Recommended read: "brief" to help improve your impact

A great read for developing or refining clear and concise communication skills. 

The B.R.I.E.F. acronym is somewhat forced, but the content is worth it. 

Get heard by being clear and concise The only way to survive in business today is to be a lean communicator. Busy executives expect you to respect and manage their time more effectively than ever. You need to do the groundwork to make your message tight and to the point. The average professional receives 304 emails per week and checks their smartphones 36 times an hour and 38 hours a week. This inattention has spread to every part of life. The average attention span has shrunk from 12 seconds in 2000 to eight in 2012. So, throw them a lifeline and be brief. Author Joe McCormack tackles the challenges of inattention, interruptions, and impatience that every professional faces. His proven B.R.I.E.F. approach, which stands for Background, Relevance, Information, Ending, and Follow up, helps simplify and clarify complex communication.

VW Might Have to Replace People's Cars

The options do not look good for VW, and according to Automotive News, the costs are upwards of $50B. 

Volkswagen Group is exploring options from a simple software upgrade to outright replacing cars as a deadline approaches to present a fix for up to 11 million rigged diesel vehicles.
Swapping out the affected models for new ones is the most extreme in a range of options the carmaker is discussing ahead of talks with regulators around the world, including an Oct. 7 deadline to present a plan in Germany, people familiar with the plans said.

Not Sexy, Yet Huge Potential for Mercedes-Benz

Most people don't think "van" when MB comes to mind, yet their new US import, the Metris, is likely to be big for contractors, group transport, and fleet sales. CNET gave it a great review, and this is a welcome accompaniment to the existing Sprinter line.  Good news for MB dealers, and it will be interesting to watch how Ford and GM respond.

"Indeed, Mercedes spokesman Christian Bokich called the Metris' market positioning "an interesting niche, one formerly occupied by the Chevrolet Astro and the GMC Safari." Remember them? Those General Motors twins haven't been on the market in a decade, but they still maintain a fervent following.
By that lens, the Metris isn't a new idea, but it may just be an idea whose time has come... again."


Will Mercedes make Inroads into Porsche's space? Motor Trend thinks so about the AMG GT S

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Good news if you are an Mercedes-Benz dealer, and perhaps tough news for rivals like Porsche. MB's commitment to move their AMG brand into Porsche's market, continues, and Motor Trend rated it the 2015 Best Drivers Car.

"The Mercedes-AMG GT S has the sharpest, most precise steering we have ever felt on any Mercedes or AMG vehicle," said MOTOR TREND editor-in-chief Ed Loh. "It makes massive power from a compact, high-tech turbocharged V-8 engine. What most impressed my team is how well the GT S was able to combine these elements. It put all 503 of its horsepower to the ground like an all-wheel-drive supercar and gripped the road through high-speed corners like a winged racer."

What are You Willing to Pay Cost per Mile, and How Do Self Driving Cars Change the Model?

In a McKinsey & Co. report released yesterday, and covered in Automotive News, an interesting break even analysis was done based upon the miles driven by a person per year. When does it pay to buy, ride share, or take public transport? Take a look at the chart. 

That's not the end of the story, and I recommend reading through the article.  As summarized in Automotive News:

"You may look at this chart and conclude that car-sharing is likely to remain a niche market, at least in the United States. Unless the living and working patterns change, and Americans start logging fewer miles, the economics won’t change.
That’s where autonomous driving has the potential to change everything. Much of the cost of car-sharing program comes from hiring humans. That’s especially true of Uber and Lyft, but it’s true to a lesser extent for services like Car2Go and Zipcar, which often must dispatch drivers to move their cars or bring them in for maintenance.
A second chart in McKinsey’s report shows that driverless cars would significantly shift the tipping point. Even at 10,000 miles per year, use of car-sharing services would become significantly less expensive than driving a personal car in San Francisco."


How Will Mobility Change in Urban Centers?

Great insight from McKinsey about how urban mobility is at a tipping point. 

"Four major technological trends are converging: in-vehicle connectivity, electrification, car sharing, and autonomous driving. If cities can figure out how to make these elements work together, mobile-productivity solutions could be substantially improved.
In-vehicle connectivity: The broad adoption of in-vehicle connectivity, either through the mobile phone or through an embedded system and screen, is opening up possibilities. For example, real-time analytics and data on traffic conditions can reroute drivers to avoid congestion; there are apps that offer information allowing people to shift the timing and route of travel. Eventually, vehicle-to-vehicle and vehicle-to-infrastructure communication could be used to reduce accidents and to anticipate traffic congestion.
Software will play a critical role in optimizing traffic flows. Information would travel in many directions, so that traffic-control centers could get detailed intelligence from cars, for example, to clear bottlenecks faster by alerting drivers so that they can avoid congested areas. For example, Waze, a mapping app that crowd-sources traffic data, has partnered with a number of cities, including Barcelona, Boston, Jakarta, and Rio de Janeiro, to integrate its data into the city’s intelligent-transportation system traffic-control center. Drivers get detailed, user-generated real-time data, enabling them to avoid bottlenecks, while cities can use information on traffic conditions to respond to emerging situations.4
Electrification: IHS, a market-research firm, predicts that annual sales of battery-powered electric vehicles (EVs) and hybrids will increase from about 2.3 million units in 2014 to 11.5 million by 2022, or 11 percent of the global market. Electric power trains can significantly increase the energy efficiency of the car while decreasing the pollutants emitted. While shorter-term forecasts of EV sales remain significantly lower than their less expensive fossil-fuel counterparts, Tesla has demonstrated that electrification could penetrate certain market segments. This dynamic could be stronger in cities, where driving distances are shorter and people are less worried about running out of power. In addition, battery costs are falling faster than even the most optimistic predictions, so the economic trends are shifting in favor of EVs in the mid- to long term.
Car sharing: Most cars sit idle 90 percent of the time or more. Car sharing and other services could improve this figure significantly, and perhaps reduce the number of cars on the roads at the same time. While the effect of car-sharing on rates of car ownership is still being studied, there is little argument that widespread car-sharing would mean each vehicle gets used more intensively, thereby increasing its annual mileage from 11,700 to 20,400. Extrapolating further, shared, fully autonomous vehicles could lower the cost of personal mobility by 30 to 60 percent relative to private auto ownership."

 

New Entry by Tesla Expands The Line; Threat to Dealers?

Tesla's new SUV, the Model X, will likely present challenges for traditional SUV dealers, assuming they can get the price lower than the high end ~$130K version.   Similar traditional fuel luxury SUVs are priced 2/3 lower, perhaps with the exception of MB's G-Class (Geländewagen).   However, with a 250 mile range, 0 to 60 in less than 5 seconds, and up to 7 passenger seating, it sounds like a perfect addition to anyone's ski home in Aspen.

Source: teslamotors.com

 

Why are Car Salespeople Still Needed? The Economist Explains

Interesting article in The Economist about the automotive retail channel, and why it is changing. Regardless, you'll likely be purchasing your next car from a dealer for the foreseeable future

"What motorists do want, though, is someone to talk them through all the features that cars come with these days—entertainment systems, navigation services, automated parking and so on. Carmakers are beginning to respond. Since 2013 BMW, taking Apple Stores as its model, has been installing “product geniuses” in some larger showrooms, to talk potential buyers through its cars’ features without pressing them to close a sale. Daimler Benz, another German premium carmaker, and even Kia, a mass-market South Korean firm, have begun similar initiatives."

I have no doubt that dealers will transition and work with manufacturers to deliver the services needed to make customers happy to keep driving sales.

 

ZipCar Continues to Disrupt on Campus

Photo Source: Bloomberg

Photo Source: Bloomberg

ZipCar is continuing it's drive for college students, adding another 100 campuses by the end of the calendar year.  This is interesting competition for dealers. According to Automotive News: 

Zipcar Inc. has deals to launch its car-sharing service on 100 additional colleges and universities nationwide by the end of 2015.
The company said today it has signed contracts with more than 100 campuses to date this year allowing eligible students, faculty and staff to utilize its car-sharing service.
Zipcar now operates on about 475 campuses nationwide. That number includes some of the new campuses where operations already have begun. Schools that recently have signed on include Clemson University, Wichita State University and the University of Tampa. Zipcar said it hopes to operate on 500 campuses by the end of the year.