Tesla stock upgrade, new EV battery tech, robotaxi starups

Inside Automotive:

The Simple Truths of Leadership and how to practice them with Ken Blanchard & Randy Conley
Today on Inside Automotive, we’re pleased to welcome the co-authors of “Simple Truths of Leadership: 52 Ways to be a Servant Leader and Build Trust”, Ken Blanchard and Randy Conley. Blanchard is one of the world’s most influential leadership experts, author of over 65 books, and co-founder of the Ken Blanchard Companies. Conley is an Inc. Magazine top 100 leadership speaker, author, and trust practice leader for the Ken Blanchard Companies. Randy’s award-winning blog, Leading with Trust, has influenced over 4 million viewers. Watch the complete segment here.

Headlines:

Tesla finally has some good news for shareholders after investment banker Citigroup upgraded the company’s stock last week. The group increased the automaker’s share price to $176, making it a value stock, despite a 50% year average decrease. The change comes amongst universal financial struggles in the auto industry and increased criticism of Tesla’s CEO Elon Musk. Investors and analysts have also voiced opinions that the entrepreneur is too divided amongst his business endeavors to be an effective manager of Tesla. Read More

Cruise and Waymo have announced plans to expand their self-driving taxi services as their competitors drop out of the market. Investors are growing more cautious about autonomous driving platforms after many startups failed to turn a profit and closed operations, such as U.S.-based Argo. The key sources of hesitancy are technological limitations and safety concerns, possibly validated by an NPR report of 400 self-driving vehicle crashes over 10 months in 2022. Nevertheless, the two California-based companies will be expanding their robotaxi services to more states such as Texas in the coming years. Read More

Finally, Swiss-based company Morand says they have developed a car battery that can recharge in under three minutes. Morand says independent testing has shown its tech can reach 98% charge in 120 seconds, far outpacing most commercially available fast chargers which take 18-22 minutes. The company also reported it could survive roughly 10 times longer than current EV batteries. While the firm is still refining its product, they aren’t the first to develop innovations in this space. Consumers often cite concerns over range and wait time as key reasons for passing on EV purchases. Read More

News & Opinion

How-to Guide: Driving exceptional dealership customer experiences
Exceptional customer experiences create raving fans. Raving fans are customers who love your dealership so much that they tell all their friends and family about you. And when it comes to car buying, word-of-mouth is still the best form of advertising. And to back that up, 54% of consumers say they would buy from a dealership that provides a better experience than lower prices. Raving fans are also more likely to give you positive online reviews, which can help attract even more new customers. Read More

4 innovative ways to grow your service department’s hours per RO
Among the top KPIs your service department should be evaluating, the hours per RO is one of the most important. After all, you don’t want a bunch of service advisors that are content to deal with simple oil changes all day. You want a team that’s always hunting down new opportunities and chances to increase revenue. Thankfully, we have some innovative ways to grow hours per RO without putting forth too much effort. We’ve already discussed ways to increase the Effective Labor Rate. This article goes hand-in-hand with that to optimize revenue. Read More

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