Mobility Evolves: The New Economics of Vehicle Miles

Is the future of transportation really about electric vehicles, or is something much bigger happening?

In this episode of Field Frequency, Field Advantage welcomes Joe George, President of Mobility at Cox Automotive, for a thought-provoking conversation about how technology, AI, autonomy, digital commerce, and changing consumer behavior are reshaping transportation.

Drawing on insights from the Transportation Energy Institute (TEI), Joe explores why the industry should stop focusing solely on electric vehicles and start thinking about transportation as an integrated system centered around efficiency, uptime, and total cost of operation.

The discussion covers everything from autonomous fleets and predictive maintenance to AI-driven routing, consumer ownership trends, and what tomorrow's mobility ecosystem could look like.

Transportation is evolving beyond the vehicle itself. In this episode of Field Frequency, Joe George, President of Mobility at Cox Automotive, joins Field Advantage to explore how AI, autonomous technology, digital commerce, and changing fleet economics are reshaping the future of mobility. From optimizing total cost of operation to improving uptime through predictive maintenance, this conversation offers practical insights for organizations preparing for the next generation of transportation.

Inside The Episode: 

• Why the future of transportation is bigger than EV adoption
• How "cost per mile" is becoming the new performance metric
• Why vehicle ownership may decline over the next decade
• The economics behind fleet uptime and preventive maintenance
• AI's role in routing, diagnostics, and operational efficiency
• Autonomous vehicles, data ownership, and the future customer experience
• How retailers, fleets, and mobility providers may compete for consumer attention
• What infrastructure operators should prepare for today

Key Takeaways:

• Transportation is evolving from vehicle ownership to mobility services.
• Fleet uptime is becoming one of the most valuable operational metrics.
• AI will improve maintenance planning, routing, and decision-making long before fully autonomous transportation becomes commonplace.
• Consumers increasingly value convenience over ownership.
• Businesses that optimize operational efficiency rather than simply adopting new technology will have the strongest competitive advantage.

Field Frequency is powered by Field Advantage, delivering conversations with industry leaders shaping the future of field service, critical infrastructure, retail technology, EV charging, and connected operations.

Guest Bio 

Joe George leads the Mobility Solutions Group at Cox Automotive. He is focused on helping Cox Automotive’s partners and clients successfully navigate the technology and services that support evolving consumer mobility, including delivering advanced fleet management solutions. The drive of Cox Automotive Mobility is to keep fleets and people moving safely and sustainably for the next generation.

Prior to leading Mobility Solutions, George served as interim president of Cox Automotive Media Solutions Group, overseeing the company’s Autotrader, Dealer.com and Kelley Blue Book business divisions and brands.

As an industry veteran with more than three decades of experience working with Cox Automotive and several of its brands, George began his career with Manheim as an auction employee and rose through the ranks at operating locations to become marketing manager, general sales manager, and assistant general manager. Later, he joined the company’s executive team, becoming senior vice president of Product Development, as well as group vice president of Manheim Digital.

George previously served as senior vice president of Assurance and Reconditioning for Manheim. He was responsible for wholesale and retail services strategy and execution, leading efforts to deliver innovative end-to-end inventory solutions and a high level of client service that supports dealer success.

Prior to that, George served as senior vice president and chief strategy officer for Cox Automotive. Earlier in his career as vice president of Dealer Services, chief product officer and senior vice president of Operations, he helped launch Autotrader.com and held several leadership positions with Autotrader’s parent company, including president of Cox Autotrader/AutoMart Publishing.

George holds a Master of Business Administration and a Bachelor of Science degrees from The Ohio State University. He is an active community volunteer, supporting St. Vincent de Paul Society, Marist Way, and serving as chairman of the board of trustees for Notre Dame Academy.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Transportation is becoming one of the most intelligent, connected, and economically dynamic systems in the modern world, and the companies that understand this shift will shape what comes next. In this episode, Joe George from Cox Automotive breaks down a much bigger transformation happening inside this market. It is transportation moving from vehicle ownership to the economics of miles traveled. We also get into autonomy, AI, fleet optimization, and hidden transportation costs. This wasn't a hype conversation, it was a systems conversation, and hopefully it provokes thoughts about the evolution of our transportation ecosystem. Let's get into it.

SPEAKER_01 1:03

Yeah, thanks for having me.

SPEAKER_00 1:04

So a little background for the for the audience. Recently, Joe and I were at an event by the Transportation Energy Institute where Joe was presenting there and found his presentation insightful and kind of thought-provoking. He did really good uh at that TEI event. And of course, um Field Advantage is is certainly friends of TEI. And we have Joe, or excuse me, John Heichberger coming up on the episode, or excuse me, coming up on the show pretty soon. But uh I'm glad that Joe was um was able to connect with Joe at that event and wanted to get Joe on the you know the show to kind of lay out some things and what Cox Automotive is doing in the e-mobility space. But Joe, uh, as we get kicked off here, I'd like to start off with your background, what led you into the automotive and transportation industry? If you could just share your background and then uh following your background, tell us about what Cox Automotive is doing in the e-mobility space.

SPEAKER_01 1:58

Sure. Well, uh, thanks again for having us. It's great to be here. You know, I'm uh third-generation car business. My uh grandfather was a car dealer, my dad was a car dealer, my mom and dad were together in a business, and all my uncles and pretty much my whole family. So I grew up around car dealerships and in and around the transportation industry, which led me to my now 36-year career with Cox Enterprises, all in the automotive space, from Mannheim to Auto Trader to our um retail solutions businesses, and then eventually to mobility. And mobility for us is you know, we're we are Cox Automotive is focused on helping car buying, you know. So Auto Trader Kelly Bluebook, we help drive consumers to the right vehicle through our dealers who are our main customer. That's who pays our bills. So we provide the software that operates their dealerships, and you know, this is where they come to buy and sell inventory at our auctions business. And so when we looked at the future of transportation and mobility, you know, we saw we we felt like there was some change on the horizon. And the Cox Enterprises is a 128-year-old family-owned company in Atlanta, Georgia. So it's been through a lot of decades of growth and innovation. And so we think about the world in decades, not quarters. And we saw this, excuse me, this opportunity for the revolution in vehicle technology and the revolution in the economics of transportation, mostly driven by digital commerce. So think Amazon, and then how people move from point A to point B, which started out, excuse me, which started out Uber and Lyft, and now it's Waymo, and so you're starting to see autonomy sneak into that. And so we build our business around the premise that we're gonna help these emerging fleets ma maintain their uptime, regardless of whether they're autonomous, electric, whatever form factor they take. And what's driving it on our side is on the car buying side is the cost of vehicles is getting very, very expensive for most families. This gives us this gives us a uh ability to support the thing that's gonna help families manage their budgets better as they use digital commerce and as they use delivery to obtain their products that they need.

SPEAKER_00 4:17

Yeah, I concur on the increasing, ever increasing costs of automobile ownership. I we recently had John Volcker contributing editor of Car and Driver magazine, and he was talking even about loans, car loans. So not only the cost of vehicles going up, uh you know, loans being extended out seven, eight, nine years. So that's making it even more expensive when you look at when you factor in financing. But uh you know, from a you know, kind of through the lens of of where the market sits and and the evolution of our industry, specifically with with the change from traditionally powered vehicles, sling diesel, to now uh electric vehicles and autonomous vehicles. A lot of the conversation is is always on that the the identity of the vehicle and and what its feature set is. But from your vantage point, I'm I'm curious uh where the industry is fundamentally misframing things right now. Where where is the industry getting it wrong, you might say, as as we're shifting to emerging technologies?

SPEAKER_01 5:19

I think the uh the traditional manufacturers are um kind of missing this the full story of these the next generation of vehicles where you know is the electric vehicle, is it all about electrification? But a lot of what's in these new uh freeform OEMs like a Tesla and Iribian is a completely different consumer experience driven by the in-vehicle capabilities and the ability to download different experiences over time. Really, the vehicle you purchased at the beginning isn't the vehicle you're driving. It's it's been updated multiple multiple times. And I think they happen to be electric vehicles, but they've they're also a new operating system, and it's a it's kind of the next degree of um or next vista of transportation.

SPEAKER_00 6:13

And I think to stay fixated on whether it's electric or internal combustion engine, I think that's the wrong uh I think that's when you when you step back from the vehicle, and and this question is kind of goes back to the the presentation at uh the recent TEI conference, specifically transportation as a system. Um, if you step back from the vehicle, uh what is the right way to think about transportation as a system? And then you could answer that question through the lens of of the fleet operator or uh, you know, even at the consumer level, what's the actual unit of value operators should be optimizing for as it relates to the transportation system at a kind of macro level?

SPEAKER_01 6:50

Yeah. I think ultimately, and the premise of the presentation at TEI was if you think about the future of transportation, transportation is you know a million different use cases that companies have, we as consumers have, and then transportation satisfies those use cases. And so today, the way the market back from when Henry Ford started selling bottle teas, the consumer purchases the vehicle, they finance the vehicle, we finance the vehicle, we have to provide the insurance, we have to maintain it, we have to fuel it, we have all those expenses, and plus we take the depreciation on the asset. And so when you step back at the value proposition of an American family, that's not a real great financial transaction for most families. They pay a lot in interest. So when you take that cost and you divide by the number of miles they consume, you get a cost per mile. And that's really where I think as the future comes down, people are gonna have to look at that more and more is how do I get that tuba toothpaste to my house? You know, do I drive and buy a whole basket of goods and then drive home? Do I let Amazon deliver it? For the vast majority of Americans, they're gonna start having to make make these decisions. So that's on the consumer side. On the fleet side, it's the same, which is total cost of operation. And to be competitive in a in a really competitive goods, goods economy, I would say service economy, you're gonna have to be always optimizing your uh expense profile, your efficiency. And fleet is an important part of how you know goods get the market. That toothpaste goes through a supply chain that has a lot of trucking involved with it, a lot of delivery aspects, warehousing. One of the significant costs in the economy is fleet operations. And so how do you optimize your total cost of operation? And that's a whole concatenate different things that you you monitor. I think cost per mile, ultimately, the most efficient and effective cost per mile for the particular use cases that consumers and businesses have. You know, we're gonna get into a world where we're always we're always looking to optimize that. And I think the models of ownership and the models of fleet operations are gonna evolve, especially with autonomy coming, because it's like who who owns the autonomous vehicle? Does Google Waymo own it? Does Uber own it? Does do consumers own it? Do you like subscribe to BMW and whatever s autonomous vehicle form factor you need for that day shows up? So there's a lot of really cool, you know, we can go on and on forever about the ways this could go, but to answer your specific question, total cost operation, and for consumers, you know, the awareness that you know my car that I finance and fuel and maintain and to take the depreciation sits idle 92% of the time. So it's like it's just a terrible investment profile. But it's like, listen, if I've got a sick child at three o'clock in the morning, I can get up and go to the hospital too. So anyway, total cost operation, looking at the world more through miles, cost per mile than necessarily how it's in because digital commerce has opened up all kinds of doors for particularly shopping, you can take a different Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 10:03

You you you highlight a very key statistic around the lifespan of the vehicle. 92% of its lifespan spent parked somewhere with the balance, eight percent, and and to your point of the depreciation that we have to take, the cost, you know, the the interest rates attached to the financing of the loan, the cost of insurance, the cost of fuel, all of that. Those are uh that that total cost of ownership, it gets gets out there both for the fleet and the and the consumer alike when you think about it. And convenience is is is shifted a lot of transportation costs out of the consumer's line of sight. And when I when I make that statement, I'm I'm thinking like Waymo um as an example. And then, of course, last week I took my first ride in a in a Zeus, the the um in Las Vegas. And so that was uh, you know, I that's that's Amazon. Uh the Zeus, that's who owns that. I d I didn't realize that. Yeah, that was that was my first ride with with that that uh autonomous brand.

SPEAKER_01 11:05

Just so your audience knows, my grandfather's rolling over in his grave for me, you know, to even say anything remotely negative about the car. Sure. Car ownership and car buying. So uh, but I I you know have been around a long time and I, you know, I just I don't I don't see how we don't evolve. We don't evolve because the cost of cars getting so expensive. Most average F-150 now, I think $68,000. I mean you gotta, you know, plumbers, you know, you gotta you gotta do a lot of plumbing to pay for pay for the yeah. The median income in the U.S. is sixty-two thousand dollars.

SPEAKER_00 11:35

Yeah, it it just doesn't add up when you look at it. So as the as as transportation of course is shifting, some of those costs that we were talking about, they they they kind of m get taken out of the line of sight to the consumer. They don't understand. So like I'm thinking the autonomous vehicle, I'm thinking about charging infrastructure. Where where are those costs going to be sitting and who's gonna be carrying them tomorrow? What's what are what are your thoughts around that?

SPEAKER_01 11:59

I that's a really, really good question, and and I I don't I have an opinion.

SPEAKER_00 12:04

Opinion's great.

SPEAKER_01 12:05

But I you know it it will probably be wrong, and I know it'll be wrong. But I don't think Google got into Waymo for to get in the automobile business. Right. I don't I don't think they woke up one day and said, hey, we want to be in the transportation business. They're in the data business. And so when you think about the amount of data that they're get have been gathering around people's use cases and patterns, life patterns, and um and what's neat about this whole concept of autonomous fleets is you know, when I taught my son how to drive, we went around in a high school parking lot and then I got a permit and then he started driving. These Waymo autonomous vehicles, every day they upload all their information to Google and they process it and then they push it all back down. So collectively the fleet gets smarter as a as an aggregated fleet. And so these cars and and vehicles are just gonna get smarter and smarter. And so, you know, it's not just the vehicle data that's getting pushed up, but it's also where did Joe go when he uses us, how does he use us, where does he use us? And anything about so who pays for the mile, you know, Joe may pay for part of it, but if I'm going to Hartsfield Airport, maybe Delta pays part of it. I I don't know, but it's and you start to get it more interesting for people have different value of the miles that a vehicle's traveled. Walmart knows that I spend more in-store than I do online, then they would certainly be glad to send an autonomous vehicle to pick me up and bring me into the store and pay for those miles on my behalf. And I think that's where that's where we'll start to see the evolution. And it's not gonna like one day we're gonna wake up and all cars are gonna be autonomous. That's just not how it's gonna happen. And that's not how we transition from horse and carriage, horse and buggy to automobiles either. So on the charging side, I'm uh I'm not as vexed by that. I think I think the free market will catch up with it. And I think data centers are gonna push it because we need the power to fuel those, and so we'll start to see more, more cooperative natures around getting more power into the grid. I also think that the profile of the charging of an of an electric vehicle is not as significant as I think a lot of the pundits say. And then finally, I think the evolution of hybrids are going to allow for low horsepower engines that do the charging for you while you're driving it. And so, but they have a much different carbon profile than building the huge power plants. And so I think there's just gonna be this uneven evolution um that that'll solve the power problem. Who pays for the charging? You know, again, it matters. Am I trying to attract Joe and his wife as a consumer? Do restaurants pay for our ride because they want us to come in and you know, frequent their restaurant? A lot of cool things are gonna happen in the future.

SPEAKER_00 14:51

Yeah, agree. And and all all good comments going back to your to your comments around retail leveraging autonomous vehicle to direct to direct business to them, bring business to them, stepping out of that and looking at even even the Tesla, the Tesla model. So you of course have the grok integration and you have the navigation system all connected together. So you get in your vehicle and the navigation is maybe got some prompts where it could send you, and that could be retail or or or food and beverage or whatever it may be. But then also when you punch into that navigation system, there's a hungry option that and and and when you click on that, it's it's gonna list businesses. And uh, you know, you can you can you can ask rock, hey, I'm you know, I'm trying to I'm trying to get to Best Buy before they close, but I also need to make this other stop. And and the the route optimization behind that whole experience. And well, you should probably go to Best Buy first, and or you know, back to the point of the hungry, you know, and it's gonna list all the all the food and beverage locations. And so as the transportation systems are becoming more connected, there there's a call to the retailer. Uh and so I'm I'm curious where where you where where your what your comments or thoughts are around concentrating that value. Who who's gonna win in that and who's gonna shudder in that whole thing?

SPEAKER_01 16:11

Yeah, I um that's uh fantastic question. I mentioned before we got on the air that you asked me some really good questions, and this is my opinion. Um, you really made me think. And so I have to go back to a really a bad answer to the question. And that is like I think those comp those retailers, those entertainment products that engage and embrace new economic models for client driving better client experience, more value to the client, to the consumers, will will be successful. And then there'll be a group that just won't do it. And it may I don't know who they are. I imagine Amazon has to be thinking about how to optimize not delivering one tube of toothpaste to mu to the George household because that's a really expensive tube of toothpaste. And so how do they how do they orchestrate because they know enough about our purchasing patterns, and so how do they orchestrate better bundling for us? And I think AI is gonna have a huge step in that. So the value I think ultimately the consumer will pay, we as consumers, in some indirect fashion, but it'll either make our lives easier, time is our most precious commodity, or or or it'll help us save money and let us do more with the money we make. Who it's it's really whoever can whoever can connect those dots the seam as seamlessly as possible, they're gonna I think we're gonna be the winners. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 17:32

Yeah, you you can you can get off into a whole conversation about you know who owns the customer. And the reason why I make that comment is about to my earlier point of of hitting the hungry feature on the on the Tesla navigation system. As a retailer, it seemed like you would be wanting to compete, kind of like in search engine optimization. You want to be at the top of the list, you want to be on page one of Google search results. Same thing in the in the vehicle system, all the navigation systems, Tesla or otherwise, you'd want to be as a retailer at the top of that list because you want people setting your location as the destination that they're headed to. And so how all that comes together, it's it it's it's very much akin to who owns the customer, who owns the data, and how is it shared and how is this ecosystem working together? I I think of retailers, fuel retailers who open up parking spaces and allow easement and to CPOs to come on site and operate their charging network on location. The EV driver is coming to Circle K, the EV driver is coming to 7-Eleven, the or rather, you know, other retailers that have have partnered with with CPOs, Sheets, Wawa, etc. Who owns that customer? You know, who who owns their arrival? Is there conversion? Is there not conversion? They pulled up and charged, did they go in the store? You know, all of all of those points. And so it, you know, transportation as a system. It's it's it's when it works, nobody notices. When it fails, right, everybody notices.

SPEAKER_01 18:58

Everybody notices, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 18:59

Yeah, so I'd like to hear your comments on on how operators should should think about that reliability and uptime, or or maybe think about visibility as a strategic lever rather than it goes back to total cost of ownership, and one of the components of that is clearly maintenance and repair.

SPEAKER_01 19:16

But one of the most significant value detractors from a total cost of ownership for a fleet is downtime, right? So if a dump truck's not hauling dirt, it's not making money. So if it sits for a week, just take however much revenue it would have achieved during that week, and that's your downtime. You know, what repair or preventative maintenance you could have or should have done to avert that weak downtime is there's a massive ROI on that. So and I think so back to your point about visibility, you know, the the tools are getting better for fleets and really for us as consumers to to understand how our how our vehicle truck is is feeling and and what it needs. And we need to we as an industry need to give better preventative maintenance insights to the driver, to the fleet owner, so that they can make better decisions. Because when when a when a when a fleet vehicle's down, it's not doing what it's supposed to be doing, and that costs money. And if you have enough of that, then um not only do you have disappointed customer consumers maybe on one side, but you also have just lost revenue from the business. And I think that you know, I always say follow the dollar. If you follow the dollar, that's where the fleets are gonna get better and better.

SPEAKER_00 20:31

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 20:32

But they need, you know, and artificial intelligence, you know, the AI capabilities are gonna help that because we can process more data more quickly and present it in a way that makes sense.

SPEAKER_00 20:42

Yeah, yeah, absolutely. In in a way that is actionable and meaningful. Like you say, you know, I even think about the the consumer, the consumer aspect of it where it's time for the oil change to your point about preventative maintenance. Time for your oil to be changed. And so, especially if your vehicle's under warning, you want to keep that preventative maintenance schedule. You want to go get the oil change, but you know, I think about what if, what if the what is it, the ECU uh that detected it was time for the oil change also interfaces with with the navigation or the operating screen inside the vehicle and says, hey, it's time for an oil change. Jiffy Lube has a special right now. You should consider headed headed over there right now and take care of two important things, save you some money on the oil change and also maintain your warranty on your vehicle. And so think that's at the consumer level, but to your point of the the AI and and fleets leveraging large data sets and actioning on them in meaningful ways to drive down that total cost of ownership within their fleet.

SPEAKER_01 21:38

I don't think it's too long before we'll get into a way, we'll get into an autonomous taxi, whoever owns it, and you'll you can pay different levels, you can it's just like streaming services, you can pay for ads or you can pay for not having ads. And so think about a world where you get in, you recognize they know Joe, they know what his interests are, they know what his traffic patterns are, and they They say something the equivalent to the Jiffy Loo oil change, but they say, Hey, did you know you know they're having a sale at Nordstrom's can get you there and you got enough time on your calendar to do it, to be honest? And Nordstrom's has the ability to buy that from an advertising standpoint from whoever it is. I I think those miles are really cheap to get Joe into the store because Joe doesn't go to the store that often.

SPEAKER_00 22:23

Yeah, it's it's that stickiness. I think you know, going back to the example I gave earlier about my ride in the Zeus vehicle, Zeus vehicle, and it gave me an option to connect my Bluetooth. So there was music playing in the vehicle, and it gave me the option to connect my Bluetooth to that. And I did it. And when it it basically sent me a message saying, okay, we're we're next time you jump in the Zeus V another Zeus vehicle, you're gonna auto-connect to Bluetooth. Yeah, we got you. And you can play your music, you can do whatever you want to do, and and it it's gonna recognize me on the next ride that I take because I made that Bluetooth connection. Scary and interesting.

SPEAKER_01 23:01

I know it's scary, but it does take much to satisfy to make us happy, you know.

SPEAKER_00 23:05

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 23:05

Not having to jack around hooking up your Bluetooth is a pretty cool.

SPEAKER_00 23:08

Yeah, yeah. Well, delighting the customer. That's the that's the whole goal. That's part of that stickiness. Yeah. Uh so looking at technology architecture and and hardware and maybe software differentiation, you made a comment about AI a moment ago, and there's there's of course lots of lots of noise, also signal, but lots of noise around autonomy and AI. Where what are your comments around real world impact versus kind of pie in the sky theoretical, you know, this is what what are your comments maybe to the to the opera the fleet operator or at a consumer level? Where is their real world impact around the kit the connection between autonomy and AI?

SPEAKER_01 23:49

Yeah, one of the important dimensions of of quote unquote A AI and large language models is computational speed and the amount of data that can be processed, which really uh doesn't have anything to do with large language models, just um has to do with it's just evolving and getting faster. And what that allows to happen is things like autonomy, things like vehicles getting safer. Um so I think real world applications, you know, you're gonna see vehicles are gonna just get more and more safe because they're not gonna let you make dumb decisions and they're gonna protect you from yourself. Number one reason there's fatalities have gone up in the US, even though cars have gotten safer, is because of texting. So how how the vehicle interacts with that capability to text will be interesting to see how that evolves. That's that's one practical example. I think safer vehicles. I think that autonomy is gonna come quicker because I think we're gonna be able to get closer to what it takes to really drive a vehicle. I still think humans are better drivers than that autonomous vehicles just because our brains are beautiful things and we can we can take so just pull up to a traffic light, there's so much going on in your brain, and you're talking on the phone and drinking coffee. But you understand how to get through that to an autonomous vehicle, that's a really complicated thing to do. But as cognitive speed and the ability to process lots of data, and they never sleep, so it's constantly getting better. I think we'll see better autonomy. And then just decision tools, uh, you know, how we help both consumers and fleet owners make better decisions about when, how, where to repair um their vehicles is gonna be important. One of the things you put in your email to me was around routing and the uh the efficiency gains there. I think that's a classic problem for a large language model to to to um satisfy. People are still gonna have to turn wrenches, people are still gonna have to, you know, clean vehicles, there's still a a physical dimension to what makes transportation go. But um I think in the near term we're using it, and I think a lot of other companies are. So it's not a matter of is the you know, sort of end-all be all for this next chapter. It's it's just like another tool in a tool chest.

SPEAKER_00 26:02

You know, when you were talking about just the the cognitive power of of the human that pulls up to the intersection, there's a phone call underway, there's a coffee in hand, there's four people that need to go, and yet you just understand you don't think about it. You just know when it's your turn to go because you your brain categorized who got there first and who who moved next. You know where your place is in line. And so the machine learning, of course, has to understand all that and work through that. I remember a conversation I was having with someone, you know, it's probably been about eight or nine years ago when we were talking about the future of autonomy, and specifically it was within the context of EVs with autonomous feature, and it's like, you know, the the knee-jerk reaction, the Luddite reaction is I'll never let a vehicle determine if I'm gonna live or die, you know, in a in a vehicle situation. And I'm, you know, I counterwise like, well, the car's probably not gonna be going 20 miles over the speed limit, anyways. It's it's gonna be traveling within the bounds of expected transportation guidelines and the you know, the lines on the road and the speed limit and the weather conditions, uh, you know, and all that. It's gonna be factoring in versus you just you know flying 30 miles over the speed limit to through an intersection. So it's probably gonna take better care of you than you are, maybe once it learns. It's gotta learn, but it's it's gotta it's gonna eventually be pointed in that direction.

SPEAKER_01 27:27

I guess I'm uh I'm with the Luddites a little bit. I'm not getting on it, I'm not getting in an autonomous vehicle and being going out on 285 here in Atlanta on a Friday night. There's just that's just not happening.

SPEAKER_02 27:36

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 27:36

You know, I I I don't care how good the technology is right now, there is just way too much going on. Now, do I take it, you know, a local route, you know, to and from work if I if I'm not any on any big freeways? Sure. Because it's you know, like you said, you're going 35, 45. Most people, you know, you're not 50 miles over the speed limit. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 27:56

Your earlier comment about you about your grandfather here in this conversation, it it makes me think of vehicle ownership. I'm I'm kind of on the other end of the spectrum. I'm ready to retire from driving. I've since already somewhat for the most part abandoned the dealership model of going to a dealer and buying a vehicle. I haven't, you know, last four, at least last four vehicles, maybe five vehicles were not purchased from a dealership. It was either wholesale or or the Carvana experience just because you know got burned out in the in the whole dealership model. And so, but even beyond that, beyond the the the acquisition piece of of an automobile, to your earlier comments about the insurance, the total cost of ownership, the depreciation, the fact that the vehicle's parked over 90% of its time in the driveway and not not moving. For me, I'm ready to I'm ready to kind of retire from automotive ownership, automobile ownership. I'm ready to outsource that to autonomy. And, you know, I live in a fairly, you know, I don't live in as big a metro city as you do. I'm in San Antonio, Texas, and Waymo is is practicing routes and developing route strategies here, and I'm sure they'll show up to market very, very soon. And, you know, it doesn't mean I'm gonna go sell all my vehicles and get out of it, but I I probably will be looking to move to reduce vehicle quantity in in my household just by leveraging stuff like that.

SPEAKER_01 29:14

And in fact, the use case is determining what transportation mode you need. I think for our aging baby boomers that are living longer, you know, autonomy is going to be, you know, it's gonna keep them from it's gonna allow them to have a a more vibrant life because they're not gonna be they're not gonna be limited to whether they can drive or not. So I think we don't even know what the implications, long-term implications, positive implications are. For the middle crew, you know, I don't know. I mean, everybody are we all gonna want to have access to at least one vehicle 24 hours a day. George family will. I mean, I'm like you on the other end of that spectrum. But then you think about our kids today or their kids, my my grandchildren, you know, I don't know what transportation looks like um ten years from now when my five-year-old granddaughter thinks about a license, or do they even have driver's licenses anymore?

SPEAKER_00 30:04

Yeah. Two two important call outs that you just made. One is is the the need to retain a uh a vehicle in the sense of like that example you made earlier, of you know, a sick child at 3 a.m. You you don't want to wait for Waymo, you want to get in the car and you want to go right now uh and and get them taken care of. And then to your point, I mean Gen Z is a is a prime example of the especially the younger Gen Z. There is a just a an obvious disinterest in vehicle ownership, driver's license. I I think of of of Gen Zers I personally know that either don't have a driver's license, or maybe they do, but they don't own a vehicle and they don't have an interest in owning a vehicle. They don't have an interest in, and it's like I I'm thinking I was learning to drive at 1314, was got my permanent 15, was in my truck on the day I got my driver's license, and I was gone. It was freedom. I'm gone, I'm out of here, you know.

SPEAKER_01 31:02

Now they're all talking to each other 24 hours a day, so they don't need to they don't need that for the right.

SPEAKER_00 31:07

Technology has brought them brought them together. It's it brought us all together.

SPEAKER_01 31:10

Now this is turning into the crusty old guy podcast.

SPEAKER_00 31:13

That's okay. This is an important conversation. I'm I'm gonna own it. No, yeah. I'm tracking right along with you, Joe. This is this is a good conversation, and I I've appreciated your insights and your commentary so far. It's it's it's been very good. And I'd like to to kind of get into, you know, as we get ready to land this plane here, I'd like to look at some future outlook and and maybe what what your view is on on what the market, who in the market's gonna be determined as the winner? If you if you if you ignore hype cycles and you focus on execution, what what what as an operator or consumer, you can answer this either way or both, what capabilities will will separate those that win from those that don't in this in this emerging technology and this shift in transportation over the next five to ten years? What's what's what's that gonna look like?

SPEAKER_01 32:01

Yeah, I think on the consumer side, who makes many of the use cases consumers have more cost effective? And so shopping, digital commerce is a prime example. Um, but that's a really big complicated problem because you can't keep running inefficiency inefficiently in how things are delivered and have the business make money. So there's got to be some give and take there. I think the ability to optimize routing, change the economics with the consumer based on, you know, can you wait till Friday? If you do, you as much discount. So I think there'll be some evolution there. So whoever's smart about making it easier and can demonstrate an eff efficiency consumer side will win. On the fleet side and the vehicle side, it's it's relatively the same. But do we have to um do fleets have to fall follow the traditional model of ownership, or do you get into more of a a lease um for uh use based for fleet operators themselves and you have pools of pools of vehicles that they can draw from? Think about the future of Uber or the future of Lyft. Are they in commercial fleets the same way they're in moving consumers? And you see Uber Freight, you see Uber Pete, so they're starting to move out into different use cases. I'm telling you, companies like those that facilitate the transaction, and I absolutely think that's where Google's going too. So I think that Chinese manufacturers are gonna be a big big part of the next 10 years just because of cost effectiveness and electrification and the quality of the products they're building. So American consumers are gonna get what they want and they want more affordable vehicles. And if they're electric and they're Chinese, I don't I don't think that's gonna stop it from happening. I think we're gonna start to go up with vertical takeoff and landing um more, more and more. I think it'll like everything, it's gonna come unevenly. Maybe the best way to deliver packages into Manhattan is land on the rooftops and distribute it down versus trying to double park and drive pallets full of boxes into those big cities. Consumer travel is vertical feet all. It happens today, form of a helicopter. Question is you know, what how does that evolve? Where does it evolve? How is that integrated into the overall transportation system? That was a long, it's a pretty broad question. So I tried to hit the most interesting.

SPEAKER_00 34:18

Yeah, no, and I'm I'm for sure that I'm sure those listening, you you took them down numerous thought thought tracks with that. So that's a good good response and good good comments. Joe, uh, thanks for being on field frequency. For those that want to connect with you directly, learn about what Cox Automotive is doing, how what's the best way to connect with you?

SPEAKER_01 34:36

Yeah, uh Joe.george at Coxautoinc.com.

SPEAKER_00 34:40

Very good.

SPEAKER_01 34:40

It's probably the best. I'm old-fashioned. I don't even know what my LinkedIn name is, so that I'm on LinkedIn, so but I don't even know what the name is. No. So Joe.george at CoxAutoink.com. Great.

SPEAKER_00 34:50

Well, Joe, thanks for for coming on the show. It was a pleasure to talk to you. That's great. Really appreciate it. This episode was produced and edited by the team at Autozi. To find out more, visit autosy.co a u t o z y dot co.