The Future of Volkswagen EVs: Exploring the CPO Landscape

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Episode Highlights:

 

(0:00) – Introduction

(0:37) – Episode beginning

(1:37) – Some more background on Igor

(4:55) – Igor’s perspective on used EVs

(8:03) – What will it take at the OEM level?

(11:09) – Episode wrap-up

Links

Connect With Igor Skinder

Transcript

Elena: The last part of the Auto Intel Summit and I am here with Igor from VW of America and I’m so excited to speak with you today and thank you for taking the time into both of your sessions. And it’s been awesome.

Igor: Absolutely. Thank you for having me. First of all, and I have been in your sessions and definitely very intriguing. I love what you are talking about, especially in the AV environment. But before we get started I also wanted to congratulate you for being one of the honorees at the used car week you know women in retail, and you know, as a girl, dad and a man that’s married to a woman who is a powerhouse in the business. So I really, really respect and appreciate that. So congratulations, you are on the stage with you know, Monica Howard, who has a friend that CARFAX and of course with our friend Laurie.

Elena: Thank you so much now that means a lot. It’s been fun to kind of be a part of this, just this larger automotive community and that’s why I will say it once I’ll say it forever, automotive is the best industry ever. So let’s talk about you a little bit more or less. Get more about your background, how you started in automotive, how you got to where you are today. I always love to hear people’s career journeys. So let’s hear yours.

Igor: Sure. So yeah, in terms of my career, I started about 20 years ago, I was just finishing up high school and going to college. I bought my very first car at the time just a year prior to that. So I wanted to wash cars and just kind of be around the brake. So I started at an independent dealership where I bought my car and being that I was 18 years old, I I got a license to sell cars and then I got addicted and all through college I was doing you know marketing and the service work and everything else at the independent dealership at some point later became a GM and ran that independent store. So those were my you know, initial steps of crawling in the business. You know, so when things really started to get more serious was right around 2008 You know, it was not the greatest year in economy, but we certainly had opportunities. Soon thereafter, I moved into the franchise world and that’s when I began my career at York Volkswagen. I’ve been a Volkswagen you know, enthusiast and a fan from very early on in my life. So, so a lot of things that I might say might be a little bit biased but I also really am passionate about, you know, not only my company that I work for, but the product itself, I’ve now owned over 80 of them and you know, I am not yet 40. So that’s a pretty big accomplishment in terms of cars. So spent several years with York VW, and that’s where really things started to take off for me and I started to get noticed at Volkswagen of America because our store was performing on all levels and of course, you know, you win prizes, trips and things of that nature. And so all of a sudden you now you’re you’re becoming a name that people know so early on, I expressed my interest coming to Volkswagen of America. To work but not really sure what I was going to do. So the fate would have it that I would actually depart from your VW and take an opportunity with ADESA auto option, managing an option in central Pennsylvania and roughly four years after that talks with Volkswagen I was offered a position in Northeast Region. Interesting fact. The person that hired me shout out to Patrick Doyle. He is the regional vice president of Volkswagen at the northeast. That’s where I get Mrs. Jones from and when you called Mrs. Jones out in your session, circle, it’s the full circle you know, Mrs. Jones came out even at the summit here in Raleigh guys, it was it was amazing show. But, you know, I was hired by Patrick and I spent five years in the Northeast region as the Sales Operations Manager. And about 18 plus months ago, I was promoted to take the national role as the operations and Strategy Manager for the remarketing side and the CPL. So it’s a unique journey. The cool part is I have really been in almost every segment of this business. The only side that I wasn’t on was finance or captive business, but I certainly work with them almost daily.

Elena: I was like, That’s yeah, it’s also a lot of your job as well and strategy and I love it. So let’s go in obviously, the podcast is called EVs for everyone. We’re gonna have a an EV discussion. Let’s talk about these vehicles. We know that slowly, slowly but surely, it’s like kind of like a turtle like moseying along US vehicles used EVs are going to be coming into the market. So we’d love your perspective on where you see that’s headed, what are the pain points, we know that there are going to be many, so let’s just start with that.

Igor: Absolutely. So in terms of EVs, right? There’s a lot of opinions on that, right? You know, you can ask just about anybody in the world who is in the market for a car, they will have an opinion on EVs, and some people believe it’s a fad that it’s going to pass us by and others are all in that 100% of the vehicles will be EVs companies and OEMs have taken their stances and plans for the future. Volkswagen is certainly doing its part and we’re proud of the products that we have rolled out and products are also forthcoming. We just revealed the ID7, the sedan and of course, everybody’s talking about the buzz. So that’s the bus No, no pun intended, right. Yeah. So in terms of that, I think when I think about the future, I think that we are going to have a lot of solutions. And DB is certainly going to be one of those solutions that’s going to be fairly large, right? It’s going to have its own appropriate market share, but I don’t think we should ignore the fact that there are companies working on other technologies that are going to be solving the problems and you know, reducing the CO2. So when we really think about it recently at NADA in Dallas, it was almost a wake up call. And then this was mostly geared towards the new car side and new EB purchases, right. So there, we have anxieties over tax credits currently because nobody knows who is qualifying for what you know, answer questions, you know, how much money do you make, do you qualify for this to qualify for that? So it’s no longer you know, the car is here and you get a credit you now have to we have to think about where the battery components and other things have been sourced from in order to make sure that we’ll get the Evie tax credit. So so there’s that one thing, right. But the biggest one that we saw is still range anxiety, where do I charge my car? And you know, and that’s a difficult hurdle to get over. Right. And so until we start to address some of the fundamental issues like charging networks and infrastructure in this country in general, something we can hook on to and say this is your solution. You know, we will continue to have those anxieties, what my concern was, then is we now see evey sales are, you know, picking up because it’s no longer just one juggernaut in the market, though they are still a juggernaut, but everybody else is getting into the game and so we are now retailing cars, whether it’s through retail channel or lease, they’re out in the market and they will be coming back just like every other car there is it comes back because he was car, we have to think about what’s going to happen and how are we going to address these cars. So if the anxiety is high on the new car side, the question is, what is it going to do to a pre owned buyer and that’s where we have to step in and think about innovation and what do we bring forth?

Elena: My next question for you Igor, is what is it going to take at the OEM level to maybe streamline or help? Or my favorite word educate folks that are interested in potentially owning a used EV?

Igor: That’s a really good question. And that question probably has many answers, right? I feel like my job is to begin to recognize what the opportunities here may be right, so to speak about, for example, what I do in the certified pre owned arena, we have a an excellent program at Volkswagen. what I consider to be a very comprehensive warranty. Literally everything is covered in the car for two years, 24,000 miles after the regular warranty has expired. That’s instilling confidence in our consumer today, and we’re doing quite well with that. But when we talk about EVs versus ICE cars, it’s it’s really truly apples to oranges. We cannot treat it the same way. So certainly we have taken that step and the leap of faith that we need to address the issue head on. But we need to take a step back first and evaluate what are the things we need to resolve first and problems that we need to solve? So when we talk about those anxieties, when we talk about charging when we talk about the battery health, right, which is a biggie that everybody has mentioned in this summit, those are the things that are going to be that our consumers are questioning and of course, you know, one of the ways to solve it is to start solving problems in terms of reducing or eliminating anxiety. So I can’t quite go into the detail of everything that the program will entail but we had Volkswagen are working on Evie specific CPO program that will apply to all of our model lines. And it will come with not only you know what’s traditionally known as just the warranty on the car but really we are beginning to look at that car that is in terms of components, the content ID meaning that it does not have all that the ice car has. So it gives us an opportunity to look at other things. What’s important to the consumer. What are they afraid of? Can we address it and take away from that anxiety and fear so that they can confidently come to a dealership look at a certified pre owned EV and buy it after they’ve been educated on it. And if we can answer some of these questions right up front in a program, then I think we have a winning solution and those of course will be surrounding the range anxiety charging, as well as the option that we heard in your session earlier is is in terms of what about your house? What about your home? How can we get you to be ready for it. And that’s simply where we’re at right now in this market is I see a lot of people are buying an EV before they install infrastructure in their own house. And for the first month of ownership. They panic a lot. And it’s unfortunate if we did it the other way around. I think we’d have a much better take rate and less anxiety and maybe we wouldn’t see some of these recently purchased new EVs back in the market.

Elena: So that’s all the time we have for today. Where’s the best way for people to either reach out to you or contact you?

Igor: Yeah, so please don’t email me. So I am on LinkedIn. So if you share and tag me people will have access to my LinkedIn profile of course and and feel free to reach out if you have any questions or you just want to chat sometimes right? I can’t tell you that I have a lot of time for that. But certainly email is a no no. And the reason I say that is because it’s shout out to Cherokee Media Group. They put on a fantastic show everywhere we go. But you know, with the announcement of me being a panelist in three sessions this week, let’s just say my inbox needs some thorough cleansing. I don’t even know what’s in it at this point. But thank you so much for having me. I really appreciate being on your show.

Elena: No. Thank you, Igor. Appreciate your time and appreciate getting to know you. This has been awesome.