Speaker 1: Brought to you by Toyota. Let's go places. Welcome to
Speaker 1: Forward Thinking. Hey, and welcome to Forward Thinking, of the
Speaker 1: podcast that makes at the future and sometimes just colms
Speaker 1: the night Rider theme. I'm Joe McCormick, I'm Lauren Bolck Obam,
Speaker 1: and our usual host Jonathan Strickland is out for the day,
Speaker 1: but we return in this second part of a two
Speaker 1: part episode to talk with Scott, Benjamin and Ben Bolan
Speaker 1: from Car Stuff about the future of some car Stuff.
Speaker 1: Say hello, guys, Hello, thank you so much for having
Speaker 1: us back on the show. We're thrilled. This is something
Speaker 1: that Scott and I have talked about at length in
Speaker 1: various other episodes. Yeah, we've we we we discussed the
Speaker 1: whole Volkswagon think in the first part And I'm gonna
Speaker 1: maybe give my mouth a rest here because i think
Speaker 1: I was rambling on a little bit too much about
Speaker 1: But no, we are. It's so glad to have you
Speaker 1: guys here. Yeah. So so we were talking in this
Speaker 1: first episode. Uh, and if you haven't listened to it,
Speaker 1: you might want to go back and do that thing, um,
Speaker 1: because it will make a little bit more sense everything
Speaker 1: that we're about to say. But yeah, we were talking
Speaker 1: about the computerization of cars, and specifically about the scandal
Speaker 1: that just happened with Volkswagen, where as it turns out
Speaker 1: they put this little bit of software in their cars
Speaker 1: to cheat on emissions tests for a multitude of reasons.
Speaker 1: But we wanted to use today's episode to branch out
Speaker 1: from this topic and look into the future and say,
Speaker 1: what does the computerization of our automobiles mean for our lives?
Speaker 1: How does software deepen and already complex relationship we have
Speaker 1: with our machines, Because software certainly does change things. Like you,
Speaker 1: you might have been able in nineteen fifty to release
Speaker 1: a car and then falsely advertise what its performance was,
Speaker 1: say you know, it gets this many miles brigallan, it
Speaker 1: goes this fast, and that wouldn't have been true. But
Speaker 1: what software has done is it can make the car
Speaker 1: dynamically deceptive. Do you do you know what? You know?
Speaker 1: The way I like to put this, and I was
Speaker 1: thinking about this on the way into work today, I
Speaker 1: was thinking that cars are almost aware now, and that's
Speaker 1: maybe the best way I can I can put it,
Speaker 1: is that they're aware of the surroundings. They know when
Speaker 1: there's a pedestrian in front of them to break, you know,
Speaker 1: to apply the brakes. They know when there's a vehicle
Speaker 1: to the left or right of them, and they know
Speaker 1: that you shouldn't deviate from your lane at that point,
Speaker 1: the time of day, weather conditions, it's just becoming more
Speaker 1: exactly right and and aware is maybe one of the
Speaker 1: best ways to say. I mean, think about like self
Speaker 1: parking cars. You know that that parking. Now I understand
Speaker 1: that these aren't thinking objects. They're not really thinking someone.
Speaker 1: So there was a humane scott. Some of our listeners
Speaker 1: might really argue with you. Some of our listeners might
Speaker 1: be cars. It's because it's true it could be, but
Speaker 1: but probably auto boats and factors like auto. So it
Speaker 1: seems like, you know, this maybe the best way to
Speaker 1: describe as aware. But it's not thinking. It's not like
Speaker 1: true artificial intelligence. And there's a human somewhere that said
Speaker 1: if this happens, then that happens, and if this happens,
Speaker 1: then that happens. And when the two things combine, this happens.
Speaker 1: So there's a there's this very logical way of programming
Speaker 1: in a car. But to us it seems very smart
Speaker 1: because the cars in the past, they weren't smart. I mean,
Speaker 1: you had to do everything. Everything was reliant on you
Speaker 1: or very very simple electronics. But now it's getting so ingrained,
Speaker 1: so so tightly woven together that modules, modules run your
Speaker 1: whole vehicle now. And I think for the most part,
Speaker 1: having smarter, more aware of cars is a wonderful thing.
Speaker 1: I mean, in almost every way, this is great. And
Speaker 1: on this show we've explored time and time again all
Speaker 1: of the fantastic things you can do with heightened awareness
Speaker 1: and computerization of vehicles. But there are things that we
Speaker 1: should be conscious of that are sort of possibilities to
Speaker 1: watch out for. I'd say, yeah, they're they're doing a
Speaker 1: lot of really great things, like like making cars safer
Speaker 1: for the drivers and various objects around them, including squishy
Speaker 1: human people. But but there's so many questions that we
Speaker 1: need to be asking, and need to be asking proactively
Speaker 1: because uh, technology moves so much faster than legislation and
Speaker 1: sometimes then uh the human brain. So yeah, right, yeah, well, yeah,
Speaker 1: this is a big topic to us. You know, how
Speaker 1: does driving change when your cars in the clouds wax
Speaker 1: a little bit poetic about it? So I guess the question, Scott,
Speaker 1: maybe correct me if I'm wrong, is Where do you
Speaker 1: guys want to go with this, because there's so many
Speaker 1: directions we go. Do you want to do pros and
Speaker 1: cons or do you wanna do you want to get
Speaker 1: right into predictions? Do you want to talk about hypothetical
Speaker 1: what ifs? I'm excited. It's not just the coffee. I
Speaker 1: could share one thing that kind of will get get
Speaker 1: us started. Maybe. Yeah, I think this is a very
Speaker 1: simple explanation of what happens. But your car can put
Speaker 1: itself into something called limp mode if something's going wrong
Speaker 1: with this, so cars can diagnose themselves. Yeah, there's there's
Speaker 1: something called limp in mode. And the idea behind limp
Speaker 1: in mode is that if there's something wrong with the transmission,
Speaker 1: it will the engine control module will limit or the
Speaker 1: transmission control module will limit the number of gears that
Speaker 1: you're allowed to select. And this is an automatic TRANSMISSI
Speaker 1: so you can limp into the gas station or the
Speaker 1: mechanical or exactly right the dealership or wherever, and it
Speaker 1: doesn't strain you on the side of the road, and
Speaker 1: it protects it protects itself. It's protecting its own system.
Speaker 1: It's saying, well, there's either an engine problem or transmission problem,
Speaker 1: and we're gonna limit you to how fast you can
Speaker 1: drive this vehicle, but we are going to allow you
Speaker 1: to drive it, and we're gonna warn you or tell
Speaker 1: you get to the dealership because I need to be
Speaker 1: fixed right now. Yeah, because otherwise the the event horizon
Speaker 1: shaped object that that looks that that is what automatic
Speaker 1: transitions look like, could do very bad things to the
Speaker 1: rest of your car. And all I'm saying is that
Speaker 1: this is just one little tiny example of the engineers saying,
Speaker 1: you know, when when this situation happens, this thing is
Speaker 1: going to protect itself, and here's how it's going to
Speaker 1: do it, and we can do that right now, and
Speaker 1: let they just kind of live in the background somewhere
Speaker 1: when that situation happens. This is what you do. And
Speaker 1: the yeah, the logics there in alarm systems as well,
Speaker 1: that I would argue they are the precursor to that
Speaker 1: kind of thing, right, because they would shut down on
Speaker 1: you remember this story about my old money Carlo had
Speaker 1: a malfunctioning alarm system for theft, and so every so
Speaker 1: often it would say, oh, Ben is trying to steal me,
Speaker 1: and then I would have to go through this series
Speaker 1: of arcane maneuvers to get it to start. So I
Speaker 1: have experience with good intentions gone bad or soured in
Speaker 1: these kind of fields. The limp mode is just the beginning, though,
Speaker 1: And one of the big questions that we look at
Speaker 1: and how driving changes is whether the what is the
Speaker 1: role of the human? Right will the human be relegated
Speaker 1: to simply being a passenger with the car being the driver,
Speaker 1: or will the human become like a teammate like you
Speaker 1: know is is your car gonna become now your buddy? Buddy?
Speaker 1: Yeah right and buddy Yeah. I don't know what that means.
Speaker 1: It's a it's a it's a show that's gotten their
Speaker 1: fans of family reverence. That's a little bit of secure.
Speaker 1: Someone got it. It was worth it, someone got I guess.
Speaker 1: The ultimate example of all of this is if cars
Speaker 1: become autonomous yeah right, yes, which Elon Musk recently known
Speaker 1: for some known for some let's call it ambitious predictions.
Speaker 1: In the past, he said that he will have fully
Speaker 1: autonomous Tesla car technology on the road in five years,
Speaker 1: but didn't. He also say that watermelons would be sentient
Speaker 1: by Yeah. That was his main when he was into
Speaker 1: u C S as and farming. He was more on
Speaker 1: the sentient watermelon side, but he gave that up and
Speaker 1: now he's into cars and PayPal and stuff. Just kidding.
Speaker 1: Didn't he say all these things while giggling atop a
Speaker 1: giant pile of froyo? Yes? Yes, not to spread a rumor,
Speaker 1: not to spread. I think it's I'm delighted by Elon
Speaker 1: Musk's uh crazy wonderful ideas well, as long as we say,
Speaker 1: just saying, just saying at the end of it. This
Speaker 1: might be interesting because we've now got people in the
Speaker 1: studio who might be less pro autonomous car than the
Speaker 1: three regular hosts of the show are. I'm typically very
Speaker 1: pro autonomous. Yeah, well, because Jonathan and Joe and I
Speaker 1: were all a little bit terrified of driving most of
Speaker 1: the time. We don't really go for joy rides. Uh so,
Speaker 1: and you guys might have a different perspective. Absolutely, Okay.
Speaker 1: So one thing that that that we have to be
Speaker 1: careful with is to avoid oversimplification when we talk about
Speaker 1: autonomous vehicles, and I don't mean just cars here, I
Speaker 1: mean also autonomous vehicles like you know, airborne things or
Speaker 1: both both possible to build the problem that we run
Speaker 1: into is that a broad brushstroke doesn't work. Sure, autonomous
Speaker 1: cars would save lives in a country like India notorious
Speaker 1: and its urban centers for unruling day your c intersections. However,
Speaker 1: in a country like the US, where there are vast
Speaker 1: swaths of land that are nearly abandoned right and where
Speaker 1: there are, in contrast, enormously dense areas like New York,
Speaker 1: like Boston, places where Boston actually is home to the
Speaker 1: world's most expensive parking space. Yes, yeah, not we thought
Speaker 1: it was just the US, but no, it's the world's
Speaker 1: reigning champions. Yeah, congrats on yet another dubious award. Who
Speaker 1: owns that space? Is it a space inside a lab
Speaker 1: at Harvard? No, it's uh, it's in I think it's
Speaker 1: in the It's in one of the blue blood neighborhoods. Anyhow,
Speaker 1: point point being uh. An autonomous car makes sense if
Speaker 1: you are in a denser area because it reduces accents
Speaker 1: and autonomous cars have a lot of pros and cons.
Speaker 1: I am I am probably a little bit less anti
Speaker 1: autonomous car than you, Scott. What do you think? Well,
Speaker 1: you know, I don't wanna I don't want to go
Speaker 1: off on a too big of a tangent here, so
Speaker 1: I won't. I'll just keep it simple and get I
Speaker 1: I like. I'll surprise you by saying I do like
Speaker 1: some elements of autonomous vehicles, some of the safety features,
Speaker 1: you know, the automatic stopping systems and the lane deviation
Speaker 1: and all that. I really like that stuff. But as
Speaker 1: far as I full on you know, don't do anything
Speaker 1: to sit behind the wheel, I don't like that idea
Speaker 1: at all. I don't know. I don't know how far
Speaker 1: that will um No, I just I just can't see.
Speaker 1: I I drive for pleasure, Like the weekends, I'll drive
Speaker 1: hours and hours just to get a pizza or something. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I love it, and I can't see giving that up. Ever. Well,
Speaker 1: I don't know if I don't know how possible it
Speaker 1: would be on a global scale, if it's if it's
Speaker 1: distributed in certain regions, because the US itself is so
Speaker 1: enormous that we would have to treat it region by region,
Speaker 1: and each state will have its own different legists. Lation.
Speaker 1: There was that excellent point about technology versus legislation, uh
Speaker 1: and and how slow one is to catch up with
Speaker 1: the other. That's why Tesla, That's why La Musk predicts
Speaker 1: twenty is his date for fully autonomous Tesla vehicles because
Speaker 1: not of the technology, which will be ready sooner than later,
Speaker 1: but because of the legislation. Can I say one more
Speaker 1: quick thing about this. When I read that topic or
Speaker 1: that title of that article, what surprised me wasn't the
Speaker 1: idea that the car would be autonomous by. What surprised
Speaker 1: me was the seven five mile range. Oh yeah, and
Speaker 1: that's something I mean, I mean, think about where we
Speaker 1: were when we started our show High Speed Stuff seven
Speaker 1: years ago. You know, it was high speed stuff back then,
Speaker 1: it wasn't car stuff. Even we together, you know, combined,
Speaker 1: both of us thought there's no way that autonomous vehicles
Speaker 1: were ever gonna happen because of the crude way it
Speaker 1: had to happen back then. Then it's just seven years ago. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and back then was just you know, somebody with a
Speaker 1: remote control essentially making making a lifestyle is our CV.
Speaker 1: It was ridiculous the amount of infrastructure change that would
Speaker 1: have to happen again just seven years ago versus now
Speaker 1: when we we realize now that that's not necessary. You
Speaker 1: don't have to bury magnetic pucks in the pavement. You
Speaker 1: have to have a wire system that's laid out or um,
Speaker 1: you know, safety walls all over the place, the sensors
Speaker 1: on every roadside. Yeah, it's not like that now. And
Speaker 1: and you know everybody understands that. You know that that
Speaker 1: doesn't happen. You can just build the car and it
Speaker 1: does everything else for you, and you can put it
Speaker 1: out on the streets with every other vehicle and will
Speaker 1: still operate and look like every other vehicle. To just
Speaker 1: some background those so people know about the Tesla thing.
Speaker 1: His prediction was that uh Tesla, the next models of
Speaker 1: Tesla would be able to go No, no, just the
Speaker 1: new batteries would enable them to go seven hundred and
Speaker 1: forties something miles per miles on a single charge, seven
Speaker 1: seven forty miles per hour. It did say it was ambitious. Yeah,
Speaker 1: pardon me, insane mode on a on a on a
Speaker 1: single charge. The closest he has to that out was
Speaker 1: something that went a little under five miles for sixty
Speaker 1: something this long range. Yeah, but at that four sixty
Speaker 1: number comes at a speed of twenty four point like
Speaker 1: two miles. Proud. Okay, I don't know if I knew
Speaker 1: that or not, but I'm just I'm just saying it's ambitious.
Speaker 1: So on the golf course, right, you will be You
Speaker 1: will drive back and forth forever on the golf course
Speaker 1: will be cursed. It'll be like the flying Dutch clubs
Speaker 1: here and there, hopping off to take a shot. But
Speaker 1: but yeah, so that's a I mean, so that is
Speaker 1: a great point because we're seeing this not just this
Speaker 1: trend of innovation, but this acceleration of the degree of innovation. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Another thing about autonomous vehicles that I think is is
Speaker 1: a very appealing point is the way that research modeling
Speaker 1: so far has demonstrated these vehicles will probably be able
Speaker 1: to increase fuel efficiency and reduce emissions by a pretty
Speaker 1: significant margin. Yeah, and you guys had a fantastic episode
Speaker 1: that I would like to plug if any of your
Speaker 1: listeners haven't checked it out yet, because didn't you all
Speaker 1: didn't you talk about one of the big questions that
Speaker 1: relates to this, like what happens when a non human thing? Yeah? Yeah,
Speaker 1: in this case, what happens when an autonomous car breaks
Speaker 1: the law? Who is responsible? Is it the programmer, is
Speaker 1: it the driver, the passenger driver? Is it the car company?
Speaker 1: Is it the government whose little piece of the road
Speaker 1: didn't get out of the way. In time. Is it
Speaker 1: someone chosen at random? Because they were standing there in
Speaker 1: the whole VW thing. They're they're talking about criminal prosecution
Speaker 1: of the people that were involved at the at the headquarters.
Speaker 1: So it's going to the criminal level. So you're you're
Speaker 1: right in that, you know, Uh, it could be pinned
Speaker 1: on the human. I suppose, you know, because the human
Speaker 1: is the one that set up those parameters to say that,
Speaker 1: you know, in this mode, you do this, and again
Speaker 1: it comes back to that, you know, if this happens,
Speaker 1: that happens. Yeah, in the episode we did about what
Speaker 1: happens when a robot breaks the law, that's the title.
Speaker 1: You can look it up on Google. Yeah, it's from
Speaker 1: mar Please go ahead. I really it enjoyed that episode.
Speaker 1: That was one of my favorites we did. But that
Speaker 1: one was about the unpredictability of robot behavior. What happens
Speaker 1: when a robot does something or a computer program does
Speaker 1: something that it wasn't explicitly told to do. It's misinterpreted
Speaker 1: some piece of data, it's it's interpreted, Um, I don't know,
Speaker 1: a a shadow as a person or something like that.
Speaker 1: And you know that the visual sensors glitching something like
Speaker 1: that emergent criminality was the idea. But yeah, but autonomous
Speaker 1: vehicles definitely figure into this because if an autonomous vehicle
Speaker 1: causes an accident, who's at fault? Right? Yeah? And does
Speaker 1: the does the driver have the agency to override something
Speaker 1: or is it a uh two thousand one space odyssey
Speaker 1: kind of I'm sorry, how I can't let me do that.
Speaker 1: I'm sorry, Scott, I can't let you do that. That's
Speaker 1: a child. Well, this is getting okay, I'll tell you
Speaker 1: right now, volks A, right now, Volkswagon. But Mercedes, as
Speaker 1: if vehicle that is essentially autonomous and you can get
Speaker 1: behind the wheel and just let it go, let it
Speaker 1: do its thing, they legally have to say that there
Speaker 1: has to be a driver in the driver's seat and
Speaker 1: paying attention, so they're not like doing the cross road,
Speaker 1: yeah exactly, and they will not. Well, yeah, but that's
Speaker 1: up to you, right they You can allow it to
Speaker 1: do its thing and you know, get you home safely,
Speaker 1: but you have to be in that driver's seat and
Speaker 1: they can't say this is an autonomous vehicle, but it is.
Speaker 1: And you also you also have to be in a
Speaker 1: in a fit state for driving, so you couldn't go, uh,
Speaker 1: I don't know, drink a bunch of what do people
Speaker 1: drink nowadays? Red Bull? Drink a bunch of Red Bull
Speaker 1: and vodka. Yeah, and then hopping behind the wheel, Yeah,
Speaker 1: a couple of gin rickeys and then get behind the
Speaker 1: wheel right right right, Yeah, seriously, you would want to
Speaker 1: do that because you're still having to adhere to the
Speaker 1: the rule of the land, of the rules of the road. Really, um,
Speaker 1: you know, you can't you can't operate a vehicle while
Speaker 1: you're inebriated. And and with Mercedes saying you have to
Speaker 1: have a driver behind the wheel at all times, that's
Speaker 1: that's saying whoever is in that seat is the driver.
Speaker 1: You can't say the car was driving itself. So yeah,
Speaker 1: and that eliminates any kind of um um fault from
Speaker 1: Mercedes were saying, well, this car driver itself home. Yeah.
Speaker 1: That is interesting because at what point is the driver
Speaker 1: at fault for something that the driver didn't choose to do?
Speaker 1: Rush Sure, well, and that's kind of the point that
Speaker 1: we wound up really talking about in that episode. That's
Speaker 1: sort of wild West area of of weird corporate policy
Speaker 1: and like responsibility waivers and and lawsuits that are probably
Speaker 1: going to have to happen before the law catches up
Speaker 1: with this technological capacity. So before we move on, one
Speaker 1: last one last pro uh. And I'm sure that we
Speaker 1: hear this all the time, both on car stuff and
Speaker 1: on forward thinking, but there is a compelling case for
Speaker 1: safety in autonomous vehicles. And have some statistics. So according
Speaker 1: to the n h T s A, there were around
Speaker 1: five point three million motor vehicle crashes in that was Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's only the ones that were police reported, so it
Speaker 1: doesn't count all the other ones that didn't get caught.
Speaker 1: It's resulted in over two million injuries, over thirty two
Speaker 1: thousand deaths. And on balance, here's the disturbing thing. That
Speaker 1: was a really good trend. It reflected a forty five
Speaker 1: percent dropping accidents from ve to that year. So of
Speaker 1: these accidents are caused by anyone, right, I guess would
Speaker 1: be that's a low number. Yeah, it's like like angry owls,
Speaker 1: is uh, angry owls and occasionally yeah, and and sometimes
Speaker 1: just Jonathan I'm kidding, I'm kidding, but yes, so Jonathan's
Speaker 1: periscoping from the sidewalk. You see him and get distracted,
Speaker 1: So I I just I just say that because I
Speaker 1: think it is it is important, um, even because to
Speaker 1: me that is the most compelling reason for autonomous vehicles
Speaker 1: in dense areas. Yeah. Absolutely, And I think that Google
Speaker 1: is Google's autonomous cars up to having had like fifteen
Speaker 1: accidents over its a few year lifespan now, but it
Speaker 1: still has never had an accident that was not a
Speaker 1: human fault. So amazing stat isn't it. I Mean, really,
Speaker 1: all those miles driven and every time there's been a collision,
Speaker 1: it's been the the human on the other side that
Speaker 1: every time. Oh, I think there's been an instance where
Speaker 1: it was the driver of the Google car, but it
Speaker 1: was a human driver, but it was still a human
Speaker 1: driver doing something that messed with the programming. Interesting. Well, anyway,
Speaker 1: I think we should transition from talking about autonomous cars,
Speaker 1: which we have talked about a good bit on the
Speaker 1: podcast before, to talking about other aspects of the computerization
Speaker 1: of our vehicles, in the ways that adding software elements
Speaker 1: and more and more layers of computerization to our cars
Speaker 1: could give them hidden agendas, because it's kind of scary too.
Speaker 1: I mean, we like to think that our cars can
Speaker 1: be smart in the helpful ways that we always talk
Speaker 1: about they can help keep us safe, they can reduce emissions,
Speaker 1: they can do all these wonderful things. But what if
Speaker 1: they're not necessarily serving our interests. It's a very good question, Joe. Uh,
Speaker 1: it could serve. It could serve numerous third party interests.
Speaker 1: They could work on behalf of insurance companies, right, it
Speaker 1: could work on, behalf of manufacturers, it could work on
Speaker 1: behalf of third party entities, governments, advertisers, advertising. I've got
Speaker 1: a scenario I want to bring up with that. What
Speaker 1: about this idea of telematics. Yeah, okay, So telematics active
Speaker 1: monitoring of driver habits, spatial chronological compilation of where you
Speaker 1: go and when. So, uh, this will tie into your excellent,
Speaker 1: your excellent hypothetical later, right, So who holds this data
Speaker 1: on you? Right? Uh? So let's say, um, let's say
Speaker 1: our super producer Noel Brown hops into his brand new
Speaker 1: twenty seventeen Mercedes Dream Big, right, and he uh, he
Speaker 1: has an active monitoring system and it is enabled in
Speaker 1: his vehicle. So they know that every day at five
Speaker 1: thirty he goes to his favorite coffee shop. It's always
Speaker 1: the same coffee shop. He's always out of there by
Speaker 1: seven thirty when he goes and he leaves from seven thirty,
Speaker 1: he goes somewhere else from maybe a couple of hours,
Speaker 1: and then he goes home, and they know the time
Speaker 1: he goes home. Then they know the time he leaves,
Speaker 1: they know the average speed he drives, they know the
Speaker 1: roots he takes, and they can tell when they're going
Speaker 1: to change. What do they do with this information? Does
Speaker 1: he own it? Did they own it? Oh? Then it right?
Speaker 1: And can they sell it? Because this has already become
Speaker 1: a problem in other other fields, this big data idea. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's interesting, And the way you phrased it, it's sort
Speaker 1: of undercut an objection I was going to make to
Speaker 1: the telematics concern, which is that your cell phone is
Speaker 1: already able to collect this kind of Yeah, we put
Speaker 1: that in when we had another We had an episode
Speaker 1: on the infamous mandatory black box. If you were driving
Speaker 1: a car in the US and it is not a
Speaker 1: classic car, then congratulations, you have a black box monitoring
Speaker 1: stuff the same way that things are monitored in an
Speaker 1: airplane cockpit. But I love that you say that joke.
Speaker 1: Is one of the things we said to the people
Speaker 1: who had these privacy concerns were that your cell phone
Speaker 1: is already doing this stuff that you didn't want the
Speaker 1: black box to do. Yeah, if you don't put your
Speaker 1: phone in an airplane mode every time you get in
Speaker 1: your car, then you are being tracked by at the
Speaker 1: very least GPS and probably WiFi as well, just just
Speaker 1: by the handshakes that the technology goes through as you're traveling. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so fantastic, But the there there are some pros and
Speaker 1: constant this, Like insurance companies would say, well we can
Speaker 1: and if you opt into this program where we can
Speaker 1: monitor your driving habits in real time, then we we
Speaker 1: can reward the good drivers. So we say, oh uh,
Speaker 1: Super producer Noel Brown goes to that coffee shop every
Speaker 1: day at five thirty and he always drives the speed limit.
Speaker 1: You know, and I have been told you shouldn't do this,
Speaker 1: that you shouldn't opt in for that kind of program. Yes. Yes,
Speaker 1: that's the other concern because about half of the people
Speaker 1: pulled regarding what's called UM usage based insurance or ub I,
Speaker 1: half of the people pulled say, well, we just see
Speaker 1: this as a way for a company to inevitably raise
Speaker 1: the rates. You know, it's not the hundred times you
Speaker 1: do something, Right, it's the one time you're like, whoa
Speaker 1: eighty and a thirty five? Where's the fire, buddy. I've
Speaker 1: never liked this idea from the very beginning. I don't,
Speaker 1: I don't. I know it's an opt in uh, you know,
Speaker 1: part of the whole thing for now, well for now. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you don't have to do that. You know you're you're
Speaker 1: doing that to hopefully get a better rate on your insurance. Right,
Speaker 1: that's the idea. But that's that's your only impetus to
Speaker 1: as a consumer. Yeah, but I mean, you're you're just
Speaker 1: giving more more of your own personal information to somebody.
Speaker 1: I'm'm a pretty guarded person in real life, you know,
Speaker 1: I don't. I don't um necessarily like offer up extra
Speaker 1: information to people if they're not asking for it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I learned your last name, like in June. How came
Speaker 1: you never let me read all your email like my
Speaker 1: other coworkers do. And when you asked him his last name,
Speaker 1: he was he was like, oh, it's ben Jamin, but
Speaker 1: I didn't mean it Ruby Stein sitting on the table.
Speaker 1: One thing that I would say is a difference though
Speaker 1: between a cell phone um and the possibilities posed by
Speaker 1: this user based insurance stuff or this real time monitoring,
Speaker 1: is that you don't need a cell phone for your
Speaker 1: car to function, and it is I possible that these
Speaker 1: things would become not opt in material that unless you
Speaker 1: are implicitly agreeing to this kind of monitoring, not necessarily
Speaker 1: even with an insurance company, but with a manufacturer, then
Speaker 1: your car will not function. I don't think this is
Speaker 1: too far off though, to say that, you know, you
Speaker 1: maybe you do have to have the phone in order
Speaker 1: to make it, to make it work, and possibly you know,
Speaker 1: with the Bluetooth technology, I mean, everybody knows about that.
Speaker 1: I mean you can you could be on a phone call,
Speaker 1: get into your vehicle, and the call picks up seamlessly
Speaker 1: through the speaker system, through the microphone system. It's they're
Speaker 1: already doing this in a small way. It's not out
Speaker 1: of the question that they would make other things function
Speaker 1: using that as well. I mean, you know, the the
Speaker 1: entertainment system that you opt for at the dealership when
Speaker 1: you buy the car new UM, if you go for
Speaker 1: the top end systems, so you can get apps and
Speaker 1: things like that on your in your new vehicle UM
Speaker 1: and different even a different even operating systems. So I
Speaker 1: don't think it's you know, out of question that that
Speaker 1: you know it's gonna start to operate a little bit
Speaker 1: more scene lessly with with your cell phone. Oh sure, yeah,
Speaker 1: and you could even For example, insurance companies really like
Speaker 1: knowing how far you drive in order to get to
Speaker 1: work as kind of a base metric of how many
Speaker 1: miles you're going to be going per day, and if
Speaker 1: it if it does a handshake with your cell phone
Speaker 1: when you get in and out of the car, it
Speaker 1: could tell if you're walking the last couple of miles
Speaker 1: to work, and or if you've lied terribly to them
Speaker 1: about the number of miles you drive. Well, see, I've
Speaker 1: recently tried to kind of, you know, mess around with
Speaker 1: my insurance and I don't mean in a bad way.
Speaker 1: I mean just to try to look get my rate
Speaker 1: lower because I've got a car that doesn't you know,
Speaker 1: one that I don't drive at all that they think
Speaker 1: I drive, and trying to get a lower rate that way,
Speaker 1: And part of this whole paperwork you have to fill
Speaker 1: out to get this done, or you know online rather um,
Speaker 1: they ask you how many miles you drive a day,
Speaker 1: a week, a month, a year, and you're you self
Speaker 1: report that. This takes the self reporting out of the
Speaker 1: whole thing, because they can just they just know, they
Speaker 1: know how far you drive. And if you say one
Speaker 1: thing and then you know, it turns out that the
Speaker 1: reality is something else, they're probably gonna hit you the
Speaker 1: you know, an extra fine or something, so you know
Speaker 1: it's it's happening. Yeah. And those are the kind of
Speaker 1: straightforward ways that you can think about people directly wanting
Speaker 1: access to information about your driving habits because it is
Speaker 1: of value to them. But there are all kinds of
Speaker 1: oblique ways that companies could make use of information about
Speaker 1: your location and driving habits. One of the weird scenarios
Speaker 1: I came up with that your car software might have
Speaker 1: a hidden agenda would be something like the following. Okay, Lauren, Yes,
Speaker 1: imagine you are out driving on punstantly on Avenue. I
Speaker 1: am imagining it right now. Okay, now you are coming
Speaker 1: up on a fast food franchise location. What fast food
Speaker 1: franchise would it be? But Burger King? Okay, that was
Speaker 1: what I was going to say. Weird. Okay, now it's
Speaker 1: almost as though we're sharing notes. Now. If your car
Speaker 1: knows where you are all the time, and especially knows
Speaker 1: what kinds of business is you've been to before and
Speaker 1: at what time of day. It might know that you
Speaker 1: like stopping at Burger King sometimes sometimes to get you
Speaker 1: some b K chicken fries. Well, clearly that's the only
Speaker 1: format that chicken should come in, And it may very
Speaker 1: well be the case that the auto manufacturer could strike
Speaker 1: up a deal with businesses like Burger King or or
Speaker 1: whoever to say, oh, you know, if I think somebody
Speaker 1: is susceptible to your marketing, I can slow them down
Speaker 1: in front of billboards for your products, or I can
Speaker 1: slow them down when they start nearing a location or
Speaker 1: one of your franchise locations to pull in for some food,
Speaker 1: or or even if not slow down, at the very least,
Speaker 1: you know, give you like a little a little alert
Speaker 1: through through your speaker system saying like, oh hey, there's
Speaker 1: a two for five dollar b K Chicken fries deal
Speaker 1: going on today. And if you think that that sounds
Speaker 1: all like super ridiculous, I would say hold on a second,
Speaker 1: because I don't know if the idea of that type
Speaker 1: of advertising alert is ridiculous. We already get ads served
Speaker 1: to us on the internet based on our searching history
Speaker 1: and stuff like that and imagine. Yeah, yeah, so the
Speaker 1: the inner the imagine the audio you're listening to in
Speaker 1: your card any given time. I think radio is sort
Speaker 1: of on the way down, and digital audio, the kind
Speaker 1: you're listening to right now is sort of on the
Speaker 1: way up for in car entertainment. And with digital audio,
Speaker 1: it seems like it's it would be perfectly easy in
Speaker 1: many cases for the auto manufacturer to supplement your digital
Speaker 1: audio stream with live updated advertisements, dynamic ads. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: have I've have three things that are all equally important
Speaker 1: that I want to ask. One, what are b K
Speaker 1: chicken fries? Oh? Have you never seen them? Because someone
Speaker 1: is driving by a Burger King right now and they
Speaker 1: are freaking out. So I've never eaten them, but I've
Speaker 1: read the Wikipedia page for them. Okay, yeah, you're telling
Speaker 1: us about this off air. Yeah, they're they're like chicken
Speaker 1: nuggets that are just shaped a little bit more like
Speaker 1: Maza realistics and then you and then you just put
Speaker 1: them in a little fried container and their chicken fries
Speaker 1: are they not chicken fingers? Where the where the where
Speaker 1: the fries on the chicken? Really, that's what I need
Speaker 1: to know. They're they're just fried. They're just fried chicken.
Speaker 1: They know this is what this podcast is about, now, Scott,
Speaker 1: I'm kidding. My second thing is, um, it feels like
Speaker 1: there would be a liability inherent in forcing a car
Speaker 1: to slow down, and then that would be a lawsuit
Speaker 1: way to happen. But the idea of an alert makes
Speaker 1: absolutely perfect sense. I think we will see it sooner
Speaker 1: than later. Should I, in fact, have not said that
Speaker 1: out loud? Have I just given someone an idea that
Speaker 1: all of us are going to suffer for? Possibly you don't.
Speaker 1: I totally agree. I think that if they start manipulating
Speaker 1: it to the point where they're slowing you down in
Speaker 1: front of there, that that can cause a lot of trouble,
Speaker 1: that serious safety issues. That's something that could happen on
Speaker 1: a state level. Maybe if you're driving by Pennsylvania Avenue,
Speaker 1: that's something the government could do. What if your car
Speaker 1: was just not allowed to drive to certain places during
Speaker 1: certain times this? What if what if they just decided that, um,
Speaker 1: you know, on this road, the new speed liman is
Speaker 1: thirty five, and we're going to restrict every vehicle. We're
Speaker 1: gonna tamper with, you know, the the um, the fuel system,
Speaker 1: on your vehicle, because we can do that electronically via satellite.
Speaker 1: Now at this point and say you can't go faster
Speaker 1: thirty five anything below is fine. Anywhere in between, you've
Speaker 1: got control over that. But anyway, sorry, well I certainly
Speaker 1: know that I can't drive thirty five. Yeah, like it
Speaker 1: seems it seems strange. Well, I love this idea you
Speaker 1: propose about um an ad revenue model, right, because Ways
Speaker 1: is a great example or a terrifying, disturbing example the
Speaker 1: possibilities Ways the navigation Okay, so Ways spelled w A
Speaker 1: Z E is an app you can get on your
Speaker 1: phone that will tell you in real time the best
Speaker 1: way to drive from point A to point B. Will
Speaker 1: also update depending on if there's an accident happening. It
Speaker 1: will tell you if there's right right in real time,
Speaker 1: and then it's you see other Ways users, so it
Speaker 1: kind of crowdsources the information. The most controversial thing about
Speaker 1: it right now is people saying, oh, watch out, there's
Speaker 1: a speed trap ahead, which obviously law enforcement is not
Speaker 1: the biggest fan of h But the reason we bring
Speaker 1: up Ways now is because you know, stuff isn't really
Speaker 1: free on the internet. What what you're paying with is
Speaker 1: your attention rather than your dollars. So you will get
Speaker 1: ads that pop up saying, oh, here's the gas station.
Speaker 1: Do you like exceon? Do you like quick trip? It's
Speaker 1: this ad helpful? Hey, take a survey. Oh they're fresh
Speaker 1: donuts at Dunkin Donuts. Just so you know, not calling
Speaker 1: you fat. Everybody's driving around now with you know, ten
Speaker 1: inch screens right in the middle of their dash, you know, so,
Speaker 1: so it's easy to serve those ads up anytime they want. Really,
Speaker 1: I mean, as long as you have it switched on,
Speaker 1: it can be there right in front of the whole family. So, Joe,
Speaker 1: what if you what if you got a brand new
Speaker 1: car and the dealer says, we have a we have
Speaker 1: a an agreement with the manufacturer. We will give you
Speaker 1: a discount on your monthly car. Note if you agree to, uh,
Speaker 1: you agree to have a commercial pop up on your
Speaker 1: console before you start the car or before you can
Speaker 1: get out of it after driving. This is absolutely something
Speaker 1: that I can see happening. But no, Scott's laughing, But
Speaker 1: I think this could absolutely happen because we have already
Speaker 1: seen advertising subsidized electronic hardware before. Like, if you want
Speaker 1: to buy certain tablets. Yeah. Yeah, the Kindle, for example,
Speaker 1: has an AD supported version that you can get us
Speaker 1: off of. Yeah, just it is cheaper, but it serves
Speaker 1: you adds. Just to be clear, Joe, I wasn't laughing
Speaker 1: at you, I was saying I was thinking of can
Speaker 1: you imagine how frustrating that would be that if you
Speaker 1: parked your car and you're ready to get out and
Speaker 1: the door won't unlock. The handle is you know, nonfunctional
Speaker 1: until that darn add stops playing for you know, folder
Speaker 1: whatever fries and ful coffee. Anybody Sanka coffee. There's there
Speaker 1: is an episode of Black Mirror that kind of a
Speaker 1: little bit of that. Not in a car like that.
Speaker 1: That is one of the most disturbing things I've ever seen.
Speaker 1: It Was it a real window or was it just
Speaker 1: another screen? Anyway at the end of that that's a
Speaker 1: great question. But anyway, Uh yeah, yeah, I think that
Speaker 1: could totally happen. I wouldn't see it so much as
Speaker 1: trapping you in the car, but doing something more like
Speaker 1: what we mentioned earlier, using your your location and your
Speaker 1: route to say, hey, this person is going to pass
Speaker 1: a business. They've shopped at this business before, and the
Speaker 1: business will pay me if I remind them that they'd
Speaker 1: like to go there. We see, you've purchased a lot
Speaker 1: of dull clothing. There's a Michael's a mile ahead. You
Speaker 1: know what kind of this is maybe a little bit
Speaker 1: off topic, but it comes back to what we're talking about,
Speaker 1: and it's example that goes back to two thousand seven.
Speaker 1: All right. So you when I in the office the
Speaker 1: other day, we're talking about some of the possibilities what
Speaker 1: we're gonna talk about today, and one of the things
Speaker 1: I said is, well, there's there's this whole double key thing, um,
Speaker 1: you know, where one key gives you full power to
Speaker 1: the vehicle. The other one is what they call valet
Speaker 1: key and limits the power the output of the vehicle.
Speaker 1: And it's not so a lot of people think of
Speaker 1: the valley key is just one that won't unlock the trunk,
Speaker 1: won't unlock the glove box. You know, it's good for
Speaker 1: the door, driver's door and the ignition only. But now
Speaker 1: and and not just now, but you know, recently they've
Speaker 1: been making keys that have a function to them that
Speaker 1: they know when you know the key with the black
Speaker 1: fob on it, uh that allows full power to the vehicle.
Speaker 1: And this is typically sports cars. Yeah, I wouldn't be
Speaker 1: worried about it in my junkie like two no, but
Speaker 1: you know, like the like do you hand the red
Speaker 1: key to the valet because you don't want him out
Speaker 1: joy riding while you're in the mall shopping whatever you're doing, right, Maserati,
Speaker 1: I would be working well. I mean this is like okay,
Speaker 1: like the Dodge, the hell Cat models, you know, the
Speaker 1: brand new ones they do in that Corvette z R
Speaker 1: one's had two keys. Uh. The Bugatti Veron has another
Speaker 1: another key where it's to the left and behind the
Speaker 1: driver's seat. So that's and this one's cool. I'm getting
Speaker 1: getting to the point or no, no no, no, no, this
Speaker 1: is this is cool. You use that key specifically for
Speaker 1: a top speed run. So when you put that key in,
Speaker 1: it goes through this checklist and it asks you are
Speaker 1: you sure you want to do this, and then it
Speaker 1: checks the car to make sure that it's in condition
Speaker 1: to do that, And a top speed run in that
Speaker 1: car is like two fifty five seven or something like that.
Speaker 1: So that's why it's saying, is this something you really
Speaker 1: want to do? Because then it it just you know,
Speaker 1: kind of does this on its own. It will activate
Speaker 1: spoilers and close diffusers, and it lowers itself to the ground.
Speaker 1: It does all these really cool things, and I was thinking,
Speaker 1: that's maybe you think that may be the most crazy thing.
Speaker 1: But this is where it gets back to what you're
Speaker 1: talking about, like going by a you know, a dealership
Speaker 1: and saying like, hey, you're due for service or something
Speaker 1: like that. Right, there's a car out there. It's the
Speaker 1: Nissan E t R and this is the Japanese version,
Speaker 1: only via GPS. It will detect that you're detect that
Speaker 1: you're on a racetrack, and it will eliminate the speed
Speaker 1: the speed sensors. So the government, yeah, the governors, I guess,
Speaker 1: so that um so that you can take it at
Speaker 1: to full speed. Yeah, because in Japan the cars are
Speaker 1: limited to top speed of one hundred and eleven miles
Speaker 1: an hour, and you think that's fast enough, right, But
Speaker 1: here in the States they allow them up to that.
Speaker 1: I think it's a hundred fifty six or something like
Speaker 1: that in Japan. In Japan, it detects where you are
Speaker 1: and knows that you're at a known location that's a
Speaker 1: race track, and it's simply just electronically disables those speed limitters,
Speaker 1: so it allows like an unlimited top end. Now you
Speaker 1: could blow up your engine, sure, but it remotely does that.
Speaker 1: It's very smart in the way that it does that.
Speaker 1: So I don't see any problem with having GPS detect
Speaker 1: you know that you're at Burger King, or at the
Speaker 1: nearer dealership or near the gas station in town that
Speaker 1: happens to be offering the lowest price on fuel at
Speaker 1: the day. Tech Nickel problem, Yeah, exactly, Yeah, well, yeah,
Speaker 1: there's ethical problems with this, sure, sure, but yeah, or
Speaker 1: even or going even weirder and deeper, like your phone
Speaker 1: knows that you're having a bad day because it can
Speaker 1: read some of your biometrics whenever you put it up
Speaker 1: to your ear. It knows that you just yelled at
Speaker 1: your significant other in the middle of a conversation, and
Speaker 1: it says, hey, buddy, how about some ice cream? Huh?
Speaker 1: Or just gonna lead you back into Burger King because
Speaker 1: they probably have ice cream, they have chicken ice cream.
Speaker 1: We're monitoring what you just spent a Burger King and buddy,
Speaker 1: that's not enough chicken fries. I think it's it's all
Speaker 1: that's out of the question that you know they can
Speaker 1: read blood pressure from your hand, your hand gripping the
Speaker 1: steering wheel, not at all. Well, I don't know specifically
Speaker 1: about blood pressure in the hand on the wheel, but
Speaker 1: certainly not a problem that it could buy various means
Speaker 1: learn things about your condition. Well, your your your car
Speaker 1: seat already knows about how much you weigh. So it's
Speaker 1: a short skip and a jump to to a lot
Speaker 1: of the rest of the stuff and skin conducting, and
Speaker 1: the price of those sensors plummets for a while. They're
Speaker 1: talking about seats that would recognize the owner of the
Speaker 1: vehicle based on the kind of thee and the weight
Speaker 1: and all that, and you would learn, it would adapt,
Speaker 1: and they realized that it was just something people didn't
Speaker 1: really want. People got uncomfortable. You can see that. Yeah, okay,
Speaker 1: I've got another one. I don't know if this is
Speaker 1: feasible at all, because I don't know if any car
Speaker 1: manufacturers would actually want to do this to their own
Speaker 1: customers or vehicles. But I also thought about the possibility
Speaker 1: of a car that intentionally sabotages its own performance if
Speaker 1: you don't use manufacturer approved products or parts. Completely believed
Speaker 1: that could happen. Really, Yeah, it wouldn't drive. It wouldn't
Speaker 1: be a matter of sabotage. It would be a matter
Speaker 1: of non compliance. Wouldn't work. It would be like trying
Speaker 1: to Uh, it would be like trying to take um
Speaker 1: proprietary plug for one kind of smartphone and trying to
Speaker 1: use it on another brand. That's exactly what to say.
Speaker 1: It becomes a proprietary issue where they would say, Um,
Speaker 1: we're gonna we're gonna make this thing have a little bit.
Speaker 1: There's gonna be a quirk to it that we own,
Speaker 1: and you're gonna have to You're gonna have to adhere
Speaker 1: to that. You're gonna have to buy our part because
Speaker 1: otherwise it just simply won't work and it needs to
Speaker 1: be replaced. And this doesn't even have it could be
Speaker 1: something mechanically even it could be the shape of it,
Speaker 1: or it could be it doesn't have to be electronic,
Speaker 1: but but electronic is probably the way to go with
Speaker 1: something like that. Sure, they could do that, they can
Speaker 1: make it very exclusive. Uh, I mean, aren't there aren't
Speaker 1: there laws out there? I'm not sure about this. I'm
Speaker 1: asking if you guys know, aren't there laws that prohibit
Speaker 1: companies from making things that proprietary and in certain systems.
Speaker 1: You know, one thing that comes to mind is in
Speaker 1: simple and I don't know if this is really what
Speaker 1: you're getting at or not, but um, car radios, and
Speaker 1: it's just that that's what in a nightmare situation for
Speaker 1: a long long time. And of course you know now
Speaker 1: they've got really really advanced systems and it's it's a
Speaker 1: lot more like a computer now. Back in their early days,
Speaker 1: when you're just pulling one radio out and trying to
Speaker 1: put another one in and after market one, that was
Speaker 1: often a really difficult scenario, you mean, trying to figure
Speaker 1: out which where I went where and they didn't have
Speaker 1: the adapter sets like they do now. And yeah, I
Speaker 1: don't want this to be splitting hairs, but maybe maybe
Speaker 1: the way to phrase it is that in many industries
Speaker 1: where they cannot say thou shalt not be overly proprietary,
Speaker 1: what they do instead is say, these are the standards
Speaker 1: you must meet at some point that and and do
Speaker 1: it how you will, but this is what we need
Speaker 1: to have here. Here's an example, like let's say you
Speaker 1: go to uh you want a cannon filter for your
Speaker 1: your vehicle, and they're they're doing a lot better now
Speaker 1: working with manufacturers to make these things actually fit. You know,
Speaker 1: you're not trying to shoot orn something that doesn't work.
Speaker 1: But but I think there's also that stipulation that once
Speaker 1: you tamper with the intake, you know, the air intake
Speaker 1: of the factory vehicle. You know, once you want you
Speaker 1: do that, you're you're you're giving up. You're right to
Speaker 1: come back to them and say that the warranty is
Speaker 1: still in place of bit. But again, I don't know
Speaker 1: exactly how, I haven't looked into this in a while,
Speaker 1: but I think that in the past it used to
Speaker 1: be that if you do that, you can do that.
Speaker 1: That's fine. It you can it's possible, it's physically possible
Speaker 1: to do it, and you probably will enjoy the results,
Speaker 1: but you've just avoided your warranty. Now, I think that
Speaker 1: a lot a lot of manufacturers are working with some
Speaker 1: of the bigger, more trusted brands and aftermarket accessory type
Speaker 1: places and saying, yeah, that's reasonable, but we'll work with
Speaker 1: you on it so that it doesn't harm our system
Speaker 1: as well or our vehicle as well. You know, the
Speaker 1: part that we own under warranty for that amount of time.
Speaker 1: And I think it's just a smart way to do it.
Speaker 1: Some high end brands will some high end brands will
Speaker 1: definitely go in the direction of not only proprietary parts
Speaker 1: and proprietary software, but measures to prevent too much fusing
Speaker 1: around with it. Yeah, like, well, we'll allow you to
Speaker 1: do that, in fact, will make it easier for you.
Speaker 1: But that comes with a partnership with that aftermarket parts.
Speaker 1: It'll be almost like how they're in network providers and insurance.
Speaker 1: I've got actually a positive one if you guys don't
Speaker 1: mind a positive one sneaking in here. Yeah, we need it, right,
Speaker 1: it's always positive on here. Uh So, so maybe in
Speaker 1: the future, with all of this computerization, recall where the
Speaker 1: problems might be able to be solved with a software update,
Speaker 1: the same way that you update an app on your phone.
Speaker 1: I mean that that could be cool. It's totally possible.
Speaker 1: In fact, doesn't that happened recently? I think there was
Speaker 1: a was it Tesla? Then? I think that there was
Speaker 1: like a flash update or something that that solves some problems.
Speaker 1: They don't have a dealership to begin with, so there
Speaker 1: would be a problem, and it makes some improvements to
Speaker 1: things that weren't broken to begin with. But Tesla is
Speaker 1: a very forward you know, I thought it's not out
Speaker 1: of question that that could happen with other manufacturers as
Speaker 1: well too, So yeah, they're on it. Although the flip
Speaker 1: side of enforcing software updates, of course is uh, planned
Speaker 1: obs lessons. Yeah. So, anybody who has owned a smartphone,
Speaker 1: particularly an iPhone at some points noticed that once you
Speaker 1: get to the point where the iOS is too smart
Speaker 1: for your current version or generation of the phone, it
Speaker 1: begins to run less and less efficiently. Could that happen
Speaker 1: with vehicles? That's that's a question. Could could the software
Speaker 1: in your you know, two thousand seventeen Mercedes or whatever
Speaker 1: we said earlier? Could it be obsolete by two thousand
Speaker 1: twenty one? So you're saying this is going to degrade
Speaker 1: over time, like over the years, it just starts to work,
Speaker 1: and then yeah, like software bloat for your car, like
Speaker 1: eventually it stops working as well because the software updates
Speaker 1: have done something to prevent it from our our the
Speaker 1: software updates are out pacing the hardware. It seems like
Speaker 1: you'd have to have a shield in place so that
Speaker 1: the safety systems don't they're not affected by that, so
Speaker 1: that you know, that those collision avoidance parts of that
Speaker 1: system as at if as they've always been, as as
Speaker 1: quick as they've always been. But you know, maybe the
Speaker 1: Facebook app doesn't work. That's fine, you know, like that can,
Speaker 1: that can kind of there's room for air on that
Speaker 1: versus you know, smashing into a wall or or a person.
Speaker 1: Your fuel efficiency declines over time or your or maybe
Speaker 1: it just becomes less likely to start when you turn
Speaker 1: the key, and then your insurance company starts charging you
Speaker 1: every day that you're driving unsafely. Yeah, that's so negative.
Speaker 1: Well what if it? What if you could do like
Speaker 1: you can also make real time games. That's kind of
Speaker 1: interesting another day, I guess. Oh yeah, yeah, like that
Speaker 1: game that I'm completely forgetting the name of where you're
Speaker 1: on the blue team or the green team and it's
Speaker 1: kind of like King of the Hill and you play
Speaker 1: with all these other random people and and mostly it
Speaker 1: just amounts to a lot of nerds like walking around
Speaker 1: looking for certain like parts of it. Just they're just
Speaker 1: glued to their phones and like furiously punching on the
Speaker 1: like no I'm here button, anyone, anyone. No, I don't
Speaker 1: know what you're talking about, but I understand the concept
Speaker 1: in general, of the idea of being able to play
Speaker 1: a game with your phone. Some people have gamified running
Speaker 1: through you know, apps like Zombies Run. What if you
Speaker 1: could gamify drying dry drying, driving driving, Yes, that is
Speaker 1: the verb. I'm sure somebody has already done this in
Speaker 1: a way, but they, you know, do it through your
Speaker 1: phone or something like that. You can gamify and sleep
Speaker 1: now at this point, because they've got about talk to
Speaker 1: your your mattress really oh right, right, yeah, then all
Speaker 1: kinds of sleep technology. You had poor sleep last night. Him. Uh.
Speaker 1: And of course there's the old worry about hacking. Uh,
Speaker 1: there's there's I mean, I guess it's everything old is
Speaker 1: new again. It's it's happened, it's happening right now. Well
Speaker 1: maybe not right now, but oh yeah. We've certainly talked
Speaker 1: about that on the show before. Um. But one thing
Speaker 1: I do want to say right as we as we
Speaker 1: finish up here, on top of the fact that, I
Speaker 1: want to thank Scott and Ben for joining us just
Speaker 1: so much. Thank you, real pleasure to have you guys
Speaker 1: on the pleasure is all ours, and thank you again
Speaker 1: for having us on the show. We have We always
Speaker 1: love getting out of the studio, our own studio and
Speaker 1: coming over to your studio and which is the same studio. Yeah, well,
Speaker 1: you know, there's a whole different theater of the mind, Joe,
Speaker 1: come on. Yeah, it's like we only have our have
Speaker 1: our own show, our own stage or something. But but no,
Speaker 1: it's it's fun too. It's fun to come in and
Speaker 1: do another show occasionally. Yeah. But the thing I want
Speaker 1: to come back to is that I really, on the whole,
Speaker 1: I feel pretty good about the computerization of cars and
Speaker 1: the things that will allow cars to do. I certainly
Speaker 1: don't want to be a downer on that. In general. Yea,
Speaker 1: with new frontiers and technology, it's always important to explore
Speaker 1: the things that we might want to be worried about
Speaker 1: so that we can bring them up with with manufacturers
Speaker 1: and regulators before they happen, of course, and now is
Speaker 1: the time absolutely to do that. I read a thing
Speaker 1: from the Boston Consulting Group that said that premium cars
Speaker 1: these days run with from a hundred microprocessors and like
Speaker 1: a hundred million lines of code, which is more than
Speaker 1: a fighter jet for the record, So I mean, if
Speaker 1: you were planning on comparing your your car to a
Speaker 1: fighter jet, then it's a useful way of putting things
Speaker 1: to perspective. But yes, so so, there's so much of
Speaker 1: this out there. There's only going to be more in
Speaker 1: the future, and we're curious to see how it all
Speaker 1: shakes out. But hey, what about you guys at home? Uh,
Speaker 1: do you have crazy computerized cars? How do you feel
Speaker 1: about them? Is your car night writer? If so, call me? Uh?
Speaker 1: You can? You can get in touch with Scott and
Speaker 1: Ben how Oh yeah, you can visit us at Facebook
Speaker 1: or Twitter where we are car Stuff hs W. Can
Speaker 1: find our website car Stuff Show dot com. And if
Speaker 1: you want to email us directly with a feedback or
Speaker 1: an idea or just a funny joke, but make sure
Speaker 1: it's good, then our email addresses car stuff at House
Speaker 1: of Works dot com. And you can get in touch
Speaker 1: with us by emailing us at FW thinking at how
Speaker 1: stuff Works dot com. You can visit our website, which
Speaker 1: is also FW thinking dot com. You can find us
Speaker 1: on Twitter, Facebook, or Google Plus. I think you can
Speaker 1: figure out how to do so. Uh. We hope to
Speaker 1: hear from you, and you will hear from us again
Speaker 1: really soon. We're more on this topic and the future
Speaker 1: of technology. This is forward sinking dot Com brought to
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