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<v Speaker 1>Mike Dubuski is the ABC News technology reporter, and Mike,

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<v Speaker 1>of course knows what's going on in the world hopefully.

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<v Speaker 2>Good morning, Mike, Good morning, guys. How are you? Yeah?

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<v Speaker 1>Good? I don't know if I gave you too much

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<v Speaker 1>credit and saying you know what's going on.

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<v Speaker 2>But about all the world. But you know we're around,

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<v Speaker 2>right for.

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<v Speaker 1>Some of the world, I mean a small part of

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<v Speaker 1>the world. And when I mean all the world, I

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<v Speaker 1>mean in your sort of expertise. All right, let's start

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<v Speaker 1>with Amazon and Prime Day, which is really Prime Week,

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<v Speaker 1>which is on its way to become Prime Month. And

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<v Speaker 1>what's going on with that? You know, at some point

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<v Speaker 1>doesn't it get to diminishing returns?

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<v Speaker 2>Yeah, well, Amazon certainly doesn't, hope. So Amazon Prime Day

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<v Speaker 2>is ten years old this year. That's all started back

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<v Speaker 2>in twenty fifteen. Is a pretty modest online sale. Amazon

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<v Speaker 2>kind of trying to stake its claim in the middle

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<v Speaker 2>of the summer. They didn't want to compete with at

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<v Speaker 2>the time, the really dominant players in the space, the

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<v Speaker 2>target It's the Walmarts of the world, who usually held

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<v Speaker 2>big sales in the fall and the lead up to

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<v Speaker 2>the holidays. Amazon thought the middle of the summer is

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<v Speaker 2>a good place to distinguish ourselves to get people's attention,

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<v Speaker 2>and they've ridden that to huge success. It it originally expanded

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<v Speaker 2>into two days. Now it is a twice a year thing,

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<v Speaker 2>and this year, for the first time, it is a

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<v Speaker 2>four day long sale, really stretching the definition of day

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<v Speaker 2>by hosting a ninety six hour long sale on Amazon.

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<v Speaker 2>But even still, experts expect this to be a major

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<v Speaker 2>windfall for Amazon, there not slowing down. Adobe Analytics predicts

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<v Speaker 2>that online spending this week will surge to about twenty

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<v Speaker 2>three point eight billion dollars by the time that Prime

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<v Speaker 2>Day wraps up on Friday. But of course, the other

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<v Speaker 2>piece of this is that the popularity of Prime Day

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<v Speaker 2>has spawned a lot of similar sales from other retailers.

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<v Speaker 2>Walmart has Walmart Deals events, Target Circle Week is this week,

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<v Speaker 2>and Best Buy Black Friday in July is going on

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<v Speaker 2>as well. And there's some evidence to suggest that people

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<v Speaker 2>don't have it done a brand loyalty when it comes

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<v Speaker 2>to score a deal on Amazon versus one of its competitors.

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<v Speaker 2>A report from Numerator finds that thirty five percent of

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<v Speaker 2>Amazon Prime members also shopped online at Target last year,

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<v Speaker 2>same number for Walmart, and twelve percent also shopped online

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<v Speaker 2>at best Buy. So people don't really care where they're

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<v Speaker 2>getting a deal, they just want to save some money.

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<v Speaker 1>Yeah, and I'm assuming that at some point, obviously these

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<v Speaker 1>folks have done all the surveys and studies because Amazon's Amazon.

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<v Speaker 1>But isn't it get to the point where there are

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<v Speaker 1>so that Prime Day, for example, is going to last

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<v Speaker 1>such a long period time, and it's twice and maybe

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<v Speaker 1>it'll be three times a year where people just kick

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<v Speaker 1>back and go, I'll wait, you know, Prime Day's coming

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<v Speaker 1>up next month, and I'll just hang loose and buy then,

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<v Speaker 1>and the website cannibalizes itself because of that.

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<v Speaker 2>Yeah, I mean it's certainly a possibility. But even still

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<v Speaker 2>in the numbers, Prime Day has grown successfully every year, Right,

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<v Speaker 2>they make more money every Prime Day, So they're trying

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<v Speaker 2>out this new four day thing that we'll see if

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<v Speaker 2>that has any sort of diminishing returns. Again, twenty three

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<v Speaker 2>point eight billion dollars is a lot of money, but

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<v Speaker 2>it's not double what Amazon made last year during the

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<v Speaker 2>two day Prime Day sale, which was closer to like

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<v Speaker 2>fourteen billion dollars. Still huge, amounts of money, but you know,

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<v Speaker 2>it's not like they're they're doubling it every time they

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<v Speaker 2>expand the amount of time people have to shop. In addition, though,

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<v Speaker 2>Amazon kind of has to do stuff right we talked

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<v Speaker 2>about their competitors that are out there in the space

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<v Speaker 2>maybe stealing some of Amazon's thunder, Well, they kind of

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<v Speaker 2>have to do that because they don't want, you know,

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<v Speaker 2>Target to come along and steal their sort of you know, attention.

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<v Speaker 2>In addition to that, they're rolling out a lot of

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<v Speaker 2>sort of attention grabbing things to get people excited about

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<v Speaker 2>Prime Day. Lebron James was all over the commercials for this,

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<v Speaker 2>so like celebrity endorsements, influencers also making major advertisements for Amazon,

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<v Speaker 2>and recently they rolled out Rufus, which is an AI

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<v Speaker 2>shopping assistant. This is a chatbot that is built on

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<v Speaker 2>top of Amazon's large language model, which is designed to

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<v Speaker 2>answer questions about any products that might not have the

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<v Speaker 2>answer in the description. So you can ask questions like

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<v Speaker 2>what material is this backpack made out of? Or how

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<v Speaker 2>easy is this coffee maker to clean? That's kind of

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<v Speaker 2>what this is meant to do. Of course, we have

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<v Speaker 2>to say this every time we mentioned large language models

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<v Speaker 2>and artificial intelligence. It's an imperfect technology. It makes mistakes,

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<v Speaker 2>it makes things up. It hallucinates, so it's best to

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<v Speaker 2>double check whatever rufus tells you.

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<v Speaker 1>Yeah, and we've all been there. I used to pay

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<v Speaker 1>a lot of money to hallucinate. Hey, you've tried the

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<v Speaker 1>new ev from Volkswagen. Tell us about that.

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<v Speaker 2>Yeah, So I was driving the id Buzz for the

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<v Speaker 2>last week. This is Volkswagen's all electric reimagining of the

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<v Speaker 2>micro bus from the sixties and the seventies. People associate

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<v Speaker 2>this with like woodstock and sixties counterculture and the big

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<v Speaker 2>flowery shirts and whatnot. At its core, that original vehicle, though,

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<v Speaker 2>was a mini van, right, it was a bus that

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<v Speaker 2>was micro The new one follows that same formula. It

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<v Speaker 2>has sliding doors, a bunch of seats that all fold down. Bill,

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<v Speaker 2>I moved apartments in the last week, and I threw

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<v Speaker 2>tables and bookshelves and bureaus and a bunch of boxes

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<v Speaker 2>in this thing and handled it totally fine. So it

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<v Speaker 2>does do the practical vehicle thing really well. And then

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<v Speaker 2>you drive it around and you see how many people

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<v Speaker 2>smile or flag you down in traffic or stop you

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<v Speaker 2>at a charging station, and it kind of becomes something

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<v Speaker 2>a little more than a mini van. People have a

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<v Speaker 2>lot of good memories associated with the old one, and

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<v Speaker 2>they want to tell you about it. Young people. Old

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<v Speaker 2>people just wanted to poke around this thing. The fact

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<v Speaker 2>that it was white and bright yellow probably helped that

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<v Speaker 2>a little bit. Of course, the trade off to all

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<v Speaker 2>of this is that it's sixty eight thousand dollars and that's.

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<v Speaker 1>A lot of it. EXI do they have a place

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<v Speaker 1>for you to put your roach in?

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<v Speaker 2>Its associated with that as well. I will say this,

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<v Speaker 2>The one that I was testing did not have a

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<v Speaker 2>sun roof, which meant that the you know, smoke conceivably

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<v Speaker 2>hypothetically didn't really have that many places to go.

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<v Speaker 1>Yeah, it's are EV's going down in price because they

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<v Speaker 1>seem to me to be getting more and more expensive.

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<v Speaker 2>So what we understand is that, yes, to a degree,

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<v Speaker 2>they are still on average more expensive than their gas counterparts,

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<v Speaker 2>about fifty five thousand dollars on average versus just under

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<v Speaker 2>fifty thousand dollars for the average new car in general,

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<v Speaker 2>but that used to be sixty six thousand dollars on

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<v Speaker 2>average for a new electric vehicle, only about two years ago,

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<v Speaker 2>so we are seeing that price come down. Volkswagen trying

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<v Speaker 2>to make a bit of a nostalgia play here, it

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<v Speaker 2>seems like so they are, you know, really kind of

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<v Speaker 2>leaning into the sixties sort of vibe here with some

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<v Speaker 2>fun colors, a lot of little Easter eggs throughout the vehicle.

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<v Speaker 2>We'll have to see if all that nostalgia pays off

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<v Speaker 2>for them, all.

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<v Speaker 1>Right, Mike, I always appreciate it.

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<v Speaker 2>You have a good day, you do the same ticket