Speaker 1: I'm Matt Miller and I'm Hannah Elliott, and this is
Speaker 1: Hot Pursuit.
Speaker 2: Okay, today we have a pretty fun and interesting show
Speaker 2: I have here with me in our New York studio.
Speaker 2: Ali Javidan who runs Range Energy. It's a business that
Speaker 2: powers trailers. Of the tractor trailer duo we all know
Speaker 2: so well, and we'll talk to him about that for
Speaker 2: a second. But I just had him on my TV
Speaker 2: show and it was really cool because, you know, Katie
Speaker 2: Greifeld and Shanalie Basset co anchor my show with me,
Speaker 2: and it's all about markets. We mostly talk about, you know, finance,
Speaker 2: but they were both enthralled with the tractor trailer story.
Speaker 2: And then I found out that they also have, like me,
Speaker 2: dreams of becoming a truck driver one day.
Speaker 3: Awesome.
Speaker 2: I think a lot of people have that, Hannah.
Speaker 4: Do you ever, No, no, no, no, that's my nightmare.
Speaker 1: But I do think a lot of people have like
Speaker 1: a secret fan want to see about that lifestyle.
Speaker 2: I'm sure.
Speaker 4: I mean, I don't get it seems like horrendous to me.
Speaker 2: To me, it seems great, just because I spend so
Speaker 2: much time driving anyway, I listen to the radio a lot,
Speaker 2: So Alie, I want to first before we get into cars.
Speaker 2: Obviously it's a cars podcast. Hannah and I talk about
Speaker 2: cars all the time, and it's it's not a business
Speaker 2: related thing. It's just like what we love, you know,
Speaker 2: the passion for the industry and the hobby. Really, but
Speaker 2: I think your business story is just so fascinating that
Speaker 2: people would like to hear about what you've come up with.
Speaker 2: And then we'll get into your history with Tesla and everything.
Speaker 3: But yeah, tell us.
Speaker 2: About the range energy trailers and all of the things
Speaker 2: that they can do beyond just extending the range of
Speaker 2: a diesel tractor or even a n EV tractor.
Speaker 5: Yeah. So the range story basically actually started way back
Speaker 5: in around two thousand and eight, two thousand and nine,
Speaker 5: when I was at Tesla and we were just kind
Speaker 5: of talking about all of these different that's a hint
Speaker 5: of how we met Hannah in the first time. The
Speaker 5: first time boy about just all of the different things
Speaker 5: that need to be true for electrification to kind of
Speaker 5: be all over the place. And supercharger networks were one
Speaker 5: of the ideas, and and uh, and this kind of
Speaker 5: thought of an electrified trailer to extend the range of
Speaker 5: one of our evs was just kind of bounced around
Speaker 5: and a couple of people even looked at it, and
Speaker 5: it just kind of died off. And as I started
Speaker 5: to kind of progress through my career, I came to
Speaker 5: this point to where I said, I went from Tesla
Speaker 5: to Google, then from Google to Zekes that then got
Speaker 5: acquired by Amazon. And after the acquisition at Amazon, I
Speaker 5: started to think, well, what else can I work on
Speaker 5: that I'll actually have a more near term impact on
Speaker 5: our environment than than what we're hoping to have with
Speaker 5: Level five or level four point five autonomy. And the
Speaker 5: commercial trucking industry kind of came up and and I
Speaker 5: started to look around and to see what the technology
Speaker 5: suite that was being developed for the trucking industry looked like,
Speaker 5: what would the effectiveness could be? And I noticed that.
Speaker 3: One thing was being left behind.
Speaker 5: It was the box, the trailer itself. And I'd been
Speaker 5: driving trucks and trailers literally since I was fourteen years old,
Speaker 5: you know, through my career in racing and in the
Speaker 5: automotive space, one thing that's always been there is been
Speaker 5: the trailer. And in all of these early days, I
Speaker 5: was the only one that knew how to drive a
Speaker 5: truck and a trailer. So I was always driving these
Speaker 5: things around. So I know about you know, overheating brakes,
Speaker 5: and I know about going up a hill when you're
Speaker 5: fully loaded. I know all of these kind of pain
Speaker 5: points that the drivers have, and so that was kind
Speaker 5: of this like aha moment for me was, well, nobody's
Speaker 5: developing an electric trailer. We're now at the point with
Speaker 5: things like our understanding of functional safety and other elements
Speaker 5: that are enabling the autonomous world to put robots out
Speaker 5: on the roads. Well, essentially, what we're building is a
Speaker 5: robot and the safety driver is the tractor, and we
Speaker 5: don't care if that tractor has a human driver in
Speaker 5: it or a robot driver. We just care to follow
Speaker 5: that tractor and make the trailer feel completely weightless. And
Speaker 5: so that's kind of that idea that sparked in twenty
Speaker 5: twenty one, and we spent the first year going through
Speaker 5: the technology to say is this real. We built a
Speaker 5: couple of small scale trailers to toe behind things like
Speaker 5: Rivian's and F one to fifties and it really worked.
Speaker 5: And so over the last couple of years we focused
Speaker 5: on the Class eight industry because we know the commercial
Speaker 5: space is really where this can have the biggest impact
Speaker 5: on our roadways, not only for efficiency and the environment,
Speaker 5: but also for safety as well, because we're adding a
Speaker 5: secondary braking system here with these trailers. The idea here
Speaker 5: is to help in every single way possible.
Speaker 2: And the traction I think is so cool because when
Speaker 2: you're going up a hill now you have essentially all
Speaker 2: wheel drive for an eighteen wheeler, that's right, And you've
Speaker 2: also managed to torque fill at a time when the
Speaker 2: torque is so important to the driver. Right when you're
Speaker 2: doing only twenty miles an hour and you're up a
Speaker 2: grade and shifting.
Speaker 5: It's a little scary, it's totally scary. I mean, if
Speaker 5: you're on a between a six and eight percent grade
Speaker 5: where there are plenty of those passes out there. The
Speaker 5: grape Vine is a six percent grade, and if you're
Speaker 5: fully loaded going up the grape Vine in southern California
Speaker 5: on I five, you're lucky if you can get above
Speaker 5: forty five miles an hour in a brand new big
Speaker 5: block tractor and your foot to the floor and you're
Speaker 5: hoping that you're not burning out the motor whatever. And
Speaker 5: what we did, we did the same we did that
Speaker 5: same route with our trailer off, and we did it
Speaker 5: with it on. And with the trailer on, we were
Speaker 5: able to maintain sixty percent throttle and climb that mountain
Speaker 5: at fifty five miles an hour. And then when we
Speaker 5: got to the backside of that mountain, we actually used
Speaker 5: the axle and region to hold the system at bay
Speaker 5: at fifty five miles an hour, didn't have to use
Speaker 5: the friction brakes at all. We didn't even have to
Speaker 5: think about runaway truck ramps, and the driver went all
Speaker 5: the way down the hill with their full breaking capacity
Speaker 5: in case somebody cuts them off.
Speaker 1: Can you just enlighten me a little bit about what
Speaker 1: exactly range energy provides. Are you you're selling electrical batteries
Speaker 1: that attach to diesel trucks. No, the actual service.
Speaker 5: If you think about the tractor and the trailer that's
Speaker 5: rolling on the highway, the tractor is the part that
Speaker 5: the driver sits in. It's the truck, the cab, many
Speaker 5: different names for it. The trailer is the box. And
Speaker 5: what we're doing is we're one hundred percent focused on
Speaker 5: the box itself. We add an e axle replacing one
Speaker 5: of the passive axles in that trailer, and then we
Speaker 5: clip a battery pack underneath the box, and then we
Speaker 5: have an intelligent drive system that looks at the interactive
Speaker 5: forces in real time between the tractor and the trailer,
Speaker 5: and then like and then it makes real time decisions
Speaker 5: on how much assists to provide either in propulsion or
Speaker 5: in regent to make the trailer feel weightless to the tractor.
Speaker 5: And we do this without any can connection. We don't
Speaker 5: have any data connection in between the two. We use
Speaker 5: all legacy connections that allows us to hook this up
Speaker 5: to an old Peter built long Hood or a brand
Speaker 5: new Tesla Semi, and we're getting efficiency numbers like going
Speaker 5: from six to eight miles per gallon up to fifteen
Speaker 5: plus miles per gallon on an old diesel or a
Speaker 5: new diesel. And we're almost doubling the range on the
Speaker 5: Tesla Semis and the electric semis that are coming out
Speaker 5: and really helping expand the utility of the tractors that
Speaker 5: are already out there as well.
Speaker 1: So how do you, guys sell, I mean, do you
Speaker 1: approach individual private drivers, do approach fleets? What's the business
Speaker 1: side of that?
Speaker 3: It's a great question.
Speaker 5: Yeah, we approach the fleets, and we talked to the
Speaker 5: fleets and you know, small and large fleets. This could
Speaker 5: be the Walmarts and Amazons of the world, or this
Speaker 5: could be like our current customer, Pedaluma Farms, which is
Speaker 5: a local northern California egg farm, and we provide trailers
Speaker 5: to them, and our system can be installed on a
Speaker 5: Great Dane trailer or Wabash trailer, any of the brands.
Speaker 5: And what we're doing is essentially creating a smart electric
Speaker 5: trailer out of whatever form factor you already use. And
Speaker 5: one of our biggest current form factors is the refrigerated trailer,
Speaker 5: because we are the only solution that can continuously sustain
Speaker 5: the refrigeration unit while providing drive, and we are currently
Speaker 5: the only path. You know, Thermo King just signed with
Speaker 5: us a big contract and we are currently the only
Speaker 5: path that gets them to pure electrification with the refrigeration units.
Speaker 5: And don't forget those refrigeration units. It's kind of like
Speaker 5: this like thing that gets scabbed to the front of
Speaker 5: a trailer. If you look close, it's only about a
Speaker 5: third the refrigeration. The bottom two thirds is a diesel
Speaker 5: engine burning about two gallons an hour just sitting there.
Speaker 5: Keeping the box cold and so, and it's making noise.
Speaker 5: So you can't even do your food deliveries at night
Speaker 5: in cities because of the noise. So we kind of
Speaker 5: fix a lot of those problems with the power platform
Speaker 5: that we build into the trailer.
Speaker 2: This is why I think it's such a cool company
Speaker 2: because when you when I heard about it first, when
Speaker 2: Ali was testing the Ionic five N with a bunch
Speaker 2: of Moto journalists, I just thought, Okay, it's a range extender,
Speaker 2: and range is in the name of the company, but
Speaker 2: actually it provides extra traction torque fill when you're changing gears.
Speaker 2: Plus you can power whatever the trailer is doing, for example,
Speaker 2: the refrigerator trailer instead of burning diesel, you can do that.
Speaker 2: So I thought that was very cool. By the way,
Speaker 2: you started out at Tesla, which I learned about you
Speaker 2: back then as well, and I know that you worked
Speaker 2: closely with Elon and developing a number of their early
Speaker 2: early models, from the Roadster to I think the Model ass.
Speaker 2: And but how did you meet Hannah because.
Speaker 5: All right, so the story goes, so Hannah and I
Speaker 5: kind of I know Magnus. I'm not friends with him,
Speaker 5: but we kind of run in the same circles, and
Speaker 5: we've kind of met each other a few times, and
Speaker 5: you and I have met like in passing at like
Speaker 5: Pebble Beach and things like that.
Speaker 3: But where we first.
Speaker 5: Met was actually at Classic Car Club here in Manhattan
Speaker 5: when you came to see the Model US for the
Speaker 5: first time. I was the handler for Elon. I was
Speaker 5: the engineer and I was sitting in the backseat while
Speaker 5: you and Elon and the video and the camera guy.
Speaker 1: Wow.
Speaker 3: So that was the first time.
Speaker 4: What year was that? Was that like two thousand and eight.
Speaker 3: Nine ten timeframe?
Speaker 4: You know what? That is wild?
Speaker 1: And I remember that, you know, I remember that because
Speaker 1: that day Elon was talking about cars being computers. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and it was the first time I had ever heard
Speaker 1: that idea, and it was just kind of weird.
Speaker 4: It was. It was like a very It was a
Speaker 4: new thing, you know.
Speaker 1: He was trying to explain how it's going to be
Speaker 1: seamless from your phone to your car to maybe your house,
Speaker 1: and like a car could be a computer of a type.
Speaker 1: It was just so radical.
Speaker 3: It was crazy.
Speaker 5: Because you know, one of the cool things about that
Speaker 5: is that most people don't know Elon knew. I knew
Speaker 5: that night actually, so all of the infotainment in that
Speaker 5: first car was run on Mac Mini's and and so
Speaker 5: then you imagine the connectivity from your Macmini to things
Speaker 5: like your iPhone and or your your phone and your
Speaker 5: laptop and all of that stuff. And that's where that
Speaker 5: thinking started to come, where where this should be a
Speaker 5: completely seamless experience and don't forget, like whatever we say
Speaker 5: about Elon, and especially in the context with Franz and
Speaker 5: other designers that he works with, the obsession is the experience.
Speaker 5: It's not about some specific piece of technology. And so
Speaker 5: that's when that's that exposure was that you know what
Speaker 5: we can we can actually really see a connection here
Speaker 5: if we start using the right platforms for some of
Speaker 5: these things. And that's that thinking kind of bloomed from.
Speaker 1: There philosophically, like thinking back to those early early days
Speaker 1: to now, would you ever have expected the path of
Speaker 1: evs to.
Speaker 4: Go that it has gone?
Speaker 1: And what is your what is your outlook on where
Speaker 1: we are now with electric vehicles compared to what you
Speaker 1: thought it was?
Speaker 5: Then that's a great question. I thought we would be
Speaker 5: where we are today in twenty twenty, so about five
Speaker 5: years behind where I originally thought we would be. I
Speaker 5: think there's a couple of things here. I think, you know, Hannah,
Speaker 5: you see this. You guys see this as well as
Speaker 5: anybody else. There was this phase of you know, kind
Speaker 5: of copycatting Tesla from everybody from Mercedes to not so
Speaker 5: much Toyota, but even Toyota fanboid on Tesla with the
Speaker 5: Raft four EV project, right, And so there was this
Speaker 5: first phase that I thought was gonna you know, like
Speaker 5: I didn't think Diamond or BMW or Volkswagen Group would
Speaker 5: fall into that trap of like me too, copycat, but
Speaker 5: we all see it, and they're still struggling with infotainment
Speaker 5: like today with all of this stuff, and that set
Speaker 5: the entire industry back at least five years instead of
Speaker 5: focusing on what they can what they did really really well,
Speaker 5: and then just layer the technology in piece by piece,
Speaker 5: and so anyways where we are today. I also thought
Speaker 5: that Tesla wouldn't be the only and primary charging network
Speaker 5: out there. We knew when we were looking at the
Speaker 5: seventeen seventy two connector back then that it was not
Speaker 5: being utilized to its full potential and it was actually
Speaker 5: under engineered for what we would need today. And so
Speaker 5: we actually predicted that there would be some shift back
Speaker 5: away from seventeen seventy two. I also thought that was
Speaker 5: going to happen a long time ago. But you know,
Speaker 5: the biggest surprise to me is the lack of charging
Speaker 5: network from other people that actually works as nearly as
Speaker 5: well as the Tesla network.
Speaker 4: So why hasn't that happened?
Speaker 5: Frankly, I think we don't have enough uh And I
Speaker 5: hate to say this, but I don't think we have
Speaker 5: enough unity in the regulation space. And I think there's
Speaker 5: a lot of different philosophies and thought processes, and no
Speaker 5: regulator wants to put their foot down and say this
Speaker 5: is how it should be done, and this is how
Speaker 5: we're going to ensure again the experience. It comes down
Speaker 5: to the charging experience. Like we have a mutual friend
Speaker 5: Alex roy right, and he talks about it's the experience. Yeah,
Speaker 5: And so it really comes down to that experience, and
Speaker 5: nobody that's building a charging network that's not Tesla prioritize
Speaker 5: the experience above everything else, other than maybe Rivian Rivin
Speaker 5: is actually doing it.
Speaker 2: You have to also acknowledge that there aren't many people
Speaker 2: who are willing to do what most people think can't
Speaker 2: be done. And I know that Elon Musk is a
Speaker 2: controversial virtial figure, but I remember driving the first roadster
Speaker 2: with Jason Harper. We drove up to Bear Mountain and
Speaker 2: almost you know, ran out of juice on the way back.
Speaker 2: But it was still at that time, Tesla stock was
Speaker 2: like ten dollars and everybody was like, this guy's crazy.
Speaker 2: He's going to take on GM and Ford like in
Speaker 2: your dreams, dude, never gonna happen. Yeah, And obviously the
Speaker 2: same thing when it came to rockets. You know, he's
Speaker 2: gonna take on NASA and Boeing. You gotta be kidding me.
Speaker 2: And now he's gonna cut two trillion dollars out of
Speaker 2: the budget. Now I realize that hasn't happened yet, right,
Speaker 2: And I know it's very controversial, but I'm just saying
Speaker 2: there's not many people in the auto industry who were like,
Speaker 2: screw it, I'm just gonna do this. I'm gonna go
Speaker 2: build a supercharger network, even if it sounds expensive and unbelievable,
Speaker 2: legally difficult, you know, from the real estate aspect to
Speaker 2: the investment, Like he just did it.
Speaker 5: Yeah, I think it's it takes a few things. First
Speaker 5: of all, you have to have like an obsessive first
Speaker 5: principle's view on life, like everything. It really has to
Speaker 5: be like, well, we can't do this. Why can't we
Speaker 5: do this because the material science doesn't allow it? Why
Speaker 5: not can we go talk to some universities to change
Speaker 5: what the thermal conductivity of this material is to help
Speaker 5: with you know, more current through these IGBTs for example.
Speaker 5: Whatever it is like, there's a bunch of different things
Speaker 5: where he would never stop until it got to a
Speaker 5: physics limit. And he had the guts to do it.
Speaker 5: Obviously he had the funding and the money and the
Speaker 5: backing to do it. That's a big piece of where
Speaker 5: you get those guts to do it. But he just
Speaker 5: never lets off the throttle when it comes down to why.
Speaker 2: By the way, this is one of the things that
Speaker 2: made me initially think we got to get Ali on
Speaker 2: the show because you're you are that scientist, right, you
Speaker 2: don't tell people a lot, but you went to mit right,
Speaker 2: And at the same time you're like a race monkey.
Speaker 2: You're like a race car guy.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, So I think that, uh, you know, that dichotomy
Speaker 2: is so cool. And the roadster that I drove I
Speaker 2: know at the time, I thought, oh cool, it's a Lotus,
Speaker 2: you know. Yeah, And actually when you finished, when you
Speaker 2: finished engineering on that, it went back to Lotus and
Speaker 2: then they adapted your technique.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 5: I think one of my first interactions at Tesla was
Speaker 5: actually as a contractor because there was something really funny, Hannah.
Speaker 5: You remember the red roadster they had was like the
Speaker 5: first prototype that they let the media look at.
Speaker 4: Yes, and I drove with Elon in that in La.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 5: Do you remember how agro that suspension felt. It was
Speaker 5: like choppy and all of that. So my first job
Speaker 5: was to get that vehicle ready for the second round
Speaker 5: of media tune the suspension, and that was as a
Speaker 5: contracting position, and so I went through, I revalve the dampers,
Speaker 5: I changed a few little tiny things in the geometry,
Speaker 5: and that ended up becoming roadster sport suspension baseline and
Speaker 5: so then that and then they were like, well, who
Speaker 5: did Roadster, who did this? Who fixed this problem? Let's
Speaker 5: hire them instead of having them on contract. And that's
Speaker 5: that was my end to.
Speaker 1: Tesla, speaking of how much you got like Tesla was
Speaker 1: considered an underdog at the time, I was working for
Speaker 1: Forbes and we really had to fight to even cover
Speaker 1: Elon and this little startup in California called Tesla. I mean,
Speaker 1: it was a fight to convince editors to even cover it,
Speaker 1: and eventually we kind of got around to it and
Speaker 1: I ended up writing a cover story on Elon. But
Speaker 1: I'm curious, like, is the person that you worked for
Speaker 1: then the same person that we see in the news now.
Speaker 5: It's hard to say, Like, you know, I didn't. My
Speaker 5: interactions with Elon were very kind of mechanical. We didn't
Speaker 5: really spend a bunch of time with each other. It
Speaker 5: was always kind of in meetings and in just hallways
Speaker 5: about talking about different types of things.
Speaker 3: I still see.
Speaker 5: That Elon there, and I imagine that a lot of
Speaker 5: that is still there day to day in the office.
Speaker 5: Beyond that, you know, I don't know, I you know,
Speaker 5: it's it's he didn't have such a public presence that
Speaker 5: he does now back then, so it may have.
Speaker 4: Been back then.
Speaker 5: Yeah, I mean they were there were, Yeah, we would
Speaker 5: when we were building. You came to the tent in
Speaker 5: the back of SpaceX when we were doing Model Less too,
Speaker 5: I think, and when we were in that tent, it
Speaker 5: was just random people coming by, like Elon was just
Speaker 5: like two or three. We're working literally twenty four hours
Speaker 5: a day, sleeping in cots in the corner of SpaceX
Speaker 5: to build the first models, which is in the Peterson now.
Speaker 5: But we would just be like three in the morning, Uh, hey,
Speaker 5: Jon Favreau is coming to scout the spot for Iron Man,
Speaker 5: like okay, and it's just Elon and John just walking through.
Speaker 5: So there was a lot of these like crazy crazy
Speaker 5: times back then where was his guard was down. He
Speaker 5: was just really about having fun and showing off that
Speaker 5: he was having fun.
Speaker 2: All right, let's talk about the cars that you like
Speaker 2: and drive. And you mentioned that you sometimes would drive
Speaker 2: the truck around because you're towing race cars, and I
Speaker 2: know that you spent a lot of time on the
Speaker 2: track beyond the Ionic five n Yeah. Yeah, what how
Speaker 2: did you get started in that? I mean, was it
Speaker 2: just the suspension, the you know, the technology that got
Speaker 2: you interested or what was it.
Speaker 5: I was always obsessed with cars, like since I was
Speaker 5: a little kid and I found my first little pile
Speaker 5: of hot wheels in a dumpster, I was like, yes,
Speaker 5: I was so happy. Because we were an immigrant family,
Speaker 5: we didn't have any money to buy stuff like that,
Speaker 5: and so I just kind of it was from there
Speaker 5: that I just never let.
Speaker 3: Off the throttle. I guess I'm sorry for the pun.
Speaker 5: In college, I studied civil engineering, I got bored with
Speaker 5: that went into mechanical engineering, and as I joined the
Speaker 5: mechanical engineering team, I noticed that they had a race
Speaker 5: car project and that was Formula SAE. So I immediately
Speaker 5: dove into that, and I ended up running the SAE
Speaker 5: program at the school, and just racing just kind of
Speaker 5: got into my blood. And as I graduated, I went
Speaker 5: and worked for a suspension company that built a bunch
Speaker 5: of suspensions for BMW and race cars and a bunch
Speaker 5: of other stuff, and I got into touring car North
Speaker 5: American Touring Car with Speed Touring and NASA and a
Speaker 5: bunch of SECA racing. I did that for a while
Speaker 5: as a race engineer, all the while like thinking I
Speaker 5: could be a fast driver and all of this, but
Speaker 5: I really just kind of was yet to discover that
Speaker 5: my true passion was building the cars and then watching
Speaker 5: a really good driver going and extracting the most out
Speaker 5: of it. And then I just kept going into racing,
Speaker 5: and you know, I would move up to different series
Speaker 5: and you know, I was running different race part racing
Speaker 5: teams for dine In, for BMW, for a bunch of
Speaker 5: different teams, and it got to the point to where
Speaker 5: I had to move out of California. It was either
Speaker 5: go to North Carolina or go to Europe to England
Speaker 5: and be on an F one team. And I just said,
Speaker 5: you know what, it's maybe time for a career change.
Speaker 5: I kind of want to settle down. And I looked
Speaker 5: for something that wasn't so much traveling, and I took
Speaker 5: a really basic tech job. And right after that is
Speaker 5: when I found Tesla. And I was sitting at a
Speaker 5: boring tech job, somebody called and said, Hey, you're the
Speaker 5: closest engineer to us that no suspension in Redwood City.
Speaker 5: Can you please come and fix this project or problem
Speaker 5: that we have?
Speaker 1: So cool, I'm not to take it back to the trailers,
Speaker 1: but I want to take it back to the trailers,
Speaker 1: because like with all the racing, did you just sort
Speaker 1: of pick up the skill of being able to drive
Speaker 1: a tractor trailer just by necessity basically, so because that's
Speaker 1: not a normal skill to have.
Speaker 5: Well, it was mostly most of the stuff was all
Speaker 5: kind of smaller scale, like not it wasn't full uh
Speaker 5: Class eight stuff. But my cousin, who I'm closest to,
Speaker 5: uh and I kind of grew up on my uncle's
Speaker 5: farm and so there was like always towing something around
Speaker 5: with a tractor. And then it was like, okay, you
Speaker 5: could do that when you're like eight or ten. Now
Speaker 5: when you're like twelve or fourteen, you can take the
Speaker 5: pickup truck and take this, like, you know, this trailer
Speaker 5: across the street to the neighbor's house because they need
Speaker 5: the trailer. And then you just drive. And when you're
Speaker 5: in a rural neighborhood, you kind of like all bets
Speaker 5: are off. And then it became my cousin and I
Speaker 5: were the go to for all of our friends, like
Speaker 5: can you help us tow this boat? Can you help
Speaker 5: us move this thing? And then by the time I
Speaker 5: was around nineteen, my cousin and I had a towing
Speaker 5: company where we had our own tow trucks, recovering cars
Speaker 5: for the CHP and for Triple A.
Speaker 3: Yeah we're eighteen or nineteen years old.
Speaker 1: Yeah, So for all of the people who have the
Speaker 1: fantasy about being a truck driver, what do you want
Speaker 1: to tell them? Is like the one thing that's going
Speaker 1: to be really a surprise and a lot harder than
Speaker 1: they may expect.
Speaker 4: So is there something.
Speaker 5: Yeah, First, I will preface all of this by making
Speaker 5: sure that everybody understands I'm not claiming to be a big, like,
Speaker 5: you know, multimillion mile Class eight truck driver. I'm you know,
Speaker 5: I have an incredible amount of empathy for those those folks,
Speaker 5: and they are some of the hardest working folks in
Speaker 5: the entire country, and New work and we work with
Speaker 5: a lot of them, we employ them, that we love them,
Speaker 5: they and everything that we're built like. We actually have
Speaker 5: a tagline that says our innovation is driven by empathy,
Speaker 5: and that's empathy.
Speaker 3: For the driver.
Speaker 5: So we actually start We start by building a system
Speaker 5: that gives the driver the most comfortable and safe driving
Speaker 5: experience possible, and then we look at how we can
Speaker 5: extract efficiency numbers from that. And that's where we get
Speaker 5: these drivers flocking to us and saying, oh my gosh,
Speaker 5: please don't take this track this trailer away from us.
Speaker 5: My old peter Bilt feels like a brand new Tesla Semi.
Speaker 3: I love it.
Speaker 2: So I just learned when I was talking to you
Speaker 2: earlier in the green room about the lack of a
Speaker 2: torque converter. I had no idea that the transmission was
Speaker 2: so different.
Speaker 3: In a big rig, you have.
Speaker 5: A ton of torque that's either coming out of the
Speaker 5: motor or needs to be reacted on by the weight
Speaker 5: of the whole system, and so there's no true automatic
Speaker 5: trans Actually, I think Allison is just now releasing a
Speaker 5: new automatic transmission soon that has a torque converter. But
Speaker 5: a Class eight tractor trailer has a semi automated manual
Speaker 5: because of the big torque transitions. So what that means
Speaker 5: is that if you're on an eight percent grade with
Speaker 5: a full load, you can't get above fourteen to eighteen
Speaker 5: miles an hour because you can't tolerate the time that
Speaker 5: it takes to shift, and it's always monitoring torque and
Speaker 5: it doesn't want to blow the transmission up and it
Speaker 5: doesn't want to burn the clutches out, so it's in
Speaker 5: this kind of perpetual back between first and second or
Speaker 5: second and third gear. What we do is we sense,
Speaker 5: because we can kinematic again first principles thinking, we can
Speaker 5: sense the interactive forces and we categorize that, oh man,
Speaker 5: this trailer or the tractor is trying to shift. So
Speaker 5: now we do our torque fell algorithm and so we
Speaker 5: kind of as the torque is dropping from the tractor,
Speaker 5: we fill the torque on the trailer intelligently because we're
Speaker 5: looking at those forces in real time, and then we
Speaker 5: make sure that we make that feeling seamless. And now
Speaker 5: you get a shift that used to take one second
Speaker 5: or one point two seconds down to like zero point
Speaker 5: three seconds now. And it's also extending the life of
Speaker 5: the transmission too, So there are all of these other knockdown,
Speaker 5: knock on benefits that that show up.
Speaker 2: We're back to the trucks.
Speaker 1: I mean, you're right, Matt, Like it's it's like surprisingly fascinating. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you're completely sight about this. I'm like, wow, okay, And
Speaker 1: I mean I got more questions about EVS, but.
Speaker 2: And it's so multifaceted. I want I wanted to ask about.
Speaker 2: So what I find so interesting is suspension engineering and
Speaker 2: the transmission technology, right, and because I think what what
Speaker 2: we all want, and especially a purist like Hannah, is
Speaker 2: really good mechanical grip. Right, And that's what I heard
Speaker 2: you and Matt talking about a couple of times when
Speaker 2: you're testing that car, but also in reference to your
Speaker 2: GT three and to the most successful kind of cars
Speaker 2: that that we like that we like to talk about.
Speaker 5: I find I think maximizing mechanical grip is good. It's
Speaker 5: you know, it's kind of the mission of all the
Speaker 5: new super hyper mega cars. But I think for me,
Speaker 5: as a pure driving enthusiast, what I would prioritize is
Speaker 5: actually feeling the level of grip at all times over
Speaker 5: maximizing the grip I would rather have. So, for example,
Speaker 5: I have a nineteen seventy one BMW two thousand and
Speaker 5: two with weighs two thousand pounds as about two hundred
Speaker 5: and eighty horsepower. It is the most fun car I've
Speaker 5: ever driven, and I've driven all the great seventy three
Speaker 5: rs and all of this stuff. I actually went from
Speaker 5: a two oh five that had pretty good two five
Speaker 5: section tire that had pretty good grip down to a
Speaker 5: one eighty five, So that and my lap time's went
Speaker 5: down a little bit because I can actually now predict
Speaker 5: when the car is uh is coming off off of
Speaker 5: its grip. Like you know, Hannah, you do all of
Speaker 5: these vintage rallies, like how good does a proper bias
Speaker 5: ply tire that sized properly for the car feel and
Speaker 5: how predictable does that feel when you have the right
Speaker 5: amount of grip, not too much grip.
Speaker 4: That's everything. That's everything.
Speaker 1: I mean, that can make just what you're saying, like
Speaker 1: a car that doesn't have gobs of horsepower a really
Speaker 1: fun car to drive, because then you're working with weight
Speaker 1: and momentum. Yeah, and that's to me actually more fun.
Speaker 5: And the more grip you have, the more it masks
Speaker 5: all of the different things that are happening in the car.
Speaker 2: It's so funny that we focus on at least I do,
Speaker 2: you know, horsepower and torque and you know the traction
Speaker 2: control systems and all this stuff. But when we hear
Speaker 2: I mean you're at the Formula one race right when
Speaker 2: we hear drivers talking, or I watch Motor GP more
Speaker 2: when I hear pilots talking, it's all about the tire.
Speaker 2: I mean the tire. There should be a podcast that's
Speaker 2: just about tires, you know.
Speaker 4: I'm sure there is hire Dead yet.
Speaker 1: I was just listening yesterday to getting ready to talk
Speaker 1: to Alexander Rossi and he's got a podcast mostly about IndyCar.
Speaker 1: But there they talk all the time just about tire degradation.
Speaker 1: That's like fifty percent of their conversation.
Speaker 2: Really, it's true, but it's also the feel like you know,
Speaker 2: if you if you can tell when your front end
Speaker 2: is about to wash out, then you know when you
Speaker 2: can be at one hundred percent.
Speaker 5: Exactly, like you can start feeling like I mean, that's
Speaker 5: the brilliance of an early nine to eleven is that
Speaker 5: steering is so direct and you're sitting on top of that,
Speaker 5: that steering axis and you actually feel feel the little
Speaker 5: differences in weight when when you're kind of in a
Speaker 5: rut and you come out of a rut in one
Speaker 5: little lane and like the most insignificant thing that you
Speaker 5: would never feel is just such an event. In the
Speaker 5: nine to eleven. It's a positive event because you always
Speaker 5: feel like you have control if you're driving it properly.
Speaker 3: But it's it's there.
Speaker 5: And I think that's one of the challenges of you know,
Speaker 5: when you do a restomod, for example, if you do
Speaker 5: it balanced and correctly, you can kind of translate that
Speaker 5: feel up uniformly. But a lot of these folks that
Speaker 5: kind of hit and miss are the ones that are
Speaker 5: putting too much grip too much roll control and too
Speaker 5: much power in a platform that really needs more l Again.
Speaker 4: It's never meant for that, that's right.
Speaker 5: Yeah, Like, if you look at the nine to elevens,
Speaker 5: like the Singer versus a nine to eleven k that
Speaker 5: Tuttle's building, it's like insane, Like I would take you know,
Speaker 5: one Tuttle car over four or five of the Singer
Speaker 5: cars as beautiful and gorgeous as they are just everyone.
Speaker 1: I've never driven a tuttle car, but like the seriously
Speaker 1: serious nine to eleven guys are all about Tuttle forget
Speaker 1: any marketing. They don't need to market like, which that
Speaker 1: is legit.
Speaker 4: Completely, That's that for sure.
Speaker 1: I mean I have to ask Ali, you're you really
Speaker 1: sort of saddle two worlds between the EV's. But then also,
Speaker 1: like we're talking about classic cars and air cooled Porschas.
Speaker 2: That junxtaposition is so interesting, right.
Speaker 1: I mean, yeah, can can the two exist happily together sustainably,
Speaker 1: you know, forever in the future? And like, are you
Speaker 1: optimistic about EV's when all we hear about and I
Speaker 1: admit I'm part of the media writing these stories, but
Speaker 1: that EV sales are going down?
Speaker 5: Yeah, I think I'm still very optimistic about EV's. I think, say,
Speaker 5: EV sales are going down because we have market saturation,
Speaker 5: plus a little bit of an ambiguity of what the
Speaker 5: next phase of EV's are going to look like. You know, Volksmen,
Speaker 5: is no good charging network for it, and what's the
Speaker 5: charging network going to be to support what I'm building?
Speaker 5: So I think, you know, for me, the way I
Speaker 5: balance this is, I will I love all of my
Speaker 5: environmentalist friends, but I will never give up my my
Speaker 5: old cars. But they they're used in context, right, And
Speaker 5: and my commuter is a Rivian, and I love my truck,
Speaker 5: and I could never imagine driving another truck now that
Speaker 5: I've had this Rivian. And so I think if we
Speaker 5: contextualize these these tools, then there's plenty of room for
Speaker 5: you know, I actually envisioned an amazing world where we
Speaker 5: could go drive up in the La Canyons and we
Speaker 5: have no commuters up there because down in the you know,
Speaker 5: taking the the express lanes on their EV only highway, right.
Speaker 4: Right, great, great scenario. I love that idea.
Speaker 3: So imagine a world like that. And I actually think.
Speaker 2: Where the Angelus Crest is.
Speaker 5: Yeah, yeah, I think at the end of the day.
Speaker 5: We have to make room for both. We have to otherwise,
Speaker 5: otherwise nobody's gonna win and nobody's gonna give in.
Speaker 2: It's just so interesting that so you are, at the
Speaker 2: same time someone who loves and appreciates you champion the
Speaker 2: analog sort of feel of, you know, the pure experience,
Speaker 2: and as a technology innovator, you're like pushing the envelope
Speaker 2: of the future. So you're like, you've got one hand.
Speaker 3: I'm trying to offset all my old cars.
Speaker 2: But is there is there like a technological innovation that
Speaker 2: you absolutely love and would want to put on your
Speaker 2: BMW two thousand and two.
Speaker 5: Yeah, I mean, I'm actually going through a full tear
Speaker 5: down and rebuild to put a modern CANbus twelve V
Speaker 5: backbone in the two thousand and two so that when
Speaker 5: I'm gone, my kids can know how to service it
Speaker 5: and deal with it with whatever future tools the mechanics
Speaker 5: are going to have. So I think that there's some
Speaker 5: room for modern modernization and a lot of these new
Speaker 5: restorations that are out there. But I also think that
Speaker 5: there's some room for electrification in some of these restorations
Speaker 5: as well. I personally don't think at nine to eleven
Speaker 5: is the right car to electrify. But like we're all
Speaker 5: the Cadillacs and lowriders and like Lincoln's and like electrify
Speaker 5: those don't put some LS motor in that, Like that's
Speaker 5: what needs to be electrified. Electrify some of these old
Speaker 5: trucks that are driving around that are just kind of
Speaker 5: like show pieces, Like those are the things that we
Speaker 5: should start thinking about electrifying as resto mods. And and
Speaker 5: I think again there's room.
Speaker 3: For all of it.
Speaker 5: We just can't look at it as kind of an
Speaker 5: absolute and and you know, I would love to have
Speaker 5: an old electric Bentley or an old Rolls Royce that's
Speaker 5: been converted to electric and just works every single time.
Speaker 5: And but I wouldn't want an old electric Mira forget that.
Speaker 2: Yeah, would you electrify a roller Hannah?
Speaker 1: Never? No, No, I mean I can support your your viewpoint,
Speaker 1: but for myself, no, I would never.
Speaker 3: I wouldn't do it or Rolls Royce either.
Speaker 1: Don't worry, Yeah, I just it comes to me. It
Speaker 1: comes back to the charging network at this point. You know,
Speaker 1: it's less about like how I think it would drive
Speaker 1: and more about the reality of trying to live with that.
Speaker 1: I would hate it. I would just hate it. I
Speaker 1: get a lot of stress trying to charge in LA.
Speaker 2: Even that reminds me of one thing that I had
Speaker 2: I've been wanting to ask you. I spent the last
Speaker 2: week driving GMC Sierra EV and I think it's a
Speaker 2: great use case for electric vehicle. Like it's the truck
Speaker 2: is so big. I can fit my two daughters car
Speaker 2: seats in the back, and you know we can fit
Speaker 2: this strollers in the bed obviously, you know, for a
Speaker 2: family vehicle. I think everyone now understands that a pickup
Speaker 2: truck is a fantastic solution. Sure, and you know, the
Speaker 2: EV propulsion system means it's not as herky jerky. It's
Speaker 2: very smooth and quiet. And the one thing I've noticed
Speaker 2: though in and I love I love, by the way,
Speaker 2: the infotainment that GM. I think and Mercedes are the
Speaker 2: two manufacturers that really get it right.
Speaker 3: But are you sure about that? I really think, I
Speaker 3: debate you.
Speaker 2: Yeah, do you think there's another one that's better?
Speaker 3: Mercedes is horrible? Probably we love it.
Speaker 5: I think it's I love Mercedes. I am die hard
Speaker 5: Mercedes Benz. I think the three hundred SL is the
Speaker 5: greatest car ever made.
Speaker 4: What's the problem with the inbox?
Speaker 5: I think, so we just bought a g l E
Speaker 5: sixty three S. We got Lemon Laude A a year ago,
Speaker 5: and then we went after the Lemon law we went
Speaker 5: to go a new one and they went from the
Speaker 5: push buttons to the capacitive touch. And then I started
Speaker 5: to spend more time with the new version of MBUX.
Speaker 5: And before this I had an s FI fifty or
Speaker 5: a five eighty sixty whatever S class with that same infotainment.
Speaker 5: It was frustrating the number of redundancies that they had
Speaker 5: for interactions in the vehicle, where you just started to
Speaker 5: get confused about what interaction should I prioritize over the other.
Speaker 5: And in fact, I don't want redundancy. I want this
Speaker 5: to do something different. And so there was redundancy but
Speaker 5: no flexibility in the infotainment layout. In addition to that,
Speaker 5: it's frankly just too much. It's too distracting for at
Speaker 5: least for me. And I think like, for example, if
Speaker 5: you look at the previous generation g Wagon where it's
Speaker 5: relatively simple, there's a screen there, I think the bus, Yeah,
Speaker 5: I think that hit it. Well, Like for me, this
Speaker 5: kind of two thousand and fifteen and through twenty twenty.
Speaker 5: Time frame twenty nineteen kind of was the sweet spot,
Speaker 5: and they've gone a little bit too far on the
Speaker 5: current model. And that's literally why I don't have an
Speaker 5: S class right now, because I don't want to buy
Speaker 5: that infotainment system.
Speaker 1: The thing with the redundancies is I can see your point,
Speaker 1: but to my mind, it's like, oh, there are different
Speaker 1: ways to get to the same spot, which is to
Speaker 1: me more convenient.
Speaker 4: Sure, Like I don't have.
Speaker 1: To go through only one There's not only just one
Speaker 1: channel to get to whatever I want to do.
Speaker 4: I can find it a couple ways.
Speaker 5: There's this philosophy called paradox of choice where when you're
Speaker 5: under pressure the you know there's a bunch of different
Speaker 5: elements to paradox of choice, but you don't want to
Speaker 5: hand the customer too many options. And the reason that
Speaker 5: I'm confident in saying what I am is because then
Speaker 5: I went out and bought a Cayenne and the new Cayenne,
Speaker 5: which is a little bit more sparse and it does
Speaker 5: have a little bit of redundancies, but it's straight into
Speaker 5: the point. The buttons do what the buttons need to do.
Speaker 5: Capacitive touches there for the more deep interactions, and they've
Speaker 5: layered those interactions in such a way that do not
Speaker 5: distract you from the point of driving to drive.
Speaker 2: I do think also especially for an S class, like
Speaker 2: on a nine to eleven, I sort of want the
Speaker 2: volume control on the steering wheel as well as the
Speaker 2: knob right, But on the S class it can just
Speaker 2: be the knob. I don't need the steering wheel volume control.
Speaker 3: I think it should be on both well.
Speaker 5: But I also think that like these little elements, like
Speaker 5: for example, one of the things that we we learned
Speaker 5: in the early days of Tesla was that different manufacturers
Speaker 5: will put the volume on the different side of the
Speaker 5: steering wheel, and like, why does Mercedes put the volume
Speaker 5: on the right side when there's another knob in the
Speaker 5: center console and sometimes in rob on the dash, it
Speaker 5: should be on the left side. When you're one hand
Speaker 5: driving with your arm on the on the on the
Speaker 5: windowsill and your other arm is you know whatever, holding
Speaker 5: your partner's hand or whatever you're doing, you want to
Speaker 5: have the volume kind of so you want to distribute
Speaker 5: that interaction so that you always have a way like
Speaker 5: if you have a soda in one hand, and you
Speaker 5: want to turn the volume up on the radio, Like,
Speaker 5: what are you going to do if it's in your
Speaker 5: right hand?
Speaker 3: You tell you it?
Speaker 4: Ali, are you right handed or left handed?
Speaker 3: Left handed?
Speaker 2: Me too?
Speaker 1: The best people are, okay, So this so a counterpoint
Speaker 1: to this though, I think you want a left handed
Speaker 1: roller button because you're left handed. Because for me, one
Speaker 1: of my favorite little inventions ever is the right handed
Speaker 1: on steering wheel volume control in a Mercedes because I
Speaker 1: don't have to take my hand off the wheel. I mean,
Speaker 1: I don't know about you, but I'm nine and three.
Speaker 1: All the time, I never remove my hands from the yeah, right.
Speaker 5: But yeah, I just see it as an efficiency thing
Speaker 5: where you can play with the volume with either hand.
Speaker 3: Maybe I'm biased.
Speaker 2: I just want to quickly interject that Dodge has the
Speaker 2: best system with the knobs behind the steam hearing wheel
Speaker 2: for channel changing of volume. Anyway, Anyway, we could debate
Speaker 2: this forever. I wanted to ask you an ENVH question,
Speaker 2: which is I've discovered in the GMC Sierra EV that
Speaker 2: I'm driving it was also the same in the Hummer
Speaker 2: GMC Hummer EV and the F one fifty Lightning that
Speaker 2: I hear a lot more cabin noise and kind of
Speaker 2: rattles and squeaks of the headliner and all that stuff
Speaker 2: in these big electric trucks than I ever have in
Speaker 2: a gas truck or a diesel truck. And it just
Speaker 2: made me wonder, does the motor drowned out somehow the
Speaker 2: sounds of the car in a way that the EV doesn't.
Speaker 2: Is that a problem that maybe Tesla worked on.
Speaker 5: Or I think it's a multi So there's it's a
Speaker 5: compounding problem. So there's what you said. So you haven't
Speaker 5: an engine in there, no matter how smooth it is,
Speaker 5: when it's under torque, it's vibrating and it's making some
Speaker 5: noises and things like that above about thirty to forty
Speaker 5: miles an hour, unless you have like a real performance car,
Speaker 5: everything comes from tire and wind noise. So that being said,
Speaker 5: when specifically, the vehicles that you mentioned now are being
Speaker 5: built with stiffer structures because now they have batteries in them,
Speaker 5: and the vehicle structures of these things that used to
Speaker 5: be trucks are now much more like SUVs and vehicles.
Speaker 5: And if you don't treat the other elements that you know,
Speaker 5: the interior MVH pieces, it's almost kind of like the
Speaker 5: vehicle was engineered and the NVH was kind of pasted on,
Speaker 5: and then the next generation is going to have purpose built.
Speaker 5: And I'm not in these companies. I'm not making any
Speaker 5: claims or any of that stuff, but that's the perception
Speaker 5: that I have. But you know the reason I say
Speaker 5: that is that when we built those first handful of modelsses,
Speaker 5: we actually had to hire more people into the NVH
Speaker 5: team to really kind of come back and say, Okay,
Speaker 5: how do we actually fix this the right way? And
Speaker 5: we innovated a lot in NBH, even on those first
Speaker 5: models's in ways that you know a lot of the
Speaker 5: different car companies started to follow. So there is both
Speaker 5: sides of that.
Speaker 1: Can I just jump in and say, for anyone who
Speaker 1: doesn't know, NVH is noise, vibration, and harshness Basically whatever
Speaker 1: noise comes in through the car, through the engines, tailpipes, road.
Speaker 3: Noise, break, squeal, interior rattles, all of that.
Speaker 2: And in the EV obviously there's no underlying motor I
Speaker 2: mean engine sound to mask anything, so it's very quiet.
Speaker 2: I of course put the fake sound on in any
Speaker 2: EV where I have the option, and I usually love it.
Speaker 2: And this is the thing, and I think I'm ridiculous,
Speaker 2: but you know what, the Chevy has a great sound.
Speaker 2: Mercedes I love their fake you know, engine sounds. And
Speaker 2: you were saying that I think the Ionic n which
Speaker 2: is by the way, totally different from any other EV
Speaker 2: and that you can shift it, which is also a
Speaker 2: very cool thing that I'd love to have you explain.
Speaker 2: But you said you like the noise that the totally
Speaker 2: fake noise that that makes too.
Speaker 5: Yeah, I mean that was fake enough and to where
Speaker 5: it was not cartoony but not trying to be engine. Yeah,
Speaker 5: the the Ionic five end was a really cool experience.
Speaker 3: You know.
Speaker 5: The thing that we always say a lot of people
Speaker 5: talk about the kind of the simulated shifting or the
Speaker 5: fake shifting, it's actually not that. It's actually simulated torque
Speaker 5: and power curve then that you can then shift through.
Speaker 5: And so that's the real key element here is that
Speaker 5: when you're on the track or even driving in the
Speaker 5: canyons or whatever with an Ionic five V and even
Speaker 5: in the traffic, you actually feel that torque and power
Speaker 5: curve rise and then drop back down, and then your
Speaker 5: natural intuition is I need to shift, I need to
Speaker 5: shift and it almost just comes as like second nature
Speaker 5: in that vehicle. And it's because not because of the noise,
Speaker 5: not because of your ability to interrupt torque with a
Speaker 5: shift lever, but it's because it's following a very very
Speaker 5: specific torque and power curve. And one of the things
Speaker 5: that Matt and I, Matt Farah and I were talking
Speaker 5: about with the Macon and we talked to the Hundai
Speaker 5: engineers about this is put a dial in here so
Speaker 5: that I can actually go through different engine maps. So
Speaker 5: I want to see what a V twelve swap is
Speaker 5: like in Ionic five N or if someone LS swapped it.
Speaker 5: So then you have all of these different power and
Speaker 5: torque curves that you can experience in your Ionic five
Speaker 5: in or you know, Portion wants to do it with
Speaker 5: a Macon or something like that, and it really it
Speaker 5: amplifies the experience beyond just you know, some some noises
Speaker 5: with shifting fun.
Speaker 2: All right, dude, let me just get your favorite cars
Speaker 2: and then we'll go. Okay, I mean, I know you
Speaker 2: mentioned a few that you have, and the two thousand
Speaker 2: and two I imagine would be at the top.
Speaker 3: Of your list personally.
Speaker 2: Yeah, but you have a GT three or you had
Speaker 2: a GT three as well, And.
Speaker 5: Yeah, you had a nine nine one GT three. Uh,
Speaker 5: sold that and then bought a car that had back seats,
Speaker 5: which was a nine nine one dot two Targa GTS
Speaker 5: and mint Green.
Speaker 2: And did you like the Targa better? Because I feel like,
Speaker 2: for NVH, the GT three is like too much for
Speaker 2: a daily.
Speaker 5: The Targa's got its fair share of squeaks and rattles,
Speaker 5: but it's not a stiff. It's not as stiff. But
Speaker 5: you know, I so obviously my my cars are never stock.
Speaker 5: So my Targa has like roof suspension and wheels, and
Speaker 5: alois kind of blessed the car with a bunch of
Speaker 5: his cool parts. But the reason I like that Targa
Speaker 5: is there's a bunch of history with Targa tops and Porsche,
Speaker 5: and I'm I really really love the history of Porsche.
Speaker 5: I love the history of BMW, which is a whole
Speaker 5: different subject, but the Targa was always something really special
Speaker 5: to me. And the first Porsche that I really fell
Speaker 5: in love with was a nine sixty four Targa in
Speaker 5: mint Green when I saw that as a kid. And
Speaker 5: then you see all the cup cars and all the
Speaker 5: fun colors and nine sixty four cup cars back in
Speaker 5: the nineties. I was like, oh my god, now I
Speaker 5: love porsia. And so then I literally was in the
Speaker 5: middle of the pandemic on my birthday scrolling and I
Speaker 5: was on peak car market and I said, oh, look
Speaker 5: at this mint Green manual nine nine one dot two
Speaker 5: Target with zero miles on it on this auction site
Speaker 5: and it closes on my birthday today. Click done, And
Speaker 5: so I bought it. It was I was like, I
Speaker 5: looked at my wife at the time. I was like, hey,
Speaker 5: I'm buying this and she said, are you okay? And
Speaker 5: so anyways, I bought that car. I love that car.
Speaker 5: So anyways, that's my That's the car I put the
Speaker 5: most number of miles on. It's got over forty thousand
Speaker 5: miles now in three years. I've driven it up to
Speaker 5: Jasper and Vamp and back a couple of times. And yeah,
Speaker 5: yeah on LA from the Bay area San Jose.
Speaker 4: Wow, Yeah, that's impressive.
Speaker 3: I drive that car a lot.
Speaker 4: That's great.
Speaker 3: As Magnus says, dirt don't slow you down.
Speaker 5: And so and then my other car is my nineteen
Speaker 5: seventy one BMW two thousand and two that I've had
Speaker 5: since ninety seven. It was my college cheap beater for
Speaker 5: five hundred bucks and it's been rebuilt a couple of times,
Speaker 5: and then it ended up being in the BMW Museum
Speaker 5: in Spartanburg and it was it won a bunch of
Speaker 5: events during Pebble Beach Car Week when I finished it.
Speaker 5: So that's kind of my favorite car ever. Now the
Speaker 5: car that's missing from my collection is an Early nine
Speaker 5: to eleven, and I would say, for me, the ultimate
Speaker 5: early nine to eleven is a seventy three RS and
Speaker 5: then second place is nine cc four career RS, And
Speaker 5: both of those are kind of on my radar right now.
Speaker 5: Whichever one I find. There's a lot of seventy three
Speaker 5: rs is out there, but I kind of really want
Speaker 5: a nine st four RS the most.
Speaker 1: I'm with You do well on your hunt. You'll have
Speaker 1: to come back and tell us when you find one.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, I would you find the one for you?
Speaker 2: Well? We do.
Speaker 5: We do one of these the fun things that we
Speaker 5: do at Range is we do community days for the
Speaker 5: drivers and for our partners, and we do these community
Speaker 5: days at big racetracks, and so we rent the racetrack
Speaker 5: for the whole day we did. The last one was
Speaker 5: at Sonoma Raceway. We'll invite you folks to come out.
Speaker 5: We'll have some fun cars to drive around and you
Speaker 5: can bring whatever you want.
Speaker 2: I look forward to it.
Speaker 3: Royce is welcome absolutely. Okay, good, Well we'll have Matt
Speaker 3: bring his Bentley out.
Speaker 2: All right, dude, so great to meet you. Thank you
Speaker 2: so much for coming in. It's been such a pleasure
Speaker 2: and it.
Speaker 3: Was so great to see you.
Speaker 2: Yeah, all right, Well that was a great conversation. I'm
Speaker 2: so glad we could get him in and on the
Speaker 2: show and on my TV show as well.
Speaker 4: Yeah, we need to have him back. He's really fascinating.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I look, I feel like there's a font there's
Speaker 2: a well of stuff still to come from him. He
Speaker 2: was explaining like how Ken Block when he was first
Speaker 2: doing an EV, Jim Conna realized that there needed to
Speaker 2: be a torque curve, an artificial torque curve, and that's
Speaker 2: how like they got to that. And also how like
Speaker 2: he realized there needed to be torque phil in a
Speaker 2: big rig transmission. Like all this stuff that's way beyond
Speaker 2: my brain.
Speaker 1: But I also like how he he like doesn't shy
Speaker 1: away from answering questions about Elon and the early days
Speaker 1: at Tesla. Yeah, because that's what I mean for me,
Speaker 1: that's I want to know all the gossips.
Speaker 4: So that's cool.
Speaker 2: Elon Musk has such great hair now, and in the
Speaker 2: early days of Tesla he was like as bald as
Speaker 2: I am. I gotta find his guy, find his guy.
Speaker 2: I gotta find his hair guy. All right, Well, that
Speaker 2: does it for today's show. I had a great time,
Speaker 2: so thanks for joining me.
Speaker 4: Me too.
Speaker 1: I still don't want to become a truck driver, but
Speaker 1: I'm interested.
Speaker 4: I'm in a think it's fascinating.
Speaker 2: I totally want to. I mean, if if something were
Speaker 2: to happen to my wife and kids, you know, I can't.
Speaker 2: I like, your bed could be behind you. That's so awesome.
Speaker 2: You're driving in a cab that has a whole thing.
Speaker 2: I would love it, just chasing that a long white line.
Speaker 4: What would your name be on the ceber?
Speaker 2: My dad's uh, my dad's handle was Snowball, which I
Speaker 2: don't know if that had any kind of double entendre.
Speaker 2: When I was a kid, I didn't really think about it,
Speaker 2: but I think I might adopt that for some reason.
Speaker 4: I like that inherit it love it on the internet.
Speaker 2: I'm shower fan in any of the forums that I
Speaker 2: hang out in.
Speaker 4: Oh, no baths for you.
Speaker 2: I just when I was a kid. I love to
Speaker 2: take showers. I could have spent hours in the shower.
Speaker 2: I still can. My wife yells at me all the time.
Speaker 4: Hours in the shower.
Speaker 2: The Matt Miller story, Yeah, that's my that's my autobiography.
Speaker 2: All right. Cool. Uh. We'll be back with you, same time,
Speaker 2: same place next week, and as usual, shoot us any
Speaker 2: emails if you like. Hot Pursuit at bloomberg dot net
Speaker 2: is our address email address. And that's how I knew
Speaker 2: that it's not Angeli's Crest because somebody emailed me and
Speaker 2: was like, dude, you're you're wrong.
Speaker 4: You know what?
Speaker 1: That is a Tomato, Tomato Porsche type of thing. I
Speaker 1: don't think you should feel bad about that.
Speaker 2: I if it's Tomato Tomato, I have no problem. But
Speaker 2: if it's Porsche Porsche, I have an issue because the
Speaker 2: name is Porschae. That's a family name, Porsche.
Speaker 1: I know, but I am not going to be so
Speaker 1: pedantic as to call someone out for quote unquote saying
Speaker 1: it wrong. If they say Porsche because sometimes that just
Speaker 1: flows better when you're speaking. You know, we naturally do
Speaker 1: you say Caribbean or Caribbean, Well, it kind of depends
Speaker 1: on what I'm saying in the flow of my conversation.
Speaker 2: True, Also, sometimes it just sounds cooler, Like when Tom
Speaker 2: Cruise says Porsche in Risky Business. I wouldn't correct him.
Speaker 4: I'm not going to correct Tom Cruise.
Speaker 2: I am pretty pedantic when it comes to language a
Speaker 2: lot of times, but not on that issue.
Speaker 4: Okay, well, I got questions for you that we're going
Speaker 4: to talk about later.
Speaker 3: All right.
Speaker 1: I'm Matt Miller and I'm Hannah Elliott, and this is
Speaker 1: Bloomberg