Latest / Auto Collabs / Inside the Most Anticipated Comeback in the Auto Industry with Ryan Decker of Scout Motors

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Inside the Most Anticipated Comeback in the Auto Industry with Ryan Decker of Scout Motors · Auto Collabs

• 0:00
  Welcome to Auto Collapse. You're listening to an exclusive series recorded live at Automobility LA 2025 in partnership with Cars Commerce.
• 0:08
  All right, we're here at the LA Automobility, uh, with Ryan Decker, VP of Brand and Strategy at- Scout Motors... Scout Motors. I mean- Very cool... it's, it's a big deal over here.
• 0:19
  You have a display that sprawls, uh, quite a few, quite a few, uh, centimeters I'll say, and, uh, a lot of energy around the brand. And- And, uh-... this is like-... Scouts, Scouts belong outside, rain or shine.
• 0:30
  The, I was thinking about that- Ah, we love that. What a flex... when it, when it was raining, I was like, "He's not gonna have any problem with the rain," right? [laughs] Like, this is the thing.
• 0:35
  You've been a fan of the brand for a long time. Absolutely. I was one of our earliest employees.
• 0:39
  [laughs] So I was lucky enough to see it go from a hallway chitchat into a company on day one, to now a company that's three years old with a factory, two great show cars. Wow. A lot of progress happening on all fronts.
• 0:51
  How did you get into the business to begin with? Uh, winding journey. Was always a car person. Okay. Spent a lot of time tinkering, I would say, uh, with my dad in my mom's driveway, much to her chagrin- [laughs]...
• 1:01
  'cause of all the oil stains. [laughs] All the oil everything everywhere, yep. Uh, did the engineering thing in, uh, in, in college. Um, a lot of the eng- engineering coursework was in automotive stuff.
• 1:11
  Career took me in a different direction, but it was sort of always calling me to come back, so made my way back into automotive in 2015, and, uh, spent a while working for various Volkswagen Group brands- Mm-hmm...
• 1:20
  and the Volkswagen Group in general, and then from there made my way into Scout Motors. So how did you move from, what was kind of the pivot from engineering to brand and strategy- [laughs]...
• 1:31
  and, and, and- Yeah, choosing that-... thinking about the, the creative go to market- Not a direct line... and things of that form. Engineering for me was, how do you solve a problem? Okay.
• 1:40
  It, it was more about how do you unlock curiosity? How do you approach questions in a very disciplined way? And I do think that that skill set actually does manifest itself quite nicely in brand and strategy.
• 1:50
  Everything we do on the brand side is very disciplined. Who's our target? What are we doing? Why are we doing? What are the outcomes? And on the strategy side, it's the same thing.
• 1:58
  Strategy is a completely open-ended and nebulous space if you let it, but how do you put some structure on it? How do you bring things towards decisions, right?
• 2:06
  Anyone can dream big, but how do you take a dream and get it into something that's executable? And I think that's what my engineering background has unlocked for me. Yeah.
• 2:13
  O- one of the things that I'm noticing just about the booth, but also about the brand in general, is there, there's a very visceral attachment to, um, the aesthetics, uh, and, and the community around those aesthetics, right?
• 2:27
  Uh, you bring kind of the history, uh, bring people through the history, and then to, to the brand center that is now. How are you drafting community around that aesthetic?
• 2:37
  The first point is I think what you're getting at is cohesiveness.
• 2:40
  And because we're building everything at Scout from a clean sheet, we have such an opportunity to make the company, the brand, the products, the physical activations, the media, the social media, all feel super distinctly Scout.
• 2:52
  And that's a, that's a competitive advantage if we get that right, and I think honestly we've done a pretty good, pretty good job at that. So that's the cohesiveness point. The second point is then community.
• 3:02
  That is a fundamental of the company, not just the brand.
• 3:05
  One of the first things we did when the company had five employees is we invited 10 Scout OGs to a warehouse in Der, uh, in Dallas, and we showed them all of our cards. We showed them our full-size design models. Mm-hmm.
• 3:15
  We showed them sort of the company business plan, and we said, "What do you think? We want your feedback." And they gave us their feedback, and some of it was- [laughs]... a little cutting.
• 3:21
  Yeah, they gave you cutting and scathing. A little cutting. Oh, yes. Yeah, yeah. But, uh- Tell the heart... we listened and it, we changed things, and I think that they frankly were just glad to have been included.
• 3:29
  And that wasn't a one-off. We did that at our unveiling. We do that frankly all the time. We, we have our own forums. Community is a key part of our company.
• 3:37
  Well, um, just announced a major pivot, which seemed, um, surprising because you say you listen to the customer, and therefore these generators, gas generators are gonna be added to the vehicle. Is that across the line?
• 3:51
  So we announced that at our unveiling, uh, last October. Our harvester range extender is what you're getting at. Yep. Um, yeah, that powertrain will be available on both models. Wait, you announced that last October?
• 4:02
  We announced that last October. Um, it, yeah, and it was our sort of one more thing moment. Because when the company started, it was all electric, right?
• 4:10
  These vehicles were gonna be on the ro- or are gonna be on the road well into the 2030s. And given the regulatory environment and everything that we could see, going all electric was the right choice. Yeah.
• 4:20
  Things changed. The market told us what they wanted. We listened to customers. We made a big, pretty significant pivot, introduced the range extender when we unveiled the sh- our concepts last year.
• 4:29
  Now, the, the range extender in our opinion is a game changer because it delivers upon the best of what makes an EV cool. Drivetrain.
• 4:35
  Impressive performance, great torque, great acceleration, a front trunk, software that can get better overnight. But- I like how you called it a front trunk. I'm not a fan- Yeah, thanks for not calling it a frunk...
• 4:44
  I'm not a fan of the whole frunk thing. [laughs] Thank you. Thank you for that. But it comes with the confidence of having a vehicle that can do 500 miles, um, that you don't have to worry about range- It's incredible...
• 4:53
  or charging anxiety. Mm-hmm. Yeah. And so we think that's a game changer how we've executed it. And frankly, the company is now built around that. We have the adaptability to install these in the factory.
• 5:01
  The platform can fit it and package it very nicely. Our service facilities will know how to do oil changes, right? The entire company now has range extender in its DNA, and, uh, we're quite excited and motivated by that.
• 5:12
  As you come to market now and, and, and look to go into production and delivering these vehicles, what are you excited about the next couple years as, as you get into, like, full market extension?
• 5:23
  Well, well, one, I can't wait for customers to actually get behind the wheels of these things. Yeah. So I, I was lucky enough to drive one of our first mules about a month ago. [laughs] Wow.
• 5:31
  Uh, and it was, like, goosebumps moment for me. Oh, the first time you drove? Oh, wow. First time I actually drove, like, really drove it- Right. Right, right, right, right... like, on a dynamic course.
• 5:38
  [laughs] Um, and yeah, seeing everything go from one employee to two employees to actually having real hardware that I could sit in and drive was super special, one. Wow. But it was also awesome.
• 5:49
  [laughs] Uh, so that, that ch- platform that we're developing, it did exactly what we wanted to do. It's fun. It's dynamic. It feels like you can do anything you want with it.
• 5:57
  It drives like an absolute bat out of you know what. Like, it was, it was awesome, a really cool experience. That's cool.
• 6:03
  Can you tell, tell, tell us a little bit about your approach to the sales model?And how you expect to serve customers? We are going, um...
• 6:12
  The way we see it, we're building an all-new company, all-new factory, all-new platform, all-new products, all-new brand.
• 6:16
  We felt it was right that we should go with an all-new sales model that does what we think is right for our customers.
• 6:22
  And in that case, it is putting them in the center of the company, selling to them, and servicing their vehicles directly. Mm-hmm.
• 6:27
  Um, we wanna earn their trust, we wanna deliver transparency to them, and at the end of the day, we wanna deliver what we see as the best possible relationship for them, and we wanna own that directly.
• 6:37
  Who do you, who do you see... How would you define the primary quintessential Scout customer? It's a great question. We wanna make sure that we don't put that quintessential customer into too tidy of a box- Ah...
• 6:46
  because we do know that Scout is a 50-state brand and will be 50-state products. It's not just overly coastal. Mm-hmm. We want some heartland appeal with these products, so that's one.
• 6:56
  We also know what our target customers are driving today, and it's the rugged SUVs that are gasoline products. It's full-size pickup trucks that are gasoline products, but it also appeals to the EV people. Mm-hmm.
• 7:07
  So we see the most successful BEVs in our target customer list as well. But in general, I think our target customers are living four key trends that we see.
• 7:16
  Rediscovering outdoors, whether it's hiking trails, national parks, pick your own orchards. People are more outdoors than ever before. Mm-hmm.
• 7:23
  DIY, hands-on, whether it's people flipping houses or restoring antique furniture, people are rolling their sleeves up and doing more stuff. Ah. Three, they're de-urbanizing.
• 7:32
  They're getting out of our big cities and they're moving to smaller cities, if not small towns. Mm-hmm.
• 7:36
  And four is this kind of craving for authenticity, whether it's sneakers, whether it's workwear and jackets, whether it's vinyl and record players. There's this big-time push towards authentic products and brands.
• 7:48
  We think Scout can appeal to all four of those mega trends, and we know when people do those things, they need something more versatile. They need a tool. We think they need a Scout. Very cool. I, I actually...
• 7:59
  So we're, like, big merch people. You can see, like, we throw our merch on. Like, we love that- Yeah... type of vibe.
• 8:04
  And I saw some of, like, the product specialists and people wearing about, wearing about your merch today. How do you go about, like, thinking about the connection of the wearable to the drivable?
• 8:17
  To, to, to me, it's just, like, again, it comes back to the idea of cohesiveness, and it's the thoughtfulness in every detail. And you're right, the team spends a lot of time [laughs] on what's the outfit?
• 8:26
  What's the, what's the attire? What's the wardrobe? What's the strapping? What's the materials? What's the warmth of the LED lighting?
• 8:33
  Every detail now really matters to us as we're building this company from a clean sheet of paper, and we wanna make sure we draw the best picture we can on that clean sheet of paper. What do the next 12 months look like?
• 8:42
  Hard at it. [laughs] That's all we want to do. Busy. Uh, so factory, uh, getting built. We'll continue to ramp up the factory in terms of hiring the folks who will work there, but also installing the equipment. Mm-hmm.
• 8:52
  Starting to make the first bodies that will come out of that factory. On the vehicle project side, it's more testing, cold weather testing, durability testing, dynamic testing. We're awarding all of our parts.
• 9:01
  We're awarding all of our suppliers, so hard work there. The company is still growing across every single department. And on the brand side, we wanna continue to show up. We mentioned community.
• 9:11
  We wanna continue to grow the community, get the Scout brand out there, which is why we're here in Los Angeles today.
• 9:15
  Yeah, it's one of the challenges to how do you build, maintain, and cultivate a brand before you have anything that they can... A product that they can buy or interact with?
• 9:24
  Um, you know, one of the things that we've seen, we saw what happened with Fisker, right? They had to, to generate this momentum for a long period of time before they finally launched a product, so not an easy thing.
• 9:34
  When's the big payoff gonna happen? [laughs] Uh, starting initial production is targeted for 2027. Deliveries will begin as soon as possible after that. As soon as humanly possible.
• 9:43
  [laughs] Follow along with our progress. I can promise we're hard at it and going as fast as we can, but there is a lot of work to do, as you can imagine. [laughs] Ryan, your smile's infectious.
• 9:51
  Your passion is, uh, is, is definitely felt. Kudos on where you've, uh, come so far, and, and encouragement, uh, to the future. And thanks for joining us here for a bit of time today and, and sharing your story.
• 10:02
  Thank you, guys. It was a lot of fun. Appreciate it. Yeah. Thank you for listening to this LA Auto Show session, brought to you by Cars Commerce.
• 10:09
  At More Than Cars, we're obsessed with uniting people around one big idea: to make retail auto an industry that people fight to join.
• 10:17
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