Okay, great, and we're live. Thank you, everyone, for joining. This is the 16th annual Barclays Global Autos and Mobility Tech Conference. I'm Dan Levy. I lead U.S. auto's research coverage at Barclays. Really pleased to see how the conference has evolved over the years, and we're really glad to kick it off with GM, a very interesting and resilient earnings power story in the face of what's been an interesting year with tariffs. I'm going to run through a series of fireside chat style questions. We have Paul Jacobson here, the CFO. I'm going to run through a series of questions. Anyone who has questions toward the end, we can take some Q&A. If you have questions via email, please email my colleague, Josh Cho, joshua.cho@barclays.com, and he can ask your question honestly. With that, we're going to kick it off. Paul, thank you so much.
Why don't we just start with, you know, you've given us periodically on some of these updates a sense of how the quarter is going. We're toward year-end. You gave us an updated guide on the 3Q call. Maybe you can just give us a sense of how 4Q is shaping up and any developments we've seen.
Yeah, I would say, first of all, Dan, thanks for having us, and it's great to be with everybody this morning. You know, it's a rainy day here in New York City, but I would say that the quarter's been going right in line with our expectations. It's obviously been a noisy quarter as we came through October with the sunsetting of the $7,500 tax credit, consumer tax credit. You know, as we look at where broad demand is, it's held in there really well, I think, consistent with the way we had guided for the quarter. There's a lot going on, as you know we talked about on our call, with making sure that we're positioning the company for 2026 with lower EV demand versus the capacity that we've built up. I'm sure we'll spend some time talking about that. Generally, I think our trends are good.
We saw full-size pickups pick up a couple of tenths of share in October. I know a lot was written about share erosion in September month, and we do not put too much stock in those month-to-month movements. We just are looking at trends, because what we do not want to do is we do not want to overreact and be impulsive about the discipline that we have achieved in the marketplace. Whether it is inventory discipline, incentive discipline, our competitors are going to do what they are going to do. It is really about making sure that we are getting the vehicles in the hands of our consumers, and demand for the vehicles remains really strong, and it has, despite the volatility that we have seen across the market.
Great. Okay, you referenced 2026, and I think that was, to a lot of us, one of the big positive developments on the last call, that you did give us a sense that 2026 can be stronger than 2025, I think, which to some people early on, that was a bit of a surprise given the tariffs and the way that that flowed. You talked about a number of factors: reduced EV losses, warranty costs, tariff offsets, regs, fixed costs. Maybe we could just unpack, and maybe let's just start with an early look at how you're thinking about the industry right now, maybe any preliminary views on what type of SAR, because we've had a lot of pull forward this year, what type of SAR you're looking at, and maybe you could just talk about the broad pricing environment that you expect.
Yeah, I mean, it's too soon to conclude on what pricing for all of 2026 is going to look like. You know, it's interesting when we talked about 2026 versus 2025, there wasn't anything in there on price. It was just really looking at the things that we know we can control and we can execute better on warranty. We're doing the right sizing of the EV manufacturing footprint, et cetera. That'll give us a tailwind. We expect tariffs to be much more stable, whether it'll be enough to overcome that extra quarter in 2026, still unsure, but a lot of things are kind of breaking in the right direction. As we look at the regulatory environment, we should start to see some of the savings.
If the administration follows through and is able to, you know, make sure that they're adjusting on the GHG the way they've done CAFE, there's still a lot of procedural stuff that has to happen. You know, there's some tailwind there as well. You know, I think all of it is sort of girded by the expectation that the consumer is going to remain pretty stable. You know, and if we're hanging around in that 16 million unit, plus or minus a little bit, I think we can do really well. That's the power of inventory discipline and ultimately what we're doing with incentives. It's just much more consistent than having to just try to flex to get that extra unit of sales, where it just doesn't make that much sense to be able to do that.
That stability in this market feels like a good environment to us to continue the success and the momentum that we've seen.
You talked about inventory. I think we've seen industry inventory has ticked up the last couple of months, 2.8 million units. We've sort of been in this 2.5-3 million unit range. Are you comfortable with that as a level that can still provide an umbrella of price discipline in the industry?
Yeah, I mean, it may sound a little sacrilegious. I do not really subscribe to the days-on-hand of inventory mechanic, because I think you are trying to solve for too many variables at the same time. If you actually look at our total dealer inventory, it is down about 16% year- over- year at the end of September. You know, we are managing to that number, and sometimes the days might be a little bit higher because the SAR is moving around so much and we cannot flex the capacity that fast. We have maintained that discipline. I think when you look at the way we have responded, really kind of over the last, I would say, even two to three years to competitor inventory and competitor incentive levels, we have remained remarkably consistent.
It's actually done quite well for us in terms of the consistency of our residual values and our sales, et cetera. I'm okay with where the industry is right now. There's a lot of noise around EVs, and I think there's going to continue to be for the next several months until we find where is that natural sort of non-incented demand level for electric vehicles. We know pre-IRA, it was sitting around 5-7% penetration. You know, maybe we level out there, maybe it goes a little bit lower, maybe it goes a little bit higher based on repeat customers. You know, we're just going to kind of take it easy a little bit and see where that goes.
I think it's going to take a little bit of time to settle, because we have seen a lot of noise out there, both in inventory and incentive levels, that, you know, to be honest, post-IRA seems a little bit, you know, confusing with some of the competitive pricing that we see.
Maybe just to double-click on the competitive dynamic, one, we have more capacity that is coming into the industry, somewhat 2026, but also 2027. Two, we know that one of your competitors that had seen share drop quite a bit, another U.S. competitor that seems to share drop, seems potentially interested or trying to rebuild that share. How do you think about that competitive dynamic considering the capacity and maybe some others that might try to recoup some share?
I mean, I think that, you know, goes back to what we've been saying all along, because I think, you know, many out there were saying with the change in regulatory environment, is our CapEx going to come down significantly? We said, no, we don't expect it to, but we will pivot some of our dollars from EV to ICE, because we've got to maintain that freshness of the portfolio. It really comes down to the quality of the vehicles. Incentives and pricing can have a little bit of an impact, but when you're producing the type of portfolio that we have that is proven to be really resilient against a lot of those competitive pressures, we think that's sustainable, and that's where our discipline comes from.
You know, as we go into 2026, we have the new trucks coming in, so we feel really good about where our position is going to be in trucks, and, you know, that'll lead to more and more. You know, I feel good. We continue to believe that we've got the best portfolio in the history of GM, and customers are really responding to it.
Okay, let's maybe unpack some of the cost elements. Can we just put a second on warranty? I know this has been a year of headwinds. It's like roughly $1.5 billion this year. There was an issue with L87. Can you just give us a sense of what has happened on warranty and what is the line of sight for the warranty situation to improve?
Yeah, this has been probably one of the areas that has probably been most disappointing about our execution, but one that we're all acutely focused on right now. You know, I think if you really step back and think about what's happened, I think a lot of these things have been driven by supplier quality issues. You know, I think when you look across the supply base, there's been a lot of challenges with labor retention and so on and so forth, especially as you go down the tiers. We're really focused on making sure that we get the sort of quality supervision in there, and we're spending more time helping them with quality systems to make sure that we don't have these big spills that we've seen. We're dealing with it.
I mean, the centerpiece of the strategy is, number one, keep the customer right at the center of the strategy. That actually impacted us this year because we took a number of L87 engines out of manufacturing, out of the production cycle to get into the field, because we saw that customers were waiting too long, et cetera. Those are the types of conscious decisions where, in the short run, it cost us some units that we could have otherwise produced. In the long run, it's absolutely the right thing to do for our customers. You know, we'll have a little bit of momentum, I think, that way in 2026 as we're largely getting through that.
What we've started to see in the last probably two to three months is a stabilization of the monthly cash flows, because if you understand how the accounting works, it starts with the cash, and then it really projects out across the entire car park, the incidents, and the cost of the warranty repairs. The first indicator that we can start to bend the curve down is getting that monthly cash spend flat, bringing it down, and then that'll start to have a lagging effect on the accruals going forward. You know, we're optimistic that we'll be able to turn that as we get into 2026, and one of the things that we're counting on to help give us a tailwind into next year.
Great. Tariffs, you said, should be better. I know there's a lot of moving pieces in that. Maybe you could just help us unpack what's going on, what's in the numbers, what's not in the numbers. You know, I think you haven't embedded any benefit from Korea this year. That seems finalized. There's some potential for Mexico, Canada, and we know that, you know, there was some relief on the parts side, expanding the number of parts codes that can get the rebate. Maybe you could just walk us through the puts and takes on tariff for both this year and next year. I think the prior guide you gave was $3.5 billion-$4.5 billion gross with a 35% mitigation.
Yeah, so you're right, Korea seems finalized, but it's not. And until it is, we're still paying at that same rate. We're optimistic that those parties are going to come together and actually get that completed, and I know they're making progress on it. You know, when that gets done, how it gets done in terms of what's the effective date, et cetera, will have somewhat of an impact on us for the year, but not huge. It is going to be a tailwind for us into 2026. We feel very good about that, where it's heading. You know, as we look at 2026, we pick up an extra quarter.
That's the biggest headwind, but I think we overcome a lot of that when you look at Korea getting done, Mexico and Canada potentially getting done, the expansion of the MSRP offset, and, you know, keeping that at $3,750 is really a strong level of support for the industry and will help us tremendously as we go into 2026 and already helped us in 2025. I think, you know, we tried to communicate that on the call that, you know, it allows us to capture that. So there's current savings, and that's why we took it down from $4,500 to $3,500-$4,500. That will be an even bigger tailwind into next year that will help us overcome that extra quarter. You know, a lot of moving pieces, you're right, but I, you know, really applaud the team for how they've managed through this, because we didn't panic, right?
It was, we had a playbook. We knew at the end of the day it was probably going to start high and negotiate back a little bit as the administration made progress with various countries. But, you know, we stuck to that playbook, and it really, I think, worked well for us going forward, because, you know, all of this becomes easier when you're managing with discipline. You don't have six months of inventory on the ground, so you don't have to respond with discounts, et cetera. You're just much more nimble the way we've been running the business, and that, I think, has paid huge dividends for us.
Okay, the EV question, which I think this is, to us, the largest development or the largest change in the U.S. industry.
For sure.
Really taking away what we'd call the carrot and the stick. On our numbers or our guess, you can verify this if you want, you're probably losing roughly $4 billion-$5 billion on your EVs.
I will verify that's your guess.
Good. Okay, you've talked, there's a few different levers to improve the profitability. Maybe you can just unpack those between mix, credits, overhead. How do we think about the opportunity to reduce that loss?
Yeah, I’m really glad that you mentioned the carrot and the stick, because I think the market for most of this year has been really singularly focused on the carrot. We read a lot about, well, what’s going to happen to EVs when the $7,500 goes away. You know, what we saw is that the regulatory environment under the prior administration, which was, you know, aiming the industry and really sort of prodding the industry to get to 50% EVs by 2030 under the power of the regulatory environment, was creating a lot of dislocation, right? We saw competitors out there discounting EVs by 70-80%. That’s not a viable business model. That’s a model to acquire credits, right, to be able to basically continue to pay for ICE vehicles. A lot of irrational behavior when you look at the market for electric vehicles.
That's got to normalize and settle down, but I think it's fair to say that the demand is going to be lower than what it was in a world where the carrot existed. We have, for the last few years, been gearing up to be compliant in that world. You know, as we had said a few years ago, building up to about a million units of capacity for electric vehicles. It's probably now going to be a while before we get to a million vehicles of demand. We have the capacity there, but what we've seen as we started to pull back production schedules and production schedules in 2025 was there's a wave of adjustment costs that constantly happen every time you take that down, whether it's suppliers or cost thickening at plants, et cetera.
You know, part of the reason for the charge that we took in the third quarter, and we've foreshadowed that there's going to be a charge in the fourth quarter related to this work, is how do we get the footprint right-sized so that every EV we produced isn't shouldering a big burden of underutilized capacity? You know, I don't like writing off capital. It's certainly not what we intended to do. With that regulatory change, we have to take a big sort of step change to right-size what that capacity looks like, and it'll put us on much more stable footing going forward on our march toward EV profitability. It's going to be a longer journey. I mean, we've said scale is a really big piece of it for us.
When you look at the next few years with what we're doing with LMR technology and going to prismatic cells, et cetera, we've got a roadmap to consistently improve that EV profitability. If we can sort of shed that overcapacity burden and right-size it and take a couple of sort of clean sheet approaches, I think there's a better sort of broader profitability story for electric vehicles over the next five years. As long as we continue to produce to demand, I think that'll be good, and I think it'll work well for us.
On the red credits, can you just give us a sense how much you've expensed this year? Is there a further need for red credits into next year?
Yeah, so, you know, 2024 is probably the best year because we've already sort of written off the CAFE and so on. So 2024 was about $1 billion of sort of total compliance costs across the board. And, you know, in the past, we've spent as much as $2 billion a year from time to time on credits. So, you know, that'll be both an accounting savings and a cash savings going forward. I don't think we've bought any credits in 2025, even before the regulatory environment shifted. So, you know, I think we see that as a tailwind. Again, it's got to be finished because, you know, the greenhouse gas is still there, but I know procedurally they've said that they're working on it. We expect that that'll be done sometime in 2026, if not sooner. That'll be another tailwind for us.
Maybe how do you balance the R&D overhead spend? Because you went through a very large product push now that, as far as we can tell, after Bolt, there's not really any new EV product. Maybe there's not as much product spend, but you do still want to push forward on maybe advanced technologies. How do we think about the level of R&D or overhead spend on EVs?
Yeah, so what I would say is it's really sort of compartmentalized. All of the R&D right now is on architecture changes, battery cell changes, and pack changes. Kurt Ketelhut is doing an amazing job, as is Sterling Anderson, getting up to speed on the business and really having an influence. That's part of, okay, let's shift from product proliferation and making sure that, you know, a strategy that, you know, follows the compliance environment to get to 50% EVs has to have a broad swath attached to it because you have to reach many markets to be able to get there. We've got that. We've put the capital into it, and, you know, we can work on now improving the profitability of each one of those vehicles through structural architectural changes.
The bigger piece and where I think the real importance is, it's not just EVs, it's also on ICE, it's on the software-defined vehicle. You know, we had a tech forward day for the media a couple of weeks ago and really started to lay out, you know, eyes off, hands off by 2028 and getting to software-defined vehicle, which is going to be what the future is. We think that that can be done with our approach both in EV and ICE going forward. Irrespective of what the next regulatory environment looks like, we're going to be well positioned to drive that software and tech revenue into the P&L as we go out over the next few years.
Okay, I just want to talk about margins more broadly. I told you I put in a little joke, but any GM historians out there, supposedly executives from GM used to go around with pins. This must have been like some 20 years ago that said 29 because it used to be 29% market share. You have pins on your lapels. You're obviously not at 29% share, but you had pins on your lapels. You're talking a lot about 8-10%, but I don't see a pin on your lapel that says 8-10%. When does that pin come out?
You can't see my 8-10% tattoo or my inventory discipline tattoo over here, et cetera. No, I actually didn't know that those pins existed. You know, I will tell you that we talk about it a lot, and it's really important to us to be able to prove that we can get back to that 8-10% margin over the next couple of years, even in a tariff environment. You know, I think back to when I started and what a lot of the mantra was in 2021 and 2022 was, can GM preserve 8-10% margins with EVs? We said at the time, we can grow EV share at the same time that we can grow ICE share. Most people thought it was a cannibalization story. It wasn't.
We actually grew ICE share and EV share simultaneously, and we had gotten to that point where we were running pretty consistently in that 8-10% range. Tariffs came, and it was, okay, 8-10% is a dream. We'll never get back there again. Now we're saying that we think we can do it within the next couple of years with a good product roadmap. It's not one that says, you know, we have to take a lot of price. We might take price. Price is going to be a function of, you know, what are the features that we add in model years and what do customers perceive as the value in our vehicles.
There are a lot of things that are directly in our control on the cost side that we still think we can go after and work our way back into that world where we can get to 8-10% margins in a post-tariff world. You know, I think that's a huge success story coming off of where expectations have been for the last five years. We were at a conference in Europe, and hopefully many of you have looked at the materials on our investor relations page because we kind of outlined how different we looked than where we were 10 years ago structurally. I mean, we're running about 2-3x free cash flow very consistently year in and year out.
This is a story that I think, even with the run-up that we've seen since earnings, I think is a bit underappreciated because there's still the legacy cyclicality thought about where we're going. I think what we've done here is we've created significantly less self-induced cyclicality. When you think about the effect that inventory and incentives had on the business, you know, you were basically sitting on a pile of finished goods that as demand waned, you were chasing demand down with price. It had this amplifying effect of cyclicality. I say all that because I think it's made us more nimble. That's where, you know, I think we can look at, you know, $3.5 billion-$4.5 billion of tariffs and say, okay, what do we need to do to adjust the business?
Let's do it as quickly as we can and let's get back to where we were. I think that that's worth something. I think the market is starting to recognize and realize that, you know, maybe a six multiple on that business is a little bit too big of a risk premium that's based on historical norms, not really based on a forward look of what we can continue to do.
I agree.
I do too. I own a lot. I don't think you can.
Just of the drivers you've talked about, the reshoring costs and software, is it software and services, is it fair to say that the reshoring is probably dimensionalizing at the largest of the three opportunities? Or how would you dimensionalize these opportunities?
I think reshoring is as much of a sort of cost mitigant as, you know, giving us some incremental growth. As we've looked at Fort Wayne, what we did with the line rate there and what we're doing with Oryon, we'll get some incremental SEV production, which we can actually use for optionality. We could produce a little bit more. We could take the pressure off of Arlington, who, you know, has been under a lot of stress. They do an amazing job there. You know, getting a relief valve is also pretty important. I think it just gives us more flexibility. The software story is really more about the future.
It's, you know, as I've learned pretty quickly, you know, when you think about the business model of the manufacturers, you know, we've made well over 90% of all of our profitability from the wholesale event. You know, we get some customer care and after-sales parts and accessories, et cetera, but largely it's a wholesale business. This gives us an opportunity over time to monetize the car park. You know, you think about the explosive amount of growth that you can see in revenues and margin performance if we're able to capture even a small slice of that. I think the last estimate there is about 55 million GM vehicles out on the road that, you know, we get a little bit from.
When you start to say, okay, that's going to grow from a software-defined vehicle base and get opportunities for people to continue to engage with the company for years and years, that's where it's really game-changing. You know, between now and there, I think what we've taken is an approach to say we're going to run the business for discipline-free cash flow performance. We're going to continue to buy down our share count and get that share count right-sized while we can do it at a really substantial discount to what the future value of the company is going to be. I think that's going to pay huge dividends for us down the road.
Okay, on that topic, maybe like you've given us a brighter outlook on 2026. You have cash that's nicely in excess of the $20 billion target. How should we look at the capital allocation framework going forward? What % of the free cash flow should we expect to be allocated toward cash returns to shareholders and share buybacks specifically?
Yeah, I mean, I think if you look at us while we haven't, you know, put out a commitment that says this is how much it's going to be, just look at the way we've deployed our cash flow this year and the last couple of years. We've already given the guidance that, you know, we think CapEx will tick up just a little bit over the next couple of years, $10 billion to $12 billion instead of $10 billion to $11 billion. It's very reasonable. You know, as much as people like to say, well, when are you going to get back to $8 billion? $8 billion on an inflation-adjusted basis is $10 billion today. We're doing it with much, much more efficient cash generation. If you look at our yield on cash conversion, I mean, it's more than double what it was five, six years ago.
I think the business is much, much more resilient. That means we can invest a little bit more, even adjusted for inflation, but do it within that discipline mindset. The second thing we do is we need to continue to protect and make sure that we strengthen the balance sheet. We paid down about $1.5 billion, a little bit more than $1.5 billion of debt this year. It's a really good investment for us. Just pay it as it matures. We're not rushing into, you know, a bunch of balance sheet fixing because I think we're in really good shape with the pension and the on-balance sheet debt. That leaves, you know, returning cash to shareholders. If you look at what we've done, you know, in the year to date, it was about $3.5 billion.
If you just assume, you know, we do the same in the fourth quarter as we did in the third quarter, that's about $5 billion plus or minus. It's pretty consistent to what you've seen over the last couple of years. We continue to watch it. You know, I'll tell you, even with the run-up that we've seen in the stock, it still feels very, very cheap when you look at it, not just against our competitors, but against other industrials. I think that's, like I said, a burden of the history. It takes time to be able to convince the market that it is different this time. You know, I know that from my prior industry as well. It's a discussion and an argument worth making because eventually it does work.
I think the key to all of that is cash flow because it becomes really, really difficult to ignore that free cash flow. The company has done an amazing job of flipping the script on that versus history.
Okay, I want to just ask a question about tech because after the earnings call, and you referenced that there was the GM Forward event, you laid out sort of your tech roadmap path to eyes off driving 2028. Maybe you can just give us a sense of what the revised roadmap is now for advanced ADAS, what hand you want to play in making consumer EVs and maybe just on resource allocation. I think the GM that we've seen in recent years is one that is trying to get a delicate balance of pushing forward on technology, but really being much more efficient on resource allocation. How do you think about that and your use of partners as opposed to doing things fully internally that's maybe a bit more resource intense?
Yeah, you know, I think we continue to believe that partners can play a role in it. But we want to make sure that at the end of the day, we control that key value, which really comes back to the data. And we do not see that. You know, there are things that we will never do better than what the market can do around maps and voice and things like that. There are a lot of things with the vehicle specific that we can do well and that preserving that is really, really important. You know, I think we are trying to bridge that gap between how do we remain capital disciplined at the same time we are investing in what we need to do for growth.
You know, I think the best example of that is, you know, the rather tough decision we made with Cruise in terms of saying we've got to abandon robotaxis because at the end of the day, that was going to cost us tens of billions of dollars to ramp up that fleet. We don't have the cost of capital to be able to do that. As we went out to the market and looked for capital, there was some capital there, but it was all sort of capital behind us that said, okay, you know, as long as GM is willing to foot the bill, we'll come along and ride along with us. That was something that, as we look at the cost of capital disadvantage that we had with other players and capital availability, it was the right tough decision.
We have taken that resource or, you know, we saved $1 billion a year on it. We have taken that resource and we brought it in and said, let's focus on personal autonomy. We are doing that from a retail perspective where the number one guiding factor is safety. I mean, that is just paramount to the GM brand that we have to do. The number two is how do we get an affordable system out there that leverages the expensive system that we had built with Cruise and really helps us move forward into more of a retail platform. I think we have a good roadmap that is achievable. You know, like I said, Sterling has been a great addition to come in and help guide that team and lead that team. We feel confident that we are going to get there.
Eyes off, hands off by 2028, and that'll just continue to expand and roll out from there.
Okay, folks, any questions? All right. Oh, gotcha.
Paul, we were talking about earlier, but if you look at the demographic that your U.S. customer fits, how has that changed versus five years ago? Is it like the top 10% of income earners in the U.S. today versus five years ago was the top 15%? Is it more concentrated in that upper demographic group? What information do we have about those buying patterns? Are they holding the vehicles for four years on average, three years? Just kind of curious how that's shifted and how that gives you some additional confidence in that demand for your product the next couple of years.
Yeah, it's a great question. It's one that we probably wrestle with the most is, you know, how do you take all of the data that's coming about the U.S. economy and sort of dissect it down into what it means for us? I think first of all, we've got a broader portfolio than we've really ever had. I mean, when you look at the success of the Chevy Trax, which is number one in the small SUVs, we can do that profitably even in the tariff world. That is a game changer for us because historically it was you make all your money in full-size trucks and SUVs and you try not to give it away in the other markets. Now we can make money across the spectrum and the mid-size pickup trucks are another great story for that.
You know, I think number one, the breadth of our portfolio is a little bit stronger. You know, I'm a big believer that there's not just one economy in the U.S. There are multiple economies that we're dealing with. I think that's where you can see some of the information about the value seeking in the retail environment that, you know, maybe we have pushed as an industry, maybe industry pricing has pushed some people into the used car market that weren't there. Maybe the historical 17.5 million unit industry is maybe 16.5 or 17 million now in the future, at least until we start to see some rate relief or more wage growth. You know, I think that customer, especially at the top end for the full-size trucks and the full-size SUVs, has been remarkably resilient.
We continue to see them buying in similar patterns that we've seen before. I think availability has hampered that. I think to the extent people are holding vehicles longer, it's a little bit based on that availability noise we've seen over the last three to four years, but certainly not holding people back from buying at those levels. You know, we've got to watch that. We've got to be flexible. That's why we maintain that inventory discipline. You know, if we do see a softening, I think we'll be able to come through it more consistently than maybe what some of our competitors with more inventory might be able to do.
We'll squeeze in one more.
55 million tons, any number is a huge number. The question is, will a manufacturer be able to retain the software? What is the need for this, GM to retain the software? Tesla or Google or somebody becoming with a satellite or Starlink becoming with a satellite that breaks the assumption of verticality?
You know, what we're really focused on is, okay, how do we take the control modules, make those our own, and then use people off the side of it? You know, partnering with Google, for example, helps, but it layers into that. We actually, at the end of the day, control a lot of that vehicle. Yes. Yeah. That's the definition of where we are with software-defined vehicles and ultimately the platform that we're building to be able to commercialize going forward.
Okay.
Yeah.
Okay.
It'll take a while to get there, but that's the future.
Great. I think we're at time. Paul, thank you so much.
Thanks for your time. Thanks, everybody, for coming.