31st Annual Automotive Insights Symposium | Closing Remarks Day One

RICK MATTOON: OK, thank you all. I have some very important responsibilities here before you get to go to the reception. So first of all, I really would like to give a round of applause to all of our speakers today. I think I learned a ton. I think this was great. I think one of the things I like best about this conference is you get people from so many different disciplines. I mean, we've had economists. We've had engineers. We've had business people. We've had people with political backgrounds. And we've had all sorts of things. And I think that weaving all those sort of thoughts and ideas together is one of the things I really enjoy. So please join me in thanking all of our presenters today.

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My second task is I have to thank all of you, those of you who are in the room, those of you who are online. This has been-- we really appreciate the energy we get out of this program, your compassion, and your interest in this particular topic. It's always great that we've had such great response to this particular program. So that's also something I really want to make a mention about.

I also have a couple of housekeeping details. First of all, if you're coming back tomorrow, please bring your name badge back. That will help get you through security a lot easier tomorrow. So please do that. We're going to start at 10:00 AM tomorrow, sharp. There's breakfast at 9:00, so please plan accordingly in terms of that.

the last thing I have to do is I was asked to provide some sort of a wrap-up. And I have to admit, my first impulse, to be honest, was I've taken probably about 12 pages of notes. And I thought, well, I could just read them verbatim, and that would take us to about 6:30 for me to get through those. So I'm going to eschew the idea of me reading my 12 pages of notes and just go with some of the big themes that I've taken away from today, which really cut across almost all the panels.

So the first thing, if I had to use one word to describe what I took away from today, it's the word "uncertainty." Basically, every panel talked about uncertainty across various dimensions. Now, a lot of this made us feel somewhat nervous, but I think you can all remember the Chinese proverb that says, "May you live in uncertain times," as being a good thing. So maybe this degree of uncertainty is something we should embrace rather than necessarily run from.

I think what was interesting about it is the dimensions of uncertainty right now are something that I think is particularly challenging for us. I mean, you have obviously policy uncertainty right now at this particular point in time. You have uncertainty as to what the consumer is looking for in terms of a product when it comes to the automotive space. You have uncertainty as to what the propulsion system is supposed to be for a car. You have uncertainty all throughout the supply chain in terms of what volumes are going to be and how you adapt to all those things.

That's a really challenging thing, which then leads to the second theme I took out of this, which is adaptability and being nimble. Now, that sounds easier than it might seem on its face, because we're also looking at industry that is incredibly capital intensive, an industry which has to have planning cycles to be able to be profitable.

And so you're putting this tension of you need to be adaptable, you need to be flexible, you need to react quickly to market conditions, at the same time that you're in an industry where a lot of what your basic building blocks are don't make that all that easy to do.
 
The fourth theme I really took out of this is the notion of supply chains. Obviously, Austin touched a lot on this, but the complexity of the supply chain, the number of ways in which it can break down. And I think what was interesting about Austin's remarks, the potential for this also to then spill over into things that most people don't think about with monetary policy is how durable this might be in terms of inflation is something I think that's really interesting for us to think about.

So I thought those were all great themes. I think it's really interesting. I know I'm really excited about tomorrow. We're going to be delving into some more topics that I think will be of interest to everybody in this room. So at this point, I would like to invite you all to join our-- adjourn, go to our reception, continue your conversations.
Come up, talk to anybody you want.

I understand that we now are allowed to serve liquor at 4:30, which before we didn't, which also would have led me to actually read my 10 pages of notes if I had to stall all the way to 5:00. But, fortunately, now, we have a new regulation where we can serve you at 4:30 So please--

AUDIENCE: It's 5 o'clock somewhere.

RICK MATTOON: That's right. Exactly. So please, thank you all for attending today. We look forward to seeing you tomorrow. And please join us for the reception.

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