Speaker 1: Bloomberg Audio Studios, Podcasts, radio News. I'm Matt Miller and
Speaker 1: I'm Hannah Elliott, and this is Hot Pursuit.
Speaker 2: All right.
Speaker 3: We have a really cool episode today because one of
Speaker 3: my favorite guests that we've ever had was Alex Roy,
Speaker 3: Cannonball run record holder at one point. I don't think
Speaker 3: he holds it now, but in a normal Cannonball run,
Speaker 3: which is like the Burt Reynolds, you know, starting in
Speaker 3: New York, ending in La driving as fast as you
Speaker 3: can and avoiding the cops. But now he's done something different.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and this is actually a new record, which is
Speaker 1: the FSD drive Coast to Coast, which he did in
Speaker 1: forty five hours thirty six minutes. That's including five hours
Speaker 1: worth of charge time.
Speaker 3: And it's extra special because you and I were with
Speaker 3: him the night that he left.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and he swore us to secrecy, but he was
Speaker 1: all pumped up with his lovely co driver who is
Speaker 1: going incognito mostly. Yes, Yeah, that was very cool. I
Speaker 1: mean I just can't imagine going out the night before
Speaker 1: the morning, you know you're going to set off and
Speaker 1: just drive for days.
Speaker 3: Yeah. And by the way, I so I've met Alex before,
Speaker 3: but only briefly, and but I've been following him forever.
Speaker 3: He's also like both he and Carrie when I met
Speaker 3: them at the Classic Car Club. You know when you
Speaker 3: meet someone and you feel like you have been best
Speaker 3: friends forever. I instantly had that, and.
Speaker 1: You know, the New Yorker and me, of course, when
Speaker 1: I meet people like that, I'm just like, well, we'll see,
Speaker 1: we'll see. Like I can feel it that I really
Speaker 1: like them and they feel very copaesthetic and simpatico. But
Speaker 1: I'm always just like, we'll see. But no, there's no
Speaker 1: other there's no there's no other shoe dropping. It's it's authentic,
Speaker 1: it's genuine. It's very nice. And I've known Alex for
Speaker 1: a long time and he's one of those people that
Speaker 1: you don't try to stay in contact with, you just
Speaker 1: are in contact with, and then you look back and
Speaker 1: you're like, oh, yeah, i've known him for I don't know,
Speaker 1: ten twelve years.
Speaker 3: Well I'm looking forward to that. I'm from Ohio, so
Speaker 3: there's no skepticism in me, and like when I met Carrie,
Speaker 3: we both have lived in Berlin for a long time.
Speaker 3: We're both fairly new parents, and oh, I didn't know
Speaker 3: that yeah, we have like so many things in common
Speaker 3: that I was like, wow, we we should go have dinner.
Speaker 3: So it was great, and I'm really glad we were
Speaker 3: a part of their trip, their journey. Let's get into
Speaker 3: our interview with Alex Roy. I'm so glad you could
Speaker 3: join us.
Speaker 1: We need to celebrate. This is a celebration. Really.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: The last time we saw you, Alex, you were this
Speaker 1: was it was the night before the morning of oh
Speaker 1: oh yeah, and we were sworn to secrecy about what
Speaker 1: you were about to undertake.
Speaker 4: So I am a firm believer that one should keep
Speaker 4: these things a secret until for a long time after
Speaker 4: one does it, or at least a little bit of time,
Speaker 4: because there's always someone out there who feels super competitive
Speaker 4: who might want.
Speaker 2: To sabotage the drive.
Speaker 4: This is less of an issue with you know, electric
Speaker 4: and autonomous drives because they're slower. But you know, there
Speaker 4: was a time when people who did cannonball drives would
Speaker 4: call it the police and call in other cars and
Speaker 4: it got pretty hairy.
Speaker 2: Yeah it was dirty.
Speaker 4: That's not the case anymore, but still, you know, you
Speaker 4: never know what's gonna happen.
Speaker 3: Wait, so, first of all, I knew about this, But
Speaker 3: I host a daily television show, and so every day
Speaker 3: when there was something, you know, there's often news about Tesla.
Speaker 3: For example, it was hard for me to keep my
Speaker 3: mouth shut until you finally released the results on your
Speaker 3: LinkedIn page, and then I talked about like every day
Speaker 3: for a week. So I kept steering people towards your
Speaker 3: LinkedIn page summarize for us exactly what you did.
Speaker 4: Okay, so you know, the cannonball run is of historical
Speaker 4: legacy American car culture.
Speaker 2: People drive cross country as fast as possible. Uh, but
Speaker 2: it's always been done.
Speaker 5: As fast as possible.
Speaker 4: And we know with the you know advent of you know,
Speaker 4: driver assistance systems and now you know, autonomous vehicles, it
Speaker 4: becomes a lot more interesting to try stuff that hasn't
Speaker 4: been done before. Notably, how fast can you get a
Speaker 4: vehicle cross country that is send me autonomous or autonomous?
Speaker 4: And so Elon Mullusk said, I think it was eight
Speaker 4: or nine years ago that it would be possible to
Speaker 4: summon your vehicle, your Tesla cross country. It would just
Speaker 4: come to you, and no one had tried it before
Speaker 4: to the best of my knowledge, under cannonball conditions meaning
Speaker 4: NonStop except for charging your gas, and so I'm like,
Speaker 4: why not do that? And so in late December, on
Speaker 4: a date I shall not yet, well everybody knows it
Speaker 4: was late summer, I went country with my co driver,
Speaker 4: Sea Fox, whose identity is still not public, but we
Speaker 4: have met her.
Speaker 3: I mean, there are pictures of her on your site.
Speaker 2: Yes she uh, let's just say.
Speaker 3: Her name is Sea Fox as you put it on
Speaker 3: your LinkedIn page.
Speaker 4: Well you know, but look, hey, look her name is
Speaker 4: Carrie Schuler and she's worked for Porsche.
Speaker 2: She's great. She's been in fashion, she was a stylist, but.
Speaker 4: Most importantly Tesla owner and like I think eight or
Speaker 4: ten years living in Germany, high speed driving experience.
Speaker 2: She's been to racist school. She's one of a kind.
Speaker 4: So we went across and tried to come up with
Speaker 4: a rule set that poorted kind of canniball history to
Speaker 4: autonomous driving. And you know, the rules are no stopping
Speaker 4: except to charge. And since the metrics aren't top speed,
Speaker 4: the metrics are how close to one hundred autonomous driving
Speaker 4: can we get? That's that's the goal, and that's the bar.
Speaker 4: Whatever we do is the bar. And then in the future,
Speaker 4: as future software iterations come from Tesla or a competitor
Speaker 4: comes out with a vehicle that is capable of doing
Speaker 4: something similar. People now have a way of measuring the
Speaker 4: both the quality and the capability of an autonomous driving system,
Speaker 4: and so I kind of humorously called this the Cannibal Run,
Speaker 4: the nerve burg Ring of autonomy, because it's a bench bar.
Speaker 5: And you know, everybody, Hannah, you've driven the Neurveburgering, haven't you?
Speaker 1: I haven't. No, I haven't.
Speaker 2: You've never driven it.
Speaker 5: I have driven it, And did you find that challenging?
Speaker 3: I found it very challenging. It was literally twenty five
Speaker 3: years ago, but it was awesome, right. I didn't drive
Speaker 3: it terrified. I didn't drive it as fast as I
Speaker 3: could because I was scared that I would crash.
Speaker 2: You know, we're in the same boat.
Speaker 4: I went for the first time last year, and I
Speaker 4: was suddenly I got it. Like the peak people car
Speaker 4: makers take their cars there as fast as they can
Speaker 4: because they know most people will.
Speaker 2: Never drive that fast there.
Speaker 4: But that the potential, like the potentiality and like of
Speaker 4: what your car could do if you wanted to is
Speaker 4: the lives in the minds of everyone who buys a
Speaker 4: sports car and so what if we took the Nurber
Speaker 4: Ring and did it for autonomy and that's the cannonball run.
Speaker 4: So we got cross country in forty five hours and
Speaker 4: thirty six minutes.
Speaker 3: Was it New York to Phoenix or New York to
Speaker 3: La or what did you?
Speaker 2: New York to La?
Speaker 5: Which is the classic cannonball where in La?
Speaker 1: And well we have specifics for the Angelinos.
Speaker 4: So the finish line is the portafinu in And which
Speaker 4: is set just south of LA. And the start line
Speaker 4: is the Red Ball Garage in midtown Manhattan. And so
Speaker 4: actually forty five thirty six is pretty good, would be
Speaker 4: pretty good even for like one hundred percent human driven time.
Speaker 2: It's a little less than six hours at charge time.
Speaker 4: So thirty nine forty four I have time, which is
Speaker 4: actually a really good time.
Speaker 3: What's your fastest what's your fastest time ever? Alex?
Speaker 4: Uh, My fastest time is thirty one hours and four
Speaker 4: minutes in Uh, you know BMW five, I mean the
Speaker 4: current canniball record internal combustion. I think it's like twenty
Speaker 4: five and change.
Speaker 3: Who has that?
Speaker 4: Oh my buddy Arnie Towman, he went across during the
Speaker 4: COVID lockdowns. And I don't know if that'll ever be beaten,
Speaker 4: but I have predicted years ago that someday an electric
Speaker 4: vehicle would break the gas time because if you look
Speaker 4: at the rate of improvement electric vehicle technology, it looks
Speaker 4: like the lines will cross in the next I think
Speaker 4: ten years, and then after that autonomous driving. Eventually, I'm
Speaker 4: certain that a drive this vehicle could be electric will
Speaker 4: break Arnie Toeman's time of twenty five hours and change.
Speaker 4: I'm convinced of it because eventually, and this is where
Speaker 4: this is all going, when the technology is capable of
Speaker 4: driving safer than a human in most conditions, eventually you'll
Speaker 4: be able to raise the speed limit of that vehicle
Speaker 4: in the software, and then it will it'll break the
Speaker 4: human record.
Speaker 5: That's inevitable.
Speaker 3: I don't want to get too drawn off on a tangent,
Speaker 3: but are we already there that the technology is safer
Speaker 3: than humans? Like, aren't there driverless taxis in San Francisco
Speaker 3: and Phoenix and you know that just don't crash very much.
Speaker 4: Well, I ride Weimo's every day. I live in Scottsdale,
Speaker 4: and they're terrific. Waimo has released data indicating that they
Speaker 4: are and this depends on how you measure it. That
Speaker 4: they are safer than the average human driver where they operate,
Speaker 4: But where they operate is the key phrase here, because
Speaker 4: at highway speeds in bad weather things get more complicated.
Speaker 4: We've not yet seen any driverless vehicle operate in those conditions,
Speaker 4: you know, for a lot of miles, and they're not
Speaker 4: available to public yet anyway, they're being tested. So I'm
Speaker 4: confident based on Weymo's progress that they will eventually do
Speaker 4: highway speeds in all conditions, but they do not yet
Speaker 4: offer commercial service that goes, you know, outside of an
Speaker 4: urban area like Scottsdale, or like Phoenix, Metro and San Francisco.
Speaker 4: Eventually they will, and so will everybody who wants to
Speaker 4: be in this business. You have to because if you
Speaker 4: want to if you want to sell I think a
Speaker 4: car to someone in twenty five years, it's going to
Speaker 4: have to have autonomous capabilities, drier less capabilities. It's not
Speaker 4: gonna be restricted to fleets and people like to go
Speaker 4: on vacation.
Speaker 1: And you're making a distinction between autonomous vehicles and electric vehicles,
Speaker 1: you know, because I think oftentimes those are just lumped
Speaker 1: together as if you have one you have the other.
Speaker 1: But it sounds like there's a specific separation in your
Speaker 1: mind between the two.
Speaker 4: So uh, there was a time when, you know, consultants
Speaker 4: years ago said that the future of all cars was
Speaker 4: case connected, autonomous, shared, and electric, and I said that,
Speaker 4: I'm like, that's insane. Americans don't really like sharing. Many
Speaker 4: of them don't want electric car connectivity.
Speaker 2: Well, I think if you if you have red state,
Speaker 2: people own guns. They don't want to be connected.
Speaker 4: They want their privacy and elect Well, uh yeah, and
Speaker 4: that's an autonomous Well, I think a lot of people
Speaker 4: will want a choice. I like to say that I'm
Speaker 4: pro choice in the war on driving, So I like
Speaker 4: to have an autonomus vehicle that has a steering wheel.
Speaker 2: Yeah, actually it is. That's on the Human Driving Associations here,
Speaker 2: it's I sell those.
Speaker 4: But you know, I think the distinction between electric and
Speaker 4: eternal combustion is more of a political one because there
Speaker 4: are countries like China where I think one hundred percent
Speaker 4: of cars sold will be electric within a few years,
Speaker 4: and Norway it's it's I don't know, do you know what, Hannah,
Speaker 4: do you know it's close.
Speaker 1: I mean, it's toughs biggest Marketer, it was forever.
Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, and so but you know, with the recent
Speaker 4: election in the US, I think we're going to see
Speaker 4: gas and hybrids have a new lease on life.
Speaker 2: So uh.
Speaker 4: But there is a weird thing about internal combustion cars
Speaker 4: and autonomy because autonomous UH driving software is generally very smooth.
Speaker 4: The best systems are quite smooth. Sometimes the vehicles I
Speaker 4: don't want to name names vehicles, gas vehicles or hybrid
Speaker 4: vehicles that have suboptimal transmission.
Speaker 1: I don't think anyone listens to this, So you can
Speaker 1: name names if you wanted.
Speaker 4: To stay all right, So back in the day, this
Speaker 4: is seven eight years ago. I tested a Mercedes E Class,
Speaker 4: which is a great car, but when you used its
Speaker 4: drive pilot drive pilot system, which was like their first
Speaker 4: generation UH drivers and software, the band in which it
Speaker 4: operated interacted with the trans mission shift points in such
Speaker 4: a way that it was really uncomfortable to use it.
Speaker 4: And I was like, wow, I wish this car had
Speaker 4: been electric, because then you have the linear power of
Speaker 4: electric drivetrain and the linear performance of the of the
Speaker 4: driver assistance. And so I mean, I think it's inevitable
Speaker 4: all vehicles will be electric, But how long that takes
Speaker 4: as a political issue.
Speaker 3: I just want to tell you that chat gpt tells
Speaker 3: me in Norway, ninety six point four percent of all
Speaker 3: new cars registered last year we're fully electric, battery electric vehicles,
Speaker 3: and they cite electrive dot com as their source.
Speaker 1: So thank you. That's a good fi.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I'm obsessed with chat gpt. By the way, what's
Speaker 3: the difference between autonomous and semi autonomous and fully autonomous?
Speaker 3: Like I'm in a FD I'm I'm in a GMC
Speaker 3: Yukon Denali Ultimate right now and it's got supercrews which
Speaker 3: is really cool, but it obviously doesn't take me, you know,
Speaker 3: on and off the highway from my house to the
Speaker 3: grocery store kind of thing.
Speaker 4: Well, uh, this is a this is a semantic problem
Speaker 4: because for a long time, self driving meant you, well,
Speaker 4: if you go to India, a self driving car is
Speaker 4: a tax to the human driver because you don't have
Speaker 4: to do the driving. And so for many years, self
Speaker 4: driving was a vehicle that was driverless. But then when
Speaker 4: companies started releasing driver assistance and called it self driving,
Speaker 4: it kind of muddy the waters. And Tesla came out
Speaker 4: with full self driving, which but that's it still requires
Speaker 4: a supervisor. And so then you know, WEIMA went from
Speaker 4: marketing they had a website called Let's Talk self Driving,
Speaker 4: they switched to Let's Talk Autonomous Driving because they felt
Speaker 4: like self driving stolen.
Speaker 1: Yeah yeah, yeah.
Speaker 4: It sucks and so and then autonomous got kind of
Speaker 4: stolen by companies marketing self driver assistance, and so it
Speaker 4: became a total hot. So today, I would argue that
Speaker 4: if it's capable of driverless operation, you have to just
Speaker 4: call it driverless, because otherwise it gets thrown in the
Speaker 4: in the soup with driver assistance systems. So I would
Speaker 4: say in a perfect world, autonomous would being driverless. It
Speaker 4: doesn't always mean that, so I always use semi as
Speaker 4: the prefix to distinguish that there's someone in a seat
Speaker 4: and to classify this specifically what we did Carrie and
Speaker 4: I I call it the production autonomy record, because the
Speaker 4: Tesla is the only car you can buy which is
Speaker 4: potentially capable of fully autonomous driverless operation.
Speaker 2: It isn't yet, but it.
Speaker 5: I'd convinced that it will be.
Speaker 4: And this is and I used to work at a
Speaker 4: competing company at our GOAI, but I'm.
Speaker 2: Convinced that they can't. And the only other record that
Speaker 2: I'm aware that.
Speaker 4: Exists in this category would be is a wild card.
Speaker 4: A guy named Jay Roberts, bravest man I know, has
Speaker 4: a Prius and he put a device called the Comma AI.
Speaker 2: Have you heard of Comma.
Speaker 1: No, but I see it was one of your witnesses
Speaker 1: on your on your run.
Speaker 4: So George Hatts, who's a very famous hacker, h first
Speaker 4: person a hack a PlayStation on an iPhone Tesla try
Speaker 4: to hire him and said no, he he has a
Speaker 4: device called the Comma AI unit. It's it's you pull
Speaker 4: out your rearview mirror. You stick this thing, which is
Speaker 4: a cell phone that with a connector that sticks where
Speaker 4: the mirror went, and it connects to the CANbus of
Speaker 4: your car with a single cable and it will convert.
Speaker 4: It will basically enable not every car, but many cars
Speaker 4: two capabilities similar to Tesla autopilot, so you can now
Speaker 4: have send me autonomous features. The common unit was reviewed
Speaker 4: by Consumer Reports years ago, and I think they said
Speaker 4: it was the best on the market, or vert or
Speaker 4: second better than anything else except I think autopilot. And so, uh,
Speaker 4: Jay Roberts took put this in his Prius and went
Speaker 4: across country a few months ago and set a record.
Speaker 4: I call that the what I think it's the aftermarket
Speaker 4: autonomy record.
Speaker 1: Now I know this is a deeply uncool question. I
Speaker 1: just have to ask really quickly, but is that a
Speaker 1: legal device or is it? Kind of like radar detectors
Speaker 1: that you know really aren't legal, but we can all
Speaker 1: get them.
Speaker 4: So a comma in it's completely illegal, you can. I
Speaker 4: think what makes it legal is you buy it and
Speaker 4: then but it doesn't come with the software on it
Speaker 4: and you have to download the software.
Speaker 2: Let's go work around.
Speaker 4: There was a funny story years ago where Hots I think,
Speaker 4: went to a party with a head.
Speaker 2: Of Nitza Mark Rosekind.
Speaker 4: They were both in the room together at rose Kind
Speaker 4: It's like, what's this guy's here? So you should in fact,
Speaker 4: if you want to talk to rose Kind, I know him.
Speaker 4: I'll get him on your show. I called rose Kind
Speaker 4: while we were in the car doing this to tell
Speaker 4: him and he's like, this is the crazy thing you've
Speaker 4: ever heard anyway, you know.
Speaker 2: But that's great.
Speaker 3: So much safer is the thing, Alex Like, I think
Speaker 3: a lot of people fear that these vehicles are going
Speaker 3: to be hitting old women in crosswalks all the time.
Speaker 3: But the fact is, the autonomous vehicles that are out
Speaker 3: there right now are just killing far fewer people than
Speaker 3: the human driven vehicles that are out there right now.
Speaker 4: I would say, I wouldn't say all autonomous vehicles are safer,
Speaker 4: but I would say that the cutting edge, like a
Speaker 4: waimo is And I have been in some systems in
Speaker 4: other countries that I was not convinced that they should
Speaker 4: be on the road. And the thing about a system
Speaker 4: like Tesla's is that it still requires a human supervisor.
Speaker 4: So if that supervisor is a bad human driver, they're
Speaker 4: going to be a bad supervisor and then they.
Speaker 5: May not catch a mistake the vehicle makes.
Speaker 4: And a lot of Tesla crashes are classified as human
Speaker 4: responsible crashes, like the supervisor responsible, But there is a
Speaker 4: that's a gray area because the relationship between the handoff
Speaker 4: when the system's on and then it makes the person
Speaker 4: takes over, it's not always so cut and dry. So
Speaker 4: I'm a firm believer in WEIMO today and I'm optimistic
Speaker 4: about Tesla in the future.
Speaker 1: Can I ask if you've heard from Tesla about this endeavor?
Speaker 1: Were they aware of it beforehand? Even have you have
Speaker 1: they reached out after and you know has Elon made contact?
Speaker 2: So this time all right?
Speaker 4: So this this time out, I have not heard from
Speaker 4: Tesla officially directly. In ten years ago and seven ten
Speaker 4: years ago and eight years ago when I went across
Speaker 4: country UH in a Model S and set the speed
Speaker 4: the full on canniball electric canniball record, Tesla, did I receive.
Speaker 2: Emails from people inside Tesla said this is great UH, and.
Speaker 4: A lot of the Tesla influencer community, we're super positive
Speaker 4: about what we just did. The answer is no, they
Speaker 4: did not reach out, but I know they're watching and
Speaker 4: they are friendly and supportive. Like when I get my
Speaker 4: Tesla serviced incredibly, I have a great experience, and I
Speaker 4: know that's not the common experience, and so I suspect
Speaker 4: good that they've been flagged.
Speaker 1: They've been flag.
Speaker 4: I never asked for anything, and I never know. I
Speaker 4: don't make demands, but they've been good to me. I
Speaker 4: hope that is true for more people.
Speaker 3: So you started the Red Ball garage here in New York,
Speaker 3: and do you start out with your hands on the
Speaker 3: wheels and your feet on the pedals or how often
Speaker 3: did you actually have to touch the wheel and what
Speaker 3: situations did you have to take over?
Speaker 4: So there are Tesla influencers who make videos where they
Speaker 4: sit with their hands like you know, like.
Speaker 2: This, or like on their legs.
Speaker 4: I follow the best practices that Waimo and the other
Speaker 4: big players have adopted after years of testing eight self
Speaker 4: driving testing such cars, so hands hovering right behind the
Speaker 4: wheel nine to nine percent of the time because if
Speaker 4: something should go wrong, you might have less than a
Speaker 4: second to react, and if your hands are in your lap,
Speaker 4: you're not gonna be able to react.
Speaker 2: So when we first started, we.
Speaker 4: Had to That was Tesla FSD software version twelve five
Speaker 4: to sixty four late December, So at that point you
Speaker 4: had to actually the car had to be You could
Speaker 4: not engage FSD from a stop.
Speaker 5: From in front of the garage where we were, so.
Speaker 4: We had to pull out in the street, engage it
Speaker 4: with a button, and then hands hovering near the wheel.
Speaker 4: The total disengagements between New York and LA were thirty two,
Speaker 4: but twenty one of those were what we call voluntary
Speaker 4: disengagements that we had to do in order to get
Speaker 4: the car into a charging stall to charge it. So
Speaker 4: that leaves eleven that were non charge and related. Of
Speaker 4: those eleven, only two were the really bad kind, which
Speaker 4: is what you call an involuntary disengagement, and that is
Speaker 4: when your driving, it's the car is driving, you're supervising.
Speaker 5: And without any warning, it suddenly says take over.
Speaker 4: Now it flashes red you know, alert's go off. That
Speaker 4: happened twice for reasons that are unclear software fault, we
Speaker 4: don't know. And then there were two that voluntary takeovers
Speaker 4: for the car making a navigation error, and on two
Speaker 4: occasions we had to reboot the system software while driving,
Speaker 4: once while driving, once while stop, which is something also suboptimal.
Speaker 4: So the total the metrics that matter are engagement rate
Speaker 4: and number of involuntary disengagements.
Speaker 2: The total engagement rate was ninety eight point five.
Speaker 4: Two percent, which is a very good number, and I
Speaker 4: think that you will see that creep up towards one
Speaker 4: hundred in the next couple of years. And obviously for
Speaker 4: that to occur, the engage the disengagement rate will have
Speaker 4: to fall to zero, and I'm convinced it will.
Speaker 3: But that means of the thirty six hours and change.
Speaker 3: For most of that the car was driving itself, like
Speaker 3: thirty five hours and forty five minutes or something.
Speaker 4: Well, yeah, actually it's but it's more than that that.
Speaker 4: The drivetime was thirty nine forty four, So I'm I'm
Speaker 4: I don't have the number off the top of my head.
Speaker 4: It was, you know, it was doing the driving with
Speaker 4: us supervising, you know, something like into thirty nine hours
Speaker 4: and change, which is it's incredible, It is incredible.
Speaker 1: I see in the metrics here that the average driving
Speaker 1: speed was seventy one miles per hour, which is great.
Speaker 1: If you had twenty one charge stops for a total
Speaker 1: of five hours fifty two.
Speaker 3: Minutes, that's nuts.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's that's crazy. And then I see also you
Speaker 1: say there's other errors one so what was that?
Speaker 2: I remember which one that was? And I'm looking at.
Speaker 1: Your what you posted on X the long article that
Speaker 1: you wrote about Yeah, with all of the metrics.
Speaker 4: Yeah, so the if I remember that correctly, the vehicle
Speaker 4: made all right. So I think there were three navigation errors,
Speaker 4: but in two cases we took over. In one case
Speaker 4: we let it play out. To be specific, the vehicle
Speaker 4: when leaving a charging station doesn't always get back to
Speaker 4: the highway in as directly, and so in one case, and.
Speaker 2: That's the one outlier of the other error. I think
Speaker 2: it made a.
Speaker 4: Left instead of a right, which would have added you know,
Speaker 4: ten or twelve minutes to the overall time, and I
Speaker 4: think we let it just play out. I think we
Speaker 4: just let it go to see what would happen. The
Speaker 4: two system resets were the weird ones because most people
Speaker 4: would not feel comfortable rebooting a car while in motion,
Speaker 4: So we did it once. I've done it many times,
Speaker 4: of course, you know, many years of Tesla ownership. We
Speaker 4: did it once in motion, and the second time we
Speaker 4: were at a charging stop, and we could see on
Speaker 4: the navigation screen that it was not going to naviget out.
Speaker 2: Correctly, and so we just rebooted to see what would happen.
Speaker 4: I mean, these are It's funny because people really want
Speaker 4: to focus on this particular thing, and yet anyone who's
Speaker 4: ever used computer knows that over time, all computers have issues.
Speaker 2: They have issues.
Speaker 4: I'm surprised that we had so few, and then Tesla's
Speaker 4: come this far, and I don't consider myself a Tesla
Speaker 4: fanboy at all, and yet the improvement over ten years
Speaker 4: in Tesla system software isn't credible. And when I get
Speaker 4: into a lot of other OEM vehicles today that are electric.
Speaker 4: Forget the driver assistance and their stuff, just electric cars,
Speaker 4: software defined vehicles in the zeitgeist. I am shocked and
Speaker 4: how terrible these systems aren't, how frequently they crash with
Speaker 4: basic things. So not an apologist for Tesla optimistic that
Speaker 4: they will get there, everyone will eventually.
Speaker 3: My focus is on the small amount of charging time,
Speaker 3: because not only did you drive all the way across
Speaker 3: the country. You know, if I did that in a
Speaker 3: gas vehicle, I would definitely spend ten hours at a
Speaker 3: gas station just to chill. And also you're driving at
Speaker 3: high speeds, so I imagine the battery would be drained more quickly.
Speaker 3: So I think charging for less than six hours seems
Speaker 3: like a very small amount of time.
Speaker 4: It seems small for us as civilian, normal people with
Speaker 4: kids and families and like civilians.
Speaker 3: Not cannonball record holders.
Speaker 4: Okay, fair, fair, in cannonball terms, six hours is a
Speaker 4: glacial It's like the place era, you know, So when
Speaker 4: I went across in thirty one hours back in the day,
Speaker 4: our target time for refueling was thirty minutes the whole way,
Speaker 4: and we got we did it in like thirty one.
Speaker 1: No across like twenty eight hundred miles basically, yeah, just.
Speaker 2: Over thirty minutes.
Speaker 4: And there are people who've done it with less because
Speaker 4: they carried more fuels.
Speaker 2: We had like six charging stops, six gas stops.
Speaker 4: Now, interesting thing about electric vehicles is that you have
Speaker 4: to because charging.
Speaker 2: Takes so much longer than your fueling.
Speaker 4: You you start thinking like Lama team managers because it's like, Okay,
Speaker 4: do you want to go with like do you want
Speaker 4: to charge one hundred percent because that would mean like
Speaker 4: fourteen stops, or are we going to go with a
Speaker 4: twenty eight stop strategy which means charging at forty percent?
Speaker 4: So you have to be looking at the battery chemistry
Speaker 4: and the temperate exterior temperatures, battery temperatures start optimizing for
Speaker 4: charge rates there, and every vehicle is a different charging
Speaker 4: curve and the chargers themselves different different charge rates and reliability.
Speaker 4: Imagine if we went to gas stations today and shell
Speaker 4: a shell station pump it, you know, twice the speed
Speaker 4: of an xon, which one would you go to? So
Speaker 4: even though it's only like a minimums make a difference.
Speaker 4: And so that's how that's how charges are. So, uh,
Speaker 4: there has been the for many years, Tesla's dominated cannonball
Speaker 4: records electric records because the supercharger network had ninety nine
Speaker 4: percent up time and the fastest speeds. Electrify America showed up,
Speaker 4: and you know, they offer higher charging speeds, but only
Speaker 4: with a couple of cars like a Lucid or a Tychon,
Speaker 4: a Portia Tychon and so.
Speaker 2: But their reliability rate is somewhere like sixty.
Speaker 5: Percent versus ninety nine per Tesla.
Speaker 4: So this has been gained back and forth people like
Speaker 4: myself and a friend named Kyle Connor. He's got a
Speaker 4: out of spec his channel. He and I have been
Speaker 4: We've had talks and turned out like, well, when will
Speaker 4: someone that's not Tesla break the record? So he's tried,
Speaker 4: We both tried, and he came close in a Tykon
Speaker 4: once and in the Lucid once, and recently he broke
Speaker 4: the ev canniball record in a second gen Tychon, and.
Speaker 2: Solely because.
Speaker 4: The charging curve of the new second gen Tychon battery
Speaker 4: is faster. It's better than anyone else's. However, there is
Speaker 4: a trade off, which is that the range of the
Speaker 4: car is much shorter.
Speaker 2: But if you get it just right, you could do it.
Speaker 4: I think he did it in like thirty nine and change,
Speaker 4: which is two and a half hours faster than the
Speaker 4: Tesla record, which.
Speaker 2: Has stood for a few years.
Speaker 5: So the new race in electric vehicles.
Speaker 4: Is going to be for how to maintain long range
Speaker 4: out of the battery while getting those charging curves faster.
Speaker 4: And the new tychon is and the new Lucids the
Speaker 4: latest vert their opposite theories. Lucid is optimizing for maximizing
Speaker 4: range and their charging curve.
Speaker 2: Is quite good.
Speaker 4: The Tychon is much less range for a faster curve.
Speaker 4: So I think we'll see these times fall once you
Speaker 4: get those times from you know, six hours in my
Speaker 4: last drive down to say three or two or say one,
Speaker 4: that's when we're going to start looking OEMs can start
Speaker 4: looking at how will they break the internal combustion record.
Speaker 1: I want to ask you about battery degradation here, and
Speaker 1: especially as it relates to resell resale values of Tesla's
Speaker 1: and ty Koons and that sort of thing. Is that
Speaker 1: a valid concern because I've been watching the secondary market
Speaker 1: values of EV's just completely tank. What's your experience with that?
Speaker 4: Uh, Well, for the average person, it's not an issue
Speaker 4: because they're least singer three years financing.
Speaker 5: Maybe a five to seven.
Speaker 3: But we want to buy after someone's least, you know, yeah, of.
Speaker 4: Course, well you know, uh, the first generation is out
Speaker 4: of almost everybody. We're not not awesome ten year old
Speaker 4: teslas today modeless as you can get them for like
Speaker 4: twenty five or thirty k. Their range was shorter out
Speaker 4: of the gate, and it's even shorter now. But they're
Speaker 4: pretty good values if you are happy getting into like
Speaker 4: kind of the weird world of non warranty teslas. I
Speaker 4: wouldn't buy, I mean, I wouldn't buy probably any old
Speaker 4: EV except a Tesla. And the Gen one Tycons are
Speaker 4: awesome cars, really well made. The software is a different issue,
Speaker 4: but everything else about him is great. Matt Farrah just
Speaker 4: bought a Gen one Tychon Grand Turismo, which is stunningly beautiful.
Speaker 3: The wagon version. They're so hot.
Speaker 4: Yeah, but I mean, look, once someone else is taken
Speaker 4: the hit, it's probably a good deal. But the real
Speaker 4: question is when will battery chemistry technology improve such that
Speaker 4: this is not an issue because gas cars that are
Speaker 4: fifty years old can be restored to efficiency, so new
Speaker 4: chemistries have to come and there's a few different approaches.
Speaker 2: We've not yet seen them do what.
Speaker 4: We want, and I think that depreciation is going to
Speaker 4: be terrible for many years to come. I this isn't
Speaker 4: But there's a separate reason, and that's why I don't
Speaker 4: buy used dvs, which is some of them, Tesla, lucid
Speaker 4: Rivian are software upgradeable, like they probably have a long,
Speaker 4: a long, happy life with improvements to what they can do.
Speaker 4: Tesla most of all, but the other but lucid Rivian
Speaker 4: right right next to them.
Speaker 2: Uh. And so, uh, you.
Speaker 4: Want to have the latest hardware because the better hardware is.
Speaker 2: Going to mean a longer, happy ownership cycle.
Speaker 4: But if you buy an EV that's from like a
Speaker 4: legacy OEM, that's like basically, uh, you're locked in. They're
Speaker 4: never gonna the software is never really going to do
Speaker 4: much more than it does out of the gate. I'm
Speaker 4: not interested in that.
Speaker 5: I mean, that's why I think you see so few
Speaker 5: two or three.
Speaker 2: Time owners of evs.
Speaker 4: Unless it's lucid Rivy and Tesla, the owners are very loyal.
Speaker 3: The other ones the portie you can't you can't change.
Speaker 3: I always wonder about battery swaps too. I mean as
Speaker 3: battery technology gets better and better, can you just pull
Speaker 3: out an old techon battery and put in something that's
Speaker 3: twice as one.
Speaker 4: I don't know if if Porsche will do it, Tesla
Speaker 4: will swap, well, you'll sell you a.
Speaker 2: New battery back.
Speaker 5: It's like it's fifteen twenty grand.
Speaker 2: It could be more.
Speaker 4: Battery swaps were discussed and Tesla said they were going
Speaker 4: to do it, and then in the early days, in fact,
Speaker 4: they said they were going to do it for instead
Speaker 4: of charging, you would just swap batteries.
Speaker 2: They decided not to continue with that. In China there.
Speaker 5: Are I don't know who it is, at least one OEM.
Speaker 2: That does battery swaps.
Speaker 4: I think that's not a I don't think that's a
Speaker 4: really viable long term solution because the infrastructure required.
Speaker 3: It's it's no. I just mean though, if you look
Speaker 3: at if you buy an old Camaro, you know that
Speaker 3: has a little motor and you want to put in
Speaker 3: a big V eight. People do that all the time,
Speaker 3: right you can? So can you eventually do the same
Speaker 3: thing with electric cars? Can you say I love the
Speaker 3: look of the taekon Grand Trismo, but I don't really
Speaker 3: love the software and the battery. So I'm gonna buy
Speaker 3: this thing and put in the hot rod version.
Speaker 4: Uh well, the battery and you know, and the motors
Speaker 4: are two different things. You could I mean, someone could
Speaker 4: swap the motor, I suppose, but the architecture of these cars,
Speaker 4: the early.
Speaker 2: Ones, is really not designed to for it changes.
Speaker 4: I mean, other than battery for service purposes. I think
Speaker 4: it's early days. Look, the future of hot riding, obviously
Speaker 4: is kids in the future are not just gonna swap
Speaker 4: right hardware.
Speaker 2: They're gonna know some coding.
Speaker 4: That's the future of hot riting. So what you see
Speaker 4: for ECU like remapping and people chipping their cars and
Speaker 4: writing new software a little bit today, that's gonna be
Speaker 4: you know, in fifty years. Kids are gonna take They're
Speaker 4: gonna look at this car.
Speaker 2: They're good.
Speaker 4: I think they're gonna look at like at early Lucid,
Speaker 4: and they're gonna say, Okay, I don't care about destroying
Speaker 4: my bradish and longevity. I want to dump four x
Speaker 4: the power out of this thing into the motor right now.
Speaker 4: And they're gonna hack it and they're gonna make that happen.
Speaker 4: And at that point the depreciation will have been like
Speaker 4: ninety seven percent I mean of the value of the car,
Speaker 4: and they're not going to care.
Speaker 2: That's the future. But people forget.
Speaker 4: It's decades to get It will be decades before the
Speaker 4: evav car market approaches the maturity of what we've had
Speaker 4: for fifty years in eternal combustion.
Speaker 3: So I'll get there, Alex. If you could have one
Speaker 3: electric car, is there one that you think? Is there
Speaker 3: one that you love? Is there is there an ee
Speaker 3: that you think about when you go to sleep at night?
Speaker 1: Like?
Speaker 4: No, no, because the selection is so limited today. I mean,
Speaker 4: I just took delivery of a brand new model S
Speaker 4: which is not as comfortable as the lucid uh and
Speaker 4: doesn't quite handle like a Tychon, but it does.
Speaker 2: Everything else I want.
Speaker 4: Charging network and the driver's system software is the best
Speaker 4: there is.
Speaker 1: Well, here's here's a more of a philosophical question. Why
Speaker 1: don't you feel Why don't we feel an emotional pull
Speaker 1: to any electric vehicles? Besides the obvious and oh I.
Speaker 2: Do, okay, there is one.
Speaker 4: The most unbelievable vehicle I ever drove was a Rimock one,
Speaker 4: the first Oh wow Rimock supercar.
Speaker 5: Yeah, hyper call, did you drive that Incroach?
Speaker 4: Yes, very cool and uh yeah, and that was and
Speaker 4: I went down there with.
Speaker 2: Jaff Musual went down there and was crush. I went
Speaker 2: down there and I.
Speaker 4: Drove that for like fifteen minutes alone.
Speaker 2: Holding your hand. He wasn't with me. No.
Speaker 4: And the thing about that car is that you there
Speaker 4: wasn't the level of like sound deadening in the vehicle
Speaker 4: as you'd find in a lot of luxury cars and
Speaker 4: sports cars.
Speaker 2: So you could hear all of the motors and drive trains.
Speaker 5: You could hear so much of what was happening.
Speaker 2: Underneath you.
Speaker 4: Uh that I felt connected to the to the car
Speaker 4: in a different way because in most almost any internal
Speaker 4: combustion car, you only hear two things the engine and
Speaker 4: wind noise, whereas in an electric car you hear road
Speaker 4: noise and that's often all you hear. And so the
Speaker 4: level the noise levels in that car were so the
Speaker 4: noise was so different from any other car. I felt
Speaker 4: like I was learning how to drive again.
Speaker 1: Wow, And yeah, I was like a reburse really.
Speaker 4: Yeah, it's really it was really cool. And I think
Speaker 4: that there's there are I think like as yet unseen in.
Speaker 2: Magical futures for drivers, especially.
Speaker 4: With Mate Rimmak, being the guy behind both Rimock and
Speaker 4: now Ceoti is a friend of yours hand I mean.
Speaker 1: I wouldn't say we're friends. I would love to be
Speaker 1: friends with him. We're certainly friendly.
Speaker 3: Wait what if he's listening and he thinks you're friends?
Speaker 1: Bejected, I'm very honored. We're certainly friendly. I really enjoy
Speaker 1: talking with him.
Speaker 4: So I think the most interesting people are like a
Speaker 4: handful of people in the world who both understand the
Speaker 4: internal combustion era and have done engineering work in ev
Speaker 4: because they understand, yes, the psychology of drivers, and you know,
Speaker 4: the Tesla fans are really interesting people. The hardcore ones
Speaker 4: are peculiar because they are so obsessed with Tesla. They
Speaker 4: obsess over everything that zero six people and also the
Speaker 4: driverless stuff.
Speaker 2: So Tesla it's.
Speaker 4: Like the people project onto what they want. But Tesla's
Speaker 4: are weird because they're meant. They're meant to be super fastive,
Speaker 4: fun to drive, and yet so many people are like,
Speaker 4: but they'll be soon, which you know, kind of what's
Speaker 4: the word, uh that cross purpose half of their Yeah? Yeah,
Speaker 4: So the it's the only brand on the planet which
Speaker 4: allows people to virtue signal and vice signal at the
Speaker 4: same time. And this is why Tusla has narrative command
Speaker 4: of the EV and AV you know, enthusiasts, because anyone
Speaker 4: can believe what they want because it satisfies both of
Speaker 4: the needs they project onto the brand.
Speaker 2: No one else does that.
Speaker 4: Portia in some cases a little bit comes close with
Speaker 4: some of the really cool like hybrid Turbot the top
Speaker 4: of the line, Cayenne and Panamara come close.
Speaker 3: All right, that was very cool, And I really do
Speaker 3: recommend people go back and listen to our original podcast
Speaker 3: with Alex Roy because he explained so eloquently the connection
Speaker 3: that we feel with with cars, especially with internal combustion engines.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and the thing I love about Alex is he
Speaker 1: he is he speaks his mind, and he yes he's
Speaker 1: driving in Tesla, but he says he's not a fan boy.
Speaker 1: He's he's critical. He's self aware of the benefits and
Speaker 1: negatives of electric vehicles.
Speaker 2: You know. He drives an.
Speaker 1: Old Wooden Morgan, one of those three wheel things.
Speaker 3: He the good one version with on the front, you know.
Speaker 1: So I do feel like sometimes when you have people
Speaker 1: driving electric vehicles, they only drive electric vehicles and they're very,
Speaker 1: very invested in pushing evs for the rest of the
Speaker 1: world all the time, and and that is good for them,
Speaker 1: but it does make me question their independence of thought sometimes.
Speaker 1: And Alex is very good about He dabbles in everything,
Speaker 1: and you know, he says the positives and negatives.
Speaker 3: Actually, the two of you have that kind of integrity
Speaker 3: gene in common, like you cannot be bought. And I
Speaker 3: think that's I think that's pretty rare though.
Speaker 1: I mean, you see me get upset match.
Speaker 3: Yes I have, and I'm by the way, I'm surrounded
Speaker 3: by journalists all the time. But I think it's rare
Speaker 3: that that someone has that much integrity, which I always
Speaker 3: recognized in you, which is why I love working with you.
Speaker 3: But Alex two and actually I notice a lot of
Speaker 3: the full self driving freaks are like that. It was
Speaker 3: great to get Alex's take.
Speaker 1: And uh, you know, the one thing I wanted to ask,
Speaker 1: which I purposefully didn't, is what is he working on next?
Speaker 1: Because you know, he's always cooking something.
Speaker 3: And he won't tell, and he won't tell. I wanted
Speaker 3: to ask, and I still may. I'll call him later.
Speaker 3: I wonder how he set the speed, because you know,
Speaker 3: when you're driving super fast and you've always got to
Speaker 3: kind of regulate that speed in case, you know, a
Speaker 3: semi in the right lane pulls over. Yes, but if
Speaker 3: it's self driving, do you just tell the tesla like, hey,
Speaker 3: figure it out, we want to go as fast as
Speaker 3: we can.
Speaker 1: Well, yeah, that's a good question. I mean, I guess
Speaker 1: I assume that it a automatically. It had just speed automatically,
Speaker 1: you know, like cruise control would.
Speaker 3: Right, But you just said it as high as it
Speaker 3: can possibly go, like the cus control Max.
Speaker 1: See what you're saying.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I don't know.
Speaker 1: It's a good question.
Speaker 3: Well, I guess it's all the more reason to have
Speaker 3: him on again because he's gonna do this three times. Right,
Speaker 3: that was the first run of three. All right, that's
Speaker 3: all we have for you this week.
Speaker 1: Yeah, thanks for your letters. Email us at hot Pursuit
Speaker 1: at bloomberg dot net. I'm Matt Miller and I'm Hannah Elliott,
Speaker 1: and this is Bloomberg