Dan Roth  0:01  
Coming up on episode 180 of wheel bearings, we're joined by Alex Roy, host of the no parking podcast, the katana cast and lots more. We're driving the 2021 Cadillac Escalade, Genesis gv at Audi asix, all road prestige, and infinity Qx 50. autograph. We talk about big changes at Lotus and the refresh for Tesla. Before we finish up with a reader question. That's all ahead on episode 180 of wheel bearings. Did you know you can support wheel bearings directly? Head to patreon.com slash wheel bearings, media, and you can become a patron today. Your contributions will help fund the platforms and tools we use to bring the podcast to you. And exclusives and improvements are already on the way thanks to your generosity. So if you want to be a part of an automotive podcast, like no other had to patreon.com slash wheel bearings, media.

This is wheel bearings. I'm Dan Roth from Forbes. 

Sam Abuelsamid  1:07  
I'm Sam Abuelsamid from guidehouse insights,

Rebecca Lindland  1:09  
and Rebecca Lindland from Rebecca drives.

Dan Roth  1:11  
And we have a guest this week. Yes,

Sam Abuelsamid  1:15  
it's your turn.

Alex Roy  1:15  
Okay. I'm Alex Roy, a friend to Dan, Rebecca and Sam, a fan of wheel bearings for a long time. It's nice to be invited in the show where if I have a friendly, friendly invitation. Should I say what I guess my what I do?

Dan Roth  1:32  
Yeah, definitely.

Alex Roy  1:36  
Well, thanks for having me on the show. To be clear, my day job is director of Special Operations at Argo AI, although I do not represent or go on my appearance on Wilburys today. But I'm also a columnist at ground truth, which is the educational site set up by Argo AI to tell the truth about autonomous vehicles and actually how the technology will propagate. And I co host the no parking podcast with Argo AI CEO, Brian solinsky, which is meant to have honest conversations around AI and self driving. And that's why Sam has been on the show, and why I'm so thrilled to be on wheel bearings today.

Sam Abuelsamid  2:12  
In another show you also do

Alex Roy  2:15  
you're afraid to atonic cast, which is the unscripted plug. Cast is the unscripted circus that I co founder and co host with Edward Anita Meyer, of the pave organization, which is again an educational organization around autonomous vehicles and kearson korsak who was just promoted

Sam Abuelsamid  2:34  
to transportation editor

Alex Roy  2:37  
I think at TechCrunch and who is like yourselves one of the few credible journalists covering this sector so I feel like my boat you know, but my boat arises when I'm you know, engage gauge with you find people

Dan Roth  2:53  
credible to I think I just get the contact hi from from Sam and Rebecca. That's how I fit in journalism. Great.

Alex Roy  3:01  
Glad to be here, everybody. Thanks. I love your show.

Dan Roth  3:03  
Thank you. Do you sit through like the entire episode? Like in one sitting? Do you do a whole episode because I we've been kind of long lately. So

Alex Roy  3:11  
I mean, oh, wheel bearings? Yeah, it was. Certainly I'd never be true. Any show that I'm that I host I can never listen, watch myself. I put I put things on like wheel bearings. And Doug demuro. Like, as I'm doing other stuff, and if I hear something catches me, I will sit down, rewind 15 seconds. I'm like, I mounted that

Dan Roth  3:32  
know.

Alex Roy  3:34  
How much time do we have listen to podcast, you have to pick like three or four. And that's it.

Dan Roth  3:39  
Yeah, well,

Unknown Speaker  3:39  
I like you

Sam Abuelsamid  3:40  
should see my subscription list in pocket casts. I have. I have about 90 odd shows in my subscription list. Some of those probably about a third of those are currently either retired or on hiatus, but I leave them in there just in case every once in a while some of them pop back up again. But you know, I have about 50 or 60 shows listened to on a regular basis.

Dan Roth  4:02  
And you can how I used to be able to when I was commuting. I would commute like, you know, 90 miles a day. So I had plenty of time in the car. Now I'm not commuting so I have to invent excuses to go be in the car because otherwise like I'm I'm writing or I'm doing something where I can't I can't split my attention that way. If I write and listen to a podcast, I start typing the transcript. So I need to I need to do something else. But yeah, I actually just finished yesterday, taking my dog back and forth to the groomer that Jason chintzy episode of no parking, which is fantastic.

Alex Roy  4:37  
He's, he's lonely and special. He wished that there were more people. I mean, he's a true polymath, you know because he can illustrate the ideas in his head which is really a gift and I wish I had that gift.

Dan Roth  4:53  
Yeah, well he's really entertaining to listen to as well. He's very, very sharp about was his book was what We're talking about two. So that was, that's a good one. If nobody if I, anybody in our audience is looking for another show to check out, start there.

Rebecca Lindland  5:07  
What's the name of the book and the podcast again,

Alex Roy  5:09  
the book is robot take the wheel and the Lost Art of driving and the podcast is the Jason torches episode of no parking. The interesting thing about the most interesting thing I learned from his book and talking to him is that one, if one is looking, trying to look back on the history of automation in transportation, and draw a direct line from autonomous vehicle development today, back to that thinkers of the past towards schinsky. Well, the the most fantastical example of ancient autonomy would be the concept of a flying of a magic carpet, that you could summon, and it would find its way to you, and then it will, you could command it to take you places, and it would do so magically and perfectly. But the first real world design as Da Vinci's cart, that, and he was, I think, twitches, he's the first person to cite that as the first example of an automated or semi automated vehicle. And he found a sketches of it. And apparently, someone designed a working model of it few years ago, so it's an interesting, interesting read, and there's pictures of it. I'd like someone to find the working model from Italy. Take that to the DARPA challenge.

Sam Abuelsamid  6:25  
I'll put the link to that episode of the show, and also a link to his book in the show notes. So if anybody's looking you can you can click right there and get right to it. Yeah, I remember. The first time I met Jason was a few years ago at the SAE World Congress when he did a talk there. You were there as well, Alex, and that was that was a fascinating, fascinating talk that he did.

Dan Roth  6:51  
Yeah, he some, though. He's one of my favorite authors. No, regardless of platform, but

Sam Abuelsamid  6:56  
one of my favorite things that the Jason's been doing of late is this whole saga with the changli. Evie.

Dan Roth  7:03  
Yes. I talked about that with Peter Egan. Which,

Sam Abuelsamid  7:06  
yeah, that's kind of a modern day. Take on the setup.

Dan Roth  7:12  
Yeah. Well, it's the same kind of concept. Yeah.

Sam Abuelsamid  7:14  
Yeah. The, the episode that or the video that that Jason did with Sandy Monroe with the changli was hysterical.

Dan Roth  7:26  
Yeah, I watched that as well. So now that we've sent everybody away from our pod. Let's let's, let's conclude the audience development section by just shouting out our newest patrons. So we've gotten a couple of blind spot monitors our friend Chuck Goolsbee, who's been a podcast listener commenter, since like the Autoblog days. So welcome, Chuck. Steve Dotto, also kicked in on Patreon. And then we've got some Forward Collision Alert, folks, Mark. And will Randolph will is another one who's a long term friend within the in the business. So welcome, everybody. Thank you for your support. I hope it's worth it. Moving on.

Alex Roy  8:10  
It's worth it. I love the show. I wouldn't. I wouldn't do beyond if I didn't actually love the show.

Dan Roth  8:15  
Good. Good. That's the high standards. Excellent. Let's talk about what we're driving because we were we started talking about that a little bit before we decided to just start recording and I think given the contrast that you pointed out, Alex, you need to go first and tell us about your your latest. Your latest time behind the wheel.

Alex Roy  8:35  
Well I daily drive a Tesla Model three. And I love it despite it has all kinds of problems. But I love the car. But recently took out of storage. My father's old car in 1987 Porsche 911 target which is in a bad as mint condition as one can find such car. Sam, you've driven it pretty sorted out

Sam Abuelsamid  8:57  
right? It's awesome. Yeah.

Alex Roy  8:58  
And, and so I I just moved to Miami, and I've been driving the target for a few days. And it is amazing how much my driving skills have declined. After two years of Tesla ownership. My driving skills are not at all what they use, like I'm just so used to having to reading or using radar cruise control, but specifically, autopilot and villian keeping functionality, which, for all its safety flaws is pretty good when it works. That I find myself in the Porsche cruising and wanting to repeatedly look down at my phone, and then realizing that is the most dangerous thing I could possibly do. And wow, I think we're gonna see, like five years from now when every cars got just ubiquitous driver assistance that's decent. People who drive older cars or you're not gonna want to get into an older car because your skill documents can be really bad. Really bad.

Dan Roth  9:56  
That makes me so sad

Alex Roy  9:59  
when I hit me up I'm not saying I'm a great driver, but I thought I was attentive and I just, you know, I'm getting older and I see my skills going down, I can see it. Well, I

Rebecca Lindland  10:08  
think it's not just older cars, too. I mean, how we define an older car is five to seven years old, because they don't have all that data for yourself. Well, no, me, but for the general public, that are listening public. And, you know, we get a lot of, I think all four of us get a lot of questions about what car should I buy, you know, for my teenager, or for my mom or for myself. And it's one of the things that I always talk to people about to say, you know, you've got to understand like, a car that is a 2014 could be a completely different animal than a car that's 2015 and 16, and 17. And so, it's just, it's something that people need to be aware of, especially because the average age on the on the, the cars on the road today is like 11 years old, 12 years old. So when you go to buy, if you're buying a used car, you have to be aware of what's in there, I'm not talking about fabulous vintage antique cars, by all means, but

Sam Abuelsamid  11:06  
for mainstream. Mainstream cars, yeah, you're right, you know, if you go from a 1215 year old car, and even if you buy a used car, it's probably going to be going to a seven or eight year old car, or maybe a five year old car. And that change is going to be pretty dramatic, probably, you know, a lot more dramatic than, you know, when you went from whatever you had before that 12 year old car to that one. You know, we've had so much change in technology in the last decade. And they, it's, that that is one of the big risks that we were going to have is this atrophying of our driving skills. You know, and this is, you know, I, you know, we all know, this, the three of us, you know, drive new cars all the time. So, you know, we're constantly experiencing this. And, you know, I try to get back into my Miata as, as frequently as I can, you know, to, you know, just to drive, like,

Alex Roy  12:00  
remind yourself what physics are? Yes.

Dan Roth  12:04  
That was what I was gonna, that was what I was gonna ask Alex, as, you know, how, I guess how extreme is that contrast of being so close to the machine, you know, I can't think of a car that puts you as in touch with the machinery, maybe like a Lotus Elise or something.

Alex Roy  12:23  
Actually, new Lotus is probably safe.

Dan Roth  12:28  
You know, like the 911, especially that generation of 911. Like, you just, it hums with the energy of the engine, and you just feel everything up the steering column and everything, versus the model three, which is a lot more isolated. So

Alex Roy  12:41  
Well, I can tell you this, my father said to me, and I was in high school and I said, Oh, Dad, I really want to own a car like yours someday, he's like, your left leg is gonna hurt. And arms are gonna be strong, and your back's gonna hurt. And you're not gonna be able to carry anything, but specific to the ergonomics. All those things are true. My left leg hurts my arms. And it's um, it's a very uncomfortable car. And it doesn't even have power steering, I mean, nothing. And my dad, he always complained about his Porsche and then love getting into his 77 Cadillac Fleetwood, which he owned until the day he died in 2000. Nothing. And I now suddenly, I understand it, I understand the desire to have power, everything and comfort everything. But you know, the derailing our episode,

Sam Abuelsamid  13:32  
the standard operating procedure.

Alex Roy  13:36  
I went to visit several car dealerships recently to help a family member buy a car, and you know, the budget was 30,000 or under small crossover. And you know, my first question going in the guy's like, Oh, are you familiar with the Mazda brand? I'm like, Listen, bro, does it have radar radar cruise control? He's like, well, it has adaptive cruise control. And then I knew this whole thing was going off the rails. And I feel like the I feel like a lot of people going in the door and maybe even fans of your show going door are going to encounter this because you're gonna give recommendation and then along with it if they're going to go into a store say I want to buy x x y&z with these features and the salesman doesn't understand the context of the question. And that scared me then the guy was trying to sell me on you know, a lane keeping assistance. I'm like, bro. Really? Like Come on. So

Sam Abuelsamid  14:28  
yeah, I feel that this is the thing we drove up in. Yeah.

Rebecca Lindland  14:32  
Okay, was lightly okay. It was like a lot. Here. They

Alex Roy  14:36  
ask you miss review question because you're very normal for people. I could not get an answer from Subaru on this. Or anyone else and I think I'm pretty knowledgeable. You get if you go to a Subaru dealership and you're shopping for an Outback or any actually, any of like the wagon crossover models, and you look at the options chart. They have a comprehensive standard package of a driver Resistance features including radar cruise and Lane Keeping. But if you go up the chain to sport and premium models, then they have a thing called eyesight. Some it's some kind of driver monitoring. And I thought I was

Sam Abuelsamid  15:14  
actually super who doesn't use radar for cruise control. The camera site is a stereo stereo camera system. So it's two cameras set on either side of the mirror.

Alex Roy  15:24  
Okay, so I'm really excited it's standard is the thing that they have is driver focus tech is like on the upper models, can anyone tell me what driver focuses not only the dealer Could

Dan Roth  15:35  
I don't know exactly how Subaru implements it, but for a while, like, I would say at least the last seven years, some cars when I drive them in a certain manner, will light up a little coffee cup icon and tell me that it's time to take a break. Usually, it's because I've made some strange inputs that they've noticed either through their their steering angle sensor, and just the the stability control has noticed that I'm either doing donuts or something. So I think you could do it that way where you just look at the inputs without a camera on the driver, which I know a lot of the newer systems are doing now where they've they've added actual like, driver camera monitors to

Alex Roy  16:15  
focus in a Subaru is not a camera basis. No. Yeah.

Sam Abuelsamid  16:18  
So I think it says doesn't look like it. It's

Dan Roth  16:20  
looking at the inputs and comparing them between, you know, what would be expected. And, you know, if you're making lots of sharp erratic inputs, like you would if you're kind of trying to drive.

Alex Roy  16:31  
Okay, I guess, going back for a second with Sam said, because this is why I love this show, because I'm actually learning something, Sam. So what I'm understanding here about the Subaru dealership is that their Adaptive Cruise is not radar based, which I thought it was. And it's camera based. And when I asked that question, and the guy's response was, well, it's adaptive. He didn't give me the second piece of information, which is it is adaptive, and yet doesn't require radar, which would have put that, so I thought he was an idiot, and he didn't understand where I was coming from. Thank you for teaching me something

Dan Roth  17:01  
he may not have known. I know that.

Sam Abuelsamid  17:04  
He didn't know.

Dan Roth  17:05  
Well. Brown training is really important, though. So like, that's

Unknown Speaker  17:09  
fascinating that

Dan Roth  17:10  
that's something you should talk to the zone rep about.

Alex Roy  17:13  
Thank you. Thank you. Okay, I'm done talking told me about your.

Rebecca Lindland  17:16  
What's interesting is I went on the Supercross track launch. And I don't think they talked about it at all. I don't know what's in the cross check, though. Maybe I wasn't paying attention. I don't know. There might have been a puppy involved. Let

Alex Roy  17:34  
me ask you a question. Do you like to cross check?

Rebecca Lindland  17:37  
You know what I actually just had one a couple weeks ago. I think it's a fun car. I think it's a great run, I think I call it like a little suburban runabout. So you know, I like the fact that it's all wheel drive. I like the ride height of it. It's got really good ground clearance. I remember actually writing something for Forbes, right after Hurricane Sandy. And the Crosstrek had one of the highest ground clearances, and when and so I was out of town for Hurricane Sandy afford event actually. And when I got back, I was trying to drive home in my fee of 500. And let me tell you, there were branches down that were bigger than that car. And so I looked at like all the different cars that had a decent amount of ground clearance for things like that, or like the snowstorm that we're supposed to get, you know, in the next day or two with eight to 12 inches of snow. So I think it's I liked the fact that it's a smaller vehicle with really good ground clearance, especially for the size.

Alex Roy  18:39  
I liked it and the daughter may end up one.

Rebecca Lindland  18:42  
Yeah, so my nephew Jake, I, he, his his mom had leased one. And then she didn't need her lease anymore. So he took it over. And he's 26 now and driving all over the place and you know, his girlfriend live someplace else and the whole thing and he loves it. And he's really been happy with it. And I really liked it. I thought it was a lot of fun. I think I talked about on the show a couple episodes ago.

Sam Abuelsamid  19:04  
Yeah. So to get back to the driver focus for a moment. While you guys were talking, I was looking it up. In fact, Subaru does have a camera that's looking at the driver and as Dan said, most of the systems most of the earlier systems were just using the steering input information basically the same way that Tesla tries to detect if the drivers hands are on the wheel, looking for those orange little steering wheel motions and you know tries to detect your normal pattern when there's a deviation from that. Then it says oh maybe you might be tired. And then newer systems use the forward looking camera for the Lane Keeping Assist. And if you're you know bouncing off the the light lanes too frequently then again, you know, thanks. Okay, maybe you're tired or you know, otherwise incapacitated.

Alex Roy  19:51  
Imagine if you put the super Java focus system on a Tesla so can analyze what the Tesla's doing

Sam Abuelsamid  19:58  
Subaru actually has a camera That's doing, you know, looking for your eye gaze, and your head position to detect if you're getting tired. So

Dan Roth  20:09  
there's actually looking at your phone,

Rebecca Lindland  20:11  
there's a company nearby here, we're in Connecticut, called Dr. Dr. d, y, EV. And I've met with them a couple of times, just because we're both in the industry, there's not that many people around here. And they offer a driver facing camera, a forward facing camera, a fleet dashboard. And it's basically it's there, they would like it to be part of the vehicle built, but right now it's aftermarket, but they're using a lot in commercial applications. And so it's very much an you know, following the eye position, I like closing patterns to detect drowsiness and things like that. So it's, it's, you know, I think it basically focuses very much on the drivers head. And, you know, like, like Alex, like you were talking about where you're distracted by your phone, and, you know, the temptation to look over. And so the drive system is very much a tentative just to the driver, or

Alex Roy  21:07  
what I like to see. And I imagine the three of you are all over this at some point in the future, you know, Euro end cap, city standards are going to require some type of driver monitoring system in the future. And I'm not aware that they've defined what how it's designed or even necessarily exactly how it's going to work. But I'd love to see in the future a comparison of the different driver monitoring systems driver focus the old coffee cup systems see machines as the system in what Cadillac and and the new Ford f150 and then there's eyesight which is out of Sweden, right.

Sam Abuelsamid  21:47  
eyesight is the brand for Subarus link right? There you guys

Unknown Speaker  21:51  
see, I

Sam Abuelsamid  21:55  
know there's, there's a bunch of different

Alex Roy  21:56  
anyway, I like to see them compared actually compared on in a safe and on a track is someone being distracted, and how the alerts work. And the alerts is one half that I'd like to know how the OEMs use those alerts to trigger or, or not trigger system submitted Gator compensate. And I think that's the future of automotive journalism. And I'm Wait, hopefully, if anyone's gonna do it, it'll be you. Since the state of automotive journalism technically is there, those things aren't always connected.

Dan Roth  22:26  
I say that the Cadillac system is very, I haven't escalated this week. So the Cadillac system has already given me the attention warning. I was trying to do something with their infotainment, and it got to the point, right, so I picked up my phone, and was making the call and it was like a knock it off. So it's it's not shy, which I think is good. And I think that's one of the things that automotive journalists need to recognize is the safety systems that we've for decades called like nannies. Yeah, if you're, if you're driving in a particular way, if you're if you're driving like an enthusiast, they're going to intervene. But for the people who aren't trying to trigger a slide, they're better. They're worth having. And those warning, it's like when your bank shuts down your credit card because it notices weird transactions. Even if it was you. You're happy that they did it because it could not have been you at some point. So it's that same kind of thing. It's they're they're protective for most people who shouldn't be driving like we try. Yes, we shouldn't be driving drive sometimes. So

Unknown Speaker  23:38  
what do you all driving was

Dan Roth  23:43  
the escalate so I mean, I've got an accolade which is $109,000 and it's just super lovely, and I adore it and I don't want to give it back. It's, you know, it's a typical press fleet, a Cadillac, so it's actually it's not gonna say, it's what you imagined the Cadillac to be like, white leather interior, which is like that's a classic Cadillac thing. I don't necessarily want to own that but it's lovely.

Rebecca Lindland  24:14  
All bought ballpoint pens and you'll be fine.

Sam Abuelsamid  24:17  
It's also perfect for taking your Labradoodle to the groomer.

Alex Roy  24:22  
Visiting Alex in Miami.

Dan Roth  24:25  
I put I put a towel down on the seat, but it has the screens in the back and so it's loaded up with tech. It's all the materials are really nice. And that's what really stands out is the outside is fine. It looks like Cadillac Escalades, they've done a really nice job evolving the style, but inside is really where It impresses you know, it's got a big sweep of screens and the screens are there. Really high quality screens. That's one thing I was noticing is that there must be OLED or they are

Sam Abuelsamid  24:55  
they are OLED but

Dan Roth  24:56  
man do they look good. And I think like really, I don't really like screens. Cars, but the and it sleeps all the way from the very left side of the instrument panel all the way over to the center stack. So there's a lot of screen in it and it's, it's well done some of the interface the touchscreen part of it isn't great some of this stuff is hard to find and the targets are a little small. We constantly say that I think as I've spent a few days with it, it's gotten better but the overall driving experience is fantastic. It's feels light on its feet it's got the 6.2 liter V eight which I don't want to talk about the fuel economy I'm getting

Sam Abuelsamid  25:40  
it's using fuel let's leave it at that

Dan Roth  25:41  
yes, it's using fuel So thank you everybody with the efficient cars for leaving some for me it's it but it's you know, it's such a big thing and that's why I was noticing that it it really it handles and rides quite well so the new independent rear suspension makes a big difference it doesn't feel as heavy as it is and it it's not that it feels small you know some cars they just sort of shrink around you when you when you drive them it still feels big but it feels maneuverable and just sort of well controlled. So and it's the newest one in its class so I'm hopeful that it pulls everybody else along. I was I was commenting to my wife was like you know that the navigator which we also like quite a bit because I mean, we'd like to be coddled New Englanders that one feels a little bit heavier a little a little less light on speed a little more clumsy almost. So but neither of them are real clumsy. These are amazingly nimble vehicles for what they do and I just I love the size I really like the new features the tech in the the Cadillac is come a long way you know this is a real real step up for cue if they're still calling it and again the just the materials I was I just geeked out over how it's decorated in there you know there's there's wood and leather and cloth and it's just it's beautiful So whoever designed that interior did the best job I love it in there.

Alex Roy  27:07  
I just one question live in it my but my big beef with so many cars is that everything you say is true until you use the backup camera. And then suddenly that screen resolution displays this low rez trash

Dan Roth  27:20  
know for sure took me 15 minutes to figure out when it first came. So it's got forward looking cameras as well. And so you can put in the instrument panel behind the speed display you can put the augmented reality camera. So it's showing you a wider angle view of what's in front of the car as you drive and I got to shut that off because I could see it in my periphery I could see all the you know, houses and stuff and going by so it's distracting to me, but in like a parking lot or something like that, where you've got to maneuver tightly it'll show you what's in front of the car in a really wide angle view that's nice and it has night vision as well which you can pop right behind there. So in that sense if you can train yourself to not stare at the screen and look out the windshield it has a lot of options to make it easier to maneuver such a large tall vehicle which that is one of the problems is trucks are getting so high that you know it's gonna take you 50 feet before you realize you mowed over somebody's pet. So yeah, the screens are good. I was impressed with the screens and I wanted to note that specifically because I normally hate screens

Sam Abuelsamid  28:29  
did two questions did the Escuela de escalated your driving have supercruise on it. And does it have the camera mirror system in

Dan Roth  28:38  
it? I don't believe it has supercruise I'll have to check on the camera mirror

Sam Abuelsamid  28:42  
okay

Dan Roth  28:44  
that's what you just click it right

Sam Abuelsamid  28:45  
yeah, just flip it you know the way you used to flip it you know to go for you know when there's somebody driving with their your headlights on behind you at night. Right when you flip it now it switches over to the camera view so you have an unobstructed view, no pillars and headrests and all the other nonsense so you can actually see what's behind you.

Dan Roth  29:01  
Yeah, I am pretty sure it does not have supercruise. That's probably an option to make $115,000. And the other car I had real briefly was the genesis gvhd, which again, talking about screens that has a nice instrument panel that is all screen, but it's like a 3d effect with it. I'm not quite sure what they've done with the screens if they've got different actual planes in there that they for the display or something. But I was looking at that. That's a really interesting way to execute the instrument panel and I love I love the details and the gvhd everywhere you look it's just been fussed over in, you know, little things that just make you smile. It's got a backwards winding tachometer, which I chuckled about it. Such a little geeky thing, but I loved it. The outside design, it's beautiful. It definitely looks expensive. It doesn't really matter what it costs. It just looks like it costs a lot in the interior Look, I

Alex Roy  29:59  
mean, basically These pictures like if I saw a new Bentley, yeah.

Unknown Speaker  30:06  
Yeah,

Dan Roth  30:07  
it's really opulent inside and diamond stitch says money. And it's got plenty of time, it's you know, and that's so, you know, again, Genesis is just they're doing a really good job finding that balance of design and, and value and premium feel and look, regardless of price because this is it was 72,000, which again, that's as premium car money, but it starts at 48 which that's attainable. You know, that's not that far up. The the controls that you've, Rebecca and Sam that you've talked about the little rotary controller, I did experience a little bit of that where the the rotary controller I, it was too slippery, like a good enough purchase that

Rebecca Lindland  30:54  
I mean, the biggest challenge that Genesis has, I think, as we've talked about a lot is just the brand, the brand image and recognition and, you know, because when I've had I haven't had the GMAT score exists, awareness, you know, all those things. But when I went on the gv launch GB at lunch, but I haven't had one for the week here, but when, you know, I remember talking to people about it. And certainly when I've had any of their sedans, and I say, you know, this car is so good, they're so beautiful. And people are like, really a Hyundai Genesis, you know, and it's just, I don't know what they need to do, they've got to put some money behind marketing and awareness beyond just golf tournaments. I know and you know, and really dig in and get some grass roots going. Because the cars are so good. It would just be a shame for for it not to be a successful brand.

Dan Roth  31:48  
opportunity. And it's not just they're well designed, and they're comfortable and luxurious, they drive really well, which absolutely like so it's the whole package, which this is what they should have launched Genesis with. You know, from the sidelines, I'm a little annoyed that it's taken them this long to get it to market, but it's also they had to get their, their act together with it. So now that they've got it, they should very aggressively tell everybody that they have it because it's really, really competitive and really good. So I'll stop talking now and move on. Rebecca, why don't you tell us what you're driving.

Rebecca Lindland  32:21  
I had the 20 I had two cars, but I'll focus on one four time either 2021 outtie, a six all rode in the prestige. It's top of the line. And Alex, you know, most people know that. And Rebecca drives, I write car reviews and 200 words or less. And this is going to be less, because the review is, but uh, that's it. That's the whole review is better. It really is. It's delicious. So So just a little quick background, my neighbor raises Golden Retrievers, which I did not know when I bought my house, but believe me, it's a lot of happiness over there. And so when I when I first moved in, you know, I spent a lot of time outside because the ground seemed a lot of work. And one of my first days these two, gorgeous, gorgeous eight month old golden retriever puppies come over, unleashed uncolored I didn't know where they came from. Did you steal the work? I'm sorry?

Dan Roth  33:21  
Did you steal them? You know,

Rebecca Lindland  33:23  
so. So the one so the little girl, her brother would go and get all muddy and stuff. And then he'd run home. And which then I figured out was a couple of doors, a couple of fields because I live in the country. So they live they live a field over. So then the little girl she would actually want to come in the house. So I would let her in. But I needed to name her because I didn't know her name. And I didn't know the neighbors. And so I called her butter because she was building and delicious. Now butters eight years old and I keep asking the owner if I can please have her Well, no. But so this car, it's just a it's, it's to tonic butter. That's what I wrote. So it's just so smooth. This is the 3.0 liter six cylinder engine. It's got 335 horsepower, which is so happy. I did triple digits without meaning to on a regular basis. And that's up

Dan Roth  34:20  
without meaning to. So now I know I'm gonna do 110 here but

Rebecca Lindland  34:26  
well, so I had a perfect excuse I had to deliver. I sold this great big giant seven foot artificial tree that's actually a really beautiful tree that I've gotten at a flea market or a state sale here. I can't use it. I've got to sell it so I had the perfect excuse to drive up about probably about 3540 miles all on the Merritt Parkway, which is a really windy, lovely road. And so I drove it up there. Two things of tree fit perfectly into the car which is impressive with the second row backseat down and then that car was just so happy to be on the highway to be in that kind of environment. But it was great around town also, you know, because I love that wagon. It's low, this low center of gravity, you can dive into curves. It's just, you know, it's great. People can get in and out of it really easily. You can get stuff in and out of it really easily. I and you know, it's not a minivan, but it still is a family hauler. And so go out he, I loved it, the interior to that when you're talking about the Cadillac, every piece of this interior was beautiful. And I mean, people know, well, I can break any infotainment system that you give me. And this thing actually worked really, really well. I love the haptic feedback because then I know it's taken, you know, that I know, it's it's listening to me. Right. And so that works really well for me. And it just, it was just a joy. I loved it. I absolutely loved it. So 71 for was the one that actually mine was about 75 It starts at 65 nine for the Premium Plus and as I mentioned, I had the prestige so 2021 Audi A six remind the listeners what

Sam Abuelsamid  36:09  
car that was,

Rebecca Lindland  36:10  
I always just doing that you're listening 2021 Audi asix all rode I had the prestige line. Absolutely delicious.

Sam Abuelsamid  36:20  
Excellent. And I I had the 2021 Infiniti QX 50 autograph all wheel drive. And so the Qx 50 is his infinities. Like, it's a mid size crossover,

Rebecca Lindland  36:36  
sad that we have to explain that

Dan Roth  36:39  
I find it amusing that we have to explain.

Sam Abuelsamid  36:44  
And, you know, this will this, this vehicle will later this year also spawn the Qx 55 which, you know, infinity when they announced it a couple of months ago, you know, called it the you know, the inspired by the the old FX the Infinity FX Gx 55 is the Qx 50 with you know, a little bit less of the roof, you know, it's kind of

Dan Roth  37:08  
charge you more and they give you less you get less rear headroom you get

Sam Abuelsamid  37:11  
you get less rear headroom, less roof, less cargo,

Rebecca Lindland  37:14  
more style.

Sam Abuelsamid  37:17  
This is this is where I think I think what the 50 you still get plenty of style. I think I like infinities design language. Yeah, sure. I think this is a really good looking vehicle. The only engine that's available in the Qx 50 is the two liter VCT, the varial variable compression turbo engine, which, you know, we've talked about before, it's it's a really nice engine, it's a surprisingly good engine. When I first heard about this, you know, this concept of this variable compression engine, you know, and I looked at the diagrams this thing, why the hell are they doing this, this makes no sense.

Dan Roth  37:56  
It's quite a contraption, fellas,

Sam Abuelsamid  37:59  
there's a lot of hardware down in the bottom end of that engine, you need to change the compression ratio. But it's actually when you look at it in more detail. It's not as complex as it seems. And it actually works really well. And I remember when they first announced it talking to the chief engineer on the engine at the LA Auto Show. And it explained that you know, one of the advantages of this engine, because of the way the you know, this system works for varying compression ratio. Essentially, what it does is it twists the the crank shaft a little bit and the crankshaft is actually offset a little bit from the from the centerline of the cylinders. So what ends up happening is you actually have low reduced side loads on the pistons as they're going up and down. And so the engine is actually better balanced than it would be normally. And it's even without balance shafts on it, it's actually smoother. So it's actually a really nice engine two drives 268 horsepower, 280 foot pounds of torque and you know, good torque all the way through, you can actually pull up on the instrument cluster you can one of the bits of data that you can show is the compression ratio in real time. Which I yeah, I mean, it's kind of pointless but so geeky you know, I mean for an engine geek like me, you know, it's it's kind of interesting. But the reality is you can just drive this thing and it just drives really nice. It you know, the the autograph is the top end trim level. I think there's about five different trim levels available on the on the GX 50 you know, it's the ranges from the guy.

Alex Roy  39:41  
Yes. Wait, this is a $60,000 car, isn't it?

Sam Abuelsamid  39:44  
Yeah, the one I drove was including the delivery charges 61,007 65

Alex Roy  39:51  
but me call me primitive and ignorance that I feel a little funny to leaders. I don't care how it's how it's designed. For $60,000

Sam Abuelsamid  40:03  
and, you know, go go look at you know, modern BMWs and Mercedes you get in two liter, four cylinders, and most of those and that same price range as well. I

Alex Roy  40:11  
feel like they're ripping me off Jaguar

Dan Roth  40:15  
or Volvo for that. Yeah,

Alex Roy  40:17  
yeah. But Volvo I don't expect a big engine. It's a difference. Like, okay.

Rebecca Lindland  40:21  
This is performance oriented.

Alex Roy  40:24  
You know, maybe me I'm suffering from Musa zoic era thinking. But, and also, I haven't really owned a car with a small a small, modern car with an internal combustion engine. So like, in my mind, I feel like I've not yet been convinced I might just wrong.

Sam Abuelsamid  40:46  
You know, I was I was skeptical when, you know, these Turbocharged Direct injected engines first started coming out, you know, really nice, maybe almost 15 years ago. Now, some of the first ones like Volkswagen and Audi, and they're, they're pretty commonplace now. And, you know, these modern engines actually feel a lot stronger than you would think. Yeah, I agree. You know, growing up, you know, a two liter engine was nothing, you know, I mean, not, I, I've had, you know, I've had two liter engines, you know, that produced under 100 horsepower. And this feels like a much larger engine. You know, the reality is, most people never look under the hood of their car anyway. And, you know, they don't care what Saturday they drive it. And, you know, if the driving experience is good, then they don't, it won't matter how big the engine is,

Rebecca Lindland  41:40  
which is, what's his point? Do you think that's true of the, of the Infinity buyer?

Sam Abuelsamid  41:45  
Yeah, I think most infinity buyers probably don't probably don't really care.

Rebecca Lindland  41:50  
As long as it performs, they don't care

Sam Abuelsamid  41:52  
about as long as as long as it performs. Yeah,

Alex Roy  41:54  
you know, no one's buying a Qx 50 for the performance, but it does say 50 on it. And I just can't use disconnect. There's nothing five zero about except the price, which is

Rebecca Lindland  42:09  
I feel like a lot of

Sam Abuelsamid  42:10  
38,000. So

Alex Roy  42:12  
that is value to me.

Rebecca Lindland  42:14  
But I do like infinity buyers are a little bit more premium or more performance oriented than say, Alexis buyer. Yes. Is our buyer general, I

Sam Abuelsamid  42:23  
would say that that's definitely true. And this, you know, overall has a sportier feel than an RX does. Yeah. No, there's no question about that. It's not hard. Yeah. I mean, this, this, the the cars, his vehicle stance, you know, the the way it moves down the road, it's body control, everything about it has a more athletic feel to it. Yeah, it's, uh, you know, I think I think it's well executed what I pay 60 grand for, probably not. But you know, in the mid 40s, you know, for like the Qx 50. Lux, all wheel drive, you know, 4343 five for that one.

Dan Roth  43:02  
So this is the this is the thing that I struggle with, sometimes with media cars. And I don't want to belabor the point, but you know, the interior in the trim that you've got beautiful, I love infinity interiors, when we get them as media cars, because they're usually really nicely executed. But when you start to look at the lower trims, they're not necessarily outfitted the same. And that's where they feel like less of a value because for for the money, you know, for 45 you're getting something that's not necessarily going to have the quilted leather with the contrasting stitching and the accent stuff. So you got to sort of carefully look at what you're you're getting for that price. And, and it's not just infinity, but

Rebecca Lindland  43:47  
my other car that I didn't talk about that I was the Sentra, the Nissan Sentra, and that thing had a beautiful interior. I mean, it was really, really nicely done. Yeah, for you know, it had a really nice feel to it. And, you know, it's so, and yes, it's all tricked out, but it's still, you know, was pretty inexpensive and loaded,

Sam Abuelsamid  44:09  
you know, centers. You know, what, 2526 pounds? Yeah,

Rebecca Lindland  44:12  
I mean, that had a really, really nice feel it didn't have Android Auto as as infinity infinity as an either. Yes. Well, that's what I thought. But when I was looking online, it doesn't show it on infinity. It only talks about Apple CarPlay

Sam Abuelsamid  44:26  
No, it's it's got Android Auto. I mean, I'm looking at the site right now even on the base pure model it CarPlay and Android Auto and I use

Rebecca Lindland  44:34  
q x 50. Is that what you're on? Yeah. That this is only highlighting Apple CarPlay cuz then I looked back at

Sam Abuelsamid  44:42  
they may only be letting that but but it's got Android Auto

Dan Roth  44:45  
or Apple CarPlay. Like you want to make sure that you attract those Apple customers. I mean,

Rebecca Lindland  44:51  
how did I not notice this in the Sentra and the same thing on the Center website?

Sam Abuelsamid  44:55  
Yeah, all Nissan's have both.

Rebecca Lindland  44:57  
That's what I thought but why don't they own it? Half the global population has an Android Auto has an Android phone,

Dan Roth  45:04  
I think actually, probably more

Rebecca Lindland  45:06  
your head out of America people

Dan Roth  45:09  
is actually like, you actually probably know, it's probably more than half that the

Sam Abuelsamid  45:13  
US is the one exception where like 55% is iPhone, and the rest is Android and globally, it's like 80 to 83%. Android. And then

Rebecca Lindland  45:25  
I had the same conversation with Porsche and I lost.

Sam Abuelsamid  45:28  
Yeah, but infinity does support both. But you know, their infotainment system is a little odd, because it's got that split to screen layout. Yeah. So you have the upper two separate touchscreens, the one above is for the media stuff. And then down below is for climate controls and other controlling settings and things like that. And, you know, it just, it looks a little confused, and not particularly well thought out. I mean, it works. Okay. But it's, you know, it does look a little peculiar. And especially now in an era where we're starting to see these big, massive, you know, single screen layouts. You know, I think that I'm guessing that the next generation of infinities, hopefully won't follow this path. But you know, that I think, you know, the Qx 50 is a really nice midsize crossover. You know, especially I think, you know, in the, you know, in the middle trim levels, you know, where you're still going to get a decent combination of, of equipment, at much more reasonable price point, I think 60 is probably not a little high for what you're getting with this one. But even, you know, in the Lux trim level, you're still getting there propilot assist, which, while certainly not as capable as, as many others, you know, it does a decent job of helping keep us centered in the lane and the depth.

Unknown Speaker  46:55  
But does it it's a little aggressive

Sam Abuelsamid  46:57  
on the highway. It does. Yeah.

Dan Roth  47:00  
It's Alex, I feel like your feelings about this.

Sam Abuelsamid  47:02  
It's not, you know, it's it's a hands on system. So, you know, it's, it's really is just assisting you, you know, this this is one of the things that's annoyed me about Nissan that I've complained about in the past, especially outside of the US, they refer to it as more of an autonomous system, which it absolutely most certainly is not. I remember a few years ago, Carlos gone, speaking at CES, and then a couple days later at the Detroit Auto Show, you know, referring to propilot, when they were first launching it as a, you know, their first autonomous system. And I went to Brian Brockman, who's now head of comms for Nissan North America, and tell him, Hey, Brian, you gotta get them to stop with this autonomous stuff. This is not at all autonomous. And but by the time they actually launched the system here in the US, they rebadged it overseas, it is just called pro pilot. Here, it's pro pilot assist, and they make it very clear that this is a Driver Assist system. But the you know, the adaptive cruise works fine on there. So, you know, that's that's the Qx 50 infinity

Alex Roy  48:07  
might be for all, almost all use systems except like Cadillac, and upcoming f 150. c machines enabled assistance system is that no matter what the system is do the interface, I guess the interface with a driver is like a multistage button engagement system with a very small little light up icons in the dash. So to engage them as difficult. The you're the drivers awareness of the system state is very poor. And this is pretty this is true of pretty much everybody. Except Cadillac with that beautiful steering wheel with the light up bar on the top.

Sam Abuelsamid  48:50  
Well, that's beautiful. It will give Nissan Infiniti, Infiniti some credit there, you know, there is the big blue button on the on the steering wheel, you know, and it's pretty distinct from everybody else on the steering wheel. So you've got, you know, blue, it's got, you know, like an overhead view icon of a car surrounded by some blue circles. And it's it's pretty clear that this is something different, you hit that, you know, and then on the cluster, you know, it shows you when that's engaged. So, yes, it's it sounds good. Not it's certainly not as good as as what supercruise does. But I think it's better than most.

Dan Roth  49:26  
That's a really good point. Oh, Alex is I guess I I find myself doing this. I'm just thinking about when I get in media cars, sometimes they have the lane keeping on. And that's really aggressive. And I want to try it without it. And there's like four buttons sometimes for each different feature and they're not in the same place. And it's hard to figure out like, how do I turn that thing off? Or on

Sam Abuelsamid  49:49  
that bad user experience design? I

Rebecca Lindland  49:50  
feel like I think it's GM that has like a two stage process to activate. Adaptive Cruise Control like It's like, and it was, I remember, it was very confusing, because it was like, I just want it activated. And if I don't want it then that that should be the effort not

Dan Roth  50:10  
not like you get you get regular cruise first and then adaptive or something like that. Yeah,

Rebecca Lindland  50:14  
right, which I thought, you know, just I didn't, because then of course, I think I'm thinking that it's adaptive. And all of a sudden, oh, I'm on that guy's tail.

Dan Roth  50:28  
Oh, I heard some. From a fellow writer, auto writer, I heard some stories about using dynamic cruise in the wrong place at the wrong time. doing exactly that running a brand new car into the back.

Rebecca Lindland  50:46  
seat. Lucy has a lot to say about that, too.

Sam Abuelsamid  50:52  
Well, well, while we're while we're on the topic of user interface design into vehicles. Earlier this week, Tesla had their q4 earnings call. And they announced a refresh of the Model S in the Model X. As a Tesla driver. Alex, tell us, what did you think of this new steering mechanism that they have?

Alex Roy  51:16  
And you're referring to the aircraft style yoke like the Boeing two style avian? Yes, I

Dan Roth  51:22  
believe in there. Yes, we are. Butterfly steering wheel.

Alex Roy  51:27  
So obviously, the most famous example of this is the Knight Rider steering wheel, which was also like that is a fun article and road track, where they embed a video of Mr. Regular from regular car reviews, who goes and drives one of these night router replicas. The problem with that car, the two with the Knight Rider car twofold. The yoke is so wide, that when you turn it, it gets into your legs. And it's very difficult to take turns because the steering ratio is unchanged on the Knight Rider vehicles. So you have to turn this thing around multiple times. And it's really bad. It's tough. So if it seems to me, and we don't yet know that if Tesla has increased the steering ratio, such that you don't need to turn the wheel more than say 80 degrees. Right. Maybe and also the steering wheel does not appear that wide. So from that standpoint, I think that problem is they've solved the Knight Rider problem. I don't know if that's the case, it might take some getting used to but you know back in the in 71 when the late 60s in citra and introduced a system called the dear Avi system, which which I owned, which was installed on my Citroen SM which was a 73 and that system had the lowest wellhead a variable steering ratio at different speeds the ratio changed and was was you know hydro, what what does hydro pneumatic system. So at high speeds, it required greater force to turn the wheel. And you also and it was very difficult turn the car at low speeds, you could take one finger and rotate, rotate the wheel like you know three acts. As a result, I crashed the car in the garage in like the third day on the car. And that was very expensive. And the manual for that car stated that the de Ravi system is the most advanced and safest such system. And it should require no less than 50 hours of driving time to familiarize.

Unknown Speaker  53:43  
So

Alex Roy  53:45  
So I imagine for this thing to work

Sam Abuelsamid  53:48  
50 hours

Alex Roy  53:49  
Yeah, I crash the car to test the steering wheel. So I imagine. So Tesla's interesting because what they do is they introduce some functionality, which seems wildly different and crazy. And then they have a settings turn on or off. So the regenerative braking in the car, it the standards, the default setting is high region, one pedal steer one pedal throttle, and then I almost never use the brake pedal in that car. And but you can set it to low region and it feels more like a like an internal combustion car without a region system. I imagine that for this to work at all, the default setting is going to have to be a instance drive by wire, a setting that allows you to do all your steering with no more than say 70 degrees of input. And the Tesla fan base is going to claim to love that whether they do or they don't. They're going to claim to love it and they're just going to get used to it and then new buyers will just get used to it or they could turn it off but you're gonna want to leave it on. It's a very musky and thing to do. And I can't I can't lie. I think it might work because I know that in my driving in the Tesla I have my seat position settings, I always hold the wheel three and nine and I hooked my hands in like this, I do most of my driving without moving my arms more than a little bit, most of it. And the only exception is parallel parking. Which brings us to the second phase of the nonsense of this design, which might actually be stupid is that the musk says they're not going to have turn wheel stocks, turning stocks, or nice, the turntable or a gear selector. This is stupid, and it can't possibly work. Because there are too many cases cases where you're, you will need to you need to signal something, but you're not making a lane change return. It happens,

Dan Roth  55:44  
I think, though, is that like just him speaking nonsense off the cuff, where you're like, Oh, come

Sam Abuelsamid  55:50  
on what he's doing the images they released. There's no, there's no stocks.

Alex Roy  55:55  
The logic of what he's saying is predicated on convincing people that full self driving level four or five is imminent, and it's going to coincide within a few months or a year of the arrival of this new UI. And that's nonsense. That's absolutely nonsense. The majority, even if full self driving worked anywhere. And if they can't make it work to test the supercharger, parking lots, it doesn't work, okay, on the majority of buyers of this car, who may be foolish enough to spend $10,000 on the functionality are not going to live places where full self driving, works, or allows you to be truly driverless. So you're gonna need stocks, you need a gear selector. And the notion that the system which cannot drive itself currently will know whether or not to signal or change gears is also absurd. Well, and especially Alex, I mean, we said we're almost an hour into recording, and just remind our listeners, what you do is your day job again, well, I work for an autonomous vehicle developer, Argo, Ai, and Argo feels Brian's less my friend who goes, No parking podcast with me, the clarity of language and honesty is important. So he's, that's Yeah.

Rebecca Lindland  57:07  
I mean, you're not you're a Tesla owner. And I love the car, but you're much more qualified than the average person to speak about where we are when it comes to autonomous driving and, and looking at that kind of development. And so it's really it's I love getting your perspective on this because it's you have an inside track on really what we're looking at.

Alex Roy  57:32  
Well, let me say that probably the most important conversation to have around all the time is vehicles and is around clarity of language and what things really mean. I'm working on a column now that's going to run on ground truth about how everything we own doesn't matter what it is, has a geo fence, your sneaker shoes have a geo fence, they do everything in the worlds ever been invented to serve a purpose as a fence. A pen, it's pens fence is when it touches paper, or your sneakers function running, they don't work on the beach snowshoes don't work for swimming, flippers, fences in the water, everything is a fence. The purpose of the fence is for people to know when and where things are supposed to work by design. And inside offense you can have you can have a smaller area in which things work perfectly. And then there are things where things were placed where things work sub optimally. So the notion that I mean, what is the why do we want autonomy vehicles at all. And what we really want is, we just don't want to if you don't want to drive, you don't want to be this then being in the driver's seat defeats the purpose. You know, it doesn't make any sense. So we're playing games a language which makes no sense. So if you want if a vehicle is capable of driving itself anywhere, you might likely go you can take out the stocks and turn signal indicators and and what's it called the gear selector because you can just tell it, you just tell it what to do. You can sit in the back, but we started

Rebecca Lindland  59:03  
with talking about magic carpet rides, right? We weren't ready to mind reading now.

Alex Roy  59:08  
Yeah, it was so like, you know, something that's just it's, it's fun to talk about. It's a fun joke to make. And if you said if if one said that vehicles g the full self driving geo fence was parking lots where superchargers exists, and the only function there then you know, you don't need stocks or anything mean, you stop. This is all pointless. It's pointless to just to to talk about it, because it makes no sense. You need stocks. And you need a gearshift selector,

Dan Roth  59:43  
I think actually, like you federally mandated to have them right now,

Unknown Speaker  59:46  
I don't know if you did.

Sam Abuelsamid  59:49  
That's still kind of an open question. Certainly. Well, certainly for the you know, the shift selector, you know, that it doesn't have to be a stock on the steering column, obviously. You know, there has to be some, right now, it has to be some kind of physical control. for it, you know, I mean, we have a lot of vehicles now that have pushed buttons or rotary controllers or, you know, all kinds of different interfaces for that the the turn signal stock, again, it's not entirely clear that it necessarily has to be a stock. You know, it's a stock by convention. I mean, we've, you know, since the 1940s, you know, we basically settled on a basic layout of controls, you know, the accelerator pedals on the right, brake pedals next to it to the left of it, clutch on the far left, if you have one, you know, turn signal stock, you know, on the on the steering column, on the left hand side, and, you know, maybe a transmission on the right or somewhere else. That because that's a convention, but it's not actually mandated anywhere. Yeah.

Alex Roy  1:00:56  
per second, if I may, the most, the biggest reason you want to have at least one stock on a Tesla, is because today, set aside autopilots, which is a driver assistance system, set aside some issues that it has, in terms of engagement of the system, it is the best on the market, because if you want to engage adaptive cruise in a Tesla, okay, you tap the stock down once, it's the simplest system on the market for engaging with the system. And if you want to engage adaptive cruise, plus Lane Keeping, which is what autopilot is you down twice, and no other manufacturer has simplified to this level. And it is why the system enjoys such great loyalty and popularity among Tesla fans, even though the system has some flaws, and detailing into the back of the stationary fire

Sam Abuelsamid  1:01:49  
trucks.

Alex Roy  1:01:50  
Well, well, that's a separate issue. That is not a UI issue. That's has to do with with the functionality, the functionality. But in terms of actual interface, it is the best interface there is for engagement and disengagement. Now, if you remove that stock, I'm not sure like what better method there is of engaging that system. Maybe I've missed something here. Oh, that's

Sam Abuelsamid  1:02:13  
what I was gonna get to is, you know, they actually do have controls for the turn signals and autopilot. There. There's capacitive touch surfaces on the yoke, the spokes of the yoke, loves.

Alex Roy  1:02:26  
Oh, wait, there's capacitive touch on

Sam Abuelsamid  1:02:29  
on the left hand side, and on the left hand spoke, there's a couple of buttons for the turn signal. So there's a capacitive touch surface there. And then I think autopilots on the right hand stock.

Dan Roth  1:02:40  
Let me tell you a story about capacitor right.

Alex Roy  1:02:43  
Clarify for me here. I was under the impression there's no capacitive touch on the Tesla wheel.

Sam Abuelsamid  1:02:48  
On the new one on this yoke, there is

Alex Roy  1:02:51  
a well, I stand corrected for a second time.

Sam Abuelsamid  1:02:53  
Yeah, so it's, you know, so there is there is a control there, you know, it's designed to, to activate automatically to guess what you want to do. But there there is a control there. And there's also manual control for the transmission select, but it's in the center touchscreen,

Unknown Speaker  1:03:11  
I hate I hate that,

Dan Roth  1:03:12  
which is stupid. Okay, so again, let me tell you a story about capacitive touch, our dishwasher has capacitive touch for controls all across the top, and you brush it with your ankle when you're unloading it, and you just like select all kinds of stuff. So when you close it, it just starts running, and you have to cancel it all. That's what's gonna happen if you have capacitive touch on the spokes of that stuff by mistake. Without intent, you know, I, we can go down an entire UI

Sam Abuelsamid  1:03:41  
around that arguing that this is a good idea. I think it's a ridiculous idea.

Alex Roy  1:03:45  
It sounds to me like I came in this episode with wrong attitude completely. And I, I think that they're full, I'm gonna get rid of those stocks. Totally wrong

Dan Roth  1:03:56  
attitude. I think that what we what I want to see, I don't mind if they get rid of the stocks, they do like that we've got a convention that's 6070 years old now that everybody expects, I think there's a safety aspect to that, that is important. But if you're going to break the convention, and and make a change, I feel like it needs to be an improvement. And I don't know that we're we're there

Sam Abuelsamid  1:04:21  
yet. You know, so

Dan Roth  1:04:22  
if you want to get rid of the stocks come up with a way other than saying the cars gonna guess what you want. Because it'll do okay, like maybe 70% of the time. And then that other 30% is where bad things are gonna happen. So if you're going to innovate, innovate, don't just change for the sake of change, although it's been a masterful way of controlling the sort of the hype cycle. So I guess when your job is to, you know, attract investment and continue to deliver shareholder value. I can't fault that, but

Alex Roy  1:04:55  
it sounds to me like you. Go ahead, Rebecca.

Rebecca Lindland  1:04:58  
So I think of the Mercedes gear shifter stock, which I find very hard to get used to every single time that I try and because it's on the right side, and it's where like the blinkers are and it's where you know, or the windshield wipers or something. And so there have been changes me to that setup, the idea of having the blinkers on the yoke, your the indicators are, so I just want to make sure that I can control it. Because I, I do not expect a car to guess what I'm thinking, you know, or what my next move is going to be, especially in more rural areas where we're, you know, in Boston, you're driving on paved horse paths, you know, you're not driving on a nice grid,

Alex Roy  1:05:45  
we'll try the red circle, the archer front arc of triumph, like you're not.

Rebecca Lindland  1:05:53  
So, you know, I think, but to Dan's point, I appreciate that, yes, you have to innovate, and it needs to be in some kind of benefit, whether it's more convenient, easier to use safer. All those things, what throws me off it probably more or equally, is the idea that, you know, so many people still don't put their hands on the right place on a steering wheel at that three and nine. And and you're right, you're right, Alex, like you can I try and drive my entire drive, I had to go out to Long Island probably have a 17 mile drive. And it dawned on me, I thought, you know, for the most part, I didn't move my hands the whole time. It was really, really comfortable. And but most people you know, are still gripping tend to like it's their life depends on it. So it'll be interesting to see how people adapt, if anybody's going to adapt, though, is their early adopter innovators that tend to buy Tesla's so we'll see what happens.

Alex Roy  1:06:56  
Sam, next time you come into an episode, you got critical information, please share it up front.

Rebecca Lindland  1:07:03  
Welcome to our world.

Alex Roy  1:07:04  
Where did you see the capacitor tech news about that wheel? I mean, I read a bunch of articles and see that

Sam Abuelsamid  1:07:09  
there's I think roadshow had it. It was a bunch of places that a bunch of articles that had it I'll find I'll find something Sunday was

Alex Roy  1:07:17  
an official Tesla

Sam Abuelsamid  1:07:18  
news, the capacity? I think it was I think it might have been in that report or somewhere. I'll find it for you. But yeah, it's and i think i think the question was asked, as well, during the conference call during the earnings call. You know, when when after Ilan, announced this and revealed this, you know, I think somebody might have asked about that. But yeah, so the the capacitive surfaces are there. I agree. I think it should be physical controls. And I think a stock works really well. You know, I think I think part of the reason why they're doing this is a it's cheaper not to engineer those stocks, you know, there's fewer parts that they have to assemble. And, you know, that cuts their cost, you know, but it doesn't, it doesn't make the driving experience better.

Alex Roy  1:08:06  
My my foot might, I guess epilogue to this is that I've had a few screen failures on my boat, I've two, Tesla's I've had several screen failures, where and I had to drive the car with no screen. And so if that thing, if I had not had a physical stock to change gears, I wasn't, I would not have been going anywhere, that would have been a big problem.

Dan Roth  1:08:29  
So, you know, like, let's talk about the rest of the upgrades, though. You know, for me, looking at it, it amounts to about half of what you'd see in a normal mid cycle refresh, where automakers can take the opportunity to streamline assemblies, you know, get cost out, provide a new look and materials and the same basic bones. So, the s and x, the upgrades don't seem as dramatic as refreshes go on the exterior. And they're kind of four years behind when you might expect so it seems a little late for for an innovator. Like Tesla, although I think they've, they've sort of flipped it as well. I will use an example. Or an analogy. Like it's like a candy bar, right? Like their packaging is as important as the Snickers bar inside. The Snickers bar is the part that's consistent, it's been consistent for however long you know what it's gonna be, but the packaging changes, this is sort of different where, you know, a 2012 Model S is going to feel a lot different to drive and operate then an a brand new Model S at least I think I imagine maybe

Alex Roy  1:09:43  
build was is gonna be a lot better, that's for sure. You get into a five year old Model S and it just, it's it fallen apart. Yeah, yeah.

Dan Roth  1:09:54  
But you know, the interesting stuff in Tesla's is is under the skin you know, the engineering is very clever and It's very, you know, there's there's a lot of stuff to geek out about in there. So I don't know if it's good or bad, they've kept the wrapper kind of similar. The analogy does fall apart to a certain degree, because Tesla is what it is. And by being so recognizable, that's not necessarily a bad thing. They, they are going to have to take a really big leap, the next time they restart, you know, when there's a fully New Model S, it's gonna have to be a big change. So that the incremental change here with the interior, I think, you know, the screens, what do you think of the they've gone away from portrait to landscape?

Alex Roy  1:10:39  
I think the Model S is a beautiful car, I think it's dated really well, I think it absolutely can go another five or seven years, I really do. And you know, they seem superficial, but the switch from Chrome to black trim, if you look at this car, on the I'm looking at the configurator. Right now, it feels fresh, it's beautiful The interior is, it's radically different than anything else, they had to go to port landscape mode, because you can't if you want to watch movie, if you have to for models, the more expensive models have to match or surpass experience in the cheaper ones. And in the model three, when you're charging, you watch Netflix or video, you got this beautiful big wide portrait landscape mode. And so the SX needed to match or match that. And I think the screens a little bit bigger. Is it bigger in the lesson x? It looks great. Actually,

Sam Abuelsamid  1:11:29  
yeah, it's not clear if it's what size it is, I don't think they actually said what size it is, whether it's a 15 or 17, it actually looks like it's a 15, like the three and the why

Alex Roy  1:11:37  
it's good. I mean, actually, the the one, the two things that I've got unspoken, in the refresh, is that your luxury models have a traditional instrument cluster binnacle over the steering wheel, your cheaper ones don't. So that's basically an admission that luxury buyers expect demand and deserve that secondary display, which is in fact sorry, Tesla fans safer. It's safer to have your eye gaze track down for a millisecond, check your speed, and it is to track right and down. So I'm glad. And it's also safer for anyone who is really obsessed with our Tesla. If you're if you must look at the situational awareness display, to see what your car sees, you know, the which is the lane lines and other vehicles, it's a lot safer to be glancing down straight down rather than down to the right. That's that's one thing. The other thing, and I would be dying to know, mate, our little, our expert Sam might know is the the SX refresh included Kevin facing camera. Because the wind three do.

Sam Abuelsamid  1:12:44  
We don't know that because

Alex Roy  1:12:45  
that's the big, that's the that would be the big admission by Tesla, that some form of driver monitoring is coming in has to come because your end cap standards for DMS systems will require if you want a five star safety rating in Europe, you have to have a cab driver monitoring system. It's got to be cat camera based so

Sam Abuelsamid  1:13:03  
well, except that, you know, the the three and the y only use an RGB camera, they don't use an infrared camera, which means that if you're wearing sunglasses, or you know, even at night, you know sometimes it's going to have trouble actually detecting but certainly if you're wearing sunglasses,

Alex Roy  1:13:20  
while you're assuming you're assuming, of course that the systems will be required to do gaze tracking as opposed to just head pose. That's true.

Sam Abuelsamid  1:13:31  
Yeah. But I think for I mean, almost every other manufacturer is going with an infrared camera system. I suspect a standard

Alex Roy  1:13:44  
that this is why you're the three of you. doing real journalism and comparing these systems in the future is going to become an important aspect of measuring actual safety or whether or not there is a safety improvement having a camera based TMS present. Because systems that do proper, as you point out, gaze tracking can see through glasses are going to be safer, or they'll be capable of being safer, because the other half of the equation is what the system does, once notified of a suboptimal gaze. But that's a whole nother episode. I

Sam Abuelsamid  1:14:18  
mean, does it rumble your seat like the Cadillac does or you know just shake the steering wheel or give you a little seat?

Alex Roy  1:14:23  
It's all these Tesla fans claim a GM S is stupid, are going to have to eat crow once. Once Tesla activates presumably the cabin facing camera that is in the SX because your luxury model can't be less safe than your cheaper model can't be lacking some critical safety feature. So

Rebecca Lindland  1:14:41  
it'll be interesting to see how well these systems learn. You know, like because I was like that stupid coffee cup that can show up in like I've been driving for 10 minutes if I'm doing something really aggressive, but safe you know i on a quiet road or something and so It needs to be able to learn because if you see that coffee cup or whatever signal, if you get that repetitively, you're just going to ignore it, you're gonna try and turn it off, it's not going to mean anything, you know. And so there needs to be some kind of a learning aspect to it as well to say, Hey, you know what this person lives in a particular environment, where this is how they drive, or this is how they operate the vehicle. And I don't know how it judges safety or whatever. But it'll just be interesting to see how that happens.

Alex Roy  1:15:32  
So there is an entry thing about DMS camera based CMS, it is that some companies have a large and growing databases of human behavior, human factors, research, and some, some researchers more than others. And so what you have is, depending on the type of system, I'm not going to break down the companies because I'm not even fully familiar with how all the different approaches are. But there is one approach is to create a fixed set of rules of behavior. So a person's head moves this far this way, they must not be paying attention, the person hand moves here, they must be distracted towards something that that is one way to do it. But there are systems being prototyped, today that create an individualized baseline. So the user of the system, their inputs are x, the outputs are why this environment looks like and they just happen to hold their head this way. That's just how they drive. They just happen to look over here. And because everyone, there's physical behavior a little bit different, and so a, creating a baseline per user, and integrating that with their inputs, and what the car sees, and what actually and the outcomes over time. That is, I think that's going to be the future of really great driver monitoring. So yeah,

Sam Abuelsamid  1:16:55  
I think, actually, that's something that Genesis the GMAT and the gv ad, are starting to do, you know, if you look in the specs, one of the things they mentioned in there, and actually, Hyundai announced this, about a year and a half ago, was this idea of adding machine learning into the adaptive cruise control system. And what they're actually doing is, it's trying to learn that learn each drivers behavior, you know, so, for a particular driver, you know, if they are consistently, you know, accelerating up, you know, trying to get a little bit closer, or, you know, trying to or backing off, you know, for for cut ins and things like that, they're looking for the, the, what the driver is doing, and trying to replicate that with the automatic control. So using a machine learning algorithm, and making adjustments to the default control, based on what that drivers expect, expectation is essentially trying to do what what Brian talks about all the time with naturalistic driving behavior, but tuning it to the individual driver, as opposed to tuning, you know, your, your automated driving system to the behavior around a particular area where you're driving.

Dan Roth  1:18:14  
I mean, it's pretty great for an owner to step out of a car and be like, wow, I think drives like me. Yeah.

Sam Abuelsamid  1:18:21  
Ideally, But to your point, Alex, you know, that, you know, that idea of trying to better learn the drivers behavior and, you know, in simple, or, you know, in some in fairly rudimentary ways, you know, this is something that, you know, that the systems have been trying to do for a long time, you know, the early driver monitor systems, you know, the coffee cup systems. You know, one of the things I remember when Ford first launched theirs, I think the Mercedes system that launched before that similar is, it looks for a pattern of steering input behavior. And, you know, using using a fairly basic pod controller system, I'm not going to get into the details of that, but basically, you know, using some calculus to figure out, Okay, what, what is what is typical for this driver. And then when it sees a deviation from that, that's when it triggers and says, Okay, this, there's, this might be something that we need to alert the driver about. All right. Wow.

Alex Roy  1:19:31  
That's why I wrote why I love this show. I love a show where I learned something.

Unknown Speaker  1:19:36  
Thank you.

Sam Abuelsamid  1:19:40  
Now, now that we've talked automated driving to death, before we get to a listener question, I would like to touch on some news that came out of the UK this week, from a company that is completely the opposite of this, which is Lotus. Lotus Lotus announced that this year, they will be ceasing production of the Elise the sesion, the Evora, the Elise is now 25 years since it launched. And sometime later this year, they're going to launch their new sports car, the type 131, which apparently will be their last ever internal combustion vehicle. After that, it's, you know, they're also launching the Avaya this year. But you know that that after the whatever this type 131 is, it's gonna be all electric.

Rebecca Lindland  1:20:30  
I love the title of this release, though. A new year and a new future new load of sports cars series confirmed, Elise G's is that as you embark on a final year of production, like they make it so positive, as opposed to saying we're canceling all this crap and moving. The positive spin on this is fabulous. So kudos to that headline writer.

Alex Roy  1:20:57  
Well, you know, Morgan just announced the end of a Three Wheeler production. But again, a wait one more year of a special edition can be yours.

Sam Abuelsamid  1:21:13  
You still have your mortgage? Yeah.

Alex Roy  1:21:16  
I mean, it's Yeah. I love that car. I mean, I'll do anything to keep these companies in business. Except buy another one. Somebody else? I've owned three Morgan three wheelers in 10 years. Don't ask me why. The first two were problematic. But this one is as perfect as an 11,000 mile nine year old car can be. But we're here to talk about Lotus.

Dan Roth  1:21:46  
Yeah, well, so I was pleased to see that they're, they've apparently figured out the whole Brexit thing. And they're adding jobs, which is good, because that was 50 jobs. Yeah, yeah, that was an industry uncertainty about what they're gonna do. And we've seen because they've now finalized things there. There's some jobs, I think Nissan as well as moving some jobs into the UK operations that they they were going to previously source elsewhere. You know, the batteries or motors, I forget exactly what it is. So maybe this is the same kind of thing where some of those moves. Some of these moves are predicated by their their trade situation. But also the the Evora and the least where we're old so they were due for a refresh anyway, do we know if the type 131 is going to be similar to the lotuses that we know and love? Are they going to be significantly different?

Alex Roy  1:22:44  
Well, I just seen a picture of him. No, I haven't. It looks like more of the same. It looks like a slight It looks like a refresh. devorah

so i don't know if i love it. But I do you love that Lotus exists. Have y'all driven one of these?

Sam Abuelsamid  1:23:03  
Oh, yeah. But my my engineering career when after I graduated my first job out of school, I went to work for what was then delco moraine. MDH as part of GM working on abs, my first assignment was working on ABS for the M 100. a lot. And, and also supporting the sprit x one ADR race program. So, I dove into the deep end with Lotus I mean, even even when I was still in school, before long before I got that job, you know, I was always a fan of Lotus. You know, I was a fan of Colin Chapman, and it is his willingness to take chances. Take a flyer on wild ideas. You know, like the, you know, some of the, some of the Formula One cars, some of the, you know, some of the race cars, and just that whole ethos of, you know, implicate and add lightness, you know, that take, take, take complexity out of the car, make it lighter, you know, and sometimes you went a little too far, you know, like, you know, that they'll, you know, probably apocryphal story of, you know, having having a Formula One racecar to prime racecar, you know, keep taking tubes out of the structure until it collapses and then add that last one back.

Alex Roy  1:24:17  
Yo, have you looked at the what is it the big one, the vija

Sam Abuelsamid  1:24:22  
the Avaya,

Alex Roy  1:24:23  
the Avaya. Like this thing is really cool. You think you've I mean, I I'm always rooting for Lotus because unlike and I love Koenigsegg Gandhi's pleasant things, but they do strip these things down to the core drivers car, and they're really cool. And they and I've driven a an Elise, an older one. And it's really great. I mean,

Sam Abuelsamid  1:24:48  
I did a review of the axes 260 are back in 2009, I think for Autoblog. And I was I was lucky in that early time at delco. I actually got to spend some time with Roger Becker. And, you know, in just a few hours in the car with Roger, I learned more about vehicle dynamics than I think I did in in five years of engineering education. And, you know, it was always always a blast. Getting to, to work on those cars.

Alex Roy  1:25:21  
Yeah, I mean, if you see this, if I am person, it's much smaller than you think. And the person who buys a lotus is always someone I'd like to meet. Yeah, and you can't say that for a lot of other supercars.

Sam Abuelsamid  1:25:38  
I was actually seriously tempted earlier this week, there was an M 100, Milan on bring a trailer 100 100,000 miles on it. And it was at the time the bid was like 80 $600. And have you ever driven one of those alarms? No. They are actually actually shockingly good to drive. I mean, despite being a front wheel drive car, it's actually a it's got an amazing chassis in it. And somebody on Twitter was wondering, was speculating, she would type our engine fit in that thing. And that would actually that would be really interesting to put a type our engine although the big, probably the biggest weakness, biggest mechanical weakness of those pylons was the cooling system. They know if they were left sitting idling for too long, they did have a tendency to overheat especially in sounds like summer days.

Dan Roth  1:26:42  
Yeah.

Sam Abuelsamid  1:26:45  
So Lotus is designed for English weather.

Dan Roth  1:26:47  
They're not really two separate companies, but Lotus like Lotus engineering and Lotus the automaker, they they go forward doing different things. Do you anticipate there's a day where Lotus is is no longer making automobiles? Or do they fully embrace EBS? Like a driver's Evie that doesn't have lots of screens it doesn't have lots of the tech that he V's are typically sold with now they're premium in a different way. They're they're premium for you get less of, of what you typically get and more of a drivers car still just with Evie propulsion. What maybe the future looking like for Lotus?

Sam Abuelsamid  1:27:26  
I hope that's the direction to go. That would be kind of cool.

Dan Roth  1:27:29  
I was dreaming.

Alex Roy  1:27:30  
Yeah, I predict Lotus will as a brand will survive

Unknown Speaker  1:27:37  
forever.

Sam Abuelsamid  1:27:38  
I mean, now they're owned by jelly now. So yeah.

Alex Roy  1:27:42  
So I believe that OEMs will bifurcates into the the pieces that manufacture autonomous pods. And then I'll just take an example. You take Ford, like, or GM, like, what are the brands, what are the models they make that have to live for the brand to matter, Mustang? Corvette, they have to it doesn't matter if you sell one or a gazillion f150 it has a brand there. And Jeep like a Jeep has is that's an important brand. And so once you get to skateboard powertrain ubiquity, you're going to see, you're going to see every manufacturer make pods, and then they're going to make their valuable their Halo brand vehicle on that skateboard. And then they're gonna have to like quintuple down on design around it. My theory of I wrote a column about this, that was satirical years ago, it's becoming true. my review of the 2036 Porsche 911, which I wrote five years ago, it people still come back to me from OEMs saying how much they love it, because one of the ideas was that onboard the vehicle, you could, you'd have a database of every Porsche 911 ever made onboard with the sound, the gear ratios, and like the handling balance, and that you could then just select the year and the package. And then you'd have a virtual manual transmission that would replicate the ratios, you know, and the changes, and the car would just match up like performance would match up with your selection,

Rebecca Lindland  1:29:29  
you can drive emulator,

Alex Roy  1:29:30  
basically, you're driving a real world simulator every Porsche ever made. And the way to replicate the handling balance, you could actually physically replicate some of the handling balance by having like a piece of like a section of the battery would be like on a rail which could move forward or rear vehicle to to further replicate the appeal the good old days And beyond that, because you would have modeled the you know, grip and you know the physics of the car perfectly. You'd have your extended safety envelope. car would not allow you to crash. It just would not.

Dan Roth  1:30:03  
And that was very like appealing to me. If you've seen that kind of thing happen, I know you you're big on the audio side. So for decades now for like 20 years, audio companies have been emulating the sound of gear from the 50s and 60s and 70s. So you can buy plugins that go into your digital audio workstation, that supposedly sound like hardware from the 60s. And it's gotten better and better and better, especially with the convolution emulation technology and stuff. And this is audio only, but that's not a terrible idea.

Sam Abuelsamid  1:30:37  
It's not only photography to you, I've got, you know, apps that can take my digital photo from my my Canon DSLR and make it look like Kodachrome or ektachrome or Elford, HP film, you know, or anything else, you know. So this is running of this replicating old analog technology is is a interesting idea. I don't know how healing,

Alex Roy  1:31:07  
it's actually here's the thing, I don't think anyone's gonna do it. But it's gonna be a selling point. At the end of the day, people want they want brand, they want authenticity, they want to know that they can go to a dealership and pay extra to be told that a guy in England had his hands on this thing. And that thing could have escaped or doesn't matter what it has. But that thing is different from the thing the guy in France touched. And that's what people pay for. It doesn't matter if it's food or perfume or

Dan Roth  1:31:33  
whatever, or car and that there was a human being made a decision. I'm here for the explosion of design and brand and personality. I'm down. Let's go. Let's do it.

Sam Abuelsamid  1:31:51  
Let's do a listener question here from Tristan Ali says he's a big fan of the podcast. He lives near Boston. So it's always fun to hear but Dan and Rebecca's New England adventures as a multi part question for you about conductivity in newer vehicles. Oh, boy. It seems like more and more cars are relying on built in connectivity to power different features of the vehicle. Tesla's done it for a while, over eight years now, since the Model S, the new Maki, and now all cars that will be based on Android automotive. If you're buying any of these vehicles, once they are five years old, or past the complimentary length of included internet service, how much will it cost per month for the internet connection? Someone who really does not want another monthly bill, how much functionality Will you lose, if you don't subscribe to that data, our future cars going to need an internet connection to function. Related to that have automakers talked about their plans for long term support of these platforms, Android phones are notorious for being bad about getting updates once they're more than two years old. What's a 15 year old car with Android automotive going to be like, are updates going to be pushed out by Google or Volvo? What feature what worries me is that a lot of these features these cars have now just won't work down the road. Netflix and Hulu no longer work on a lot of older smart TVs because they've not been updated and can't support the newer versions of the services annoying with the TV. But more concerning when it comes to a car.

Dan Roth  1:33:18  
That says a lot to unpack there.

Sam Abuelsamid  1:33:21  
So let me answer one part of this first, which is yes, some of these features, once you reach the end of that complimentary connectivity service, you will have to pay to continue using those features. supercruise being one of those, that's one of the first that we've seen, GM gives you three years of OnStar service with purchase of the car. After that, if you don't sign up for a $25 a month OnStar plan supercruise will stop working because it can no longer get map updates. So that's, you know, that is a serious problem. And this is something that manufacturers are gonna have to address is how they how they pay for this stuff. Because I mean, it costs money to do the, you know, to develop these updates and validate them, you know, test them and validate them. So, Alex was the owner of a model three, what do you do have the Do you have the premium conductivity package on your car?

Alex Roy  1:34:16  
I do. I do have it it's I forget what it costs. It's fairly inexpensive. Um, you know, when you buy an apple, you get bass, you do get OS updates. They happen because system stability, you know, and security over time requires these updates. So there has to be some at the very, very least code maintenance for the systems. I mean, I guess there's a lot there's a lot to unpack here. I would like to see manufacturers, I hope they do what I think is the right thing, which is as the state of the art changes. If you Software Update is possible. They, if it's a safety related thing, I would hope that they would just update it. If it's convenience, then people probably should pay for it is luxury and safety to different things. Safety should never be a luxury, it should be table stakes. So that's Yeah, it's a personal thing. It's a personal thing. So

Rebecca Lindland  1:35:19  
no, I, I totally understand what Tristan is talking about I the idea of yet another bill. I'm, especially for something that is integral to the car. Alex is right, there is a difference between safety and just convenience features are something. So I think it is something that we have to figure out as an industry, I had an interesting experience that I will not elaborate on too much. But when I had the Ford Mustang Maki this week, and actually had a lot of issues with the infotainment system, I had the privilege and luxury of talking directly to senior people at Ford engineering about it, and we had a conference call on it. And we think that it was actually related to the version of the Android Auto that my Android phone that I'm using, which is two and a half years old. And the Android automotive, which is different, the the programming, which is different than using Android Auto. But the basically the maps won't work. I couldn't get any navigation to work. And the car was I just got frozen screens. It worked 20 about 12 hours after when the car kind of reset itself. And I and then I didn't have any issues for that day. But so to Kristen's question, yeah, I think part of it was blamed on bad Wi Fi signal, which I am notorious at my house, which is why I still have landlines. And because when I do radio interviews, I can't depend upon my Wi Fi signal. But it was just, it was an ongoing issue that happened for almost a good portion, good four or five hours of an afternoon with the car. So, you know, we have to figure out a way to fix these kinds of issues for it actually does have a way to provide feedback. And so if you don't have somebody like Jim Farley on speed dial saying, Hey, I'm having problems with you, you can actually, you know, you can provide feedback at which they got it immediately. And it was great, because it was, you know, that specific VIN number that particular car, and, and they said, you know, they had all the reports, and the feedback screens in the Ford SYNC system are actually very, very good. So you're able to provide some pretty specific feedback.

Dan Roth  1:37:42  
I, the idea that the cars using Wi Fi for things isn't, isn't terrible, to me, the I'm not thrilled with the extra monthly bill, it's gonna depend on what that cost is, you know, cuz it's not like it's a phone. So you need a limited feature set. They're gonna need to work with the provider to figure out what is that tier of service, what does it cost. And there's going to come a point where the thing is obsolete. I mean, that's, that's a problem now, where we've got such, you know, connected devices and like smart TVs is a great example. If the rest of the TV works, but you can't use half of the functions are important things that you especially if you bought a smart TV, because it's a smart TV. And now it doesn't work because the hardware is too old. You hate to throw away a thing that functions it's just it's it's no longer supported because of its hardware version. I don't know if there's hardware patches for cars that can continue to move that along. There's a repair culture in other parts of the world that we don't necessarily have here where things are more expensive. And they keep them running longer. And they they fix them when they break versus replace them. I think we're going to see more of that here as this stuff spreads out. And we rely on the features and we rely on the the actual connectivity to make the thing work for us. And then on a day to day basis, it's going to need to be figured out because cars are expensive and I can't be buying one every seven years that just doesn't work. It's got to be viable.

Sam Abuelsamid  1:39:34  
And you know to to what Tristan said you mentioned you know that idea of you know, the Smart TV. This is why you know in my house. We have I have a Chromecast on each TV in the house because you know we have a TV across the room from me here that isn't you know, a 10 year old TV that actually has no smart senate at all. And I've got a couple other ones upstairs. That Each one of them has a Chromecast on it, you know, it's a 35 $50 device, I can swap those out, which I think is is nice, you know, because I've had other devices hooked up to these I've had, I've got a couple of old Roku sitting on a shelf in the, in the workshop here that are too old that no longer get software updates, and I've even got an older Chromecast that no longer gets software updates. So I think one of the things that manufacturers need to do is they need to go down this path of making the cars upgradeable hardware upgradeable for a reasonable cost, you know, and this is something I remember seeing a couple of years back, Qualcomm at a show I was at was showing off a version of showing off a system where the Snapdragon chip that was powering the infotainment system in this car was on a module that could easily be unplugged, replaced with a newer one with a newer, a newer chip with more power, more memory, whatever, and newer conductivity. And I think this is, and this is something I've written about several times over the years, this idea that we need to design cars for that upgradability because, you know, if you've got a vehicle that can last 1520 years or more, it's not, it's not acceptable for major functions to stop working after three or four years. Because it's not it, either the software can't be updated, or it's not being updated, we need to be able to keep that stuff going. And I agree with Alex, you know, certain things like security fixes, and, you know, recalls and things like that, that has to be provided free of charge there, that's not acceptable for for those to be charged for even if you're not subscribing, you should still be getting, you know, cybersecurity fixes and certain other types of fixes, free of charge. certain functions like supercruise, or, you know, whatever other brand new manufacturer has, yeah, that, you know, that can require a subscription after a period of time. But I think the manufacturers need to be much clearer upfront that, okay, you, you're getting this feature, you're going to have it for three years. And then after that, you're going to have to pay a subscription fee to continue using it. And I think that's acceptable, as long as you're transparent about it. From the time the person buys the car, if they buy the car expecting that function to work for the life of the car, like it, like you know, the air conditioning did or your power windows did on your on your 10 year old car,

Alex Roy  1:42:34  
you know, be nice, is if manufacturers for example, my Morgan would say hey, after three years, this thing is gonna be a paperweight. It has no electronics, the mechanical part. That would be nice. Yeah.

Dan Roth  1:42:53  
So I'm curious, like, this is one of the things that Tesla has gotten whacked for that I don't feel it's necessarily fair, where it gets traded in, they'll reset it, and the next owner can buy the features, they want

Alex Roy  1:43:08  
to be clear to just to clarify, when you buy a ticket when you get a Tesla lease, buy whatever, so autopilot function out, so the your driver assistance is baked in, that's part of the car. And so and cybersecurity baked in, so you will just get updates for that forever, or whoever buys a car will get updates those things. It's the it's the premium connectivity specific to and full self driving those things which you may lose, if you transfer ownership. And presumably when they have a subscription program, you stop paying, you know, get those things. So the stuff that says to makes you pay for is not essential, like it like activity is not essential to basic vehicle function. Right and,

Dan Roth  1:43:54  
like, you're gonna annoy some people BMW also got whacked where they started charging for for CarPlay. And they backed off of that. But again, neither of those things are essential. And so I feel like they're, they're gonna have to get over that hump of acceptance. And then it's just going to be how things are.

Alex Roy  1:44:12  
The thing about Car Play, though, is it should be baked in because it's a cost nothing to what does it cost to implement that?

Dan Roth  1:44:20  
Well, I don't know if there's a license fee they have to pay to Apple shocked if there wasn't,

Rebecca Lindland  1:44:24  
well, in some on some vehicles, I don't have nav built in. And so then in some ways, it is kind of essential. You know, if you want a navigation system that works well and safely as opposed to listening to your car or phone or looking down at your phone for ways or Google Maps or something. So I think it depends on the vehicle.

Sam Abuelsamid  1:44:43  
This is exactly why most of the companies developing a these are focusing on fleet owned vehicles, not on technology for individual consumers to buy because, you know, there's this understanding That, you know, these, unlike vehicles of the past, these vehicles are going to require updates throughout their lifecycle. And that does cost money. And the challenge of, you know, how to how do you get consumers to pay for that, you know, do you get them to pay once up front, you know, which might be an exorbitant amount of money over the life of the vehicle, do require them to have a subscription. You know, this is this is a challenge that the industry is struggling with. And at least for, you know, these Robo taxi type vehicles, you know, or delivery vehicles, they are going to be in fleets, because that's, that's somewhere where, you know, you're going to have a recurring revenue stream. And you can, you can bake that into the cost of that service. You know, the cost of, you know, the support can be baked into the cost of that service much like, you know, you see Adobe, you know, doing now with Creative Suite, you know, they're they're baking the cost of the updates into that subscription, let me

Dan Roth  1:45:56  
tell you, there was a lot of people who hate that idea.

Alex Roy  1:46:00  
Well, to be fair, I'm, it's I as an Adobe customer, and someone who works in autonomous vehicle space, I, I don't yet the Adobe model doesn't thrill me, because the basic tasks of performing graphic design can be performed perfectly well with a 10 or 20 year old installation of the Creative Suite. But safety is something which is always improving. And the goal of onto percent is probably almost unattainable. But every day you want to move in closer to it. So the enormous costs and Sandpoint not correctly of getting there, it's always going to be there, we're always going to be investing in improving safety technology. And therefore, there's always going to be a cost associated with updating that, that hardware and software to get safer every day. And that's why the commercial fleet ownership model makes sense. And the notion that one could spend $10,000, to buy extra as an option in a car that you buy today, that that gets you in the door for autonomous technology forever makes no sense. Because on the other side of that, if a company starts with a T is going to be has to invent, they're gonna have to be investing forever Tesla, you know, in trying to make their systems safer. And there are ongoing costs, and logically, you want to pass them on down to somewhere. And so of course, Tesla wants to get a subscription model, because you need some way of paying for the ongoing r&d to keep improving the system.

Dan Roth  1:47:31  
At a certain point to like, you as the manufacturer, if you're liable for keeping those things up, you need to sunset, that old hardware that comes a point where How long is is long enough to support that stuff. And then how do you transition those owners to a newer version.

Alex Roy  1:47:47  
Another reason why a commercial fleet owner of autonomous vehicles is the model of anyone who is sane, and rational, you know, in in, you know, for the first probably several generations of vehicles someday that could change. But if you look at the, you know, the rumors that go on on the internet around Tesla updates, there was rumored somebody that got green, the only on Twitter is when these accounts, who picks apart his Tesla, he opens up it looks at the code. And he found that they look, you're talking about updating sensors. So of course, updating sensors, because the current generation of Tesla's on the road, as Sam has pointed out, going back five years, the hardware has limitations. It has limitations. And someday every In fact, every year, better hardware is going to come out. And you're going to want to implement that you're going to have to attach software for it. And then the bar for safeties and go even higher. So the notion of permanence in technology makes no sense. The notion of permanent evolution makes perfect sense. And there's costs associated with it.

Dan Roth  1:48:55  
All right, well, it's been let's see where Oh, it's 11am it's been an hour and 15 minutes, I think we should should wrap

Sam Abuelsamid  1:49:03  
it up and let

Dan Roth  1:49:04  
everybody get their mornings and let our listeners have a rest before they wind up with the next episode of this. value packed show is here.

Alex Roy  1:49:13  
Value pack if you want to hear no parking, check us out at no parking podcast calm and ground truth. The URL is ground truth autonomy.com.

Dan Roth  1:49:24  
Go go add them to your RSS, you know, pod catchers.

Sam Abuelsamid  1:49:28  
Thanks, Alex.

Dan Roth  1:49:38  
Thanks for listening to wheel bearings. Hey, we love to listen to our listeners to drop us an email to feedback at wheel bearings dot media with your thoughts, questions or conversation starters. That's feedback at wheel bearings dot media. You can also find us on Twitter at wheel bearings cast. Don't use any vowels except for The a in cast. So that's why LBRNG s cast. Thanks again. We hope to hear from you soon.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai