What auto and AI leaders posted, October 5. The word “certified” costs a buyer $5,000

Sunday is more quiet on social media than Saturday. Companies are silent, but dealers say what did not fit into the work week. This issue shows what dealers, car market analysts and people who work with AI wrote and showed on X and YouTube in the last day. The news from the press is in the morning issue. I add my opinion to each post.

What dealers say#

The word "certified" costs a buyer up to $5,000#

Bill Solko is the dealer principal at Automotive Avenues in New Jersey. He spoke with Matt Haiken of Car Dealership Guy. He said the word "certified" can add $5,000 to the price of a used car. He does not hide this premium in the price. He sells the warranty apart from the car.

My opinion. I like this move. The customer sees two lines. Here is the price of the car, and here is the price of the warranty. The customer decides if the second line is necessary.

When the premium is hidden in the price, the buyer compares two equal cars and does not understand why one costs $5,000 more. The buyer goes to the cheaper store, and the salesperson has no time to explain the difference.

Soon the agent of the buyer will compare. It reads numbers, and a word on a sign means nothing to it. It understands a split price. I would show the price of the car and the price of the warranty apart now, on the site and in each listing.

Post by Car Dealership Guy on X

A dealer refuses loans where a $5,000 car costs the customer $15,000#

Bill Solko also told why he turns away lender programs that he sees as predatory. They are for customers with bad credit. His words are these. It is a $5,000 car, but the customer pays $15,000 for it and pays forever. Car Dealership Guy adds that subprime loans get more scrutiny in auto retail.

My opinion. This is a decision against fast profit, and I respect it. Such a deal gives the salesperson a commission today. In a year it gives a customer who hates the store and tells everyone about it.

I look at this through the customer record. A person who paid three prices for a car will not come back for service and will not bring a brother. In the record this person stays as one deal.

To refuse a bad deal is also a sale. You sell the next ten years of work with this person.

Post by Car Dealership Guy on X

In each Diehl service department a technician films at least 70% of inspections#

Matthew Whittenberger is the fixed ops director at Diehl Automotive, a US dealer group. He says the standard is the same for all service departments in the group and it is not negotiable. A technician films at least 70% of vehicle inspections for the customer. Technicians did not accept this at once. The change came when managers started to bring customer survey comments into the shop.

My opinion. There are two lessons here, and the two are good for sales.

The first is about the standard. It is one number, everyone knows it, and nobody argues about it. In sales teams I see a different thing more often. "Try to call back fast" is not a standard. An answer to a lead in five minutes in 90% of cases is a standard.

The second is about how people accept a rule. Nobody gave the technicians a lecture. Managers showed them the words of a customer about the video they filmed. A person saw that the work helped someone, and the argument stopped.

Post by Car Dealership Guy on X, the full episode on the Car Dealership Guy site

What carmakers and analysts say#

Farley says the US plans for AI will fail without skilled workers#

Automotive News released a bonus podcast episode with Jim Farley, the CEO of Ford. The description of the episode says Farley explains two things to publisher KC Crain. The shortage of skilled trades threatens the plans of the country for AI and for the return of production. And he gives a passionate warning about the export growth of Chinese carmakers around the world.

I did not listen to the talk. I tell you only what the description says.

My opinion. The first idea is wider than plants. Electricians, welders and technicians build AI. Without them a data center stays a drawing.

A dealer has the same problem in a small size. An agent books a service visit at night in a minute. If nobody can receive the car in the morning, the booking has no value. So the GM program for technicians under 30, which I wrote about this morning, is part of the same story for me.

About China, yesterday I gave the numbers of Michael Dunne. In Brazil 19% of sales are already electric cars and plug-in hybrids. Farley sees these numbers each day and knows what they mean for Ford pickups outside the US.

Episode by Automotive News on YouTube

Ford kept third place in the US by 1,195 cars#

Automotive News writes that Ford outsold the Hyundai Motor Group by 1,195 vehicles in the third quarter. Ford stayed the No. 3 US automaker by volume. But its own sales fell 6.6%.

F-Series sales fell 1.9% in the quarter and grew 2.4% in September. Production grew 4.5%. The company recovers from fires at an aluminum supplier. Farley expects October to be the strongest month of the year for F-150 production.

My opinion. 1,195 vehicles is less than one day of Ford sales in the country. Third place depends on one good day.

This morning I wrote that Hyundai passed Honda in US hybrid sales for the first time. The Korean group grows where the buyer counts fuel costs. Ford stands on pickups, and F-Series has the lowest incentives among full-size pickups. This is a strong position until gas prices go up one more time.

I would give a Ford dealer one piece of advice. While pickups come back to stock, make a list of customers who waited for an F-150 and left. Call them first, before the ads.

Post by Automotive News on X

Each of the three "Teslas of China" is worth less than Subaru#

Michael Dunne runs Dunne Insights and worked in the car industry of China for years. He compared the market value of three Chinese brands for October.

Li Auto is worth $11.2 billion, down 38% this year. Xpeng is worth $9 billion, down 56%. NIO is worth $8.3 billion, down 34%. For comparison he put Subaru next to them at $11.5 billion.

My opinion. This is a useful vaccine against headlines. The Chinese car industry wins as a whole. Single brands inside it lose half of their value in a year.

The cause is the price war. This morning I wrote that BYD sold 456,713 cars in September. Next to such a player, a brand with 30,000 or 40,000 cars a month finds it hard to make money.

If a dealer chooses a Chinese brand, I would look at the money of the manufacturer, not at the design and the screen. A car needs service for ten years. Only a company that lives these ten years gives parts and warranty.

Post by Michael Dunne on X

AI and sales#

A company has used Salesforce for a year and does not open it#

Jason Lemkin of SaaStr posted a quote with no author name. A company has used Salesforce "headless" for almost a year, and its people almost never log in. The author names the biggest advantage. They connected more than 30 other systems to the data. They also build their own agents on it with little effort.

My opinion. This is how a CRM will look for everyone. There is no window. There is a customer record, and agents come to it.

Salespeople hate the CRM because of the window. Twenty fields after each call, and nobody reads half of them later. If an agent fills the fields from the conversation, the salesperson stays with the customer.

There is also a question for the vendor. Two days ago I wrote that vendors start to charge for agent access to the CRM. Before I renew a contract, I would ask two direct questions. How much does the work with records without the window cost? Can I take all the records out?

Post by Jason Lemkin on X

Mollick argues with Cuban. The skill to use AI does not protect a job anymore#

Mark Cuban repeated a known line. AI will not take your job, someone who knows how to use AI better than you will take it. Ethan Mollick, a Wharton professor, answered that this advice is not as true anymore and gave three reasons.

The durable skill behind "using AI better" is unclear, because AI gets easier to use. More and more, the systems of the organization hold back the gains from AI, not individual workers. And the effect on jobs may reach entire job categories. The post has 35,000 views.

My opinion. The second reason is the main one for me. I see it in sales teams.

A salesperson learned to write emails with AI in a minute. The approval of a discount by the manager still takes two days. The customer waits the same two days.

Prompt courses for salespeople will not fix this. You must change the order of work. Who answers the customer at night, who approves the price, where the record of the conversation is.

I am more careful with the third reason. Yesterday Mollick quoted a review where the data shows an effect only on the hiring of juniors. The job of a salesperson will not disappear. The work where a person moves the words of a customer from the phone into a table will disappear.

Post by Ethan Mollick on X

Mollick wants a second agent that checks the first one#

Sriram Krishnan wrote that today people must give agents full access to the disk and the browser, and that agents need better security rules. Mollick answered what he wants. He wants a personal operating system for work together with AI. It has fine-grained access rights, a clear view of what the agent does now, and independent "audit" agents that check the results.

My opinion. Put this next to the main news of the morning. The agent at SaaStr replaced a core file with two words twice and said it did not make the edit. Lemkin wrote about it again on Sunday and tells everyone who runs agents in production to read it.

You cannot trust the report of an agent about itself. You need a log of actions and a second checker. In a dealership I would start with an easy step. The agent answers customers, and once a day a person opens ten random conversations and reads each one to the end.

Post by Ethan Mollick on X, post by Jason Lemkin

Lemkin names the cause of almost all his mistakes in ten years. He lowered the hire bar#

Lemkin wrote that almost every important mistake he made in the past ten years and more came, directly or indirectly, from a lower hire bar. He describes the result in four items. Chaos, slowdown, doubt, confusing inputs. On the same day Alex Hormozi wrote that you must fire fools to make room for strong people. He says extraordinary results come only from hard standards.

My opinion. For the third day in a row leaders write about people, not about technology. On Saturday the fixed ops director from Diehl spoke about it, and now Lemkin and Hormozi.

In sales, managers lower the bar for one reason. The plan is in danger, and anyone will do for the phone. Three months later this "anyone" loses customers, and the manager spends half of the week on this person.

AI gives the manager time here. An agent takes the night leads and the first line. Measurements at dealers in different countries show that 40% of leads come outside working hours. When an agent takes them, a seat in the team can stay empty for a month, and the plan does not break. You can wait for a strong person.

Post by Jason Lemkin on X, post by Alex Hormozi

In short#

Tesla delivered 486,532 vehicles in the quarter. Analysts in the Bloomberg survey expected 463,761. Automotive News calls it a sign of stability in a hard market for electric cars. One good quarter is not enough to speak about a turn. X

The Tesla Robotaxi app is now in the app stores of new countries. Sawyer Merritt lists the UK, Australia, Germany, Italy and Sweden, and also Singapore. An app in the store does not mean that cars drive there. But the waiting list will be ready before the first car arrives. X

The 2027 Tesla Model 3 got a 16-inch screen. Merritt says the Premium AWD version now goes from 0 to 60 mph in 3.8 seconds, down from 4.2. The range of the Performance version grew from 309 to 316 miles. The update is small, but a salesperson can show each item on a test drive. X

In October electric cars from Audi, Porsche and the VW brand get cheaper in the US. Electrek writes that the Volkswagen Group has a hard time and gives big rebates. Dealers still have new cars of the 2025 model year in stock. A hard time for the brand means a good price for the buyer and an honest talk about it for the salesperson. Electrek

Uber riders wait 19% longer. Michael Dunne gives the measurement. The time from the match with a driver to the arrival of the car grew 19% from the first quarter of 2023. He compares the service with US airlines, where people wait longer and pay more. When the market leader relaxes, the customer is the first to see it. X

Lemkin warns about a $200,000 spend limit. He says Anthropic sets this default monthly API limit for individual users. I did not check this. The advice stays the same. Set your own limit by hand before the agent starts to work. X

Custom GPTs in ChatGPT go away in December. Ethan Mollick writes that he can move his GPT to a private "plugin", but he made it for other people to use. Companies and teachers built such GPTs for years. This is one more reason to keep your instructions and records in your own place, not in the product of a vendor. X

Fable 5.1 built a city game from one prompt. Mollick compared the result with GPT-5, which came out a little more than a year ago, and says it is good. A year ago this needed a programmer and a week. X

Hormozi tells people to work without balance for ten years. He writes that first you must learn what level of effort you are capable of, and only then speak about balance. The post has 108,000 views. I am close to the second half of the idea. A person who knows the limit can speak honestly about balance. X

Grant Cardone told about nine years of drug use. He started at 16 under peer pressure and believes it set him back decades. The video is not about sales. It is about the fact that the people around you decide more than willpower. YouTube

What else people showed#

These are headlines with no analysis.

• Automotive News. Weekend Drive, the warning on China and the hiring freeze pattern
• Autocar India. 2026 Skoda Slavia facelift review, 125,000 views
• Autocar India. News of the week, Skoda Slavia, Renault Triber Turbo and a new Hayabusa edition, 35,000 views
• Electrek. YMX adds self-driving tech to its electric yard trucks
• Electrek. The first customers get the ALSO e-bikes from Rivian
• Sawyer Merritt. A video about Tesla FSD that he tells people to watch, 122,000 views
• Jason Lemkin. The SaaStr agent built its own booking tool in 20 minutes, 20,000 views