Speaker 1: Welcome to tech Stuff, a production from I Heart Radio.
Speaker 1: Be there and welcome to tech Stuff. I'm your host,
Speaker 1: Jonathan Strickland. I'm an executive producer with I Heart Radio.
Speaker 1: And how the tech are you? It's time for a
Speaker 1: plastic episode. This one has the title high Tech at
Speaker 1: High Speed and originally published on February two thousand and sixteen.
Speaker 1: And Scott, who at the time we're hosting a podcast
Speaker 1: called car Stuff, joined the show too talk on the
Speaker 1: subject of tech in vehicle form and the kind of
Speaker 1: tech you're you're finding in vehicles. Keep in mind this
Speaker 1: is from things have changed, like this is before we
Speaker 1: started talking about stuff like paying a subscription feed in
Speaker 1: order to access your heated car seats. I'm sure that
Speaker 1: they would have a lot to say about that as well.
Speaker 1: But let's sit back and enjoy this classic episode. So
Speaker 1: today we're gonna talk about a little more in depth
Speaker 1: about some of the technology that was on display at
Speaker 1: cs SEN, specifically in regards two cars, which is why
Speaker 1: I got Scott onto the show here to kind of
Speaker 1: gauge his reactions and maybe even here your insight on
Speaker 1: some of this stuff. Well, you know I've read about it.
Speaker 1: Now you were at the show. Of course, you saw
Speaker 1: this stuff firsthand. A lot of this is just me
Speaker 1: looking at reviews of you know, what everybody else has
Speaker 1: written about this stuff. So I'm getting, you know, a
Speaker 1: different view of the whole thing. I don't get the
Speaker 1: hands on experience, but um, I'll do my best to
Speaker 1: try to keep up with you. But really the reaction
Speaker 1: maybe more of what you're going for here, because we've
Speaker 1: got opinions both ways about this. I mean, I know
Speaker 1: that your listeners have heard us uh, I guess butt
Speaker 1: heads and a couple of contutes in 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 gonna give you
Speaker 1: a scenario that in like ten years it's illegal to
Speaker 1: drive a car, And then then I watched your you
Speaker 1: just kind of wilt from that point on. Yeah. So
Speaker 1: one of the things I want to just mention right
Speaker 1: off the top before going into any specifics, is that
Speaker 1: the car industry is always played a part in CS
Speaker 1: as long as I have been going. This was my
Speaker 1: eight year going, and typically the North Hall of the
Speaker 1: convention center is where you'll find the car text stuff.
Speaker 1: Occasionally there will be some things out in the the
Speaker 1: actual parking lots that are around the convention center to
Speaker 1: show practical demonstrations of stuff like driver assist technologies that
Speaker 1: sort of thing. But typically most of the the exhibits
Speaker 1: are inside, so their static displays, they're not you know,
Speaker 1: you're not gonna get in the car and drive around
Speaker 1: or anything. But I've noticed that the trend has been
Speaker 1: growing year over year that that we're seeing more and
Speaker 1: more car technologies make their way into the show floor,
Speaker 1: which is kind of interesting. I mean, I get that
Speaker 1: their consumer technology, but often when I hear consumer technology,
Speaker 1: I'm thinking of smaller things, things smaller than a vehicle,
Speaker 1: right like maybe as big as like a refrigerator, But
Speaker 1: mostly I'm thinking of things in the television stereo system world,
Speaker 1: not things that you park in a garage. Well, you know,
Speaker 1: sometimes they get around this by just bringing in maybe
Speaker 1: the cockpit, the driver cockpit and the seat that is,
Speaker 1: you know, integral to whatever they're trying to show or display,
Speaker 1: and and that's enough. But sometimes they want to bring
Speaker 1: the whole vehicle because it's a whole package. Now at
Speaker 1: this point, everything is connected to everything else, and they
Speaker 1: want to show you how it all works together and
Speaker 1: how it feels when you're actually in there. There true
Speaker 1: to life product that they're going to be coming out
Speaker 1: with soon. And in fact, I noticed that there were
Speaker 1: a couple of a couple of early reveals that happened
Speaker 1: at this show that I just wanted to mention. They brought, well,
Speaker 1: Chevrolet brought to brand new vehicles for actually there aren't
Speaker 1: gonna be out until the end of and this is
Speaker 1: what's really weird to me. 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: had 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 of 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, I have a drive
Speaker 1: out on stage at the Detroit show. Yeah, it's interesting
Speaker 1: to see ce S play home to that sort of
Speaker 1: announcement 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 text 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 should
Speaker 1: get it, but there's some hardware changes and some other
Speaker 1: surprising things along the way to right. And the first
Speaker 1: thing I want to start off with Scott is talking
Speaker 1: about Toyota. I want to get that out of the way. So,
Speaker 1: first of all, full disclosure, I was there at c
Speaker 1: S 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 all
Speaker 1: the way. Uh. So they had a presentation that they
Speaker 1: were calling moving Safely into Future Mobility, and it was
Speaker 1: all really about artificial intelligence. Now, in two thousand and fifteen,
Speaker 1: it was announced that Toyota was going to fund two,
Speaker 1: well at least to start with two different research facilities,
Speaker 1: one near Stanford, one near m i T dedicated to
Speaker 1: researching artificial intelligence, specifically in regards to automotive industry, but
Speaker 1: beyond that as well. And then it was announced that
Speaker 1: they were going to put in a billion dollars over
Speaker 1: the next five years into these two research facilities. And
Speaker 1: they're they're actually working on two different things. So the
Speaker 1: Stanford group is working on something where you are trying
Speaker 1: to eliminate uncertainty in AI. And by that what they
Speaker 1: mean is, Scott, You're you're driving your car. You're driving
Speaker 1: down at highway speeds on a highway and there's you
Speaker 1: notice that the car in front of you, uh that
Speaker 1: it's got some barrels in the bed of a truck.
Speaker 1: And one of the barrels happens to to fly out,
Speaker 1: and you have a time to react, so you managed
Speaker 1: to swerve all the way. You as a human being,
Speaker 1: you're able to recognize this extrapolate from past experience kind
Speaker 1: of no, because you know the car and know the road.
Speaker 1: You know sort of what you can do, what's within
Speaker 1: your abilities to do in reaction to something like that.
Speaker 1: The thing that the Stanford folks are working on is
Speaker 1: how do you program that kind of ability into artificial intelligence?
Speaker 1: Because machines are really good and reacting in a specific
Speaker 1: way to specific scenarios. So in other words, you could
Speaker 1: program in, all right, if a bicyclist swerves into your lane,
Speaker 1: then you slow down like you have that. If this,
Speaker 1: then that, But you can't anticipate everything, so this is
Speaker 1: like a split second reaction. Uh. Everything that goes into
Speaker 1: a human split second reaction and is what they have
Speaker 1: to some kind of find some kind of way to
Speaker 1: develop for their own AI system to recognize and react
Speaker 1: the proper way so that it what Well, here's the
Speaker 1: here's the question though. Does it react to preserve the
Speaker 1: lives of the people that are in the car. Does
Speaker 1: it react to preserve the lives of people that maybe
Speaker 1: are walking on the sidewalk? This is the classic trolley problem. Okay, well, okay, yeah,
Speaker 1: that's right. So who does who does the system protect?
Speaker 1: Does it protect the driver of the vehicle or does
Speaker 1: it protect the people around surrounding that? And that's and
Speaker 1: that's one of the questions that has to be asked, right,
Speaker 1: like how how you know knowing that there's going to
Speaker 1: be ultimately at some point a scenario where a car
Speaker 1: will have to quote unquote decide to do something that
Speaker 1: is going to put someone in harm's way, how do
Speaker 1: you determine what how the car will will make that decision?
Speaker 1: And that's that's part of it is just this idea
Speaker 1: of you can program AI to handle the mundane situations
Speaker 1: of driving. Really well, we we have pretty got that
Speaker 1: down right. The manufacturers are essentially doing that now, they
Speaker 1: just can't legally say that you're allowed to operate that
Speaker 1: vehicle without a driver in the driver's seat, right, So
Speaker 1: under normal operating conditions, so a normal day like in
Speaker 1: a in a temperate area, So we're not talking about
Speaker 1: whether conditions like ice or snow. We're not talking about
Speaker 1: you know, traffic system where maybe the traffic lights are
Speaker 1: on the blank. That could obviously cause issues with a
Speaker 1: car that is designed to wait until a green light
Speaker 1: comes up, that kind of stuff, But under normal operating
Speaker 1: conditions they're very safe. The point that Toyota was making
Speaker 1: is that that's not the way the world works, and
Speaker 1: that you could argue that right now, we have a
Speaker 1: million mile safety record with autonomous cars, just because that's
Speaker 1: the number of miles autonomous cars have traveled collectively. But
Speaker 1: they argue that we really need a trillion mile safety
Speaker 1: record to prove that autonomous cars are safe enough for
Speaker 1: us to hand over control two machines and not be
Speaker 1: at least partially in control. Well, that's part of the
Speaker 1: reason we always see this this decade out date where
Speaker 1: they say we're gonna have this ready by or in
Speaker 1: some 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 must look
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 were 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 boxes 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 caring 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: that nice and when the learning algorithm kicked in, then
Speaker 1: they were able to start, you know, was pausing to
Speaker 1: let another car go in front of them before our
Speaker 1: cross in front them before they went and uh, it
Speaker 1: became this very intricate, almost like a dance that you
Speaker 1: could watch, and they had a video streaming in the
Speaker 1: background explaining the whole process that this was a machine
Speaker 1: learning algorithm that would be applied on a much grander
Speaker 1: scale to technology that would find its in cars down
Speaker 1: the road. It's almost like a like a fish school mentality,
Speaker 1: you know, like they all move one way together and
Speaker 1: it's all fluid and there's not really much of fish
Speaker 1: colliding all the time. You know, they all know where
Speaker 1: the other one is going. It's like maintaining that distance. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's it seems it seems like that. It looks like
Speaker 1: that when you see it happening. Yeah, it's actually it's
Speaker 1: actually pretty cool to watch. Like I got to watch
Speaker 1: it for a really long time as we were setting
Speaker 1: up a shot and so but yeah, it was neat
Speaker 1: seeing how these were working. And in fact, a lot
Speaker 1: of the people from Toyota said, yeah, some of our
Speaker 1: competitors were coming in to make sure that it wasn't
Speaker 1: like remote controlled vehicles that was all actually autonomous. And
Speaker 1: in fact it was autonomous. It's just like a little
Speaker 1: little bitty model cars. Yeah. You know, one thing as
Speaker 1: this that you sent me an article at least from
Speaker 1: the New York Times. Yeah, that that mentions this, you know,
Speaker 1: Toyota investment of one billion dollars in artificial intelligence here
Speaker 1: in the United States, and it said, and I thought
Speaker 1: this was pretty interesting that artificial intelligence technologies were disappointing
Speaker 1: for decades. And I've never really thought on the disappointing.
Speaker 1: I mean, I see them incrementally growing, you know, getting better. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but I never really saw them as being disappointing. I
Speaker 1: think part of it is that there is the the
Speaker 1: public expectation of what artificial intelligence is versus the actual
Speaker 1: definition of artificial intelligence. So if you if you look
Speaker 1: at artificial intelligence as being a very broad spectrum that
Speaker 1: encompasses a ton of stuff and on on the the
Speaker 1: simplest level, it's on the the idea of sensing a
Speaker 1: change in the environment and being able to react to it.
Speaker 1: That's the type of artificial intelligence. And of course the
Speaker 1: far end of the spectrum is human like or superhuman intelligence,
Speaker 1: which obviously we have not really achieved. Um. But you
Speaker 1: know a lot of people think that that superhuman or
Speaker 1: human like intelligence is the definition of AI. They don't
Speaker 1: realize necessarily that artificial intelligence means lots of different stuff.
Speaker 1: Well just give you an example. I mean that this
Speaker 1: article in particular mentioned Siri as a as a tremendous
Speaker 1: advancement in artificial intelligence. Now, I know that you've probably
Speaker 1: talked about this at length on the show, but I
Speaker 1: can kind of understand it. That's like, finally the general populace,
Speaker 1: I guess, is getting a chance to kind of kind
Speaker 1: of toy with this a little bit and see what
Speaker 1: it can do, what it's capable of. And I know
Speaker 1: it's a it's I don't know, I have trouble calling
Speaker 1: it true artificial intelligence. Yeah. No, it's it's it's voice recognition,
Speaker 1: which is already impressive, right, And then it's it's it's
Speaker 1: pairing that with UH an ability to execute uncertain apps
Speaker 1: or do searches. But then you think about it, if
Speaker 1: you're gonna call Sirie artificial intelligence, you might as well
Speaker 1: call a Google Search artificial intelligence, because Siri is just
Speaker 1: really a new way to interface with a system that's
Speaker 1: been in place for several years exactly now. Okay, so,
Speaker 1: but we're seeing more and more stuff like Siri implemented
Speaker 1: into automob be recognition. We'll be talking a lot about that,
Speaker 1: and to be able to control certain things in the car,
Speaker 1: which are what you're getting far more advanced than they
Speaker 1: were even last year. Um. Yeah, it's crazy. Yeah, the interaction,
Speaker 1: the level of interaction. I mean, I gotta say, I've
Speaker 1: never really been all that impressed with any of these
Speaker 1: apps that you can have on your phone that maybe
Speaker 1: turn on the lights in your living room or you know,
Speaker 1: you can adjust your thermostad like you stand to get it.
Speaker 1: You say that, but until you convince your loved ones
Speaker 1: that your house is haunted because you are using the
Speaker 1: app while you're at work to turn the lights on
Speaker 1: and off, you really haven't lived. I see, I see.
Speaker 1: 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: pretty funny 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 re lee talked to this thing and make it
Speaker 1: do what you really want, I mean, and there's far
Speaker 1: reaching implications with that. Yeah, I think, uh, I think
Speaker 1: it's really cool that, I mean. That was one of
Speaker 1: the really big stories this year l c ES was
Speaker 1: that this sort of connected card technology is really starting
Speaker 1: to make sense, right, it's it's gone beyond. It made
Speaker 1: me think of the way smart TVs were when they
Speaker 1: first came out. Smart TVs when they first came out,
Speaker 1: you get a widget on your screen and it would
Speaker 1: tell you, you know, what the temperature was outside and
Speaker 1: how likely is it going to rain? And it wasn't
Speaker 1: very attractive, it wasn't very useful, and often it was
Speaker 1: difficult to navigate around these systems because it was more like, hey,
Speaker 1: we can put internet content on a television. Let's go
Speaker 1: ahead and do that before we figure out what's the
Speaker 1: best way to incorporate it so that the experience is
Speaker 1: a positive one and I think cars have had the
Speaker 1: same thing they are getting there. Now I'll tell you
Speaker 1: because this this whole Forward Alexa, I think the years
Speaker 1: you've mentioned as this is one of the top so
Speaker 1: you wanted to talk about you mind if we go
Speaker 1: to that right now to it all right? So Ford
Speaker 1: is kind of working with Echo and and Alexa and uh,
Speaker 1: and they're incorporating this into their already existing SINC program
Speaker 1: and I think they're at the third generation of the
Speaker 1: SINC program for their cars. How do you know SINC
Speaker 1: program is the right way to say that platform platform,
Speaker 1: it's a better way. So you can go to forward
Speaker 1: dot com and check out what SINK will do. But
Speaker 1: I'll tell you that this next level where they've taken
Speaker 1: out of the way. They've integrated everything that SINK will
Speaker 1: do with Echo and with Alexa. So that's like the
Speaker 1: is it a personal assistant or what do they call
Speaker 1: they call them now they're calling a voice concierge voice concierge.
Speaker 1: So I was reading an article about this from Gelapnic
Speaker 1: and it's a car site and one of the things
Speaker 1: and this impressed me. It's not just turn the lights
Speaker 1: on and or you know, set the set the temperature,
Speaker 1: it says, you know, you can you can from your
Speaker 1: car on the way home, you can say, Alexa, turn
Speaker 1: the kitchen lights on, open the Gradu door, heat the
Speaker 1: oven to four degrees, and turn on a baseball game.
Speaker 1: So when you get home, all this stuff is ready
Speaker 1: to go. It's all set to go. And and Mercedes
Speaker 1: Benz is working with with Nest to do something very similar.
Speaker 1: So other auto manufacturers are working with different companies to
Speaker 1: do similar things. One of them is working with Microsoft
Speaker 1: and has Cortana, which is Microsoft version of a voice concierge,
Speaker 1: incorporating that. We'll get to that in a little bit too.
Speaker 1: And and you can you can set start times for
Speaker 1: your car. So here's the usual routine. You know, you've
Speaker 1: got the automatic start that you know, the manufacturer builds
Speaker 1: into the system. That's that's one thing, right, But you
Speaker 1: still and I know this sounds kind of silly, but
Speaker 1: you still have to you don't go near the window,
Speaker 1: I guess, and look at your car and and push
Speaker 1: the button and knowing you know the previous night, you
Speaker 1: turn the heat on high and the defroster on and
Speaker 1: all that stuff and it sets or you know, some
Speaker 1: manufacturers probably has settings that automatically do that, but you
Speaker 1: have some type of physical interaction you have to do
Speaker 1: with your car in the morning. You have to remember,
Speaker 1: I'm going to turn that on ten minutes before I
Speaker 1: go out. Clear, clear off the frost on the windshield.
Speaker 1: Make sure the car is a nice temperature before I
Speaker 1: get in exactly so about comfort. Right. So this system,
Speaker 1: this is this new forward Alexa ecosystem, will allow you
Speaker 1: to set a time like on on Monday morning, I
Speaker 1: want the car to start at five am. I want
Speaker 1: the interior temperature to be seventy five degrees um. I want,
Speaker 1: you know, whatever you can. You could adjust that, you
Speaker 1: can turn the radio station to whatever you want. But
Speaker 1: you can program all that in days ahead of time.
Speaker 1: It's like setting a schedule for your car. My question
Speaker 1: is with that, though, what if things change and you
Speaker 1: forget to do that, then your car is running out
Speaker 1: in the driveway for you know, an hour and a
Speaker 1: half or whatever before you remember that it's actually running.
Speaker 1: I would imagine that, assuming you're having this worked with
Speaker 1: the echo, which is essentially a speaker that has a
Speaker 1: microphone embedded in it so you can speak into it,
Speaker 1: it can talk back to you. Uh. I would imagine
Speaker 1: how fail safe would be to have the speaker chime
Speaker 1: or otherwise alert you that your car has been running
Speaker 1: but hasn't been doing anything after a certain amount of
Speaker 1: time has passed, maybe five minutes. That's that's that would
Speaker 1: be my solution to that problem. But it's it is
Speaker 1: something that obviously you have to think about when you're
Speaker 1: trying to implement these kind of approaches into the automobile industry.
Speaker 1: I mean, this is stuff that we've seen in smart
Speaker 1: homes to some degree or another, and to see it's
Speaker 1: kind of creep into cars. You know, hopefully people are
Speaker 1: taking lessons they've learned from the other implementations and trying
Speaker 1: to figure out 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 galan of milk on the way home. Right,
Speaker 1: So that this does require, obviously that you have various
Speaker 1: smart appliances to to network together. Right. Yeah, If it's
Speaker 1: just a regular old fridge or or a kegenator as
Speaker 1: as we might have back at home, it's not going
Speaker 1: to be able to chime up. But yeah, it's this interconnectivity.
Speaker 1: And in fact, that's one of the big assets that
Speaker 1: Amazon has is the Echo can work with lots of
Speaker 1: other different home automation products, not even not just once
Speaker 1: from one company, which is a huge deal. Scott, I
Speaker 1: can't tell you how big the deal this is to
Speaker 1: have a connected home. Like in the early days, everyone
Speaker 1: was trying to make sure their approach was going to
Speaker 1: become the standard approach, which meant that there was no standard,
Speaker 1: you had a bunch of proprietary approaches that wouldn't talk
Speaker 1: to each other. So products like the Echo and some
Speaker 1: apps that I've seen are finally getting to the point
Speaker 1: where you can interface with different products from different companies,
Speaker 1: so you don't have to i in on just one
Speaker 1: system if you happen to like one manufacturer's refrigerator. Let's
Speaker 1: say you like Whirlpool and you really want the newest
Speaker 1: smart Whirlpool fridge, which, by the way, I've seen and
Speaker 1: it's pretty sweet. If you wanted one of those, but
Speaker 1: you wanted to have your other devices from a different manufacturer,
Speaker 1: it would be difficult to have them all talking to
Speaker 1: each other. But something like the Echo can act like
Speaker 1: a hub, and then your car becomes an extension of
Speaker 1: that hub, and that's where you can do things like
Speaker 1: check to see if like if when was the last
Speaker 1: time I bought milk? So, oh, it's two weeks ago, Like, oh,
Speaker 1: I gotta buy milk, you know. And that's the whole
Speaker 1: reason we're talking about it today, because they're adding the
Speaker 1: automobile to this whole mix that you know, you can
Speaker 1: it's now completely mobile. You can really you can really
Speaker 1: truly control your home from your car, and you can
Speaker 1: do a lot of things in your car from home
Speaker 1: as well. I mean the things that you just wouldn't
Speaker 1: think that you would normally need. And it's it's it's
Speaker 1: all luxury. I love the idea of it to like
Speaker 1: some of it. It's definitely luck tree, 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 we're a turn trip home before we
Speaker 1: ever get to our destination. And ALEXA. One of the
Speaker 1: things that can do is it can tell you and
Speaker 1: presumably at least in future or implementations, it can even
Speaker 1: correct things if they are incorrect, Like if you say, hey,
Speaker 1: is the front door locked, No, it's not, it's unlocked.
Speaker 1: Can you lock the front door for me? Yes? Click
Speaker 1: and then you don't have to worry about it anymore.
Speaker 1: Very smart. Now, I want to show you something, and
Speaker 1: this is only your benefit, not the listeners benefits. To
Speaker 1: see this page where I have the word yes with
Speaker 1: two exclamation points, I have underlined the line that says, asking,
Speaker 1: for example, whether the gardge door is closed. Every time
Speaker 1: I leave my house, I look at the gradge door,
Speaker 1: make sure it's closed, and I say, I whispered to myself,
Speaker 1: the gardge door is closed. Yeah. And it's like a
Speaker 1: little routine. It's a pattern I have. And if I
Speaker 1: if I ever leave without doing that, I have to
Speaker 1: return and make sure that garage door is closed because
Speaker 1: I 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 won't come
Speaker 1: a point where my wife say, did the garage door
Speaker 1: go down? And because I don't want to lie to
Speaker 1: my wife, like I want to get to where I'm going,
Speaker 1: but I never want to get to where I'm going
Speaker 1: more than I want to you know, like that that's
Speaker 1: never so great that I will lie. I'll say, I
Speaker 1: don't know. I am turned around and go look. I
Speaker 1: am sometimes ridiculed for my my whispering of the gradge
Speaker 1: door is down. It's when you say closed. When when
Speaker 1: you 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 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 store. And then and the best thing, Scott, absolute
Speaker 1: best thing, Alexa will never mock you for that is
Speaker 1: probably the best part of the whole thing. Scott and
Speaker 1: yours truly will talk more about high tech at high
Speaker 1: speed after we come back from this quick break. So
Speaker 1: moving on to some of the other manufacturers that we saw,
Speaker 1: we stopped by Volkswagen and uh so, of course Volkswagen
Speaker 1: obviously still in the wake of the pr disaster that
Speaker 1: was the clean Diesel scandal, so they were they trotting
Speaker 1: out their latest diesel technology. They oddly enough left that
Speaker 1: off the show floor, an interesting move. Yeah. They instead
Speaker 1: decided to show off an electric vehicle concept design called
Speaker 1: the Buddy. Yeah I did that. I did that on
Speaker 1: a previou A c S episode and got a lot
Speaker 1: of people saying, I know who Polly Shore is, thank
Speaker 1: you for the Polly Shore reference. Um, but yeah, the
Speaker 1: Buddy electric vehicle concept, which it's kind of funny. It
Speaker 1: relates in a way to another car that we'll talk about,
Speaker 1: the F Zero one. And I know that you and
Speaker 1: Ben covered Faraday Futures f F zero one in an episode,
Speaker 1: right we did about it, so, uh, in a similar
Speaker 1: way to what that concept was. Volkswagen's idea was to
Speaker 1: create a sort of modular approach to designing electric vehicles,
Speaker 1: and so this was really just a representation of that idea.
Speaker 1: That being said, it kind of had this sort of
Speaker 1: quirky retro futuristic design to it, very angular, very uh
Speaker 1: odd looking. But I really dug it. Do you think it?
Speaker 1: I mean, it was it trying to play on the
Speaker 1: old VDO microbus thing. I think so a little bit,
Speaker 1: but definitely in a way that was not like it
Speaker 1: was obviously not a a uh you know, a recreation
Speaker 1: of the microbus just with new lighting and stuff. It
Speaker 1: was the design itself had changed pretty dramatically, Okay, And
Speaker 1: you know I heard one of the one of the
Speaker 1: biggest parts of this whole thing that made it interesting
Speaker 1: was that, uh, it's not going to support any kind
Speaker 1: of It was designed without without the intent to support
Speaker 1: 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 gonna be customizable. Of course,
Speaker 1: we're gonna be able to kind of change things around.
Speaker 1: But they've got an idea that right now it's gonna use.
Speaker 1: It can use up to three different types of batteries. Right,
Speaker 1: So there's three different types. There's the cylindrical, pouch and
Speaker 1: prismatic cells. And I think right now they're only using
Speaker 1: two of those. They're using prismatic and pouch cells at
Speaker 1: this point. So they haven't um decided yet on the cylindrical,
Speaker 1: but they say it gives them the flexibility to adapt
Speaker 1: to whatever becomes the forerunner in that yield. Right. So
Speaker 1: with this approach, they can design any number of vehicle structures,
Speaker 1: like whether it's a car or a van or whatever,
Speaker 1: they can go with that because of this module or approach. Uh.
Speaker 1: They just change out the size of the battery, the
Speaker 1: capacity of the battery essentially, and the size of the
Speaker 1: chassis obviously, but it gives them a common starting ground
Speaker 1: for lots of different vehicle types. And the the battery
Speaker 1: pack itself is flat and fits under the car, so
Speaker 1: you get this nice flat interior which made it incredibly
Speaker 1: roomy on the inside, not that we were allowed to
Speaker 1: get in. No one was allowed to get very close
Speaker 1: to this thing, at least at the time we were there.
Speaker 1: It's surprising, isn't how much how much room that free
Speaker 1: up when it's a flat floor, Like, Yeah, it is
Speaker 1: phenomenal where it's just like you just look at it
Speaker 1: and you think, wow, I I would have so much
Speaker 1: room to stretch out, and you know, you can even
Speaker 1: have luggage in the cabinet law with passengers and it's
Speaker 1: wouldn't even get in the way. You get in and
Speaker 1: it feels like an empty bust or something. Yeah, it's big, yeah,
Speaker 1: and it has The Buddy concept car had two motors,
Speaker 1: two electric motors, one for the front wheels, one for
Speaker 1: the back. Um supposedly had a hundred and one kilowatt
Speaker 1: hour capacity battery that would provide a driving range of
Speaker 1: three hundred seventy three miles, although when asked about it,
Speaker 1: Volkswagen essentially said, actually, that's what we're working toward, that's
Speaker 1: our goal. We're not there yet, so they packed it
Speaker 1: down a bit. Yeah. Most people say around three hundred
Speaker 1: miles max. Nasty. I saw a different number that said
Speaker 1: when they ran it through testing based on the U
Speaker 1: S E P A cycle. So you know the way
Speaker 1: that they normally determined for these electric vehicles, the comparison miles,
Speaker 1: I guess the equivalent. They said the equivalent was going
Speaker 1: to be two D thirty three miles. But that's you
Speaker 1: know what I should even stay per gallon, that's the range.
Speaker 1: That's how long these batteries were less two or thirty three.
Speaker 1: That's a significant drop from what they came out. Yeah,
Speaker 1: more than Yeah, so when they say three seventy three
Speaker 1: and it goes to significant. But what is interesting, and
Speaker 1: they didn't back down on this, is that they can
Speaker 1: charge of the battery capacity in about fifteen minutes. And
Speaker 1: that's pretty good. Yeah. If that if that holds, if
Speaker 1: that sticks, and that's true, that's really good. That's significant
Speaker 1: step forward. It's good. I don't know that's good enough.
Speaker 1: Like like Tesla's idea about having not just the super
Speaker 1: fast charging stations, but also the option to switch out
Speaker 1: a battery if you are on the go. That makes
Speaker 1: a lot of sense for people who are used to
Speaker 1: being able to pull into a gas station and refill
Speaker 1: in a couple of minutes. It does, but look, I'm
Speaker 1: on gas stations. There are yeah, sure, there are four
Speaker 1: in every corner. Yeah, that's true. It's I don't mean,
Speaker 1: I don't mean to shoot you down on that idea anything.
Speaker 1: It's quick changing things. They can be far they can
Speaker 1: be a lot fewer and far between. I suppose for
Speaker 1: for the for the battery swaps, the the supercharger stations. However,
Speaker 1: I think those have to be fairly common because a
Speaker 1: Tesla right now s the charge times. If you have
Speaker 1: a supercharger station, or I think that's what they call it,
Speaker 1: a supercharger station, it takes you about one hour to
Speaker 1: fully charge the battery, and that's the three mile range.
Speaker 1: But if you don't have a supercharger station, you're just
Speaker 1: relying on plane old electricity from the wall plug in. Uh,
Speaker 1: you get something like twenty two miles of range for
Speaker 1: every hour of charging. So that's a significant drop in well,
Speaker 1: it's a it's an increase in the time that would
Speaker 1: get somewhere. So I mean for v W to say
Speaker 1: of battery capacity in fifteen minutes, so what's of two
Speaker 1: thirty three miles, that's pretty good. Yeah, no, it's it's
Speaker 1: it's definitely significant. Uh. And you know. They had some
Speaker 1: other cool features on this, including a big display screens
Speaker 1: that would replace your typical dashboard, so it was like
Speaker 1: a bunch of almost like tablets style computers. Um plus
Speaker 1: just your controls, just your controls were huge with cars
Speaker 1: this year. That's that's where you don't even have to
Speaker 1: touch the screen. You can move your hands at a
Speaker 1: certain height and camera will detect the pre stuff your
Speaker 1: hand and then interpret that as a command, so you
Speaker 1: can swipe through options or select something by typically acting
Speaker 1: like you're pushing a button in mid air. That tends
Speaker 1: to be the like you're playing charades or something. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you know, I saw that this is an infrared system,
Speaker 1: So it's kind of a cost cutting measure on their
Speaker 1: part because there are other ways to do it as well,
Speaker 1: but this one they claim they're Gonnase infra red just
Speaker 1: to keep cost down. Again, this is not really meant
Speaker 1: to be a production model. It's strictly a show card.
Speaker 1: It's just really to show off the technologies that that
Speaker 1: Volkswagen has been working with, many of which may find
Speaker 1: their way into production vehicles in the future, but not
Speaker 1: necessarily the Buddy itself. You're not gonna find the buddy
Speaker 1: on a on a show floor for you to purchase.
Speaker 1: It's just a rolling test bed at this point. In fact,
Speaker 1: I should say that I suspect at least a few
Speaker 1: of the vehicles on the showroom floor at CS are
Speaker 1: no more than a shell with nothing that actually makes
Speaker 1: the thing go. I think, faaradays, like that, isn't it.
Speaker 1: I remember trying to remember back to our program, and
Speaker 1: I think that it's it's not really on a power
Speaker 1: platform at this point. It's all theoretical. Yeah. I do
Speaker 1: not know the answer to that to be able to
Speaker 1: say definitively one way or the other, but it would
Speaker 1: not surprise me. I'll tell you that's not anything brand new.
Speaker 1: Really show cars, even at the big auto shows in
Speaker 1: the past, there have been many times when they have
Speaker 1: to be pushed out on the stage or or they
Speaker 1: have some just really low low power module underneath. It's
Speaker 1: not like what they claim is under the hood. Um,
Speaker 1: you know, it's just something just to get out on
Speaker 1: the stage for the show and that's about it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: never never look under the hood. I know that one
Speaker 1: of the Toyota fuel cell vehicles was like that, and
Speaker 1: that the chassis they were showing off was a concept,
Speaker 1: but the car underneath it was not actually a fuel
Speaker 1: cell vehicle, whereas the fuel cell vehicle they had on
Speaker 1: display was using a modified Toyota previously existing Toyota model
Speaker 1: as the chassis. So it's just one of those things
Speaker 1: where it's it's like we have the idea, we have
Speaker 1: the technology, we haven't gotten into production yet, so we
Speaker 1: don't have a model that actually works with the technology
Speaker 1: we're talking about fully fully formed. And that's not every case.
Speaker 1: I mean, they've been running driving concept cars or what
Speaker 1: they called dream cars for decades, of course, you know,
Speaker 1: since the beginning, but there were always those cases where
Speaker 1: they bring out some just crazy design that doesn't really
Speaker 1: have anything under the hood or anything. And and it
Speaker 1: was kind of a big deal again back in the
Speaker 1: late eighties and early nineties when companies started making running
Speaker 1: driving production rather prototype vehicles, um, all these concept cars,
Speaker 1: and it was kind of like this thing really drives,
Speaker 1: Like I mean, it's the I think I'm I'm not
Speaker 1: gonna say the first or anything, but I remember like
Speaker 1: hearing about the Viper Dodge Viper, and they're like listening,
Speaker 1: actually drives, we can drive it on the Indian helps
Speaker 1: five under track, like, no, way, that thing actually has
Speaker 1: a V ten and you know they claim it did,
Speaker 1: but it really did. And the Plymouth Prowler, and you know,
Speaker 1: vehicles like that along the way that you thought and
Speaker 1: all the cars that I thought were awesome when I
Speaker 1: was younger. Yes, well that's that's when it's kind of
Speaker 1: the resurgence of like, well, this thing actually does what
Speaker 1: we say it does, is that it's not just a shell. Yeah.
Speaker 1: There were some other cool technologies on display to stick
Speaker 1: with a connected car and just your controls. BMW showed
Speaker 1: off their eye Vision Future Interaction Platform, which again is
Speaker 1: another network car. All those commands that you would issue
Speaker 1: to the car can be done by uh, touchscreen or
Speaker 1: by voice control or again by gestures um. And the
Speaker 1: steering wheel actually, did you see the steering wheel on
Speaker 1: this thing with the lights? Okay, so there are three
Speaker 1: different modes of driving this vehicle. There's pure drive, where
Speaker 1: the vehicle is under the control of a human driver,
Speaker 1: at least presumably a human driver. A driver could be
Speaker 1: a dog. Well you would hope it would not be.
Speaker 1: I suppose it could be at this point. Then there
Speaker 1: was assist mode, which was kind of where you have
Speaker 1: that autonomous ability to kick into gear should something go
Speaker 1: wrong to protect the driver and the car. And then
Speaker 1: you had pure autonomous mode or auto mode, and the
Speaker 1: steering wheel would light up to indicate which mode you
Speaker 1: were in. So if you were in automode, it would
Speaker 1: be blue steering wheel like pretty much at the um,
Speaker 1: you know, the three and nine positions up would be
Speaker 1: blue like up to the top. And then if you
Speaker 1: wanted to switch over to pure drive, the lights would
Speaker 1: start to fade down from the top to the sides
Speaker 1: so that it would be an alert saying, hey, you
Speaker 1: should probably put your hands on the wheel now because
Speaker 1: here where the blue light is so so. And then
Speaker 1: before it would switch to pure drive mode, the lights
Speaker 1: turn red to indicate, hey, seriously, take the wheel. I'm
Speaker 1: not in control anymore. All right, let me tell you something. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I got a major problem with this car. This is
Speaker 1: kind of way you invited me here. It was one
Speaker 1: of the minutes, the moment right here, because this could
Speaker 1: be a moment. Let me tell you, all right, this
Speaker 1: is the so, this is the BMW I eight they
Speaker 1: have modified. There's no doors in this car. There's no
Speaker 1: hood on this car, I mean roof on this car.
Speaker 1: But um, but inside is where all this technologies happen.
Speaker 1: And you get it, that's what the showcases. They want
Speaker 1: you to have a clear, unobstructive view of that. So
Speaker 1: I get it. What I almost cannot believe I'm hearing
Speaker 1: from BMW, which by the way, used to be called, uh,
Speaker 1: the ultimate driving machine, right, okay, the ultimate driving machine.
Speaker 1: Now here's what. Here's what this says. BMW's latest technology
Speaker 1: reduces the amount of driver control to a minimum in
Speaker 1: order to simplify driving, and driving can be stressful for some.
Speaker 1: And that's when it goes into the three modes. Come on.
Speaker 1: This is part of the stuff that they that they're
Speaker 1: you know, this is their message. I get it. There's okay,
Speaker 1: and we're all going there. Some of us are are screaming.
Speaker 1: And but this company in particular, and I understand. I
Speaker 1: understand that. You know that they have to keep up,
Speaker 1: that they have to remain relevance. I get That's why
Speaker 1: they're doing it. So I'm not I'm not that old
Speaker 1: that I don't understand that. I really do. They have
Speaker 1: to remain relevant, they have to they have to sell product, right,
Speaker 1: So that's what they're doing. I get it. But for
Speaker 1: a company that that claims to be the ultimate drive machine,
Speaker 1: and they are known for building cars that drivers really
Speaker 1: really enjoy. They pay a premium to drive a BMW
Speaker 1: because of the experience. It's a driver's car, and there's
Speaker 1: certain vehicles. You could expect that out of Porsche as well. Uh,
Speaker 1: you know, you expect a certain experience when you get
Speaker 1: behind the wheel, and this is removing all that. You're
Speaker 1: just saying, I want the I want the brand name.
Speaker 1: I wanted to be this I eight or whatever platform
Speaker 1: they put it in, but I don't really want to
Speaker 1: do anything. I don't want to experience that anymore. I'd
Speaker 1: rather just sit back and read a book maybe while
Speaker 1: I go to work. Why not take the train it start?
Speaker 1: It sounds to me like a glorious future. But let
Speaker 1: see the problem is your listeners have come to expect
Speaker 1: this kind of rant from me, So get you on
Speaker 1: the show. But honest, really, I mean, really think about it.
Speaker 1: I mean, this is supposed to be a driver's cards.
Speaker 1: It's it's a it's an odd move from this manufacturer.
Speaker 1: That's all on SAE 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've 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. Alright, we got a little bit more
Speaker 1: to say on this topic before we get to that, though,
Speaker 1: Let's take another quick break. Did you happen to see
Speaker 1: the demonstration of their self parking technology for for the alright, So,
Speaker 1: so BMW has shown off self parking a couple of times,
Speaker 1: like it's not like it's brand new, except that this
Speaker 1: year they showed off that they had a new way
Speaker 1: to interact with self parking because usually you would get
Speaker 1: out of your car, you might have a button on
Speaker 1: your key fob that says park and you would press
Speaker 1: it in the car would pull itself into a parking slot.
Speaker 1: Very impressive, you know, you know, yeah, and you can
Speaker 1: even maybe with something like Alexa have voice control where
Speaker 1: you could say park the car and then jump out
Speaker 1: and it would probably a car that would be cool too.
Speaker 1: BMW decided to go the air controller route. But just
Speaker 1: your controls. You can actually just your to your car
Speaker 1: to take a to take a spot, and to to
Speaker 1: move the car while you're outside of it to go
Speaker 1: and park. Really yeah, they actually showed off. They had
Speaker 1: journalists sit in the passenger side, no one in the
Speaker 1: driver's seat, have a BMW representative standing there gesturing to
Speaker 1: the car and to the parking space, and the car
Speaker 1: would maneuver over into the parking I got to ask
Speaker 1: you this, do you have to have those flashlights with
Speaker 1: the cones on the end to do this? You have
Speaker 1: to have them, but I think it presents a certain
Speaker 1: element of style. I absolutely would plus the giant ear
Speaker 1: mud right exactly. You know, the BMW dengines can get loud,
Speaker 1: so you want to be able to protect your ears.
Speaker 1: But yeah, so that's that's that's a shock to me.
Speaker 1: I I'll have to seek a video of this because
Speaker 1: I've got to see somebody directing their car as if
Speaker 1: it's an airplane into a potet. I think it was.
Speaker 1: I want to say it was the Verge where I
Speaker 1: saw the video demonstration of this particular technology. I should
Speaker 1: go on to say I didn't get a chance to
Speaker 1: see this personally. This was something that I saw after
Speaker 1: I got back. This is one of the most frustrating
Speaker 1: things about attending CES is you get to see a
Speaker 1: lot of really cool stuff. But when you come back,
Speaker 1: you see all this really cool stuff that you didn't
Speaker 1: have a chance to experience yourself. There's just no way.
Speaker 1: There's no no, there is absolutely no way. And like
Speaker 1: even if you spent every single second running from thing
Speaker 1: to thing, you would still miss stuff. Um. So next
Speaker 1: we have Kia, which normally I think I wouldn't have
Speaker 1: even wouldn't have even registered with me. But again Kia
Speaker 1: again moving on this this same sort of autonomous car bandwagon,
Speaker 1: I guess you could call it. UM introduced its drive
Speaker 1: Wise platform. Yeah, on the Soul e V platform. Right, So, uh,
Speaker 1: you know, it's in a product that they currently build,
Speaker 1: which makes sense. It's not like they're bringing out some
Speaker 1: concept vehagle that's a you know, pie in the sky
Speaker 1: idea that maybe will never happen. They're saying, now we're
Speaker 1: gonna put it into our actual product right here's what here,
Speaker 1: here's what we have available right now that it works in. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and so right now, it's kind of a a advanced
Speaker 1: driver assistance system or ADS. It's one of those where
Speaker 1: again similar to what I was talking about with Toyota,
Speaker 1: with with pretty much every do you like, it's this
Speaker 1: idea of a computer assisting a driver, normally just to
Speaker 1: intervene when there's something that the driver has not noticed
Speaker 1: or has it doesn't have the time to react to
Speaker 1: him or herself. So this is a partially autonomous system,
Speaker 1: right because they've got to release dates. Yes, this was
Speaker 1: me the earlier one, the earlier one which is scheduled
Speaker 1: to debut in and another full ten years beyond that.
Speaker 1: So when is when they're gonna come out with the
Speaker 1: fully autonomous version. That's what they're projecting right now. I think, honestly, Scott,
Speaker 1: if I have to be like, if you nailed me down,
Speaker 1: I'd have to say I think a lot of these
Speaker 1: car companies are purposefully being conservative with those guesses. I
Speaker 1: totally agree. I think I think certain companies that are
Speaker 1: not car companies, like Google, are really pushing the envelope
Speaker 1: as far as the autonomous car technology goes to the
Speaker 1: point where there will be enough demand from the consumer,
Speaker 1: are 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 beds a little bit insane, and 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: delivery 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: going to be fantastic, and the rolls around you look
Speaker 1: back at that new story and then you, you know,
Speaker 1: kind of press Kia and say, well where the fully
Speaker 1: autonomos vehicles and they have to kind of put their
Speaker 1: you know, head down and say, well, kick quite where? Yeah,
Speaker 1: you know, maybe in five more years. I think I
Speaker 1: think part of it is also the idea that if
Speaker 1: you'd go with the driver assist route rather than the
Speaker 1: fully autonomous route, you can keep that culture of personal
Speaker 1: car ownership going longer, right because people will be interested
Speaker 1: in driving with these kind of vehicles. It's when you
Speaker 1: go the fully autonomous route where one vehicle price gets
Speaker 1: so high that the average person starts to have trouble
Speaker 1: affording one and two. There's less need to have one
Speaker 1: in densely populated areas. Obviously, in rural areas that's a
Speaker 1: totally different story. But but in cities where you could
Speaker 1: presume presumably get a service going with electric or not
Speaker 1: even electric, but fully autonomous vehicles, um, then there's very
Speaker 1: little reason to own your own desk. See I totally
Speaker 1: understand that there's a time and place for this tepeon thing,
Speaker 1: and really it does work in some situations. Other situations
Speaker 1: there's just no way that it would work. There's certain
Speaker 1: people that this type of this type of idea, this
Speaker 1: car sharing idea, this uh um, even even e V
Speaker 1: cars at this point the way they are right now
Speaker 1: wouldn't work for a lot of people. But for a
Speaker 1: lot of people they do. And it's a great thing.
Speaker 1: And I get the move to autonomous and people's excitement
Speaker 1: around it, but um, I don't think it's ever gonna
Speaker 1: go either way. Yeah, I I used to be gung
Speaker 1: ho autonomous, but I've eased off on that a little
Speaker 1: bit just because I recognize there are I'm thinking of
Speaker 1: it too narrowly, right, I'm thinking of it from my perspective,
Speaker 1: my own personal experience of using vehicles. For me, it
Speaker 1: makes perfect sense pretty much all the time. But there
Speaker 1: are plenty of outliers that you would say, all right, well, know,
Speaker 1: personal ownership is never going to completely go away, not
Speaker 1: as long as we still have people living outside of
Speaker 1: urban areas, and presumably that's going to continue. Um. But
Speaker 1: to get back to Kia, I want to ask you this,
Speaker 1: did you happen to look at their blind control system.
Speaker 1: It's a fingerprint scanner that identifies the driver, and then
Speaker 1: as you drive the vehicle, the vehicle begins to learn
Speaker 1: your style, and it learns what temperature you like to
Speaker 1: keep the car, and what stations you tend to listen
Speaker 1: to and UH and other ways that you actually handle
Speaker 1: the vehicle while you're driving it, and it builds a
Speaker 1: profile that's personalized to you. And then if someone else
Speaker 1: drives 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 adjusts all those
Speaker 1: settings so that you get the driving experience you want
Speaker 1: and the other driver gets the driving experience it's 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 chages 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, they know that at a
Speaker 1: certain time you come up from work and you want
Speaker 1: the temperature to certain setting. You want this light on,
Speaker 1: but not that one. And then later in the evening
Speaker 1: turned that one off, turned that one on, and right
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 every
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 that 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: the 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 degrees 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. When we come back, Scott and
Speaker 1: I will end up concluding our discussion about high tech
Speaker 1: at high speed after these messages. So we kind of
Speaker 1: mentioned Fair 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 I've got some I've got a pile of notes
Speaker 1: here on this whole thing. So you've you've seen this
Speaker 1: in person. I haven't. I've only read about it, and
Speaker 1: you know, kind of get the the idea that some
Speaker 1: people thought it was really fantastic, and other reviewers went
Speaker 1: in and said, this is absolutely ridiculous. I don't know
Speaker 1: what they're doing bringing this car to the show because
Speaker 1: this has nothing to do with what the company is really.
Speaker 1: What the what the real messages here? Yeah? I I
Speaker 1: well it didn't in a way, but it but it
Speaker 1: wasn't a good representation of what they're gonna do, right,
Speaker 1: So the representation is similar to what we were talking
Speaker 1: about with Volkswagen. This modular approach to building, designing and
Speaker 1: building vehicles, where you have a basic design that you
Speaker 1: can then modify for whatever purpose you need, whether it's
Speaker 1: a subcompact car, a race car, and suv, a truck,
Speaker 1: whatever it might be. You can adjust the foundation and
Speaker 1: then you have this modular battery system that allows you
Speaker 1: to add or remove batteries depending upon what vehicle it
Speaker 1: is that you're planning on building. So subcntact compact cars
Speaker 1: don't need as much battery power, essay, a race car.
Speaker 1: I think they called it strings of batteries, didn't they.
Speaker 1: You can you can adjust the size of the string
Speaker 1: of batteries, right, Yeah, And they had a cool video
Speaker 1: that sort of showed the concept from very high level.
Speaker 1: But I like the idea a lot because it allows
Speaker 1: for rapid development and prototyping. I mean that the car
Speaker 1: that they had on display did not exist eighteen months ago.
Speaker 1: It's a killer car, by the way. I love it.
Speaker 1: It looks like it's going fast while's sitting still. That's awesome.
Speaker 1: I really do like it. Good design. I I as
Speaker 1: soon as I'm not a Scott you know, I'm not
Speaker 1: a car guy. That's not me. I wanted to get
Speaker 1: behind the wheel of this car. When I saw it,
Speaker 1: it was just like and you would be the only
Speaker 1: one able to do that because it's a single seat car.
Speaker 1: It's so you know, to to drum up excitement, of course,
Speaker 1: brought out the race car version, Yeah, it was. It
Speaker 1: was 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 you're gonna be driving like an
Speaker 1: suv and areas. Obviously they would have a different drive
Speaker 1: train than from a subcombat car. Four motors instead of
Speaker 1: two or something like. Yeah, yeah, they had. They showed
Speaker 1: all the different variations where like there was one where
Speaker 1: it's like one motor attached to one wheel, and I
Speaker 1: was like, huh okay, they would be a little commuter car.
Speaker 1: So they also had the ability. They said, well, our designs,
Speaker 1: one of the things we wanted to work in from
Speaker 1: the beginning was that if we wanted to make it
Speaker 1: an autonomous vehicle, we could add that on to the
Speaker 1: frame as well. So in other words, it's not automatically
Speaker 1: going to be an autonomous vehicle, but they have the
Speaker 1: option to make a any particular model, they go into
Speaker 1: production with an autonomous version of that car. Pretty simple
Speaker 1: thing in an all electric vehicle. Really yeah, so really
Speaker 1: cool idea. Uh and the race car obviously was just
Speaker 1: a way of saying, come and take a look at
Speaker 1: what we have to show you. And it worked for me.
Speaker 1: But the problem was when they started interviewing the people
Speaker 1: that you know, brought this technology out on stage, the
Speaker 1: ones that we're conducting, you know, the press conference, when
Speaker 1: they really started drilling down and asking a lot of questions,
Speaker 1: here's here's the thing they got. They got a lot
Speaker 1: of uh, well, we don't really know the answer to
Speaker 1: that yet, but just trust us. It's gonna work out.
Speaker 1: Everything's gonna be fine. We we know that we can
Speaker 1: achieve this as just right now, we don't have the
Speaker 1: solution that kind of answer. It's a very much an
Speaker 1: Internet startup approach, and it's an Internet startup approach to
Speaker 1: an industry that has uh, very deep roots and a
Speaker 1: very very high barrier to intrigue. In fact, I would
Speaker 1: say Faraday Future would have had zero chance of success
Speaker 1: were it not for a little company called Tesla. Sure. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but you can look at other examples that the people
Speaker 1: immediately go to. And we've heard the smart listeners on
Speaker 1: car stuff as well. Um, you know, this looks al
Speaker 1: awful lot like something like an Elio or even if
Speaker 1: you want to go back farther, UH Tucker or Dale Dale.
Speaker 1: Dale's a different scenario because that was just complete scam
Speaker 1: all around right there. There's no way around that one.
Speaker 1: But but the others Tucker and UH and Elio, and
Speaker 1: there's been others throughout time as well that have done this.
Speaker 1: But they bring a real product out and they show
Speaker 1: you the real product, and they say, all we need
Speaker 1: is X million number of million dollars to get the
Speaker 1: first you know, production run, first match of production out there.
Speaker 1: And then from that point, you know, we can we
Speaker 1: can you know, take them out and say self, we
Speaker 1: can sell you a dealership and you can sell these
Speaker 1: products and then we can create more cars. And that's
Speaker 1: the way the whole thing works. But they've got to
Speaker 1: get over that initial hump and this one. Now they've
Speaker 1: got a huge backing, right, They've got a lot of money, yes,
Speaker 1: available to them. That doesn't necessarily guarantee success. Anyone who
Speaker 1: has backed a kickstarter for any kind of technology, UH
Speaker 1: has probably had the experience at least once of backing
Speaker 1: something that never ever came to fruition, and whether it
Speaker 1: was due to someone trying to pull a scam or
Speaker 1: someone uh underestimating the challenges they would face taking an
Speaker 1: idea from the concept stage to production or whatever it
Speaker 1: may be. You always encounter things that you did not
Speaker 1: anticipate when you first set out. Uh. A lot of
Speaker 1: people have experienced this disappointment and something that they back
Speaker 1: not actually coming out, and that's a possibility. Uh. The
Speaker 1: nice thing is it's someone else's money in the case
Speaker 1: of Faraday Future, so I'm okay with this, that's true.
Speaker 1: I mean, like in the case of Elio Motors, that's
Speaker 1: that's the most recent one. You know that we've we've
Speaker 1: been dealing with, is that you know, people are sending
Speaker 1: in you know, hundred bucks, two hundred bucks, five hundred
Speaker 1: dollars or whatever. It's kind of a down payment deposit
Speaker 1: with the idea that that's starting the company and that
Speaker 1: you know, when they do start producing them, they're gonna
Speaker 1: get the first pick. You know, they're gonna get the
Speaker 1: first production run. Uh. You know, they get little little
Speaker 1: things along the way, you know, Smill incentives I guess
Speaker 1: for doing that, whether it's bumper stickers or T shirt
Speaker 1: or something like that. Right, Um, but that company, the
Speaker 1: hurdle for that company is something like two hundred and
Speaker 1: fifty or three hundred million dollars and that's what it
Speaker 1: would take to get that company to start producing car
Speaker 1: is right now. Probably some other things too at this point,
Speaker 1: because it's some time has passed. But but this one,
Speaker 1: this is all being funded by one individual and it's
Speaker 1: it's the I laugh when I see this, But it's
Speaker 1: the Chinese version of Steve Jobs. That's what the that's
Speaker 1: how he's described now he has he's the founder of
Speaker 1: uh I guess the Chinese version of Netflix over there, right,
Speaker 1: So he's got a lot of money, this guy, he's
Speaker 1: a billionaire. But he's not going to throw all of
Speaker 1: his money behind this whole thing. Of course, he's gonna
Speaker 1: put some money behind it, but he's got deep pockets.
Speaker 1: Is this gonna make it? Because they're talking about putting
Speaker 1: a factory in it's again a billion dollar facility north
Speaker 1: of Las Vegas. They're gonna break around on that. I
Speaker 1: believe it was at the end of this month, if
Speaker 1: not next month. Um, so it's it's happening soon. Do
Speaker 1: you really see this thing going anywhere? Do you think
Speaker 1: they're gonna do it? Are they gonna come out, you know,
Speaker 1: the week before and say like, well there's been a
Speaker 1: delay and we're gonna do it, um at the end
Speaker 1: of this year. Uh, without having seen any of the
Speaker 1: actual inner workings of the But it's really hard for
Speaker 1: me to say. I can say I want them to
Speaker 1: to succeed so badly simply because I think it could
Speaker 1: be a truly disruptive approach to the automotive industry. And
Speaker 1: by disruptive, I don't mean like a dangerous thing or
Speaker 1: a destructive thing, but rather something that shakes stuff up
Speaker 1: enough that we start seeing crazy innovation across all manufacturers.
Speaker 1: That's what I want to see, and I want to
Speaker 1: see I want to see all boats rise. Like I
Speaker 1: don't have a grudge against any particular company. Um. I mean,
Speaker 1: I definitely wagged my finger at Volkswagen for 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,
Speaker 1: Steve Ben and I had a similar thought on our
Speaker 1: show and 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 to 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
Speaker 1: ride and I mean the future. If you're listening, I
Speaker 1: want a ride. Well, that's that's something we didn't mention.
Speaker 1: That's that's their race car version. It's like the top
Speaker 1: ends thing that they can produce. But but the reality
Speaker 1: is their road testing a vehicle right now that no
Speaker 1: one's seen. They They've got a secret card that's out
Speaker 1: there testing somewhere. So if you see a car go
Speaker 1: by that you don't recognize and there's no marking on it,
Speaker 1: that might be them. It could be them. So they're
Speaker 1: out there somewhere testing this platform, and you probably somewhere
Speaker 1: in California or Nevada. 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: when you see it, uh, versus the race car that
Speaker 1: they showed at the c S show. I mean, it's
Speaker 1: it's it's like, you know, it's good that they did
Speaker 1: that to get the excitement. They promised you this, but
Speaker 1: they gave you this. That kind of thing. Well kind
Speaker 1: of yeah, I mean you're gonna you know, you're gonna
Speaker 1: be just a little bit disappointed, Like, oh man, I
Speaker 1: was really hoping for that single seater, the zero one concept,
Speaker 1: that car that probably would have cost around three hundred
Speaker 1: thousand dollars. It's like a batmobile or something. It's so
Speaker 1: it's pretty wicked. It is the people on the floor
Speaker 1: they were say they preferred to think of it as
Speaker 1: the car out of Minority Report. Oh yeah, okay, I
Speaker 1: can see that a little bit. Yeah, all right, Um,
Speaker 1: you know there's another one that you wanted to mention,
Speaker 1: the last one that Sherry on top of this Sunday. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and this one leaves me with my head chacken, I
Speaker 1: I understand what this this uh, 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 Atas 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 mean,
Speaker 1: Rin Speed has done a lot of cool concepts in
Speaker 1: the past, and you know they've got sure, someone has
Speaker 1: some questionable features and things. But when I look at
Speaker 1: this one, the ETAs, Yeah, it's got a lot of
Speaker 1: questionable features. So yeah, let's talk about some of them.
Speaker 1: For one thing, the interface that they have is is
Speaker 1: encased in two twenty one and a half inch curved
Speaker 1: four K displays four K resolution, Scott. I mean, granted,
Speaker 1: you are pretty close to those displays when you're a driver, right,
Speaker 1: I mean, it's not that far away from you. And
Speaker 1: in fact, four K resolution is insane to me because
Speaker 1: those displays would need to be enormous and you'd have
Speaker 1: to be even closer to appreciate the sharpness in that resolution.
Speaker 1: I can't believe four K is necessary when ten AD
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 itself, Scott,
Speaker 1: and then it ch tracks into the dashboard so it
Speaker 1: goes away. So that okay, that's That's one of the
Speaker 1: things that left me shake in my head. Like most
Speaker 1: of these systems, even most of them, recognize the idea
Speaker 1: that there's going to be a point when human interaction
Speaker 1: is probably gonna be necessary. And we're gonna alert you
Speaker 1: with a chime or lights, as you said on the
Speaker 1: one steering most of the again the BMW Right, 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, push shaws as
Speaker 1: written speed. Yeah, so you know that's I mean, I
Speaker 1: watched it happen in the video video clip and it's
Speaker 1: not a fast motion for it to come back out.
Speaker 1: It's it's cool, it is, it's cool. It's interesting to watch.
Speaker 1: But the idea also of a folding steering wheel, that's
Speaker 1: another thing that makes me cringe just a little bit.
Speaker 1: You know, that's that's not a great design. Really. Yeah,
Speaker 1: the two 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 that.
Speaker 1: Four KOs appreciated a lot more when it's when when
Speaker 1: it's when it approaches you by five inches, when it's
Speaker 1: eight inches away from your eye. 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 lap time from a human driver
Speaker 1: on the screen. So it's it's got you know, an
Speaker 1: interface allows you to record lap times and it's really cool,
Speaker 1: a map of the track and everything best you know,
Speaker 1: kind of a best time with a little award, you know,
Speaker 1: a silver copper with It's almost equivalent to like a
Speaker 1: video game, except this is a real car that you're
Speaker 1: driving around a real track. Yeah. Sure, and we've seen
Speaker 1: that stuff, you know in other cars. We get that,
Speaker 1: you know, they've got stuff like that. You know, they
Speaker 1: can measure times and speeds and all that. But this
Speaker 1: one was showing like, Okay, I'm gonna I'm gonna let
Speaker 1: the autonomous UH feature take over and drive around this
Speaker 1: racetrack in Spain. And then that's when the driver decided
Speaker 1: to grab a book from the from what it looks
Speaker 1: like a bookshelf on the passenger side. That thing was
Speaker 1: always loaded with books. So while they're driving around this
Speaker 1: racetrack in Spain, the driver's reading a book. And I
Speaker 1: know that's to prove a point that he's not touched
Speaker 1: on the wheel, that there's no interaction there. But the car,
Speaker 1: of course, best of the human driver's time was much faster,
Speaker 1: or a little bit faster anyways. But I just thought
Speaker 1: that was so odd to see him doing that, you know,
Speaker 1: like to be on a racetrack of all places I
Speaker 1: can get if you're on a boring can mute or
Speaker 1: so clearly he was trying to psych out the robot
Speaker 1: car to show how how little interest he had in
Speaker 1: the robot car's performance. I thought, you're gonna say other
Speaker 1: drivers competing against like I'm just gonna let it take over,
Speaker 1: Like 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. Sound 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 they did
Speaker 1: show it to something that was kind of cool. Now,
Speaker 1: in the video, it's kind of a silly setup, right,
Speaker 1: I mean, it's a male female females flying the drone
Speaker 1: in some kind of looks like they're in a warehouse
Speaker 1: or something. Yeah, it's a big circular room where there's
Speaker 1: a there's a staircase that's on the internal curved wall
Speaker 1: that goes up. So some very weird looking space where
Speaker 1: the car is parked in the center of it, but
Speaker 1: it's open to the to the air, you know, there's
Speaker 1: an open top. So the guy climbs back into the car,
Speaker 1: and the car alerts him, Hey, it's Valentine's Day. Wouldn't
Speaker 1: you like to get some roses for your wife? And
Speaker 1: then he just says the word roses and that sends
Speaker 1: a signal to the drone that the woman is currently
Speaker 1: controlling with a with a remote control, and the drone
Speaker 1: ends up going into auto mode and flies off, sending
Speaker 1: the woman into a fit. A fit. Yes, she is
Speaker 1: quite upset that she has lost control of this, and
Speaker 1: she she confronts her husband, who takes off his glasses,
Speaker 1: his sunglasses, puts one uh one stem of the sunglasses
Speaker 1: in his mouth and shrugs is to say, hey, what
Speaker 1: are you gonna do? Things happen, and then they go
Speaker 1: down the stairs to get into their autonomous sports car
Speaker 1: of the future. When the drone returns with a bouquet
Speaker 1: of roses that it has picked up from a delivery service.
Speaker 1: It was like a like a messenger drone. I right
Speaker 1: it it went out and it's it's sought the nearest floors,
Speaker 1: which was, I believe on the screen it said four
Speaker 1: point one miles away, something like a long long distance,
Speaker 1: so it went out got them or no, it was
Speaker 1: four minutes away, four and a half minutes and a
Speaker 1: half minutes right. So he attaches a bouquet of roses
Speaker 1: and it brings him right back to her and everything
Speaker 1: is just every smoothed over. At that point she gives
Speaker 1: him a hug her her one foot comes off the ground,
Speaker 1: you know, and classic hug posed. Truly, I had it.
Speaker 1: I had 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 you as
Speaker 1: and also as proof of concept of certain technologies. It's
Speaker 1: really cool. I mean, I I agree with you. I
Speaker 1: don't think that the autonomous approach as as awesome as
Speaker 1: this automated thing where the steering calum retracts into the dashboard,
Speaker 1: as awesome, as visual as that is, I don't think
Speaker 1: it's terribly practical. For one thing, it's a couple of
Speaker 1: different points of failure in a system that doesn't need
Speaker 1: any points of failure. Right. If anything goes wrong and
Speaker 1: then you switch to manual and something some connection has
Speaker 1: been severed as a result of this process, that's bad.
Speaker 1: But I did think that the whole thing was very
Speaker 1: fun and I like the approach, Like the forward thinking
Speaker 1: nature of the video was was really cool and forward thinking.
Speaker 1: It's like that tattoo can see in your neck, you know,
Speaker 1: that's how they track me. Um So, at any rate,
Speaker 1: this was this was a lot of fun to talk
Speaker 1: to you about. The technology that was on displayed c Yes,
Speaker 1: obviously very different from the underlying technology that actually makes
Speaker 1: cars work. You know, we're not talking necessarily about motors
Speaker 1: or you know, transmissions or that kind of stuff. This
Speaker 1: is all add on stuff. It's like, how can I
Speaker 1: make an app, uh, make that system better? And and again,
Speaker 1: like smart TVs, I think we're finally starting to see
Speaker 1: that idea mature to a point where it is something
Speaker 1: that could be marketable as opposed to well, we have
Speaker 1: the ability to throw this in there, let's just do it.
Speaker 1: I hope you enjoyed that classic episode from It was
Speaker 1: great having Scott on the show. Scott has moved on
Speaker 1: to other endeavors and actually a completely lost touch with him.
Speaker 1: Hope he's doing okay, Love you buddy, but yeah. If
Speaker 1: you have suggestions for topics that I should cover in
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