what it takes. So where do you apply yourself to do that? You know, we have a lot, again, we have a lot of 20, 30 year team members now have ownership and dealerships. They've earned their place under the sun. And it's basically called the ownership mentality. You know, shouldn't I think you got spread their wealth and try to help people to grow and take responsibility like their owners themselves. So I think we've been fairly successful at doing that. Of course, what binds us is the culture, you know. And I have other family members in the business and long term, I have a long term partner going back to really late 70s with us. So it's a good arrangement, successful for us. You know, $0.6 billion company was 1,600 employees. But you know what, it's one car at a time. Take care of every customer and try to get your people the training and the tools they need to get the job done.
You mentioned one car at a time. You know, someone once told me, which I love to set lines, they said like averages are dangerous because when you look at an average in a retail business, right? You might have a, you know, a 1% failure rate, but that 1% is that's real people. That's that's actual experiences. And so it's, you know, we set like one of our core values and cardioship guy, which is, you know, focused down to the last basis point, because to your point, it's one car at a time. And you know, really focusing on every single customer, every single opportunity, you know, you look at a whole holistic average, someone's going to be disappointed. So I think that's a really important line. Let's go back to the mutation. The problem, it's an advantage for America. Promise our staff will mutate every day away from proven steps that work. You know, so we all were trying to shortcut find a better way, but they get off, off track. They don't run the play. So a lot of it is continue to help them to see here's the benefit. Here's why you do it this way. And it's hard to, it's like hurting cats sometimes. That's the challenge of our business. It gives us these great inventions and things, but also causes people to be distracted and not run the play correctly. And then that's, I think the frustration for me, because you can teach them, but you got to keep an eye on, make sure they continue to do it like they should. They will yield the best results for them, you know, and the customer.
I want to pivot to the future of this industry, right? Legislation. Because there's a lot of stuff happening right now. Just a table set at a very high level, right? Most people listening to this already know that the FTC introduced this thing, something called the car's rule, which stands for combating auto retail scams. Our new rule meant to, you know, set all types of new, just changes to deal shape processes, advertisements and whatnot. You, I'm sure you could, you know, speak a lot more knowledgeable to this than I can. Before we even get into the crux of what this means for the industry and what's where, you know, where we're headed, why is the industry gone to this point? Why is the FTC, you know, coming up with a rule that has the word scam in it with respect to, you know, the, like, what is going on, right? Give us the land of the land here. Well, you know, something I say is they think we're ripping people off. It's sort of how we're doing it.
You know, here's, here's the problem with the car business. It's not a problem. You know, a lot of our sales are negotiated and a lot of people, I don't want to pay more than the next person. And that causes people on ease. What's a good deal? A good deal is a state of mind. You know, some people have the most dissatisfaction. We got the best deal because they don't know when they would be satisfied. So a lot of this drives this negotiated process drives a lot of things, but look during COVID, what's happened in COVID, we had greater price, price transparency. We were willing to quote a price. We had much more confidence because of the shortages.
Here's the car. We knew there were fewer cars available than demand. And the consumer, you use car prices, we're not more than new cars, 40%. And consumer satisfaction was very good in that period. So was dealer profitability. The deal was probably better for the consumer during COVID than before COVID is that they had a trade. They have so much higher in value. And so that price transparency was a good thing. But now we get with more supply. You know, a lot of people are saying, if I can give you this deal, I mean, it's going back to that whole process of maybe over promising under delivering, you know, which can happen. And most people are not bad actors in the car business. Most people really do a great job. I think the government doesn't understand our job.
This rule is a horrible rule. The FTC, the fact they have scanned in the name, there's no protections in this rule that don't already exist. But the problem is this $50,000 penalty for every violation of the rule, this rule is, it's basically can't be implemented properly. Well, can you explain like what cannot be implemented? Like why do you think, I mean, it's already something that's more or less been done, but why can't it be implemented? We offered a 365 page rebuttal to it. They only gave us 60 days to do that. They would not extend. Usually they extend for a rule like this. They did not extend, would not. We had a 365 page rebuttal. They took out some of them are ownerous parts of it through like volunteer protection products. You needed four additional disclosures besides what we already have.
And it took that away because it was really, you know, there was no supporting it. But one example would be when someone asks a price for a car, you must give them the final price at that time. Example, your road testing with a customer, because how much is this car? You got to give them the final price at that point. You may not know that all the particulars in your trade, what's their credit like? You know, an example. So and the penalties are so severe, I think this opens up to enterprising class action attorneys just to rip us apart. Again, there are no protections in this bill that don't already exist. And we have to keep every communication with us and the consumer, you have to retain for years every text, every email, every phone conversation. You know, it's really a setup.
And you know, we're fighting in the Fifth Circuit in Texas. Now, the Fifth Circuit doesn't not like overreach of the regulatory state. We don't know how it's going to go. But you know, I think we're offering a vigorous defense. We have a great litigator with great success doing the FTC. We don't like to sue people, but we have to because this is defending the car industry. There's no need for this bill. And it's really unimplementable for a lot of reasons. You know, I believe that in life, like when something, there's a reason that this is a focal point for a government agency, right? It could be, you know, constituents are kind of bringing it up as this is, you know, something that's unfair, whatever, maybe if you're being, imagine you weren't a dealer right now and you were the FTC, right? Or you were someone on that side. Where do you think there's truth to this? Or again, I said, why did we get to this point?
Like how could something like this have been avoided or be avoided in the future? Is it a customer experience issue? Is it a branding issue? Well, but look who the FTC is taking on. They're taking on a lot of big players, you know, Google, you know, is it a money grab? Is it a money grab fair enough? Look, Lena Khan is running the FTC. She's a young person from Yale. I think she's basically following somewhere philosophical beliefs about how things operate. But when you're a young person, you may not know all the rules, how life operates, you know, not to excuse anything. It's a realistic view of industry, you know. She's taken on a lot of players and lost a lot of times. Hopefully she'll lose again. And I think what's, you know, the problem with government, you know, we need government. We need a good government. You know, there's certain things that you do like, you know, education and sewers or work. You know, and that type of thing, public, you know, protecting people. But they also can try to run industry. And we have to have certain protections for industry for overreach and people are doing bad things.
Those rules already exist. But some people want to re-engineer society in the new view of how they see the world. And that's wrong, you know. I think basically our system is the best system in the world. The Korea has the most creativity. But you can't implement, a lot of government officials have never worked in the private business. They've all worked in academia or government. They lack a certain understanding of the forces that make our success, our society successful, how it works. It's not unrestrained capitalism. We have controlled capitalism, you know. But you can't take a textbook and try to implement that on the world. And that's what she's lean a con is done. She's basically trying to implement her view of the world on everybody else. But we all have a view too. And there need to be personal protections against overreach. But some things, the road to hell is paved with good intentions. And this is a very damaging bill. It will add two hours.
Independent study shows it will add two hours to the vehicle purchase and $35 billion in cost. If we do anything, we should reduce the time it takes to sell a car and reduce the cost to sell a car. But this is not a good thing for the consumer. It's certainly not a good thing for the industry. It doesn't fix anything that's broken. It's a fixed looking for a solution looking for a problem. So where are the manufacturers in the picture? If I'm Nissan or Toyota or whoever and I know that my franchisees are going to be potentially have a prolonged process here for selling a car, I'm pissed off. That sucks for me. It's a reflection of my brand.
Where are the manufacturers? Who are not directly involved, but they have weighed in. Many of them have weighed in supporting us. And we think we have an excellent case. And we're working with bills in Congress too to defund it as well. That's another way. But obviously our supporters are probably in the minority in Congress and capital here right now. But there's somewhat bipartisan approach to this. No solution is to just to defund it so it can't be enforced. Yeah, I mean, I can't help but think. You purchased in your NADS speech, you mentioned that you purchased a test line and you were looking to test out the experience. And you went, you physically picked it up. And I think one of the things that you said, which I found very interesting, was that you picked it up at this warehouse, that plywood on the walls. And but you said the quiet part out loud, which was that I was thinking when you were experiencing this, which was that you weren't, you were observing the experience. But what you had said is that, hey, it just seems as though clearly manufacturers don't respect the retail process or maybe respect it on the right word, but they don't value it, the retail process. And so when I see stuff like this happening, then I wonder, okay, you know, is it in the long-term best interest on manufacturers for the retail experience to deteriorate? I mean, again, I don't want to be too conspiratorial here, but I'm just trying to kind of put all the pieces together, right?
We're coming off a couple of years where there have been murmurs of direct to consumer and stuff like that. You know, folks back in Scout, we've we all heard the stuff that Ford had said. So like, what are the real intentions for manufacturers here? What end game do they want in the next decade? Well, I remember everything's like a pendulum, you know, swings one way and it swings back the other way. That's just how life is. You know, a lot of people forget why things didn't work. They try them again. You know, I mean, the definition of insanity is trying the same thing and expecting different results, you know, which is frustrating sometimes. Look, I think there's a lot of common ground between manufacturers and dealers. We basically want the same thing. We would take care of customers to sell out of cars. So why don't we cooperate more? And I also see the best results or when there's a collect for both. It's when there's a collaborative relationship between the manufacturer and the dealer.
And when there's not, generally the results aren't so good. So maybe that's the reason why they're not so good because they're not collaborative. Now, I don't know how to make a car. I have no idea. It's very complicated. And selling a car is complicated too. And so we missed like, I know the manufacturer gets really upset. I've heard the gift set when someone comes into a meeting, you know, that white Safari I ordered and never got, you know, in like one car. I mean, I'm surely, you know, Silverado. I'm sure they wanted to make it. There was some good reason why they couldn't. There was some parts supply or some issue. But you know, get, dealer gets pissed off based on a singular car versus they don't understand all the steps it takes to sell a car.
I think it's just like it takes 15 minutes. No, it's very complicated because there's a trade, credit issues. There's a lot of credit issues. And direct sales, yes, it seems like here's the thing with Tesla. I bought Tesla. Why? There's a big buzz about Tesla. And I've been driving EVs for a while. I need to know everything there is about it because it's a happening thing. And people talk big about Tesla. Well, some go buy one. So I ordered one online and just, you know, it was this Tesla's Tesla that they're so good at this and so good at that. Well, my car came in, it's home in a Tuesday. It came in take every Wednesday, Thursday, Friday. I'm on Capitol Hill, I'm in for meeting meetings. The last window is like five 30. And the place is close to my home. I said, I can't come in those three days. I said, if you came in three days, it'll sell someone else. And they did. I'm like, Oh, okay. Let's learn experience. So I ordered all the one. I lost my $200 order fee. So no one came in. And I get noticed on a Tuesday car come, just come in, take every Wednesday, Thursday, Friday.
I said, I'm in Europe. I'm at the European Artillery Convention. I say, I can't possibly come into a Monday. You know, I come back that Sunday because you must come between 12 PM 15 PM and Monday, take a little 15 minute window. I'm like, well, now the price went down 3000 between the two. And I didn't order the 20 inch wheel. So I'm about $5,000 a head. So the consumer always wins. And I take living from a warehouse, through a loading dock, a warehouse with plywood on the walls. And I'm like, wow, what dawned on me is that all my deliveries don't look at plywood on the walls. I mean, they're really nice. And if the factory thinks we were cost, they made it that way. Obviously, Tesla thinks putting money into their software into their charging infrastructure is more important than their retail facilities.
So I've learned a lot. I like, I like the Tesla. And I, you know, it's not everything is good about it. But there are a lot of good things. But you know what, no one can snow me now. The Tesla does this and Tesla's like, let me tell you, you brought one? No, let me tell you my experience. They can't snow me anymore. And the thing is the manufacturer, everyone's chasing Tesla. Now, Charles Lindbergh was first fly solo across Atlantic who was second. We don't know. No one knows. You could look it up. Same way, Tesla had a window. We did a good job.
But they're running out of orders. They've lowered their price six times in the past year. And that's causing a real problem because all their owners are now under water by a lot of money. Your car's worth less, you know, by lowering that price, it lowers the price of their trades. So no one can follow that path. That window is closed in terms of capitalization. There's no magic of direct sales. Look at Ben Fast, look at Pisker. They're going through dealers because the direct order doesn't work when they're not off orders. And Tesla lowered the price because they're running out of orders. So, you know, look, it's a competitive market. It's a big market. A lot of rooms for selling cars different ways and a lot of rooms for a lot of players. But I think we found a lot of things in common with manufacturers under my term with NEDA. I think we can help solve key issues by working together if we can talk about it, find common ground, you know. And there's a number of initiatives I started, which I'm going to see through that could be beneficial to the industry in that way. And not everybody thinks that way. But again, we should look for things we have. And look, we got to defend ourselves, dealers, unfair actions from manufacturers. But many of them work well with their dealers. And we've got to encourage that kind of relationship, I think.
What do you think Tesla does well? What do you think about their sales process? Is there anything that you believe is superior to the dealership model? Well, they don't have this way. They don't have many models. And there's very few options. I was kind of surprised. The only free color was white. So I'm driving a white Tesla's cheap. Red cost 2000. So everything's all a car. You got to get the steps. And I bought all the steps that I needed to really experience them. Simplicity. Well, look, no, the manufacturer has just a couple of models or a couple features that you can buy. I think they found a way to produce cars efficiently and high volume.
I thought one thing that's really interesting is the little details. Some have thought of the little tales of manufacturing. One is the sun visor. It's kind of hard to keep it connected on that clip. Always false. They have a magnet there. Someone thought, let's have a magnet. So you get the visor and you're supposed to go, it's clips right in. And there's a warning tag on the bottom of the visor that talks about your airbag. They put theirs on the top of the visor. And someone thought about that. So they're thinking about things. And it's kind of interesting.
But I have an ID for own now. I have a couple of those. I act five. And I'm comparing apples with apples, what's good and what's not. I mean, there's some things, no lights in it. There's other other, it's complex. You got to run the wipers as a horrible system. And what's really good is the downloads. I've had a lot of updates, maybe one a month. OTA. So you still have your Tesla? Oh, yeah. Sure. Absolutely. I like, I like their over there updates. I think I'm going to write an article on this. You know, people get tired of their car. So once they buy the car, come to the factory door, that's the car you're going to get with over the updates, you can update and change the functionality of a car over time.
I think that might cause people to like their car longer. You know, it might change the buying cycle. You know, because if your style and looks pretty good and you're pretty like the car, if you're getting improvements through OTA's, that's in performance, how things operate, buying additional features, that's difficult. It could change the buying. You know, cars last longer, it could change the buying habits of the universe. So I now the VW has OTA's work as well. You know, what's funny is, uh, Honda's coming out with EV and I asked to head of service for for Honda. Will it do OTA's and he couldn't even know. So I mean, oh, I think I'm ahead of some people. That's not good. You know, he wasn't even sure. And I see the being over the updates. Important now, there's two aspects of that. One is that dealers should participate in over the year of subscription accessory sales to manufacturers. See, they're looking, they need to find new profit centers, the manufacturers to sell people things that they can do that with over their updates, uh, that you can buy performance enhancements or other features.
And I think dealers should participate in the revenue stream of those things because if those things don't work or break, they'll come to the dealer and we'll just say, call the 800 number. I can't help you. So I think this opportunity for dealers and also opportunity for manufacturers, they should have us participate in this revenue streams. Today we're hovering around like 7% market penetration for electric vehicles. A year ago, that was at about 5.9%. What do you think? What do you think this looks like in about 10 years? Where we headed? Well, the government's about to announce that's an EPA new mandates. I think I've heard March 22nd, which would lead to 68% of retail sales being required to be EVs by 2032. That's less than 10 years. It's not achievable for every manufacturer to get to that level.
Look, I like EVs. There's a market for EVs. If dealers don't have desirable, portable EVs will lose that business to direct sellers. So there is a market. More in some markets than others, California, the coast and the heartland. But the question is, what is the level of consumer acceptance going to be? And look, you said EV sales are about 7% and they were about 7% retail sales last year. The Tesla is 60% or so of that 7%. So OEM is only about 2% to 3% of their EV sales, of sales for EVs. And we have over 100 day supply of cars. So what's that telling us? Telling us consumer demand is tepid. And for a lot of good reasons. And even Tesla's, they lower the price six times or run out of customers. And they have like two weeks worth of orders, you know, and they're not expanding because if they do, they're going to be, you'll have to cut production.
So I think what are the barriers to EVs? Affordability is one. And S&P International said that the same model EV costs 40% more than a gas version. Okay, you can't go by average. The barrier is affordability with high interest rates, you know, 60% live paycheck to paycheck. You know, a couple hundred dollars a month makes a difference. They can't afford it. It's charging challenge. And I say all home charging, you have home charging. Well, you got to buy charger and half the homes don't have electrical service without additional upgrade. They don't have the amperage. So that's additional costs and half people don't own a home, live in a street, live in apartment, rent a home or street parking.
They'll have to use the DC fast charging network with costs more. It's inconvenient and often sometimes broken. So look, if the car charged in five minutes, I like to gas your car in five minutes at a 350 mile range and costs the same. Sure, go for it. But it doesn't. It costs more. It gets, spend money on charging. It's inconvenient. It's a hassle. And you have range anxiety because you wonder, where am I going to go?
If I'm not outside of my home, where am I going to get my charge? Will the charge be working? You know, I, there's one major brand which comes free with the car. I have one of the cars I have. And I like trying different chargers. One was 35, give me 35 kilowatts an hour. One's giving 56. One was giving one 25. The same brand about the same level charge on my car. So there's other fact involved with this. Now I could be two and a half hours there. If you know, get a charge, that's not going to work. So it's, the government is going to force this. But here's the problem is that it's all about carbon footprint. Right?
They say zero mission. Well, nothing zero mission. You know, electricity comes from some place. The problem is you got to mind you got to move 500,000 pounds a mineral to make one battery. You extract 100,000 pounds of ore, process that ore. It's very carbon intensive. The carbon footprint is bigger on an EV than a gas car significantly at the factory door. Volvo did a study, it's 70,000 miles for us even. And with the batteries getting larger, it's probably 100,000 miles. You increase carbon emissions with EVs. You won't reduce it. I mean, that's, I mean, and China's making the batteries with coal power plants.
You know, so it's not, it's not environmentally, I hate to tell people it's not environmentally can help us move in the right direction. And I'm not opposed. I like, you know, there's a role for them. We need them. I like them in my daily ride as an EV. It fits my lifestyle. It's great. Enjoy it. I'm learning from it. But it's not for everybody. And here's what's going to hurt, I think, in the heartland, where people live a little further apart and they're reliant more on big trucks, you know, F-150s, Silver Auto, you know, those trucks, the batteries are huge, the cost of the vehicle is very high and utility towing something is very limited. And even in cold weather, it's even worse.
So it's going to take, it's going to just kill the manufacturers, depending upon heavy trucks. The F-150 Lightning is complete failure. These only guys are going to fail too for the same reasons. You really need a more gentle slope in terms of adoption. You need a charging network, you need affordability. But it's being ran down people's throats with the government regulations. A lot of the headlines are lulling people's sleep. All they're moderating, all they're adjusting, no, they're not. You know, they give me lip service and they're going to be onerous these regulations. You're standing on the F-150 Lightning being a complete failure. Why do you think that is? Why did say it? It costs. It costs a lot. And utility, you know, you don't have the range of your towing. And those are big barriers.
I mean, and here's the thing is, okay, so use your F-150 Lightning. It's probably a good product, you know, doesn't mean people want to buy it, you know, in itself it's probably well made in that way. So let's say you're towing a boat, okay, and you need a charge. You can't just drive up the charging station with your boat. You block all the stations. So you got to take your boat, unhook it, put it, it's not practical. Drive up, charge for an hour and a half and go back, hook your boat up and you'll, you know, run 30 miles, you know, hopefully your lakes near your house. But it's just not the practicality. Plus it costs $20,000 more. That's a lot to people.
So speaking of China, you know, murmurs about China entering the US with their EVs, you know, their, they've been, you know, spreading pretty far and wide across the world, you know, outside of the US. What are your thoughts there? I was in China in November. It was really an interesting trip. And I spoke at the China Autodular Association Convention. You know, Beijing is as modern as any sea in the world, you know, I'm so glad I went and I just said, met some wonderful people, had a great experience.
Now, if you look at the manufacturers, you can't look at them in isolation in the United States. Most of the manufacturers deal with in Asia, they deal with Europe and the United States. And what's happening in China, the Chinese could not compete with ice turning busing engines because basically the manufacturer locked up the supply chain. But they said, they figured out 10 years ago, we're going to go move in the EV direction. Okay, part of that may be to reduce their consumption of oil because they don't have the domestic supply, they want to reduce the demand on oil.
So they locked up the supply chain, 80% supply chain of critical minerals to make batteries and to process those minerals. And in China, they're working to, you know, the Europeans, the Japanese Koreans and the Americans, Matazlo and Jenna Motors have been very active in China selling cars. Today, the Chinese government is trying to push them out of China, promoting new energy vehicles, electric vehicles, plug-ins and to buy domestic home grown cars.
GM the past 10 years sold more cars in China than the United States. And what's on the news, it was amazing article a few months ago, it's in five years GM only in B in China. So the Chinese are going to push the other company, you've taught us how to build cars, thank you very much, we'll take it from here. So there's a market share a lot because of EVs, the Chinese have a 35% cost advantage at a minimum over any other EV manufacturer, good control supply of minerals, the processes minerals, and they have the involvement of the government, which is kind of hard to unravel from that.
35% cost advantage. Now Elon Musk said, under his chain, the Chinese would cause an extinction event among manufacturers around the world, you know, there are some barriers to them. So you look at Europe, they're going to ban the self-gassing cars in 2035, that's their plan, and then you have in the United States new plans being announced going 68% or so EV by 2032.
So the manufacturers have to move in that EV direction, but the Chinese with this cost advantage could undercut everybody else. And their heading for Europe is only 9% tariff, we're going to take huge market share and they're likely coming to North America.
You know, we've had waves here before, we've had waves of Japanese brands, European brands, Korean brands, Chinese waves could be quite different, that could because of their price advantage, it could take out some manufacturers along with the dealers, it's very possible. Very interesting. I never heard that the embedded cost advantage is just not something I considered, especially with your point, right? They have the government connections there, where they've really taken over a lot of, you know, areas around the world where they do mining. So that's very a good point.
As you think about that, right, and you think about the future of car business in general, and of course your group, but I'm thinking broadly, what brands are you bullish on nowadays? Automotive brands. Well, that's like saying, which of your children do you like best? You know, clearly some brands are superior to others because their product is better, and because their relationship with dealers, but dealers generally know who those are. There's, it's a big market.
I think cars aren't going away. I think personal ability is really important. Affordable personal ability is really a source of freedom that people can live where they want to live, work where they want to work, take their family where they want to go. I think dealers play a big role in preserving affordable personal transportation.
So they keep talking about EVs. It's like a horse and buggy. Now it's still the horse and buggy. You just change the horse's food, you know, electricity versus gas. The horse is still there, you know, so it's not such a big change. We had electric cars a century ago. So I think the future is still good for automobiles. People clamor for automobiles can still win automobiles. They may be driving a little later than they were before, but as they move to the suburbs or have families, they need cars.
So I think there's still a role for the car dealer. I'm bullish on the future. We've had challenges before, threats before. Dealers are really creative. Look how fast we mutated during COVID to adjust to the new reality really fast, really quick, really imaginative and creative. Some of the creative people are car dealers and he worked in car dealerships. So I'm very optimistic about the future, but there are some really large challenges, like the FTC, like the EPA coming. You mentioned Scout and you have the unanswered question of distribution from VW Scout and Honda Sony, the Afielda. You know, basically dealers have protection, you know, in a lot of states. And if they try to sell direct, it would be contrary to those regulations and the state associations are going to challenge them legally. We would like to see them work through dealers, but they've not announced it. And my response then was silence speeds, you know, until we hear something, we're probably going to think the worst. But we're working now on how responders do EPA and its regulations, which are very onerous.
They could bankrupt some car manufacturers potentially. Manufacture goes out. I mean, the dealers could go out too, because the cost of transition is very high to electrification. Some manufacturers, you know, California has their own 14 states or so follow California missions. In the year and a half, you're supposed to be 35% EV, every manufacturer 35%. Again, we're three to 4% as an industry. That won't be achieved. California likely will move the goalposts like they have in the past. But these federal regulations are onerous. Now, a couple of things to look at, if Biden remains as president, these rules will stay in effect. If we have a Republican administration, if that were to happen, regulations sometimes take years to unwind. So a lot of these regulations will be announced maybe later this month are going to be there for quite a while.
And it's going to be quite something to see how you can match availability of product with consumer demand. Consumer demand is tapped. And EVs above a certain point. And I think there's going to be some kind of collision here, something's going to break. Absolutely. And when you say something is going to break, what do you mean by that? Just prices declining or something else? Well, the manufacturers, because here's the thing about EVs, it costs a lot to manufacture. Okay. And they keep talking about battery prices going down. Right now, there's a lull in commodity prices like lithium cobalt. Those prices are going to go skyrocket as the demand increases. We've got increased mining 400 to 4000%. In like a few years, it's not going to happen. It can't happen. So the battery price is likely the manufacturer will go up with can manufacturers make money on them? They're not now, probably not. And unless they get to a certain volume.
And so with manufacturers of overcapacity, of EVs and dealers aren't willing to take them, what's going to happen then? Now the fine is like $25,000 a car. They can't make the emissions. You can example would be the California emissions that require 35% of cars to be EV in a year and a half. Let's just say those rules take effect and if any has no EVs, they're such a stop selling gasoline cars in those states. That's where it breaks. Okay. 10 years from today, do we have more dealers or fewer dealers? I would say the question is there may be fewer dealers. There may not be fewer dealerships, but there's more consolidation. There will be fewer dealers. So roughly 8,000 dealers, 16,000 dealerships, something like that. There will be fewer dealers just because the cost of entry is so large and economies of scale to be larger is something that's been going on for a long time. In fact, there's been fewer dealers since back like 1920s. It's been a long term trend, but there's more consolidation.
So there will be fewer dealers, but not necessarily fewer dealerships. Yeah. And I was actually alluding towards fewer dealerships. Well, remember the population is probably growing. We're least stable or not shrinking, like a lot of countries. Most industrial countries are shrinking population with that immigration. We probably have the health healthiest demographics, and there's a move to the suburbs from the city post-COVID and for a lot of reasons. And I think demand for cars will stay strong and as such, there will be some kinds of, well, here's a point I'll just say. Well, the manufacturers have not been supportive of the dealer position in trying to tell government that this is moving too far, too fast with EVs. It may be because of competitive reasons for them. I think just on myself, I think they could have four positions, the manufacturer.
One is if we fail, the government will bail us out. Two is, if we say go bankrupt or reorganize, clear out the dealers we don't need and move forward. Three, a public administration will bail us out. Or four, we have value. We're small company have value, but we've merged into some other organization. They may take one of those four positions and it's not necessarily the right positions. I think the manufacturers should take a stronger position with the government in terms of these what the requirements are. The cost is not there. The cost too much and the technology is completely available to accomplish what they want. But unfortunately, the manufacturers have decided other than Toyota not to take an aggressive position and just go long to get along. And they're the ones that are going to suffer some consequences through this, I believe, in this transition.
Otherwise, dealers will mutate, will adjust, we're like bamboo. Figure it out. Have the pass. Some bamboo. I like that. I'm both in the future and then we'll be fine. We'll get through it. Jeff Ohank, thanks so much for coming on. This is seriously awesome. Appreciate it. Thank you. Thanks for having me. Appreciate it.
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