Speaker 1: Get technology with tech Stuff from Stuff. Hey there, everyone,
Speaker 1: and welcome to Tech Stuff. I am your host Jonathan Strickland.
Speaker 1: Joining me today is one half of the Car Stuff team,
Speaker 1: Scott Benjamin Scott, welcome back to the show. I'm doing great.
Speaker 1: We were gonna have Ben Bowen in here too, but
Speaker 1: Ben's a man in high demand, he really is. He's
Speaker 1: He's taken over the whole video segment of our of
Speaker 1: our uh Empire Empire. I guess it's growing, right, But yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, I'm happy to be here as always, and
Speaker 1: I'm excited about today's topic too. Yeah, I'm excited to
Speaker 1: talk about it today. And and I should add Ben
Speaker 1: totally wanted to be here. He was just he had
Speaker 1: like eighteen things on his calendar today and as someone
Speaker 1: who had that yesterday, I totally understand. Oh yeah, we
Speaker 1: get it. Yeah. So today we're gonna talk about a
Speaker 1: little more in depth about some of the technology that
Speaker 1: was on display at CS, specifically in regards two cars,
Speaker 1: which is why I got Scott onto the show here
Speaker 1: to kind of gauge his reactions and maybe even here
Speaker 1: your insight on some of this stuff, well, you know,
Speaker 1: I've read about it now you were at the show,
Speaker 1: of course, and you saw the stuff firsthand. A lot
Speaker 1: of this is just me looking at reviews of you know,
Speaker 1: what everybody else has written about this stuff. I'm getting,
Speaker 1: you know, a different view of the whole thing. I
Speaker 1: don't get the hands on experience. But um, I'll do
Speaker 1: my best to try to keep up with you. But
Speaker 1: really the reaction maybe more of what you're going for here,
Speaker 1: because we've got opinions both ways about this. I mean,
Speaker 1: I know that your listeners have heard us, uh I
Speaker 1: guess butt heads on a couple of the past, or
Speaker 1: at least they heard that one very special episode where
Speaker 1: I I pulled the rug out from under you. I
Speaker 1: still have nightmares. That was the one where I think,
Speaker 1: I think the question was Scott, I'm going to give
Speaker 1: you a scenario that in like ten years it's illegal
Speaker 1: to drive a car. And then then I watched your
Speaker 1: you just kind of wilt. It was a slow boil
Speaker 1: from that point on. Yeah. So one of the things
Speaker 1: I want to just mention right at the top before
Speaker 1: going into any specifics, is that the car industry has
Speaker 1: always played a part in CS as long as I
Speaker 1: have been going. This was my eight year going, and
Speaker 1: typically the north hall of the convention center is where
Speaker 1: you'll find the car text stuff. Occasionally there will be
Speaker 1: some things out in the actual parking lots that are
Speaker 1: around the convention center to show practical demonstrations of stuff
Speaker 1: like driver assist technology is that sort of thing. But
Speaker 1: typically most of the the exhibits are inside, so their
Speaker 1: static displays and not you know, you're not gonna get
Speaker 1: in the car and drive around or anything. But I've
Speaker 1: noticed that the trend has been growing year over year
Speaker 1: that that we're seeing more and more car technologies make
Speaker 1: their way into the show floor, which is kind of interesting.
Speaker 1: I mean, I get that their consumer technology, but often
Speaker 1: when I hear consumer technology, I'm thinking of smaller things,
Speaker 1: things smaller than a vehicle, yeah right, like maybe as
Speaker 1: big as like a refrigerator, But mostly I'm thinking of
Speaker 1: things in the television stereo system world, not things that
Speaker 1: you park in a garage. Well, you know, sometimes they
Speaker 1: get around this by just bringing in maybe the cockpit,
Speaker 1: the driver cockpit and the seat that is, you know,
Speaker 1: integral to whatever they're trying to show or display, and
Speaker 1: and that's enough. But sometimes they want to bring the
Speaker 1: whole vehicle because it's a whole package. Now at this point,
Speaker 1: everything is connected to everything else, and they want to
Speaker 1: show you how it all works together and how it
Speaker 1: feels when you're actually in there. There true to life
Speaker 1: product that they're going to be coming out with soon.
Speaker 1: And in fact, I noticed that there were a couple
Speaker 1: of a couple of early reveals that happened at this
Speaker 1: show that I just wanted to mention. They brought, well,
Speaker 1: Chevrolet brought too brand new vehicles for actually are gonna
Speaker 1: be out until the end of And this is what's
Speaker 1: really weird to me. They brought out the Chevy Bolt,
Speaker 1: which is the hatchback or the smaller version of the
Speaker 1: Chetty Volts I guess, the updated version, And uh, it's
Speaker 1: kind of it wasn't really a reveal, it sort of was.
Speaker 1: They wanted to show off the whole technology, the whole vehicle.
Speaker 1: But later they took it to the Detroit Auto Auto
Speaker 1: Show the I guess, the North American International Auto Show
Speaker 1: in Detroit, and then that's where they officially revealed that vehicle,
Speaker 1: even though everybody at c YES had already seen it.
Speaker 1: It'd been had been shown off like a week and
Speaker 1: a half earlier. Yeah, and similar with the Chevy Cruise hatchback.
Speaker 1: And I think that they wanted to show some of
Speaker 1: their safety technologies and some of their their advanced technologies
Speaker 1: that they were going to be bringing out in about
Speaker 1: what about a year now at this point, a year
Speaker 1: and a half something like that. Uh, so interesting how
Speaker 1: they would really reveal them to the public there and
Speaker 1: then give them the official reveal you know where they
Speaker 1: pull off, you know they do the dramatic Yankee off
Speaker 1: of the cover or you know, have a drive out
Speaker 1: on stage at the Detroit show. Yeah, it's interesting to
Speaker 1: see ce S play home to that sort of announcement
Speaker 1: or or non announcement almost where you do get this
Speaker 1: early look at stuff that normally would be reserved for
Speaker 1: an auto show or or even just a press event
Speaker 1: for that specific company. Um, it's kind of showing how
Speaker 1: c e S and cars are meshing together. In fact,
Speaker 1: that's going to be a theme throughout this episode is
Speaker 1: about how we're seeing sort of high tech stuff outside
Speaker 1: of the direct control of an automobile make its way
Speaker 1: into the vehicle and some things you wouldn't expect to
Speaker 1: see in an automobile that do make its way into
Speaker 1: that automobile. Generally it's apps and things like that, get it,
Speaker 1: but there's some hardware changes and some other surprising things
Speaker 1: along the way to right. And the first thing I
Speaker 1: want to start off with Scott is talking about Toyota.
Speaker 1: I want to get that out of the way. So,
Speaker 1: first of all, full disclosure, I was there at CES
Speaker 1: partially uh in my role as host of Forward Thinking,
Speaker 1: which is sponsored by Toyota. This show is not sponsored
Speaker 1: by Toyota, but I just wanted to get that out
Speaker 1: of the way. Uh. So they had a presentation that
Speaker 1: they were calling moving Safely into Future Mobility, and it
Speaker 1: was all really about artificial intelligence. Now, in two thousand
Speaker 1: and fifteen, it was announced that Toyota was going to
Speaker 1: fund two, well at least to start with two different
Speaker 1: research facilities, one near Stanford, one near m i T
Speaker 1: dedicated to researching artificial intelligence, specifically in regards to automotive industry,
Speaker 1: but beyond that as well. And then it was announced
Speaker 1: that they were going to put in a billion dollars
Speaker 1: over the next five years into these two research facilities.
Speaker 1: And they're they're actually working on two different things. So
Speaker 1: the Stanford group is working on something where you are
Speaker 1: trying to eliminate uncertainty in AI. And by that what
Speaker 1: they mean is, Scott, You're you're driving your car. You're
Speaker 1: driving down at highway speeds on a highway and there's
Speaker 1: a You notice that the car in front of you,
Speaker 1: uh that it's got some barrels in the bed of
Speaker 1: a truck, and one of the barrels happens to to
Speaker 1: fly out, and you of a time to react, so
Speaker 1: you managed to swerve all the way. You as a
Speaker 1: human being, you're able to recognize this extrapolate from past
Speaker 1: experience kind of no, because you know the car and
Speaker 1: know the road. You know sort of what you can do,
Speaker 1: what's within your abilities to do in reaction to something
Speaker 1: like that. The thing that the Stanford folks are working
Speaker 1: on is how do you program that kind of ability
Speaker 1: into artificial intelligence? Because machines are really good and reacting
Speaker 1: in a specific way to specific scenarios. So in other words,
Speaker 1: you could program in all, right, if a bicyclist swerves
Speaker 1: into your lane, then you slow down like you have that.
Speaker 1: If this, then that, But you can't anticipate everything, so
Speaker 1: this is like a split second reaction. Uh. Everything that
Speaker 1: goes into a human split second reaction is what they
Speaker 1: have to some kind of find some kind of way
Speaker 1: to develop for their own AI system to recognize and
Speaker 1: react the proper way. So it at what well, here's
Speaker 1: the here's the question though. Does it react to preserve
Speaker 1: the lives of the people that are in the car.
Speaker 1: Does it react to preserve the lives of people that
Speaker 1: maybe are walking on the sidewalk? This is the classic
Speaker 1: trolley problem. Okay, well, okay, yeah, that's right. So who
Speaker 1: does who does the system protect? Does it protect the
Speaker 1: driver of the vehicle or does it protect the people
Speaker 1: around surrounding that? And that's and that's one of the
Speaker 1: questions that has to be asked, right, like how how
Speaker 1: you know knowing that there's going to be ultimately, at
Speaker 1: some point a scenario where a car will have to
Speaker 1: quote unquote decide to do something that is going to
Speaker 1: put someone in harm's way, how do you determine what
Speaker 1: how the car will will make that decision? And that's
Speaker 1: that's part of it is just this idea of you
Speaker 1: can program AI to handle the mundane situations of driving.
Speaker 1: Really well, we we have pretty much got that down right.
Speaker 1: The manufacturers are essentially doing that now. They just can't
Speaker 1: legally say that you're allowed to operate that vehicle without
Speaker 1: a driver in the driver's seat, right, So under normal
Speaker 1: operating conditions, so a normal day, like in a in
Speaker 1: a temperate area, So we're not talking about whether conditions
Speaker 1: like ice or snow. We're not talking about you know,
Speaker 1: uh traffic system where maybe the traffic lights are on
Speaker 1: the blank. That could obviously cause issues with a car
Speaker 1: that is designed to wait until a green light comes up,
Speaker 1: that kind of stuff, But under normal operating conditions, they're
Speaker 1: very safe. The point that Toyota was making is that
Speaker 1: that's not the way the world works, and that you
Speaker 1: could argue that right now we have a million mile
Speaker 1: safety record with autonomous cars, just because that's the number
Speaker 1: of miles autonomous cars have traveled collectively. But they argue
Speaker 1: that we really need a trillion mile safety record to
Speaker 1: prove that autonomous cars are safe enough for us to
Speaker 1: hand over control two machines and not be at least
Speaker 1: partially and con role. Well, that's part of the reason
Speaker 1: we always see this this decade out date where they
Speaker 1: say we're gonna have this ready by or in some
Speaker 1: cases we don't even plan to have anything fully autonomous
Speaker 1: and until fifteen years from now. But we're gonna do
Speaker 1: these these incremental steps along the way so that in
Speaker 1: ten years we're gonna have one that's pretty good. It's
Speaker 1: nearly there. And so that's exactly what Toyota is saying
Speaker 1: that they want to have focus on driver assist systems
Speaker 1: where the AI can come in and help out if
Speaker 1: something extraordinary happens or if something happens outside of your awareness, uh,
Speaker 1: and help you avoid an accident, but it doesn't completely
Speaker 1: take over for the driver. Now check me if I'm
Speaker 1: wrong here. But I saw a just a little video
Speaker 1: clip of a display that was happening at one of
Speaker 1: the Toyota booths. And I don't know if this is
Speaker 1: tied into with this exactly, but they had almost looked
Speaker 1: what looked like a fish tank. It was a big
Speaker 1: area with the table and yeah, they had a lot
Speaker 1: of miniature, you know, scale model cars. I don't know
Speaker 1: if they're a previous cars or what they were, but uh,
Speaker 1: they were rolling around and I guess when they initially
Speaker 1: kind of released all these cars, maybe ten or twelve
Speaker 1: cars into this uh this this box, this glass box. Uh,
Speaker 1: they were all bumping into each other, and it was
Speaker 1: just kind of chaos. And the cars were then learning
Speaker 1: how to drive around each other without colliding with it
Speaker 1: with objects that were in the display and the and
Speaker 1: other vehicles. And by the end of the demonstration, or
Speaker 1: at least when they were showing this video clear when
Speaker 1: they were recording this clip, the cars were not colliding
Speaker 1: at all. They weren't touching. They were you know, sensing
Speaker 1: each other and moving to make something you know, making
Speaker 1: some kind of avoidance maneuver in a in a smart
Speaker 1: way so they didn't bump into another vehicle or another
Speaker 1: object or the wall or whatever. It was just it
Speaker 1: was a clever way to show that. Yeah, it was
Speaker 1: neat because again they you know, Toyota had a couple
Speaker 1: of vehicles on the show floor, but this was a
Speaker 1: way of showing off this technology, uh, in a live
Speaker 1: setting that still didn't require you to actually go outside
Speaker 1: and see a bunch of Prius is kind of pirouet
Speaker 1: around each other. Yeah, I know exactly what you're talking about,
Speaker 1: because I got a good look at this. So, yeah,
Speaker 1: it's sort of a grid and each car had its
Speaker 1: own route that it had to go along. And at
Speaker 1: first it was trying to go along this route, not
Speaker 1: really carrying what the other cars in the in the
Speaker 1: area we're trying to do. And that's where they were
Speaker 1: having these little collisions and stuff and figuring things out.
Speaker 1: My neighbor drives like that nice. And when the learning
Speaker 1: algorithm kicked in, then they were able to start, you know,
Speaker 1: pausing to let another car go in front of them
Speaker 1: before are cross in front of them before they went
Speaker 1: and uh, it became this very intricate, almost like a
Speaker 1: dance that you could watch. And they had a video
Speaker 1: streaming in the background explaining the whole process that this
Speaker 1: was a machine learning algorithm that would be applied on
Speaker 1: a much grander scale to technology that would find its
Speaker 1: way in cars down the road. It's almost like a
Speaker 1: like a fish school mentality, you know, like they all
Speaker 1: move one way together and it's all fluid and there's
Speaker 1: not really much of fish colliding all the time. You know,
Speaker 1: they all know where the other one is going. It's
Speaker 1: like maintaining that distance. Yeah, it's it seems it seems
Speaker 1: like that. It looks like that when you see it happening. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's actually it's actually pretty cool to watch, Like I
Speaker 1: got to watch it for a really long time as
Speaker 1: we were setting up a shot and so. But yeah,
Speaker 1: it was neat seeing how these were working. And in fact,
Speaker 1: a lot of the people from Toyota said, yeah, some
Speaker 1: of our competitors were coming in to make sure that
Speaker 1: it wasn't like remote controlled vehicles that was all actually autonomous,
Speaker 1: And in fact it was autonomous. It's just like just
Speaker 1: a little little bitty model cars. Yeah. You know one
Speaker 1: thing at this that you sent me an article at
Speaker 1: least from the New York Times. Yeah, that that mentions this,
Speaker 1: you know, Toyota investment of one billion dollars in artificial
Speaker 1: intelligence here in the United States, and it said, and
Speaker 1: I thought this was pretty interesting that artificial intelligence technologies
Speaker 1: were disappointing for decades. And I've never really thought them
Speaker 1: as disappointing. I mean, I see them incrementally growing, you know,
Speaker 1: getting better. Yeah, but I never really saw them as
Speaker 1: being disappointing. I think part of it is that there
Speaker 1: is the the public expectation of what artificial intelligence is
Speaker 1: versus the actual definition of artificial intelligence. So if you
Speaker 1: if you look at artificial intelligence as being a very
Speaker 1: broad spectrum that encompasses a ton of stuff and on
Speaker 1: on the the simplest level, it's on the idea of
Speaker 1: sensing a change in the environment and being able to
Speaker 1: react to it. That's the type of artificial intelligence. And
Speaker 1: of course the far end of the spectrum is human
Speaker 1: like or superhuman intelligence, which obviously we have not really achieved. Um.
Speaker 1: But you know, a lot of people think that that
Speaker 1: superhuman or human like intelligence is the definition of AI.
Speaker 1: They don't realize necessarily that artificial intelligence means lots of
Speaker 1: different stuff. Well, just to give you an example, I
Speaker 1: mean that this article in particular mentioned Siri as a
Speaker 1: as a tremendous advancement in artificial intelligence. Now, I know
Speaker 1: that you've probably talked about this at length on the show,
Speaker 1: but I can kind of understand it. That's like, finally
Speaker 1: the general populace, I guess, is getting a chance to
Speaker 1: kind of kind of toy with this a little bit
Speaker 1: and see what it can do, what it's capable of.
Speaker 1: And I know it's a it's I don't know, I
Speaker 1: have trouble calling it true artificial intelligence. Yeah, No, it's
Speaker 1: it's it's voice recognition, which is already impressive, right, And
Speaker 1: then it's it's it's pairing that with uh an ability
Speaker 1: to execute uncertain apps or do searches. But then you
Speaker 1: think about it, if you're gonna call Sirie artificial intelligence,
Speaker 1: you might as well call a Google search artificial intelligence,
Speaker 1: because Siri is just really a new way to interface
Speaker 1: with a system that's been in place for several years
Speaker 1: exactly now. Okay, So, but we're seeing more and more
Speaker 1: stuff like Siri implemented into automobiles with voice recognition. We'll
Speaker 1: be talking a lot about that, and to be able
Speaker 1: to control certain things in the car, which are which
Speaker 1: you're getting far more advanced than they were even last year. Um. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's crazy. Yeah, the interaction, the level of interaction. I mean,
Speaker 1: I gotta say, I've never really been all that impressed
Speaker 1: with any of these apps that you can have on
Speaker 1: your phone that maybe turn on the lights in your
Speaker 1: living room or you know, you can adjust your thermostad
Speaker 1: like you say, say that, But until you convince your
Speaker 1: loved ones that your house is haunted because you are
Speaker 1: using the app while you're at work to turn the
Speaker 1: lights on and off, you really haven't lived. I see,
Speaker 1: I see. So it's it's good for practical jokers too. Yeah, No,
Speaker 1: I've I've been guilty of that, I've turned the lights
Speaker 1: off on my wife while I was at work. That's
Speaker 1: a prettyunny trick, you know. Honestly, Like what we're going
Speaker 1: to cover here today, it goes far beyond that. I mean,
Speaker 1: because again, like I said, I'm not I haven't really
Speaker 1: been all that you know, wowed by this stuff up
Speaker 1: until this point. And now now it seems like you
Speaker 1: can really talk to this thing and make it do
Speaker 1: what you really want, I mean, And there's far reaching
Speaker 1: implications with that. Yeah, I think, uh, I think it's
Speaker 1: really cool that. I mean. That was one of the
Speaker 1: really big stories this year l c S was that
Speaker 1: this sort of connected card technology is really starting to
Speaker 1: make sense, right, It's it's gone beyond. It made me
Speaker 1: think of the way smart TVs were when they first
Speaker 1: came out. Smart TVs when they first came out, you
Speaker 1: get a widget on your screen and it would tell you,
Speaker 1: you know, what the temperature was outside and how likely
Speaker 1: is it going to rain? And it wasn't very attractive,
Speaker 1: it wasn't very useful, and often it was difficult to
Speaker 1: navigate around these systems because it was more like, hey,
Speaker 1: we can put Internet content on a television. Let's go ahead.
Speaker 1: And do that before we figure out what's the best
Speaker 1: way to incorporate it so that the experience is a
Speaker 1: positive one. And I think cars have had the same
Speaker 1: thing they are getting there now. I'll tell you because
Speaker 1: this this whole Ford Alexa, I think the years you've
Speaker 1: mentioned this is one of the topics that you wanted
Speaker 1: to talk about. Do you mind if we go to
Speaker 1: that right now? Do it all? Right? So Ford is
Speaker 1: kind of working with Echo and and Alexa and and
Speaker 1: they're incorporating this into their already existing SINC program And
Speaker 1: I think they're at the third generation of the SINC
Speaker 1: program for their cars. How do you know SINC programs
Speaker 1: right away to say that platform platform, that's a better way.
Speaker 1: So you can go to forward dot com and check
Speaker 1: out what SINK will do. But I'll tell you that
Speaker 1: this next level where they've taken out of the way.
Speaker 1: They've integrated everything that SINK will do with Echo and
Speaker 1: with Alexa. So that's like the is it a personal
Speaker 1: assistant or what do they call they call them now
Speaker 1: they're calling a voice concierge voice concierge. So I was
Speaker 1: reading an article about this from Gelotnic and it's a
Speaker 1: car site and one of the things. And this impressed me.
Speaker 1: It's not just turn the lights on and or you know,
Speaker 1: set the set the temperature. It says, you know, you
Speaker 1: can you can from your car on the way home,
Speaker 1: you can say, Alexa, turn the kitchen lights on, open
Speaker 1: the Gradu door, heat the oven to four degrees, and
Speaker 1: turn on a baseball game. So when you get home,
Speaker 1: all this stuff is ready to go. It's all set
Speaker 1: to go. And and Mercedes Benz is working with with
Speaker 1: Nest to do something very simil a uh so other
Speaker 1: autom manufacturers are working with different companies to do similar things.
Speaker 1: One of them is working with Microsoft and has Cortana,
Speaker 1: which is Microsoft version of a voice concierge, incorporating that.
Speaker 1: We'll get to that in a little bit too. And
Speaker 1: and you can you can set start times for your car.
Speaker 1: So here's the usual routine. You know, you've got the
Speaker 1: automatic start that you know the manufacturer builds in the system.
Speaker 1: That's that's one thing, right, But you still and I
Speaker 1: know this sounds kind of silly, but you still have
Speaker 1: to you don't go near the window, I guess, and
Speaker 1: look at your car and and push the button and
Speaker 1: know that you know the previous night, you turn the
Speaker 1: heat on high and the defroster on and all that stuff,
Speaker 1: and it sets or you know, some manufacturers probably has
Speaker 1: settings that automatically do that, but you have some type
Speaker 1: of physical interaction you have to do with your car
Speaker 1: in the morning. You have to remember, I'm going to
Speaker 1: turn that on ten minutes before I go out, so clear,
Speaker 1: clear off the frost on the windshield, make sure the
Speaker 1: car is a nice temperature before I get in. Exactly,
Speaker 1: it's all about comfort, right. So this system, this this
Speaker 1: new Forward Alexa ecosystem, will allow you to set a
Speaker 1: time like on on Monday morning, I want the car
Speaker 1: to start at five am, I want the interior temperature
Speaker 1: to be seventy five degrees um. I want, you know,
Speaker 1: whatever you can. You can adjust that, you can turn
Speaker 1: the radio station to whatever you want. But you can
Speaker 1: program all that in days ahead of time. It's like
Speaker 1: setting a schedule for your car. My question is with that, though,
Speaker 1: what if things change and you forget to do that,
Speaker 1: then your car is running out in the driveway for
Speaker 1: you know, an hour and a half or whatever before
Speaker 1: you remember that it's actually running. I would imagine that,
Speaker 1: assuming you're having this worked with the echo, which is
Speaker 1: essentially a speaker that has a microphone embedded in it,
Speaker 1: so you can speak into it, it can talk back
Speaker 1: to you. Uh. I would imagine a fail safe would
Speaker 1: be to have the speaker chime or otherwise alert you
Speaker 1: that your car has been running but hasn't been doing
Speaker 1: anything after a certain amount of time has passed, maybe
Speaker 1: five minutes. That's that's that would be my solution to
Speaker 1: that problem. But it's it is something that obviously you
Speaker 1: have to think about when you're trying to implement these
Speaker 1: kind of approaches into the automobile industry. And mean, this
Speaker 1: is stuff that we've seen in smart homes to some
Speaker 1: degree or another, and to see it kind of creep
Speaker 1: into cars. You know, hopefully people are taking lessons they've
Speaker 1: learned from the other implementations and trying to figure out
Speaker 1: the best practices when applying it to cars. Yeah. Sure,
Speaker 1: and you know you can schedule service reminders and things
Speaker 1: like that. No, that's not anything new because cars can
Speaker 1: do that kind of on their own. You can program
Speaker 1: that in for just a date. But they can also
Speaker 1: detect if there's you know, um um, something missing out
Speaker 1: of your refrigerator. So let's say that you're at the
Speaker 1: grocery store and you're in your connected car, and you've
Speaker 1: got your connected home and your device that you know
Speaker 1: interfaces between the two of them. You're in the grocery
Speaker 1: store parking lot, though, and you don't remember if you
Speaker 1: have milk, and you can you can now check while
Speaker 1: you're in the car at the grocery store and check
Speaker 1: to see if you have milk in the fridge at
Speaker 1: home without having to have somebody there to say, yeah,
Speaker 1: pick up a gallon of milk on the way home. Right,
Speaker 1: So that this says require obviously that you have various
Speaker 1: smart appliances to to network together. Right, Well, yeah, if
Speaker 1: it's just a regular old fridge or or a kegenator
Speaker 1: as as we might have back at home, it's not
Speaker 1: going to be able to chime up. But yeah, it's
Speaker 1: this interconnectivity. And in fact, that's one of the big
Speaker 1: assets that Amazon has is the Echo can work with
Speaker 1: lots of other different home automation products, not even not
Speaker 1: just once from one company, which is a huge deal. Scott,
Speaker 1: I can't tell you how big the deal this is
Speaker 1: to have a connected home. Like in the early days,
Speaker 1: everyone was trying to make sure their approach was going
Speaker 1: to become the standard approach, which meant that there was
Speaker 1: no standard. You had a bunch of proprietary approaches that
Speaker 1: wouldn't talk to each other. So products like the Echo
Speaker 1: and some apps that I've seen are finally getting to
Speaker 1: the point where you can interface with different products from
Speaker 1: different companies, so you don't have to buy in on
Speaker 1: just one system if you happen to like one manufacturers refrigerator.
Speaker 1: Let's say you like Whirlpool and you really want the
Speaker 1: newest smart Whirlpool fridge, which, by the way, I've seen
Speaker 1: and it's pretty sweet. If you wanted one of those,
Speaker 1: but you wanted to have your other devices from a
Speaker 1: different manufacturer, it would be difficult to have them all
Speaker 1: talking to each other. But something like the Echo can
Speaker 1: act like a hub, and then your car becomes an
Speaker 1: extension of that hub, and that's where you can do
Speaker 1: things like check to see if like if when was
Speaker 1: the last time I bought milk? So, oh, it's two
Speaker 1: weeks ago, Like, oh, I gotta buy milk, you know.
Speaker 1: And that's the whole reason we're talking about it today,
Speaker 1: because they're adding the automobile to this whole mix that
Speaker 1: you know you can. It's now completely mobile. You can
Speaker 1: really you can really truly control your home from your car,
Speaker 1: and you can do a lot of things in your
Speaker 1: car from home as well. I mean things that you
Speaker 1: just wouldn't think that you would normally need. And it's
Speaker 1: it's it's all luxury. I love the idea of it too,
Speaker 1: like some of it. It's definitely luxury, but some of
Speaker 1: it is incredibly helpful for people who are both absent
Speaker 1: minded and a little O c D. So I don't
Speaker 1: know Scott if you've ever experienced this, but my wife
Speaker 1: and I when we go out anywhere, there will come
Speaker 1: in time, usually when we're about a mile and a
Speaker 1: half away from home, when the question was the front
Speaker 1: door locked? Or did the garage door come all the
Speaker 1: way down? Or was the oven on something some variation
Speaker 1: of that will be asked, and then ultimately what has
Speaker 1: to happen is a turn trip home before we ever
Speaker 1: get to our destination. And ALEXA. One of the things
Speaker 1: that can do is it can tell you and presumably
Speaker 1: at least in future implementations, it can even correct things
Speaker 1: if they are incorrect, like if you say, hey, is
Speaker 1: the front door locked, No, it's not. It's unlocked. Can
Speaker 1: you lock the front door for me? Yes? Click, and
Speaker 1: then you don't have to worry about it anymore. Very smart. Now,
Speaker 1: I want to show you something, and this is only
Speaker 1: your benefit, not the listeners benefit. To see this page
Speaker 1: where I have the word yes with two exclamation points,
Speaker 1: I have underlined the line that says, asking, for example,
Speaker 1: whether the garage door is closed. Every time I leave
Speaker 1: my house, I look at the gradge door, make sure
Speaker 1: it's closed, and I say, I whispered to myself, the
Speaker 1: gardge door is closed. Yeah. And it's like a little routine.
Speaker 1: It's a pattern I have. And if I if I
Speaker 1: ever leave without doing that, I have to return and
Speaker 1: make sure that that garage door is closed because I
Speaker 1: got a lot of valuable stuff in there, my tools,
Speaker 1: I got my project car in there. Who knows what
Speaker 1: else is in there, but bicycles things like that. See,
Speaker 1: for us, not only do we have stuff that's valuable
Speaker 1: in our garage, but that's a direct route into our
Speaker 1: house and so and so it's where all our other
Speaker 1: stuff happens. To me, yeah and so, so you mean
Speaker 1: when you walked out the door, you didn't say the
Speaker 1: gradge door is locked? We actually say yeah, we say
Speaker 1: we say Dora is down. That is that is the
Speaker 1: that is the key phrase. And I am not joking.
Speaker 1: If we pull out of our home area and neither
Speaker 1: of us have said door is down, that it won't
Speaker 1: come a point where my wife will say, did the
Speaker 1: garage door go down? And because I don't want to
Speaker 1: lie to my wife, like I don't want to get
Speaker 1: to where I'm going, but I never want to get
Speaker 1: to where I'm going more than I want to, you know,
Speaker 1: like that, that's never so great that I will lie.
Speaker 1: I'll say, I don't know. I am turned around and
Speaker 1: go look. I am sometimes ridiculed for my my whispering
Speaker 1: of the graduate doors down. It's when when when you
Speaker 1: say it and you've you've got that, like, all right,
Speaker 1: that chapter is closed. Now a new chapter can begin.
Speaker 1: This is the journey chapter. Isn't it funny? I know
Speaker 1: people have this type of thing. It's very low level
Speaker 1: of c D. I I understand that, I get it,
Speaker 1: But I know people have this for all kinds of
Speaker 1: items in their house and their automobile. This really does
Speaker 1: smooth out some of that. How helpful would that be
Speaker 1: if you're ten miles away and you can check to
Speaker 1: make sure that stupid gradge door is down or otherwise right,
Speaker 1: or you didn't leave the dishwasher on or something when
Speaker 1: you're gone because your fear of you know, flooding the
Speaker 1: kitchen shore. And then and the best things got absolute
Speaker 1: best thing. ALEXA will never mock you for that is
Speaker 1: probably the best part of the whole thing. So moving
Speaker 1: on to some of the other manufacturers that we saw,
Speaker 1: we stopped by Volkswagen. Yes, and uh so. Of course
Speaker 1: Volkswagen obviously still in the wake of the pr disaster
Speaker 1: that was the clean Diesel scandal, so they were they
Speaker 1: trotting out their latest diesel technology. They oddly enough left
Speaker 1: that off the show floor. Is an interesting move. Yeah.
Speaker 1: They instead decided to show off an electric vehicle concept
Speaker 1: design called the Buddy Bud. Yeah. I did that. I
Speaker 1: did that on a previous c S episode and got
Speaker 1: a lot of people saying, I know who Polly Shore is,
Speaker 1: thank you for the poly Shore reference. Um, But yeah,
Speaker 1: the Buddy electric vehicle concept, which it's kind of funny.
Speaker 1: It relates in a way to another car that we'll
Speaker 1: talk about, the F zero one. And I know that
Speaker 1: you and Ben covered Faraday Futures F zero one in
Speaker 1: an episode, right, we did about it, so, uh, in
Speaker 1: a similar way to what that concept was. Volkswagen's idea
Speaker 1: was to create a sort of modular approach to designing
Speaker 1: electric vehicles, and so this was really just a representation
Speaker 1: of that idea. That being said, it kind of had
Speaker 1: this sort of quirky retro futuristic design to it, very angular,
Speaker 1: very uh odd looking. But I really dug it. Do
Speaker 1: you think it? I mean, it was it trying to
Speaker 1: play on the old VU microbus thing. I think so
Speaker 1: a little bit, but definitely in a way that was
Speaker 1: not like it was obviously not a a uh you know,
Speaker 1: a recreation of the microbus just with new lighting and stuff.
Speaker 1: It was the design itself had changed pretty dramatically, Okay,
Speaker 1: And you know I heard one of the one of
Speaker 1: the biggest parts of this whole thing that made it
Speaker 1: interesting was that, uh, it's not going to support any
Speaker 1: kind of It was designed without without the intent to
Speaker 1: support any kind of internal combustion engine. So it's purely electric.
Speaker 1: And they're going full on with this and saying this
Speaker 1: is the way we're gonna We're gonna build this vehicle,
Speaker 1: this platform vehicle. Uh, and it's going to be customizable.
Speaker 1: Of course, we're gonna be able to kind of change
Speaker 1: things around. But they've got an idea that right now
Speaker 1: it's gonna use. It can use up to three different
Speaker 1: types of batteries. Right, So there's three different types. There's
Speaker 1: the cylindrical, pouch and prismatic cells. And I think right
Speaker 1: now they're only using two of those. They're using prismatic
Speaker 1: and pouch cells at this point, so they haven't um
Speaker 1: decided yet on the cylindrical, but they say it gives
Speaker 1: them the flexibility to adapt to whatever becomes the forerunner
Speaker 1: in that field. Right, So with this approach, they can
Speaker 1: design any number of vehicle structures, like whether it's a
Speaker 1: car or a van or whatever, they can go with
Speaker 1: that because of this modular approach. Uh, they just change
Speaker 1: out the size of the battery, the capacity of the
Speaker 1: battery essentially, and the size of the chassis obviously, but
Speaker 1: it gives them a common starting ground for lots of
Speaker 1: different vehicle types. And the battery pack itself is flat
Speaker 1: and fits under the car, so you get this nice
Speaker 1: flat interior which made it incredibly roomy on the inside.
Speaker 1: Not that we were allowed to get in. No one
Speaker 1: was allowed to get very close to this thing, at
Speaker 1: least at the time we were there. It's surprising, isn't it,
Speaker 1: how much how much room that free up when it's
Speaker 1: a flat floor, Like, yeah, it is phenomenal where it's
Speaker 1: just like you just look at it and you think, wow,
Speaker 1: I I would have so much room to stretch out,
Speaker 1: and you know, you could even have luggage in the
Speaker 1: cabin along with passengers and it's wouldn't even get in
Speaker 1: the way you get in. It feels like an empty
Speaker 1: bus or something. Yeah, big yeah, And it has the
Speaker 1: Buddy concept car had two motors, two electric motors, one
Speaker 1: for the front wheels, one for the back. Um supposedly
Speaker 1: had a hundred and one kilowatt hour capacity battery that
Speaker 1: would provide a driving range of three seventy three miles,
Speaker 1: although when asked about it, Volkswagen is actually said, actually,
Speaker 1: that's what we're working toward, that's our goal. We're not
Speaker 1: there yet, so they packed it down a bit. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Most people say around three hundred miles. Max Nassy I
Speaker 1: saw a different number that said when they ran it
Speaker 1: through testing based on the U S E P A cycle,
Speaker 1: So you know, the way that they normally determined for
Speaker 1: these electric vehicles. The comparison miles, I guess, and the equivalent.
Speaker 1: They said the equivalent was going to be two thirty
Speaker 1: three miles. But that's you know what I should even
Speaker 1: say per gallon, that's the range. That's how long these
Speaker 1: batteries were less two or thirty three. That's a significant
Speaker 1: drop from what they came out with. Yeah, more than Yeah,
Speaker 1: so when they say three d seventy three and it
Speaker 1: goes to significant. But what is interesting, and they didn't
Speaker 1: back down on this, is that they can charge of
Speaker 1: the battery capacity in about fifteen minutes. And that's pretty good. Yeah.
Speaker 1: If that, if that holds, if that sticks, and that's true,
Speaker 1: that's really good. That's significant step forward. It's good. I
Speaker 1: don't know, that's good enough. Like like Tesla's idea about
Speaker 1: having not just the super fast charging stage, but also
Speaker 1: the option to switch out a battery if you are
Speaker 1: on the go. That makes a lot of sense for
Speaker 1: people who are used to being able to pull into
Speaker 1: a gas station and refill in a couple of minutes.
Speaker 1: It does. But look, I'm on gas stations. There are yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean they're there are four on every corner. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's true. Well, I don't mean, I don't mean to
Speaker 1: shoot you down on that quick changing things. They can
Speaker 1: be far they can be a lot fewer and far between.
Speaker 1: I suppose for for the for the battery swaps, the
Speaker 1: the supercharger stations. However, I think those have to be
Speaker 1: h fairly common because a Tesla right now, a model
Speaker 1: s the charge times. If you have a supercharger station
Speaker 1: or I think that's what they call it supercharger station,
Speaker 1: it takes you about one hour to fully charge the
Speaker 1: battery and that's the three mile range. But if you
Speaker 1: don't have a supercharger station, you're just relying on plane
Speaker 1: old electricity from the wall plug in. Uh, you get
Speaker 1: something like twenty two miles of range for every hour
Speaker 1: of charging. So that's a significant drop in Well, it's
Speaker 1: a it's an increase in the time that would get somewhere.
Speaker 1: So mean for VW, say of battery capacity in fifteen minutes,
Speaker 1: so what's of two thirty two or thirty three miles
Speaker 1: that's pretty good. Yeah, No, that's it's is definitely significant. Uh.
Speaker 1: And you know they had some other cool features on this,
Speaker 1: including a big display screens that would replace your typical dashboard,
Speaker 1: so it was like a bunch of almost like tablets
Speaker 1: style computers. Um plus just your controls. Just your controls
Speaker 1: were huge with cars this year. That's that's where you
Speaker 1: don't even have to touch the screen. You can move
Speaker 1: your hands at a certain height and camera will detect
Speaker 1: the presence of your hand and then interpret that as
Speaker 1: a command, so you can swipe through options or select
Speaker 1: something by typically acting like you're pushing a button in
Speaker 1: mid air. That tends to be the like you're playing
Speaker 1: charades or something. Yeah, you know, I saw that this
Speaker 1: is an infrared system, So it's kind of a cost
Speaker 1: cutting measure on their part because there are other ways
Speaker 1: to do it as well, but this one they claim
Speaker 1: they're Gonnasse infra red just to keep cost down. Again,
Speaker 1: this is not really meant to be a production model.
Speaker 1: It's strictly a show car. It's just really to show
Speaker 1: off the technologies that that Volkswagen has been working with,
Speaker 1: many of which may find their way into production vehicles
Speaker 1: in the future, but not necessarily the Buddy itself. You're
Speaker 1: not gonna find the Buddy on a on a show
Speaker 1: floor for you to purchase. It's just a rolling test
Speaker 1: bed at this point. In fact, I should say that
Speaker 1: that I suspect at least a few of the vehicles
Speaker 1: on the showroom floor at ce S are no more
Speaker 1: than a shell with nothing that actually makes the thing go.
Speaker 1: I think fairadays like that, isn't it. I remember trying
Speaker 1: to remember back to our program, and I think that
Speaker 1: it's it's not really on a power platform at this point.
Speaker 1: It's all theoretical. Yeah. I do not know the answer
Speaker 1: to that to be able to say definitively one way
Speaker 1: or the other, but it would not surprise me. I'll
Speaker 1: tell you that's not anything brand new. Really show cars,
Speaker 1: even at the big auto shows in the past, there
Speaker 1: have been many times when they have to be pushed
Speaker 1: out on the stage or or they have some just
Speaker 1: really low, low power module underneath. It's not like what
Speaker 1: they claim is under the hood. Um, you know, it's
Speaker 1: just something just to get out on the stage for
Speaker 1: the show and that's about it. Yeah, never never look
Speaker 1: under the hood. I know that one of the Toyota
Speaker 1: fuel cell vehicles was like that, and that the chassis
Speaker 1: they were showing off was a concept, but the car
Speaker 1: underneath it was not actually a fuel cell vehicle. Whereas
Speaker 1: the fuel cell vehicle they had on display was using
Speaker 1: a modified Toyota previously existing Toyota model as the chassis.
Speaker 1: So it's just one of those things where it's it's
Speaker 1: like we have the idea, we have the technology, we
Speaker 1: haven't gotten into production yet, so we don't have a
Speaker 1: model that actually works with the technology. We're talking about
Speaker 1: fully fully formed. And that's not every case. I mean,
Speaker 1: they've been running driving concept cars or they called dream
Speaker 1: cars for decades, of course, you know, since the beginning,
Speaker 1: but there were always those cases where they bring out
Speaker 1: some just crazy design that doesn't really have anything under
Speaker 1: the hood or anything. And and it was kind of
Speaker 1: a big deal again back in the late eighties and
Speaker 1: early intees when companies started making running driving production rather
Speaker 1: prototype vehicles. Um, all these concept cars, and it was
Speaker 1: kind of like this thing really drives, Like I mean,
Speaker 1: it's the I think I'm I'm not gonna say the
Speaker 1: first or anything, but I remember like hearing about the
Speaker 1: Viper Dodge Viper, and they're like listening, actually drives, we
Speaker 1: can drive it on the Indian Apples five under track, Like,
Speaker 1: no way, that thing actually has a V ten And
Speaker 1: you know they claim it did, but it really did.
Speaker 1: And the Plymouth Prowler, and you know, vehicles like that
Speaker 1: along the way that you thought and making all the
Speaker 1: cars that I thought were awesome when I was younger. Yeah, sure,
Speaker 1: well that's that's when that's kind of the resurgence of like, well,
Speaker 1: this thing actually does what we say it does. It's
Speaker 1: not it's not just a shell. Yeah. There were some
Speaker 1: other cool technologies on display to stick with a connected
Speaker 1: car and just your controls. BMW showed off their ie
Speaker 1: Vision Future Interaction Platform, which again is another network car.
Speaker 1: All those commands that you would issue to the car
Speaker 1: can be done by touchscreen or by voice control or
Speaker 1: again by gestures um. And the steering wheel actually, did
Speaker 1: you see the steering wheel on this thing with the lights? Okay,
Speaker 1: So there are three different modes of driving this vehicle.
Speaker 1: There's pure drive, where the vehicle is under the control
Speaker 1: of a human driver, at least presumably a human driver.
Speaker 1: A driver could be a dog. You would hope it
Speaker 1: would not be, suppose it could be at this point.
Speaker 1: Then there was assist mode, which was kind of where
Speaker 1: you have that autonomous ability to kick into gear should
Speaker 1: something go wrong, to protect the driver and the car,
Speaker 1: and then you had pure autonomous mode or auto mode,
Speaker 1: and the steering wheel would light up to indicate which
Speaker 1: mode you were in. So if you were in automode,
Speaker 1: it would be blue steering wheel like pretty much at
Speaker 1: the um, you know, the three and nine positions up
Speaker 1: would be blue like up to the top. And then
Speaker 1: if you wanted to switch over to pure drive, the
Speaker 1: lights would start to fade down from the top to
Speaker 1: the sides so that it would be an alert saying hey,
Speaker 1: you should probably put your hands on the wheel now
Speaker 1: right about here where the blue light is so so.
Speaker 1: And then before it would switch to pure drive mode,
Speaker 1: the lights turn red to indicate, hey, seriously, take the wheel.
Speaker 1: I'm not in control anymore. All right, let me tell
Speaker 1: you something. Yeah, I got a major problem with this car.
Speaker 1: This is kind of why you invited me here. Is
Speaker 1: this the moment right here? Because this could be a moment.
Speaker 1: Let me tell you, all right, this is the So
Speaker 1: this is the BMW I eight that they have modified.
Speaker 1: There's no doors in this car. There's no hood on
Speaker 1: this car, I mean roof on this carpet. Um. But
Speaker 1: inside is where all this technologies happen. And you get it.
Speaker 1: That's what the showcases. They want you to have a clear,
Speaker 1: unobstructive view of that. So I get it. What I
Speaker 1: almost cannot believe I'm hearing from BMW, which by the way,
Speaker 1: used to be called, uh, the ultimate driving machine, right, okay,
Speaker 1: the ultimate driving machine. Now here's what. Here's what this says.
Speaker 1: BMW's latest technology reduces the amount of driver control to
Speaker 1: a minimum in order to simplify driving, and driving can
Speaker 1: be stressful for some. And that's when it goes into
Speaker 1: the three modes. Come on, this is part of the
Speaker 1: stuff that they that they're you know, this is their message,
Speaker 1: because I get it, okay, and we're all going there,
Speaker 1: some of us are, and but this company in particular,
Speaker 1: and I understand. I understand that, you know, they have
Speaker 1: to keep up. They they have to remain relevant. I
Speaker 1: get That's why they're doing it. So I'm not I'm
Speaker 1: not that old that I don't understand that. I really do.
Speaker 1: They have to remain relevant. They have to they have
Speaker 1: to sell product, right, So that's what they're doing. I
Speaker 1: get it. But for a company that that claims to
Speaker 1: be the ultimate drive machine, and they are known for
Speaker 1: building cars that drivers really really enjoy, they pay a
Speaker 1: premium to drive a BMW because of the experience. It's
Speaker 1: a driver's car. Are there's certain vehicles you could expect
Speaker 1: that out of Porsche as well. Uh, you know, you
Speaker 1: expect a certain experience when you get behind the wheel,
Speaker 1: and this is removing all that. You're just saying, I
Speaker 1: want the I want the brand name. I wanted to
Speaker 1: be this I eighth or whatever platform they put it in.
Speaker 1: But I don't really want to do anything. I don't
Speaker 1: want to experience that anymore. I'd rather just sit back
Speaker 1: and read a book maybe while I go to work.
Speaker 1: Why not take the train it starts? It sounds to
Speaker 1: me like a glorious future. But see where the problem is.
Speaker 1: Your listeners have come to expect this kind of rant
Speaker 1: for me, So why I get you on the show? Honest?
Speaker 1: But but honest, really, I mean, really think about it.
Speaker 1: I mean, this is supposed to be a driver's card.
Speaker 1: It's it's a it's an odd move from this manufacturer.
Speaker 1: That's all on saying. Well, and to be fair, I
Speaker 1: mean they do still have the pure drive mode where
Speaker 1: I think that's what they're relying on that to to
Speaker 1: continue there there kind of their slogan about the driving
Speaker 1: experience while still also investing in these technologies that if
Speaker 1: they don't really look into that, they will literally be
Speaker 1: left behind. And I understand that not every vehicle is
Speaker 1: going to receive this type of treatment. And they got
Speaker 1: the rest of the product line. And if you look
Speaker 1: at BMW's page, you'll see that they have a lot
Speaker 1: of different products that are in fact a lot of
Speaker 1: fun to drive. Did you did you happen to see
Speaker 1: the demonstration of their self parking technology for for the alright,
Speaker 1: so for BMW. So BMW has shown off self parking
Speaker 1: a couple of times, like it's not like it's brand new,
Speaker 1: except that this year they showed off that they had
Speaker 1: a new way to interact with self parking because usually
Speaker 1: you would get out of your car, you might have
Speaker 1: a button on your key fob that says park and
Speaker 1: you would press it in the car would pull itself
Speaker 1: into a parking slot. Very impressive, you know, you know, yeah,
Speaker 1: And you could even maybe with something like Alexa have
Speaker 1: voice control where you could say park the car and
Speaker 1: then jump out and it would probably a car that
Speaker 1: would be cool too. BMW decided to go the air
Speaker 1: controller route, but just your controls. You can actually just
Speaker 1: your to your car, no way to take to take
Speaker 1: a spot, and to to move the car while you're
Speaker 1: outside of it to go and part really yeah, they
Speaker 1: actually showed off. They had journalists sit in the passenger side,
Speaker 1: no one in the driver's seat, have a BMW representative
Speaker 1: standing there gesturing to the car and to the parking space,
Speaker 1: and the car would maneuver over into the parking I've
Speaker 1: got to ask you this, do you have to have
Speaker 1: those flashlights with the cones on the end to do this?
Speaker 1: You have to have them, but I think it presents
Speaker 1: a certain element of style. I absolutely would plus the
Speaker 1: giant ear mud right exactly. You know, the BMW engines
Speaker 1: can get loud, so you want to be able to
Speaker 1: protect your ears. But yeah, so that's that's that's a
Speaker 1: shock to me. I I'll have to seek a video
Speaker 1: of this because I've got to see somebody directing their
Speaker 1: car as if it's an airplane into a park. I
Speaker 1: think it was. I want to say it was the
Speaker 1: Verge where I saw the video demonstration of this particular technology.
Speaker 1: I should go on to say I didn't get a
Speaker 1: chance to see this personally. This was something that I
Speaker 1: saw after I got back. This is one of the
Speaker 1: most frustrating things about attending cees is you get to
Speaker 1: see a lot of really cool stuff, but when you
Speaker 1: come back, you see all this really cool stuff that
Speaker 1: you didn't have a chance to experience yourself. There's just
Speaker 1: no way, There's no no, there is absolutely no way.
Speaker 1: Like even if you spent every single second running from
Speaker 1: thing to thing, you would still miss stuff. Um. So
Speaker 1: next we have Kia, which normally have I think I
Speaker 1: wouldn't have even wouldn't have even registered with me. But
Speaker 1: again Kia again moving on this this same sort of
Speaker 1: autonomous car bandwagon, I guess you could call it, UM
Speaker 1: introduced its drive Wise platform. Yeah, on the Soul e
Speaker 1: V platform. Right, so, uh, you know, it's in a
Speaker 1: product that they currently build, which makes sense. It's not
Speaker 1: like to bring out some concept vehicle that's the you
Speaker 1: know Pye in this guy idea that maybe will never happen.
Speaker 1: They're saying, now we're gonna put it into our actual product. Right.
Speaker 1: Here's what here, here's what we have available right now
Speaker 1: that it works in. Yeah, and so right now, it's
Speaker 1: kind of a a advanced driver assistance system or ads.
Speaker 1: It's one of those where again similar to what I
Speaker 1: was talking about with Toyota, with with pretty much everybody
Speaker 1: like it's this idea of a computer assisting a driver,
Speaker 1: normally just to intervene when there's something that the driver
Speaker 1: has not noticed or has it doesn't have the time
Speaker 1: to react to him or herself. So this is the
Speaker 1: partially autonomous system, right because they've got to release dates. Yes,
Speaker 1: this was the earlier one, the earlier one which is
Speaker 1: scheduled to debut in and then another full ten years
Speaker 1: beyond that. So when is when they're gonna come out
Speaker 1: with the fully autonomous version. That's what they're projecting right now.
Speaker 1: I think, honestly, Scott, if I have to be like
Speaker 1: if you nailed me down, I'd have to say I
Speaker 1: think a lot of these car companies are purposefully being
Speaker 1: conservative with those guesses. I think I think certain companies
Speaker 1: that are not car companies, like Google, are really pushing
Speaker 1: the envelope as far as the autonomous car technology goes
Speaker 1: to the point where there will be enough demand from
Speaker 1: the consumer for some of those dates to get moved up.
Speaker 1: And I just think a lot of the car companies
Speaker 1: are trying to do two things. One, they want to
Speaker 1: make sure that they give themselves enough time to really
Speaker 1: develop the technology so that the vehicles they put out
Speaker 1: are safe. Nobody wants the autonomous car version of the
Speaker 1: clean diesel scandal because that's a version where people will
Speaker 1: lose their lives. So obviously there's that. And I think
Speaker 1: the other one is just that there's this fear, a
Speaker 1: well founded one. I would argue that the autonomous car
Speaker 1: future is also going to be the future where fewer
Speaker 1: people own personal vehicles. Yeah, no argument for me on
Speaker 1: those points. I think that's really gonna happen. I think
Speaker 1: a lot of people are going to jump on this
Speaker 1: and want that, and I think that manufacturers are kind
Speaker 1: of hedging their bets a little bit insane when we're
Speaker 1: gonna be fully autonomous. But I wouldn't be surprised if
Speaker 1: that date moves up by five years. I mean a
Speaker 1: long long way. It's kind of that under promise over
Speaker 1: deliver thing, right, I mean, you don't want to say
Speaker 1: in we're gonna have a fully autonomous line and it's
Speaker 1: gonna be fantastic, and then rolls around you look back
Speaker 1: at that news story and then you you know, kind
Speaker 1: of press Kia and say well where the fully autonomous
Speaker 1: vehicles and they have to kind of put their you know,
Speaker 1: head down and say well kick kick, yeah, you know,
Speaker 1: maybe in five more years spot to be in. I
Speaker 1: think I think part of it is also the idea
Speaker 1: that if you'd go with the driver assist route rather
Speaker 1: than the fully autonomous route, you can keep that culture
Speaker 1: of personal car ownership going longer, right, because people will
Speaker 1: be interested in driving with these kind of vehicles. It's
Speaker 1: when you go the fully autonomous route where one vehicle
Speaker 1: price gets so high that the average person starts to
Speaker 1: have trouble affording one and two. There's less need to
Speaker 1: have one and densely populated areas. Obviously in rural areas
Speaker 1: that's a totally different story. But but in cities where
Speaker 1: you could presume presumably get a service going with electric
Speaker 1: or not even electric, but fully autonomous vehicles, um, then
Speaker 1: there's very little reason to own your own desk. See.
Speaker 1: I totally understand that there's a time and place for
Speaker 1: this type of thing, and really it does work in
Speaker 1: some situations. Other situations there's just no way that it
Speaker 1: would work. There as certain people that this type of
Speaker 1: this type of idea this car sharing idea, this uh. Um,
Speaker 1: even even e V cars at this point the way
Speaker 1: they are right now wouldn't work for a lot of people,
Speaker 1: But for a lot of people they do, and it's
Speaker 1: a great thing. And I get the move to autonomous
Speaker 1: and people's excitement around it, but um, I don't think
Speaker 1: it's ever gonna go on either way. Yeah. I I
Speaker 1: used to be ung ho autonomous, but I've eased off
Speaker 1: on that a little bit just because I recognize there
Speaker 1: are I'm thinking of it too narrowly, right, I'm thinking
Speaker 1: of it from my perspective, my own personal experience of
Speaker 1: using vehicles. For me, it makes perfect sense pretty much
Speaker 1: all the time. But there are plenty of outliers that
Speaker 1: you would say, all right, well, no, personal ownership is
Speaker 1: never going to completely go away, not as long as
Speaker 1: we still have people living outside of urban areas, and
Speaker 1: presumably that's going to continue. Um. But to get back
Speaker 1: to Kia, I want to ask you this, did you
Speaker 1: happen to look at their blind control system? So it's
Speaker 1: a fingerprint scanner that identifies the driver, and then as
Speaker 1: you drive the vehicle, the vehicle begins to learn your
Speaker 1: style and it learns what temperature you like to keep
Speaker 1: the car, and what stations you tend to listen to
Speaker 1: and UH and other ways that you actually handle the
Speaker 1: vehicle while you're driving it, and it builds a profile.
Speaker 1: It's personalized to you. And then if someone else drives
Speaker 1: the car and scans their fingerprint, they get a profile.
Speaker 1: And then every time you drive the car afterward, when
Speaker 1: you scan it knows it's you automatically adjust saw those
Speaker 1: settings so that you get the driving experience you want
Speaker 1: and the other driver gets see driving experience they want. Now,
Speaker 1: there have been very analog versions of this along the way.
Speaker 1: You can say this is this is driver one, driver
Speaker 1: to driver three and hit the button and the seat
Speaker 1: changes position, the steering wheel chaines position, the temperature controls,
Speaker 1: the radio stations, all that, I get it. But this
Speaker 1: is doing it with with fingerprint technology. Um, that's pretty interesting.
Speaker 1: And you know, it's kind of reminds me of the
Speaker 1: way that the houses, as smart houses can adapt to
Speaker 1: the way and you know that they know that at
Speaker 1: a certain time you come up from work and you
Speaker 1: want the temperature to certain setting. You want this light
Speaker 1: on but not that one, and then later in the
Speaker 1: evening turned that one off, turned that one on, and
Speaker 1: it starts to learn your patterns and and things like that.
Speaker 1: I can see these two things working together. It's like,
Speaker 1: not pretty soon, you're just gonna be able to walk.
Speaker 1: You're gonna be able to walk through life without ever
Speaker 1: having to push another button or flip another switch. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I've always I've always mentioned this as uh, you know,
Speaker 1: it will come down to a conversation between you and
Speaker 1: another person about what's your reality like? Because here, here's
Speaker 1: what my reality is like, because everything is customizing itself
Speaker 1: to my convenience, my comfort, my preferences. So what's yours like?
Speaker 1: Because I bet you are a little different from me,
Speaker 1: and I'm curious what how you experience life compared to
Speaker 1: how I experienced life. That's gonna be a real conversation
Speaker 1: in a few years. And it's strange, isn't it That
Speaker 1: you won't have it. You won't have the same environment
Speaker 1: that you you share, really because everything will be so
Speaker 1: as you said, tailored I guess, to custom fit to you.
Speaker 1: It's gonna be so different. It's really it's really weird
Speaker 1: to think, like you you won't have to again flip
Speaker 1: a sweet You won't if you do anything manually practically anymore.
Speaker 1: I do think smart thermostats are gonna have to start
Speaker 1: seeking therapy for families like mine, where the preference is
Speaker 1: a matter of a couple of reas and it's it's
Speaker 1: hotly contested territory. Yeah, I can understand that our is
Speaker 1: the switch on the side is almost worn out by
Speaker 1: the end of the season. Yeah, yeah, that's kind of
Speaker 1: the same for us. So we kind of mentioned Fair
Speaker 1: to Day Future already and you guys, like I said,
Speaker 1: did a full episode on it. Yeah, I mean, I've
Speaker 1: got got some I got a pile of notes here
Speaker 1: on this whole thing. So you've you've seen this in person,
Speaker 1: and I haven't. I've only read about it, and you know,
Speaker 1: kind of get the the idea that some people thought
Speaker 1: it was really fantastic, and other reviewers went in and said,
Speaker 1: this is absolutely ridiculous. I don't know what they're doing
Speaker 1: bringing this car to the show, because this has nothing
Speaker 1: to do with what the company is really. What the
Speaker 1: what the real messages here? Yeah? I I well it
Speaker 1: didn't in a way, but it but it wasn't a
Speaker 1: good representation of what they're gonna do, right, So the
Speaker 1: representation is similar to what we were talking about with Volkswagen,
Speaker 1: this modular approach to building, designing and building vehicles, where
Speaker 1: you have a basic design that you can then modify
Speaker 1: for whatever purpose you need, whether it's a subcompact car,
Speaker 1: a race car, and suv, a truck, whatever it might be.
Speaker 1: You can adjust the foundation and then you have this
Speaker 1: modular battery system that allows you to add or remove
Speaker 1: batteries depending upon what vehicle it is that you're planning
Speaker 1: on building. So subcntact compact cars don't need as much
Speaker 1: battery power as say a race car. I think they
Speaker 1: called it strings of batteries, didn't they. You can you
Speaker 1: can adjust the size of the string of batteries, right, Yeah.
Speaker 1: And they had a cool video that sort of showed
Speaker 1: the concept from very high level. But I like the
Speaker 1: idea a lot because it allows for rapid development and prototyping.
Speaker 1: I mean that the car that they had on display
Speaker 1: did not exist eighteen months ago. It's a killer car,
Speaker 1: by the way. I love it. It looks like it's
Speaker 1: going fast while's sitting still. That's awesome. I really do
Speaker 1: like it. Good design. I I as soon as I'm
Speaker 1: not a Scott you know, I'm not a car guy,
Speaker 1: that's not me. I wanted to get behind the wheel
Speaker 1: of this car. When I saw it, it was just
Speaker 1: like and you would be the only one able to
Speaker 1: do that because it's a single seat car. It's so
Speaker 1: you know, the drum up excitement. Of course it brought
Speaker 1: out the race car version. Yeah, it was. It was
Speaker 1: essentially a way of getting attention right. First of all,
Speaker 1: the brand new company. This company has not been around
Speaker 1: for very long, mostly mysterious. A lot of people had
Speaker 1: heard the name but didn't know a whole lot about it.
Speaker 1: It was getting most of its funding through China, so
Speaker 1: it's headquartered in Los Angeles and it's going to have
Speaker 1: a manufacturing facility in Las Vegas. Uh. These were like
Speaker 1: the basic things people knew, but no one had seen
Speaker 1: anything or really knew what what was going on behind
Speaker 1: the scenes. Found out it was this approach to making
Speaker 1: electric vehicles. That's their specialty. UH. Taking this modular design
Speaker 1: so they could build any type of electrical vehicle. They
Speaker 1: have different power train, our drive train UH layouts. They
Speaker 1: can do so again depending up how what your car needs.
Speaker 1: If it doesn't need a whole lot of power, then
Speaker 1: it's got a very simple drive train if it's gonna
Speaker 1: need a lot of torque for something where you're gonna
Speaker 1: be hauling things or they're gonna be driving like an
Speaker 1: suv in in rough areas. Obviously they would have a
Speaker 1: different drive train than from a subcombat car for motors
Speaker 1: instead of two or something like that. Yeah, yeah, they had.
Speaker 1: They showed all the different variations where like there was
Speaker 1: one where it's like one motor attached to one wheel,
Speaker 1: and I was like, huh, okay, that would be a
Speaker 1: little commuter car. So they also had the ability. They said, well,
Speaker 1: our designs one of the things we wanted to work
Speaker 1: in from the beginning was that if we wanted to
Speaker 1: make it an autonomous vehicle, we could add that on
Speaker 1: to the frame as well. So in other words, it's
Speaker 1: not automatically going to be an autonomous vehicle, but they
Speaker 1: have the option to make a any particular model they
Speaker 1: go into production with an autonomous version of that car.
Speaker 1: Pretty simple thing in an all electric vehicle. Really yeah,
Speaker 1: so really cool idea. Uh And the race car obviously
Speaker 1: was just a way of saying, come and take a
Speaker 1: look at what we have to show you. And it
Speaker 1: worked for me. But the problem was when they started
Speaker 1: interviewing the people that you know, brought this technology out
Speaker 1: on stage, the ones that we're conducting, you know, the
Speaker 1: press conference, when they really started drilling down and asking
Speaker 1: a lot of questions. Here's here's the thing they got.
Speaker 1: They got a lot of uh, well, we don't really
Speaker 1: know the answer to that yet, but just trust us.
Speaker 1: It's gonna work out. Everything's gonna be fine. We we
Speaker 1: know that we can achieve this as just right now
Speaker 1: we don't have the solution that kind of answer. It's
Speaker 1: a very much an Internet startup approach, and it's an
Speaker 1: Internet startup approach to an industry that has uh, very
Speaker 1: deep roots and a very very high barrier to intrigue.
Speaker 1: In fact, I would say Faraday Future would have had
Speaker 1: zero chance of success were it not for a little
Speaker 1: company called Tesla. Sure. Yeah, but you can look at
Speaker 1: other examples that that people immediately go to, and we've
Speaker 1: heard the smart listeners on car stuff as well. Um,
Speaker 1: you know, this looks al awful lot like something like
Speaker 1: an Elio or even if you want to go back farther,
Speaker 1: uh Tucker or Dale Dale. Dale's a different scenario because
Speaker 1: that was just complete scam all around right there, there's
Speaker 1: no way around that one. But but the others, Tucker
Speaker 1: and UH and Elio and there's been others throughout time
Speaker 1: as well that have done this. But they bring a
Speaker 1: real product out and they show you the real product,
Speaker 1: and they say, all we need is X million number
Speaker 1: of million dollars to get the first you know, production run,
Speaker 1: first match of production out there. And then from that point,
Speaker 1: you know, we can we can you know, take them
Speaker 1: out and say yeah, we can sell you a dealership
Speaker 1: and you can sell these products and then we can
Speaker 1: create more cars. And that's the way the whole thing works.
Speaker 1: But they've got to get over that initial hump and
Speaker 1: this one. Now they've got a huge backing, right, they've
Speaker 1: got a lot of money, yes, available to them. That
Speaker 1: doesn't necessarily guarantee success. Anyone who has backed a kickstarter
Speaker 1: for any kind of technology UH has probably had the
Speaker 1: experience at least once of backing something that never ever
Speaker 1: came to fruition, and whether it was due to someone
Speaker 1: trying to pull a scam or someone UH under s
Speaker 1: a mating the challenges they would face taking an idea
Speaker 1: from the concept stage to production or whatever it may be.
Speaker 1: You always encounter things that you did not anticipate when
Speaker 1: you first set out. Uh, A lot of people have
Speaker 1: experienced this disappointment and something that they back not actually
Speaker 1: coming out, and that's a possibility. The nice thing is
Speaker 1: it's someone else's money in the case of Faraday Future,
Speaker 1: So I'm okay with this, that's true. I mean, like
Speaker 1: in the case of Elio Motors, that's that's the most
Speaker 1: recent one. You know that we've we've been dealing with,
Speaker 1: is that you know, people are sending in you know,
Speaker 1: hundred bucks, two hundred bucks, five hundred dollars or whatever.
Speaker 1: It's kind of a down payment deposit with the idea
Speaker 1: that that's starting the company and that you know, when
Speaker 1: they do start producing them, they're gonna get the first pick.
Speaker 1: You know, they're gonna get the first production run. Uh.
Speaker 1: You know, they get little little things along the way,
Speaker 1: you know, will in sentence, I guess for doing that,
Speaker 1: whether it's bumper stickers or T shirt or something like that. Right, Um,
Speaker 1: but that company, the hurdle for that company is something
Speaker 1: like two hundred and fifty or three hundred million dollars,
Speaker 1: and that's what it would take to get that company
Speaker 1: to start producing cars. Right now, probably some other things
Speaker 1: too at this point, because it's some time has passed.
Speaker 1: But but this one, this is all being funded by
Speaker 1: one individual and it's it's the I laugh when I
Speaker 1: see this, But it's the Chinese version of Steve Jobs.
Speaker 1: That's what that's how he's described now he has he's
Speaker 1: the founder of uh I guess the Chinese version of
Speaker 1: Netflix over there, right. So he's got a lot of money,
Speaker 1: this guy, he's a billionaire, but he's not going to
Speaker 1: throw all of his money behind this whole thing. Of course,
Speaker 1: it's gonna put some money behind it, but he's got
Speaker 1: deep pockets. Is this gonna make it? Because they're talking
Speaker 1: about putting a factory in it's again a billion dollar
Speaker 1: facility north of Las Vegas. They're gonna break around on that.
Speaker 1: I believe it was at the end of this month,
Speaker 1: if not next month. Um, so it's it's happening soon.
Speaker 1: Do you really see this thing going anywhere? Do you
Speaker 1: think they're gonna do it? Are they gonna come out,
Speaker 1: you know, the week before and say like, well there's
Speaker 1: been a delay and we're gonna do it. Um at
Speaker 1: the end of this year. Uh Without having seen any
Speaker 1: of the actual inner workings of the company. It's really
Speaker 1: hard for me to say. I can say I want
Speaker 1: them to to succeed so badly simply because I think
Speaker 1: it could be a truly disruptive approach to the automotive industry.
Speaker 1: And by disruptive, I don't mean like a dangerous thing
Speaker 1: or a destructive thing, but rather something that shakes stuff
Speaker 1: up enough that we start seeing crazy innovation across all manufacturers.
Speaker 1: That's what I want to see, and I want to see.
Speaker 1: I want to see all boats rise. Like I don't
Speaker 1: have a grudge against any particular company. Um. I mean,
Speaker 1: I definitely wagged my finger at Volkswagen or the clean
Speaker 1: Diesel thing, but but it's you know, that's more of
Speaker 1: a a emotional reaction to that scandal. But I want
Speaker 1: to see everybody benefit. Um and I would hate to
Speaker 1: see this be an example of an internet startup that
Speaker 1: got a lot of hype and then collapsed in on itself. Now. See,
Speaker 1: Ben and I had a similar thought on our show
Speaker 1: when we talked about it on Car Stuff. We said,
Speaker 1: you know, we really want we we truly do want
Speaker 1: them to succeed. This would be fantastic for development. As
Speaker 1: you said, you know it would it would push things
Speaker 1: along considerably. But with all the examples, the history that
Speaker 1: we've had that we've we've seen, we've talked about on
Speaker 1: our show so many times, it's like, you can you
Speaker 1: can remain hopeful but be skeptical. Awesome, Yes, there's good,
Speaker 1: good reason to employ critical thinking. Sure, yeah, yeah, I
Speaker 1: mean this thing may or may not end up being
Speaker 1: kind of vaporware, but I hope not. I'm really I'm
Speaker 1: really hoping for the best in this. I want to ride, Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean the future. If you're listening, I want a ride. Well,
Speaker 1: that's that's something we didn't mentioned. That's that's their race
Speaker 1: car version. It's like the top end thing that they
Speaker 1: can produce. But but the reality is their road testing
Speaker 1: a vehicle right now that no one's seen. They They've
Speaker 1: got a secret card that's out there test somewhere. So
Speaker 1: if you see a car go by you that you
Speaker 1: don't recognize and there's no marking on it, that might
Speaker 1: be them. Yeah, it could be them. So they're out
Speaker 1: there somewhere testing this platform, and you probably somewhere in
Speaker 1: California or Nevada probably, Yeah, it seems like those states
Speaker 1: are you know a little more loose with their you know,
Speaker 1: the allowances, I guess, yeah, yeah, um yeah, I I
Speaker 1: would be interested to see what they're gonna come up
Speaker 1: with for the production vehicle and will it kind of
Speaker 1: be like a what's that sad trombone moment? You know,
Speaker 1: I see it? Uh, versus the race car that they
Speaker 1: showed at the c S show. I mean it's it's
Speaker 1: it's like, you know, it's good that they did that
Speaker 1: to get the excitement. They promised you this, but they
Speaker 1: gave you this that kind of thing. Well kind of yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean you're gonna you know, you're gonna be just
Speaker 1: a little bit disappointed, Like, oh man, I was really
Speaker 1: hoping for that single seater, the zero one concept, that
Speaker 1: car that probably would have cost around three hundred thousand dollars.
Speaker 1: It's like a batmobile or something. That's so it's pretty wicked.
Speaker 1: It really is. The people on the floor they were
Speaker 1: saying that they preferred to think of it as the
Speaker 1: car out of Minority Report. Oh yeah, okay, I can
Speaker 1: see that a little bit. Yeah all right, Um, you
Speaker 1: know there's another one that you wanted to mention, the
Speaker 1: last one that Cherry on top of this Sunday. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and this one leaves me with my head. Chicken, I
Speaker 1: I understand what this this h this builder does. This
Speaker 1: is WRIN Speed, Yes, Rin Speed, and the vehicle we're
Speaker 1: talking about the concept at any rate is the ets Yeah.
Speaker 1: And also we should mention the ETAs is actually a
Speaker 1: BMW I eight based concept car of course. Yeah, so
Speaker 1: the latest greatest from BMW. But what they've done with it,
Speaker 1: I don't know. I don't know if I understand everything
Speaker 1: that they're trying to achieve with this car, but I'm
Speaker 1: not stand trying to achieve. I mean, RIN Speed has
Speaker 1: done a lot of cool concepts in the past, and
Speaker 1: you know, they've got sure some of them has some
Speaker 1: questionable features and things. But when I look at this one,
Speaker 1: the ETAs, yeah, it's got a lot of questionable features.
Speaker 1: So yeah, let's talk about some of them. For one thing,
Speaker 1: the interface that they have is is encased in two
Speaker 1: twenty one and a half inch curved four K displays
Speaker 1: four K resolution. Scott, I mean, granted, you are pretty
Speaker 1: close to those displays when you're a driver, right, I mean,
Speaker 1: it's not that far away from you. And in fact,
Speaker 1: four K resolution is insane to me because those displays
Speaker 1: would need to be enormous, and you'd have to be
Speaker 1: even closer to appreciate the sharpness in that resolution. I
Speaker 1: can't believe four K is necessary when ten a D
Speaker 1: would have sufficed. However, that's nitpicking. So let's say that
Speaker 1: you're driving this this crazy concept, this this variation on
Speaker 1: the BMW I eight. Uh. You're driving around and you're
Speaker 1: you've got this nice steering wheel. It's got its own
Speaker 1: little panel right in the middle of it, and you
Speaker 1: think I'm gonna hand over control to my car. You
Speaker 1: press a little button, the steering wheel folds in on
Speaker 1: itself Scott, Yeah, and then it retracts into the dashboard
Speaker 1: so it goes away. So that okay, that's that's one
Speaker 1: of the things that left me shake in my head.
Speaker 1: Like most of these systems, even most of them recognize
Speaker 1: the idea that there's going to be a point when
Speaker 1: human interaction is probably gonna be necessary, and we're gonna
Speaker 1: alert you with a chime or lights as you said
Speaker 1: on the one steerings of the again the BMW. Okay,
Speaker 1: most manufacturers still get that that you know, there's going
Speaker 1: to be a point where you're gonna want to take
Speaker 1: control or the car will say, I don't know if
Speaker 1: I can handle this, grab the wheel. Pashaw says written speed. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so you know that's I mean, I watched it happen
Speaker 1: in the video video clip and it's not a fast
Speaker 1: motion for it to come back out. It's it's cool,
Speaker 1: it is, it's cool. It's interesting to watch. But the
Speaker 1: idea also of a folding steering wheel, that's another thing
Speaker 1: that makes me cringe just a little bit. You know,
Speaker 1: that's that's not a great design. Really. Yeah. The two
Speaker 1: the if you think of a wheel, think of it, Uh,
Speaker 1: divide the wheel in half, and the top half and
Speaker 1: bottom half fold down along the column, the steering column,
Speaker 1: and the whole thing where tracks back into the dashboard,
Speaker 1: so that you are freed up to read a book
Speaker 1: essentially like it looks like the like the passenger side
Speaker 1: of the vehicle at that point, really it really does.
Speaker 1: And the two displays extend forward so that you can
Speaker 1: get more immersed in whatever, you know, entertainment like playing
Speaker 1: on your dashboard. You can get a lot closer to
Speaker 1: that four km's appreciated a lot more when it's when
Speaker 1: it when it approaches you by five inches, when it's
Speaker 1: eight inches away from your eyes, so uh. And the
Speaker 1: other thing, Now, this just kind of made me laugh
Speaker 1: in the video. I don't know why this was was
Speaker 1: featured in here, but there's a couple of things more
Speaker 1: but um, when when they were showing the autonomous capability, Yeah,
Speaker 1: they had the car at a track in Spain, a
Speaker 1: racetrack in Spain, and they clearly had a time, you know,
Speaker 1: a lap time, a laps time from a human driver
Speaker 1: on the screen. So it's it's got, you know, an
Speaker 1: interface that allows you to record lap times and it's
Speaker 1: really cool, a map of the track and everything best
Speaker 1: you know, kind of the best time with a little award,
Speaker 1: you know, a silver copper with It's almost equivalent to
Speaker 1: like a video game, except this is a real car
Speaker 1: that you're driving around a real track. Yeah. Sure, and
Speaker 1: we've seen that stuff, you know, in other cars. We
Speaker 1: get that, you know, they've got stuff like that. You know,
Speaker 1: they can measure times and speeds and all that. But
Speaker 1: this one was showing like, Okay, I'm gonna I'm gonna
Speaker 1: let the autonomous uh feature take over and drive around
Speaker 1: this racetrack in Spain. And then that's when the driver
Speaker 1: decided to grab a book from the from what it
Speaker 1: looks like a bookshelf on the passenger side. That thing
Speaker 1: was always loaded with books. So while they're driving around
Speaker 1: this racetrack in Spain, the driver's reading a book. And
Speaker 1: I know that's to prove a point that he's not
Speaker 1: touched on the wheel, that there's no interaction there but
Speaker 1: the car, of course, best of the human driver's time,
Speaker 1: you know, the car was much faster or a little
Speaker 1: bit faster anyways. But I just thought that was so
Speaker 1: odd to see him doing that, you know, like to
Speaker 1: be on a race back of all places, I can
Speaker 1: get if you're in a boring commute or so. Clearly
Speaker 1: he was trying to psych out the robot car, to
Speaker 1: show how how little interest he had in the robot
Speaker 1: car's performance. I thought, you're gonna say other drivers competing
Speaker 1: against like I'm just gonna let it take over, like
Speaker 1: I'm just gonna I'm gonna read my cough cut here.
Speaker 1: Did you get my point though? I mean, of all
Speaker 1: places you're gonna want to see, I mean you're just
Speaker 1: gonna want to pay attention and watch what's going on
Speaker 1: because it's exciting, it's thrilling. It's not like you're just going,
Speaker 1: you know, between downtown Atlanta and home. Sure, let's be fair,
Speaker 1: could sometimes be exciting. Uh. It also uses Microsoft's Cortana
Speaker 1: concierge service, so this is similar to Ford and Alexa.
Speaker 1: Uh Cortana, I would argue, well, I mean, I I've
Speaker 1: used Cortana a little bit because I've got Windows ten
Speaker 1: on my computer at home and Cortana is incorporated into
Speaker 1: Windows ten. Sounds fancy. I've used it a little bit,
Speaker 1: but I'm still very much a keyboard and mouse kind
Speaker 1: of guy, so I don't tend to talk to my
Speaker 1: computer unless something has gone wrong, and the words I'm
Speaker 1: saying are not words that the concierge is going to
Speaker 1: help me with. I talked to my laptop here at
Speaker 1: work all the time. And uh wait, I'm glad it
Speaker 1: can't record. That's that's a good good thing. Wait, I can't,
Speaker 1: can it? I don't think so, at least unless some
Speaker 1: malware has been put on there. But the real reason
Speaker 1: we had to add this, besides all the ridiculous autonomous
Speaker 1: car features and and the fact that uh Cortana is incorporated,
Speaker 1: is that this particular car also has a landing pad
Speaker 1: on the back of it for a d j I drone. Yeah,
Speaker 1: this was probably the biggest head scratcher for me. What
Speaker 1: is the point of that drone? Well, the drone can
Speaker 1: fly along while you're driving and take video of you
Speaker 1: driving your really kick ass BMW I a concept car. Well,
Speaker 1: I agree, that is a cool thing to be able
Speaker 1: to do. I get it. You don't necessarily need to
Speaker 1: have a landing pad and a matching drone. I guess
Speaker 1: you could just get one at Toys or Us or something,
Speaker 1: or at the local Harby Harby store, but it should
Speaker 1: do something that was kind of cool. Now, in the video,
Speaker 1: it's kind of a silly setup, right, I mean, it's
Speaker 1: a male female females flying the drone in some kind
Speaker 1: of looks like they're in a warehouse or something. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's a big circular room where there's a there's a
Speaker 1: staircase that's on the internal curved wall that goes up,
Speaker 1: so some very weird looking space where the car is
Speaker 1: parked in the center of it. But it's open to
Speaker 1: the to the air. You know, there's an open top.
Speaker 1: So the guy climbs back into the car and the
Speaker 1: car alerts him, Hey, it's Valentine's Day. Wouldn't you like
Speaker 1: to get some roses for your wife? And then he
Speaker 1: just says the word roses and that sends a signal
Speaker 1: to the drone that the woman is currently controlling with
Speaker 1: a with a remote control, and the drone ends up
Speaker 1: going into auto mode and flies off, sending the woman
Speaker 1: into a fit. A fit. Yes, she is quite upset
Speaker 1: that she has lost control of this, and she she
Speaker 1: confer her husband, who takes off his glasses, his sunglasses,
Speaker 1: puts one uh one stem of the sunglasses in his
Speaker 1: mouth and shrugs to say, Hey, what are you gonna do?
Speaker 1: Things happen, and then they go down the stairs to
Speaker 1: get into their autonomous sports car of the future. When
Speaker 1: the drone returns with a bouquet of roses that it
Speaker 1: has picked up from a delivery service. It was like
Speaker 1: a like a messenger drone. I right, it it went
Speaker 1: out and it's it's sought the nearest floors, which was
Speaker 1: I believe on the screen it said four point one
Speaker 1: miles away, something like a long long distance. So it
Speaker 1: went out got them or no, it was four minutes away,
Speaker 1: four and a half minutes and a half minutes right,
Speaker 1: So he attaches a bouquet of roses, and it brings
Speaker 1: him right back to her and everything is just every
Speaker 1: smoothed over. At that point she gives him a hug.
Speaker 1: Her her one foot comes off the ground, you know,
Speaker 1: and classic hug posed. Truly, I had it. I had
Speaker 1: a tear at that point. I felt something. Um, yeah,
Speaker 1: it was it was a it was a funny video
Speaker 1: to watch. I actually really enjoyed it. Um. I mean,
Speaker 1: I think it's ridiculous is probably too strong a word.
Speaker 1: It's certainly whimsical. Let's say whimsical. That's nice. It's it's
Speaker 1: it's worth watching. It's it's interesting to see the video
Speaker 1: is and also as proof of concept of certain technologies,
Speaker 1: it's really cool. I mean, I I agree with you.
Speaker 1: I don't think that the autonomous approach, as as awesome
Speaker 1: as this automated thing where the steering column retracts into
Speaker 1: the dashboard, as awesome, as visual as that is, I
Speaker 1: don't think it's terribly practical. For one thing, it's a
Speaker 1: couple of different points of failure in a system that
Speaker 1: doesn't need any points of failure. Right If anything goes
Speaker 1: wrong and then you switch to manual and something some
Speaker 1: connection has been severed as a result of this process.
Speaker 1: That's bad, But I did think that the whole thing
Speaker 1: was very fun and I like the approach, Like the
Speaker 1: forward thinking nature of the video was really cool. Well
Speaker 1: and forward thinking. It's like that tattoo I can see
Speaker 1: in your neck. Yeah, you know, that's how they track me.
Speaker 1: Um So. At any rate, this was this was a
Speaker 1: lot of fun to talk to you about the technology
Speaker 1: that was on display at c Yes, obviously very different
Speaker 1: from the underlying technology that actually makes cars work. You know,
Speaker 1: we're not talking necessarily about motors or you know, transmissions
Speaker 1: or that kind of stuff. This is all add on stuff.
Speaker 1: It's like, how can I make an app? Uh, make
Speaker 1: that system better? And and again like smart TVs, I
Speaker 1: think we're finally starting to see that idea mature to
Speaker 1: a point where it is something that could be marketable
Speaker 1: as opposed to, well we have the ability to throw
Speaker 1: this in there, let's just do it. And I think
Speaker 1: we're maturing as well, baby steps, Scotty says. Maybe let
Speaker 1: let's not set our expectations too high for me um So.
Speaker 1: At any rate, if you guys want to hear the
Speaker 1: Faraday Future podcast, you've gotta go check out car stuff
Speaker 1: because you and Ben cover that and make sure you
Speaker 1: listen to that episode. You guys go into a lot
Speaker 1: more detail about the whole the whole process. There we
Speaker 1: do excruciating detail. That's the best kind. And uh, and
Speaker 1: thank you again for appearing on my show. So oh
Speaker 1: of course, well thank you for having me. I appreciate it.
Speaker 1: And it's always fun conversation. It always feels it feels,
Speaker 1: I don't know, feels easy, you know, yeah, yeah, there.
Speaker 1: I don't think there's anyone here that it's particularly difficult
Speaker 1: to jump into a podcast studio and talk, but uh,
Speaker 1: it's sure. It's nice to have that experience right where
Speaker 1: you go in and you sit down and you're like,
Speaker 1: we're just gonna talk about crazy car technology for an
Speaker 1: hour essentially what this was today. I mean I had
Speaker 1: a few notes, but h man, it was just kind
Speaker 1: of winging it. And yeah, honestly, I like havin your
Speaker 1: insight that you were there at the show too, to
Speaker 1: be able to kind of come back and report on
Speaker 1: what you've seen and how that differs from you know,
Speaker 1: some of these some of these reviews, like the products.
Speaker 1: It's it's so much different when you talk to somebody
Speaker 1: who has first inexperience. Yeah, when you when you have
Speaker 1: a chance to actually witness stuff with your own eyes,
Speaker 1: and not only that, but just gauge interest on the floor,
Speaker 1: like are people reacting with skepticism? Are they reacting with
Speaker 1: like us? And as it's really cool to get that
Speaker 1: that first person experience. Oh yeah, it's very helpful that
Speaker 1: you went there and checked everything out for us. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I can't wait to do it again next year. I
Speaker 1: need to rest. Al right, guys, Well, that wraps it
Speaker 1: up for this episode of tech Stuff. If you have
Speaker 1: suggestions for future episode topics, guests, guest hosts, anything like that,
Speaker 1: you should let me know. The email address you should
Speaker 1: use is text stuff at how stuff works dot com
Speaker 1: or let me know on Facebook or Twitter to handle
Speaker 1: it both of those is tech Stuff H s W
Speaker 1: and I'll talk to you again really soon for more
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