CADA Summit is the can’t miss calendar event for dealers, and increasingly for OEMs and suppliers who want to know what the auto retail industry is really going through.
I’ve been to every CADA Summit and have always had an active role on the planning committee, and I’ve moderated dozens of sessions on stage. So, I’m a fairly biased insider! But after this year’s event, and after receiving so much positive feedback from attendees, I was musing about what makes this event so different.
For sure, there’s a lot of energy and excitement when a few hundred of Canada’s top car dealers get together in one place. That’s a lot of entrepreneurial firepower, and when car dealers get together they talk. So while the content is the main hook, the networking and conversations drive additional value for attendees.
But they don’t come just to talk, they come to listen. And this year there was a lot to take in. The jam-packed day moved along briskly, and speaker and speaker just kept adding new thinking, observations and perspectives.
A few examples: Where else will you hear the heads of seven of Canada’s OEMs — from competing brands — all openly share their views on the business and the challenges that lie ahead, in a room full of their dealers? They also do so in an unscripted format ably moderated by a professional journalist, instead of reading prepared speeches, highly sanitized by their PR teams.
In the political realm, two of North America’s most respected industry analysts shared raw and pointed analysis on the likely fate of the Trudeau government, and the possibilities that the circus-like atmosphere in U.S. politics might spill north of the border.
How about a futurist’s take on the future of AI in dealerships, or the gaps in EV infrastructure, or a famous Top Gear host recounting tales from a life on the road? CADA Summit had all that too and more.
If you wanted to hear some informed perspectives on the changing economy and the perspectives of different generations of buyers, then you would have enjoyed hearing from Linda Nazareth, journalist and economist. Darren Slind, my colleague at the Clarify Group offered research findings on what information consumers are seeking when shopping for vehicles, and the need for dealers to take a lead role facilitating the customer learning and experience when shopping for EVs.
Speaking of EVs, Michael Dunne, whose Driving With Dunne podcast I already listened to regularly before his Summit appearance, made a lot of new fans with his presentation on the explosive growth in Chinese EV vehicle manufacturing and their plans for North America. Dunne, who is one of the world’s leading experts on the topic, gave an honest and accurate snapshot of what North Americans and Canadian dealers can expect to see unfold in the years ahead.
After Dunne’s session, and for the following few days around the Canadian International AutoShow, people were still buzzing about his presentation.
Because he lived and worked in China for a quarter of a century, and has the connections throughout their auto industry, he didn’t talk in a general sense about the Chinese EV makers — he named them and gave the audience a sense of who they were, what their leaders were all about, and most importantly where they are going.
And it’s clear, they are going everywhere and having great success doing so. He described them as having a colossal advantage and a head start over U.S. and European automakers.
“This is the single most important disruption in the auto industry in the next five years,” said Dunne. “Mark my words, the Chinese are tenacious competitors and they want into these markets. They will bring their game.”
The one thing that got some dealers pumped up was his observation that so far, almost 100 percent of the time, the Chinese OEMs opt for the dealer franchise model.
You can expect to hear more from us about Dunne in the months ahead, but that’s a topic for another day.
After months of planning, it was great to see it all come together. And I’d like to give a big shout out to TD Auto Finance, the event’s exclusive sponsor, whose support helps fund all these amazing speakers.
