106: That’s Slightly Right
27 Feb 2015Alternative Apple-car theories, Pebble Time, and Marco drives a Tesla.
Episode Description:
- Follow-up:
- Tesla and "customer sat"
- Apple's Minivan
- Apple/Tesla poaching
- What is Apple building?
- Sugar water explained
- Auto parts suppliers
- Maybe it's not a car after all? Or perhaps they're self-driving?
- China and manufacturing capacity
- Pebble Time
- Post-show:
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Transcript start
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Damn it John. I was about to read that.
⏹️ ▶️ John Nope save it for later
⏹️ ▶️ John Later in the follow-up section, it’s all in there.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey See this is what I get for messing with the Kings follow-up my apologies
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John All right. Do you
⏹️ ▶️ John think follow-up comes with the follow-up fairy comes at night?
⏹️ ▶️ John You just like you wake up it’s like Christmas morning Wow this follow-up under the tree question where it
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I know it comes from the king. So King, would you like to start our follow up about the apple
⏹️ ▶️ John of cars? Only if you give me a nickname that’s distinct from Marco who you also call the king. That’s true. Wait,
⏹️ ▶️ John I’m the king of something? You can start calling Declan the king. We’ll see how that goes. What am I the king of? Yeah, I don’t
⏹️ ▶️ John know. Mufflers? Fracture app icons? Something
⏹️ ▶️ John like that. All right, so the first item is a tweet from Daniel Silva
⏹️ ▶️ John talking about whether Tesla is the Apple of cars and he gave a link to a Consumer Reports owner survey
⏹️ ▶️ John asking about repair experiences and I was saying that
⏹️ ▶️ John independent repair shops outscored dealership services with one exception and that exception
⏹️ ▶️ John was Tesla which had excellent customer sat
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco which totally makes it the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco car. We need a sound effect for that maybe
⏹️ ▶️ John just like a thud. Seriously. What is the sound of one customer sitting? Customer
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yes, but yeah, that’s so bad, John. All right. So yes, so Tesla has great
⏹️ ▶️ Casey customer set. Thus they are the Apple of cars.
⏹️ ▶️ John I mean, to be fair, as people pointed out on Twitter, like since this is a thing about repair experiences, Tesla’s have
⏹️ ▶️ John only been around for a short time. So they’re all pretty darn new. So maybe the repair
⏹️ ▶️ John experience is great, just because they’re all under warranty and are relatively new. So maybe it’s not particularly fair. But anyway,
⏹️ ▶️ John I just thought I would throw that in there as a little appetizer for automotive to follow.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey All right, well, what’s our salad course then? Yeah,
⏹️ ▶️ John so now we have Apple’s making a minivan. You know, the whole minivan
⏹️ ▶️ John rumor. And I don’t remember where I read this, but as with a lot of things in the
⏹️ ▶️ John Apple car rumor stories, it’s just sort of said, it’s like, did someone see a minivan?
⏹️ ▶️ John Or did you just hear from these unnamed sources that they’re making a minivan? Or like, we don’t even know from
⏹️ ▶️ John whence does this minivan business come? It’s just, anyway. And we were talking about why that might
⏹️ ▶️ John be maybe just kind of a snub nose thing or stuff like that. And I think Keith
⏹️ ▶️ John house was the first person to point out that the possibility that
⏹️ ▶️ John I think this is in his fall, but anyway, other people said this as well, that it might just be a test mule, like,
⏹️ ▶️ John you know, where they’re testing, drive train or internal stuff or whatever, and the outside
⏹️ ▶️ John shape of the car has nothing to do with what’s inside it kind of like Columbus, set-top box that Apple is almost certainly going
⏹️ ▶️ John to introduce in 1998 is a flat black rectangular box. Of course, Columbus turned
⏹️ ▶️ John out to be the iMac. Turns out, as with computers and cars, of course, the outside shape
⏹️ ▶️ John of the thing can have absolutely no bearing on the product that you actually make. And I think that one of
⏹️ ▶️ John the other examples that someone gave was like, look at those iPhone prototypes. They were crazy and they were big. I think
⏹️ ▶️ John Columbus is an even better example because that was such a great fake out of internals of this computer have
⏹️ ▶️ John to fit in a certain size, but nobody but the industrial design people knew that the thing that was wrapped
⏹️ ▶️ John around that was going to be a translucent teal gumdrop type thing. And so car
⏹️ ▶️ John car companies do have sort of test mules that are either heavily disguised or actually bear little resemblance to the final
⏹️ ▶️ John car. I think maybe Casey or if you’ve read a lot of car magazines or Marco like,
⏹️ ▶️ John do you remember a case where someone like a car manufacturer was testing the drivetrain for a
⏹️ ▶️ John new car by wedging it into something that looked like their old car I have vague memories of that
⏹️ ▶️ Marco well even just last week there you know BMW announced they’re gonna do a seven-seater SUV the X
⏹️ ▶️ Casey god I was just about to bring that up you jerk
⏹️ ▶️ Marco yeah like a few days ago that there were these spy shots of what they basically took an
⏹️ ▶️ Marco x5 I think or an x3 what would they took one of their one of their existing smaller SUVs and just
⏹️ ▶️ Marco bolted a bunch of weights to the roof on the hood and are testing it that way by like simulating
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the bigger car that would be on it on the same on the same chassis and drive train and everything.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey That’s slightly right. So I have a link, which we’ll put in the show notes. BMW X7 testing
⏹️ ▶️ Casey using modified 7 Series prototype. That’s right. It was a sedan, right? Exactly. So
⏹️ ▶️ Casey yes, this looks like a next generation G11 7 Series prototype. But look closer, and you
⏹️ ▶️ Casey will see BMW has ingeniously added weights to the roof and inside the car and raised the hood to accommodate
⏹️ ▶️ Casey a different engine slash intake setup in order to, air quotes,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey the basic X7 drive train package. And so, yeah, that’s exactly what I was going to bring up, Marco.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And that sounds very similar to what you’re describing, John.
⏹️ ▶️ John And Keith Huss’s additional thing is like, look, if you’re going to be testing internal stuff like screens or whatever,
⏹️ ▶️ John and you will have to have a bunch of equipment hooked up to it to monitor it. A minivan type shape
⏹️ ▶️ John leaves lots of room for sort of engineers to be sitting with their little equipment or laptops are connected to the thing with cables
⏹️ ▶️ John or whatever, and monitor everything while you’re in the car, like, so it’s sort of a, if it’s just internal stuff, it
⏹️ ▶️ John would be like a mobile lab for stuff that happens inside the car and if it’s a whole car type thing then it could be a
⏹️ ▶️ John drivetrain mule or any other type of thing and that anyone seeing anything looking like a minivan may have nothing to
⏹️ ▶️ John do with anything that the final product is gonna look like.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Well and also I mean there’s a lot of popular car shapes these days especially in
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the US that look kind of like minivans like if you say like it’s kind of
⏹️ ▶️ Marco like a minivan that could that could encapsulate lots Lots of crossovers, large hatchbacks,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco things like the Prius V that I don’t think they called a minivan and it’s pretty small for a minivan, but it’s kind
⏹️ ▶️ Marco of minivan shaped. Like there’s a lot of cars that are near that shape or near that profile.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Actually probably even more in Europe because they like hatchbacks so much more than we do.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Well, there’s another great example with the BMW i3, which a few people wrote in justifiably a little
⏹️ ▶️ Casey annoyed that we didn’t bring that up.
⏹️ ▶️ John We did though. I like I thought we thought we mentioned the i3 and when we had a discussion of the i8, of you briefly
⏹️ ▶️ John brought up the i3, but no, we didn’t talk about it in the minivan type thing, although I did mention the Spark car and other cars that
⏹️ ▶️ John don’t have a lot of front overhang because there’s no engine.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Right, right. And so anyway, the point being the BMW i3, in case you’re not aware, is there,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I believe it’s either a hybrid or pure electric. Is that correct? I think it’s hybrid. Suffice
⏹️ ▶️ Casey to say that it looks like a very, very shrunken minivan, almost like a bigger smart car. So to
⏹️ ▶️ Casey kind of build upon what you were saying, John, that you could construe the i3 as a minivan And if you didn’t
⏹️ ▶️ Casey really know what you were talking about, even though it’s, you know, half the size of your average American minivan.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Do you want to talk about poaching? You can poach a car.
⏹️ ▶️ John These are in the category of stories that broke since we recorded last week’s episode,
⏹️ ▶️ John which we recorded on a Wednesday, as we always do recording this one on a Wednesday. Shortly after
⏹️ ▶️ John we recorded it, there were more stories that put, you know, even more smoke
⏹️ ▶️ John to this, this rumor. And the New York Times one was
⏹️ ▶️ John getting engineers to build a battery division, right? And automaker type engineers,
⏹️ ▶️ John well, those people might have expertise in also helping them build phone and iPad batteries, sure,
⏹️ ▶️ John but probably their expertise is much more involved in very large batteries for things like cars.
⏹️ ▶️ John And if you’re doing CarPlay, you probably don’t have any reason to get people who have expertise
⏹️ ▶️ John in building car-sized batteries. So there’s a little bit more smoke there for like, are they doing
⏹️ ▶️ John something other than just extending carplay or doing maps or something like that. And I think the big one is,
⏹️ ▶️ John again, last week, we were talking about, oh, they hired a bunch of these people. But I was saying, wouldn’t they be hiring more people
⏹️ ▶️ John who are like mechanical engineers or drive train engineers, or people know about building cars, because all we saw was
⏹️ ▶️ John like, all right, find some executives, like someone’s got to lead these car people. So I got some executives, they don’t know how to do anything. Anyway, they just tell people
⏹️ ▶️ John from Ford, head of R&D at BMW. all we saw with those like the couple, a handful of big
⏹️ ▶️ John names, and then everything else was just an amorphous number. It’s like, oh, and they’re hiring a bunch of employees and poaching from Apple teams, like, well, where
⏹️ ▶️ John are the people who know how to build cars. And so nine to five, Mac did this huge breakdown of here’s a bunch more
⏹️ ▶️ John names instead of just the names of the bigwigs that we were saying are in charge of this. Here’s a bunch more names. And
⏹️ ▶️ John if you go through these names, and look at what their experience and expertise are in there in things that have much
⏹️ ▶️ John more to do with building cars or working on cars, like the car
⏹️ ▶️ John part of the cars. It’s, again, it’s still a short list. It’s not hundreds of people. It’s not an exhaustive head count.
⏹️ ▶️ John But it sure looks a lot more like people who would
⏹️ ▶️ John be working on an actual car and not people who would be working on car play.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yeah, I agree. I felt the same way that, man, this could be construed as a car,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey but I’m not so convinced. And especially after this 95 Mac piece,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey if nothing else, they got to be toying with the idea of building actual car.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Otherwise, all these hires just seem kind of silly to me. But yeah, it’s, it’s weird. I
⏹️ ▶️ Casey last week, I would have told you, there’s a 10% chance this is actually happening insofar as that they’re
⏹️ ▶️ Casey actually even trying to build something, even if they scrap it. Jason Snell actually had a really good
⏹️ ▶️ Casey piece on six colors, where in short, he said, Well, you know, a lot of companies will try things and
⏹️ ▶️ Casey throw some spaghetti against the wall, if you will, and see what sticks. And, you you know, sometimes it doesn’t stick, and that’s
⏹️ ▶️ Casey OK. And it certainly seems as though Apple is at the very least seeing if they
⏹️ ▶️ Casey have anything to contribute here. And this 9to5Mac piece further corroborates that
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, assuming it’s true, because it’s not like Apple is confirming these people. But just to pick one random name
⏹️ ▶️ John out of this list here, this is David Nelson. He’s from Tesla. And according to his LinkedIn
⏹️ ▶️ John at Tesla, he served as the mechanical engineering manager leading a team responsible for modeling
⏹️ ▶️ John predicting, modeling prediction and verification of motor and gearbox performance and efficiency.
⏹️ ▶️ John You do not need a mechanical engineer who knows about motor and gearbox performance and efficiency if you’re working on CarPlay.
⏹️ ▶️ John Or a street view thing like people like this, I don’t know how you would explain
⏹️ ▶️ John that these people exist at all. It even kind of kills again, if this is true, the idea that Oh, Apple’s just gonna
⏹️ ▶️ John like partner with somebody and take over their entire interior and do it like, why the tell you we do need
⏹️ ▶️ John someone for, you know, for reliability and warranty projects and
⏹️ ▶️ John modeling gearbox and like, this is people for building a car like that. And that’s
⏹️ ▶️ John just one list for one person from this page is you just go through them all and I don’t know how you can finish it and say, Look, if Apple
⏹️ ▶️ John hired all these people, what are they doing with them other than building a
⏹️ ▶️ Marco car? That’s the thing. I mean, and this is, you know, we got so much feedback is really
⏹️ ▶️ Marco good feedback this week, people giving us all sorts of ideas, of which I’m sure we’re going to talk about in the next few minutes.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco All sorts of ideas. A lot of people are saying, like, you know, what if Apple is not quite building a car, but
⏹️ ▶️ Marco what if they’re addressing the problem of transportation in a bigger way? Maybe it’s a non-traditional approach,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco something like car sharing or transportation networks of different sorts, and
⏹️ ▶️ Marco like these bigger picture ideas that all kind of begin like, well, they’re going to
⏹️ ▶️ Marco solve something in a totally different way. And another common explanation is, well, Maybe they’re going to build
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the car OS and license it to car makers or partner with somebody to make the car for them.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And I think just looking at this, it is much more likely that they’re actually
⏹️ ▶️ Marco trying to build a car than anything else. Any other alternative explanation
⏹️ ▶️ Marco of what they might be doing with all these people instead, it is just looking more and more likely.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco The more attention you pay to this, the more information that comes out in bits and pieces and rumors, the more it looks like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco there’s a lot of smoke behind this and that it is way more likely than any other
⏹️ ▶️ Marco explanation that they are just actually trying to build a car. And then to address like the, what if they do something
⏹️ ▶️ Marco different or what if they do something non-traditional or solve a bigger problem? I think that’s a lot like,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you know, we have to look at every previous Apple launch and like before the watch came out we were
⏹️ ▶️ Marco talking, well, you know, what if they do something different and it’s not really a watch, it’s some kind of
⏹️ ▶️ Marco wearable that’s not a watch, but it does other things.” And then it came out and it’s like, nope, it’s a watch, it’s just
⏹️ ▶️ Marco done well. You know, same thing like when the iPad came out and I, you know,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco me and other bloggers at the time were talking like, you
⏹️ ▶️ Marco if they do a tablet, how do they solve the input problem and how big is it? How do they solve
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the problem of it being between sizes? And the answer was they didn’t solve those problems, they just made a good tablet.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco when Apple solves problems like this, they don’t do something that no one’s
⏹️ ▶️ Marco ever heard of. They just do a really good job with things that people generally have heard of or that are cutting-edge.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And so if they make, you know, looking at this project, these rumors and these people and everything else,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it sure looks like, as I said, it sure looks like they are making a car. That’s what all these people are
⏹️ ▶️ Marco probably for. And if they are making a car, rather than having some
⏹️ ▶️ Marco kind of grand reinvention of everything, it is far more likely that they’re just going to try to make a really
⏹️ ▶️ Marco good car in the traditional sense of how we know cars. Like, I don’t… and, you know, maybe it’ll be
⏹️ ▶️ Marco pure electric, you know, that’s fine. That’s still within the realm of a car, you know, and it’s very
⏹️ ▶️ Marco different, and we’ll get to that later, but it is just so much more likely that the story
⏹️ ▶️ Marco is more boring than we all think, and more boring than a lot of people are trying to predict. Like,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco people are thinking that, oh, it’s out of it’s just it has to be something crazy. It has to be some
⏹️ ▶️ Marco some like cockamamie scheme to do some crazy thing. And, and the answer is probably no, it’s probably
⏹️ ▶️ Marco just a car that they’re hoping is going to be really good.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yeah, I certainly agree that there’s a lot more smoke around this potential fire
⏹️ ▶️ Casey than there was even just a week ago. Do you want to tell us about something that’s cool?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Absolutely. Our first sponsor this week is Cocoa Conf Cocoa Conf. These are long term friends of
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⏹️ ▶️ Casey And it’s a lot of fun. It’s a really good show. The Klein family does a really good job and you can learn
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⏹️ ▶️ Marco That’s that I would go just for that. I almost did actually last year. I could make it work. But But yeah, I’ve heard
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⏹️ ▶️ Marco go, but man, I would love to go to that otherwise. That looks like an amazing event.
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⏹️ ▶️ Casey All right. So we’re like two items down in the 300 item follow up.
⏹️ ▶️ John got to be passed all
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey the way to the
⏹️ ▶️ John back. We can skip this one. The Bloomberg says that Apple wants to start producing cars by 2020 because that one is
⏹️ ▶️ John just more of the classic, like you think you have rumors. We’re going to tell you when they’re going to ship it. In fact,
⏹️ ▶️ John and if it doesn’t ship by 2020, it’s late. The slug in the URL
⏹️ ▶️ John is Apple said to be targeting in car production as soon as 2020, which just leaves them open to say, well,
⏹️ ▶️ John we didn’t say 2020 could be as soon as 2020. If it’s sooner, they’ll be like, well, that kind of fits.
⏹️ ▶️ John If it’s later, we just said as soon as 2020. What does that even mean? Anyway, I like that one.
⏹️ ▶️ John What did you just remove? You just remove the next one I was going to read. Yeah, but it’s unrelated.
⏹️ ▶️ John No, it’s real. They’re all related to car stuff. It was the sugar water when you just
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yes, but I thought we could cover it at the end. But since you brought it up, John, I guess we’ll talk about it now.
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, well, you know, Marco jumped the queue by taking the thing I deleted from the show notes and talking about it
⏹️ ▶️ John So this is chaos. It’s followed chaos today.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco This is why I don’t edit the show notes
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, well, you should at least look at them.
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco Anyway, the sugar water thing
⏹️ ▶️ Casey these two I moved it I didn’t delete it I’ve moved it the
⏹️ ▶️ John title of last week’s show was something like do you want to sell sugar phones for the rest of your life? or something
⏹️ ▶️ John that’s a reference to a line that we said in the show and And Marco and Casey asked, hey,
⏹️ ▶️ John do we want to put a link in the show notes that explains that for the people who don’t know? And they were adamant that we not do
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco should put a show notes link, because that’s
⏹️ ▶️ John what the show notes are for. If you hear something on their show, and you’re like, what the hell are they talking about? You go to the show notes and click the link, and it will
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Every joke and reference has to be explained.
⏹️ ▶️ John It doesn’t have to be explained. There just needs to be an explanation. And if you don’t get it and are seeking an explanation,
⏹️ ▶️ John like you defined one so you can follow along with everybody else and get it the next time we reference it. Can we write it at the bottom of the page
⏹️ ▶️ John upside down? It’ll be a swipe thing, swipe to read, to highlight. It’s white on white
⏹️ ▶️ John text. So we didn’t get any feedback about that. So I guess everybody understood it, because you’re
⏹️ ▶️ John listening to a Tech Nerd podcast. For people who like Apple and stuff, you know about this. And if you didn’t,
⏹️ ▶️ John I guess you could Google it, or you don’t care what the title was. Anyway, if you’re wondering what the hell we’re
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco talking about. This is the worst
⏹️ ▶️ John show. Yeah. Well, we’re explaining things. How do people become like, we have a shared history
⏹️ ▶️ John knowledge and culture of this Apple stuff. How do people gain that knowledge so they too can share in these jokes? Someone
⏹️ ▶️ John has to tell them or they have to experience it. Like you have to you have to invite people into your culture by explaining
⏹️ ▶️ John your shared heritage so then they can put anyway. This is how it works. You don’t just be like we can’t tell them because they’re not one of
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Step one, watch every episode of The Simpsons from the last 25 years. Yeah,
⏹️ ▶️ John if you just watch just watch time for the nerds, Robert Grimsley’s PBS series, which which is where this
⏹️ ▶️ John quote is from, I don’t know if it was published before that. Anyway, Steve Jobs, when he
⏹️ ▶️ John was at Apple the first time, was trying to recruit a new CEO for the company
⏹️ ▶️ John and he went to John Scully, who was working at Pepsi, and was trying to get him to come to Apple and leave his cushy job
⏹️ ▶️ John at Pepsi. And his pitch to him as they were strolling through a garden or whatever was,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Do you want to sell sugar water for the rest of your life? Or do you want to come with me and change the world?
⏹️ ▶️ John And that’s what got John Scully to come. And then John Sculley eventually ousted Steve Jobs in
⏹️ ▶️ John a boardroom battle. So that was not a great move on Steve’s part, using his persuasion to bring the guy who would kick him out of the company. But
⏹️ ▶️ John anyway, that’s what happened. Everybody knows that sugar water quote because it’s such a, you know, whatever you’re
⏹️ ▶️ John doing at your company, like Pepsi, selling people sugar water and giving people diabetes, you’re not doing anything good. You’re wasting
⏹️ ▶️ John your talents. Come to Apple and we’ll change the world. And the comparison
⏹️ ▶️ John to Tesla was like, if you just want to make like, well, you’re making smartphones and they already did change the world. But if you really want to change
⏹️ ▶️ John the world now, you should be making electric cars. So come to Tesla and we can do that. And that’s how Tesla
⏹️ ▶️ John can lure people away from Apple. How Apple can get them to stay is, you don’t have to go to Tesla to make electric car, we’re doing that here.
⏹️ ▶️ John So the link we’ll put in the show notes is actually a video from this
⏹️ ▶️ John documentary, which is great. You should watch it, Triumph of the Nerds from the 90s or something. This is before
⏹️ ▶️ John Steve Jobs came back to Apple. Yeah. If you haven’t seen it before, you definitely should watch it.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, I really enjoyed it. I know a lot of people are critical of it. I actually really liked it.
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, I mean, it’s overly dramatic and silly. And it’s not. That’s where the no taste
⏹️ ▶️ John quote was from, too. I love that. Yeah, but it has footage. For whatever you may feel about
⏹️ ▶️ John the story that it slaps on top of the history of PCs to make it interesting and dramatic,
⏹️ ▶️ John there are interviews with important people in the industry where they get asked interesting questions and give interesting answers. So you can just
⏹️ ▶️ John ignore the surrounding silliness and just watch the interviews. And even just for that, it’s great.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey All right. Do you want to talk to us about what Helmut wrote in?
⏹️ ▶️ John I’m surprised we didn’t get more feedback about this, because we were discussing in the last episode lots of different
⏹️ ▶️ John possibilities of Apple working with car makers or not working with them, and how car
⏹️ ▶️ John companies wouldn’t want Apple to come in and become the most important differentiator in their car, because
⏹️ ▶️ John then what are they doing? They don’t want to have happen to them what happened to the music industry or
⏹️ ▶️ John the cell phone carriers, where Apple is the valuable part, and they’re just sort of like the stuffing or
⏹️ ▶️ John whatever. And I guess we didn’t get feedback on this because
⏹️ ▶️ John people either didn’t know about this or understood that we understood this but every
⏹️ ▶️ John car company has part suppliers that put the you know, the make things that go into the cars
⏹️ ▶️ John like you name any car company, they don’t probably don’t make
⏹️ ▶️ John the transmission or
⏹️ ▶️ John the radio, the speedometer, the seats. Like,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco The fancy sensors, like the rain sensors and the automatic headlights, like all that stuff is
⏹️ ▶️ Marco usually from outside. Airbags.
⏹️ ▶️ John Right. Everything comes from some other vendor. But that’s how the auto industry works.
⏹️ ▶️ John Like, I make parts for whatever. Like, I’m a separate company. I’m not part of GM. But the whole purpose
⏹️ ▶️ John of my company is to make parts for GM or these other car makers. And there are a few well-known brands
⏹️ ▶️ John that you would say, okay, well, these cars from Audi, BMW, Mercedes, Chrysler, like what
⏹️ ▶️ John do they all have in common? They all have ZF gearboxes, right? Who the hell is ZF? Like, and
⏹️ ▶️ John the reason this didn’t come up is like, if you’re a gearhead, you know about ZF, you know about Bosch, and you know
⏹️ ▶️ John about like all these other companies that make things, but none of those companies
⏹️ ▶️ John end up being the differentiator. You’re like, I want the car with the ZF transmission. From year to year, the
⏹️ ▶️ John same exact car can have a different transmission. It’s like, oh, well, this model year, this car has
⏹️ ▶️ John this transmission. And next model year has a transmission from an entirely different vendor. That’s not advertised.
⏹️ ▶️ John It’s not an important model changeover. Just like, oh, they changed the transmission. Like, it is not a headline feature. You
⏹️ ▶️ John don’t, usually regular people do not know who makes the transmission in their car, right? They
⏹️ ▶️ John only know that maybe they changed to an eight-speed automatic instead of a five-speed or whatever.
⏹️ ▶️ John That’s how the car industry works. And that is an acceptable relationship for everybody involved for probably historic reasons.
⏹️ ▶️ John And a great example is for like infotainment systems, like the BMW iDrive
⏹️ ▶️ John and the Mercedes command system and all the things that have like a screen and some little wheel
⏹️ ▶️ John that you move or a touchscreen or whatever. There are only a few companies that make those things. And in fact, a
⏹️ ▶️ John single company makes those systems for BMW, Audi, Mercedes, Chrysler,
⏹️ ▶️ John and one other company that I’m forgetting. It’s Harman in Connecticut. It’s the same company that does Harman Kardon,
⏹️ ▶️ John I think. They make the infotainment systems for all of those cars. As you said,
⏹️ ▶️ John well, I don’t like, I like BMW system. I don’t like the Mercedes system. They’re both made by the same manufacturer
⏹️ ▶️ John to the specifications of the car company to some degree. But those companies aren’t
⏹️ ▶️ John making the screens and little dials and the software and everything and the operating system that goes on. This is one company doing this.
⏹️ ▶️ John That’s how the auto industry works. But the very important part is, that’s not, you don’t know that. You don’t know who
⏹️ ▶️ John supplies these parts. And from year to year, the car makers can change suppliers who do these, and they can decide to bring this
⏹️ ▶️ John in-house and outsource this to a different company and pit suppliers against each other in the same way that only super nerds
⏹️ ▶️ John know that Marco’s computer has the bad LG screen or whatever that has the image retention issues,
⏹️ ▶️ John and the good one was the Samsung one. Nobody else knows that. Apple is not afraid that people are going
⏹️ ▶️ John to decide that Samsung is the important differentiator in their products. Nobody knows that Samsung makes the system-on-a-chip
⏹️ ▶️ John for iOS devices for years. But in any kind of a relationship where
⏹️ ▶️ John Apple is going to do stuff, Apple is not going to be content to be merely a part supplier to the auto industry.
⏹️ ▶️ John I mean, even CarPlay is distinctly an Apple thing. When you see when they were on the road
⏹️ ▶️ John promoting CarPlay, you sure as hell knew that Apple was bringing you CarPlay and that it worked with your iPhone. And
⏹️ ▶️ John that was what always was 100% an Apple thing. Even if they’re not giant Apple logos all over the screen, there is
⏹️ ▶️ John no hiding that the fact that it was Apple, whereas nobody knows who makes the, you know, do
⏹️ ▶️ John I have Goodyear tires, Michelin tires? you don’t even know what the hell the tire on your car unless
⏹️ ▶️ John you’re a gearhead. So if you don’t know about the auto industry, and
⏹️ ▶️ John you read about this and get confused, and yeah, why can’t Apple be one of those things? Because that’s just not how Apple operates. But that is how the auto
⏹️ ▶️ John industry operates. So there’s a disconnect with Apple being involved in the auto industry in any way, because
⏹️ ▶️ John the relationship that the auto industry is used to is one that Apple is not interested in.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Do you have any idea how much of that approach is also true of Tesla,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey for example, are the motors designed and built in-house? So the batteries designed and I think
⏹️ ▶️ Casey the batteries are designed, if not built in-house. Well, aren’t they building a huge factory for batteries or something
⏹️ ▶️ John like that? Yeah, but they’re going to do with the batteries is like we start with raw materials and out the other end comes out a battery,
⏹️ ▶️ John which is reminiscent of like the Macintosh, one of the original code names was like sand for their thing. It’s like
⏹️ ▶️ John sand goes in one end and completed Macintoshes go out the other, but you know, sand, silicon, stuff like that. Anyway,
⏹️ ▶️ John that’s actually an interesting comparison like so for first of all, for Tesla, they I mean, their whole freaking
⏹️ ▶️ John car practically was from Lotus in the beginning because they just took a Lotus they bought like a rolling chassis from Lotus and then
⏹️ ▶️ John just jam their battery pack into it right these days. I’m assuming they’re doing
⏹️ ▶️ John the same amount if not slightly more in house stuff than everyone else. But yeah, they have other suppliers.
⏹️ ▶️ John You know, I don’t think they’re making their brake rotors and their brake assemblies like they’re I think they’re operating
⏹️ ▶️ John like any other car manufacturer where they, various parts suppliers make things
⏹️ ▶️ John and you know if you, they can make things to your specifications and to your design or if
⏹️ ▶️ John they have something previously available like we already have this brake rotor in this size if you just want to buy it from us like you don’t
⏹️ ▶️ John have to design your own special brake rotor or maybe they think they need to for their particular car but I’m assuming
⏹️ ▶️ John that they are using parts suppliers in the traditional way because that’s how they started
⏹️ ▶️ John I mean you just you know getting a whole rolling chassis from Lotus and then shoving their car inside that.
⏹️ ▶️ John Oh, and yeah, I don’t know if this is a further follow up, but it’s good to bring it up now.
⏹️ ▶️ John Apple, of course, does the same thing. You know, if you look at an iPhone, you can say all the different
⏹️ ▶️ John manufacturers like Broadcom makes the Wi-Fi chip and Samsung
⏹️ ▶️ John manufacturing a system on a chip until recently. And this company makes the the I O controller and
⏹️ ▶️ John this company makes a screen controller. And who makes the screen this year and where is the cameras coming from Sony this year? And they change
⏹️ ▶️ John the supplier all the time. And nobody knows who those controllers are and where did they get their memory from Did they get it from high knicks
⏹️ ▶️ John or whatever that company is or did they get the memory from Samsung and like nobody knows that It is not a differentiator
⏹️ ▶️ John that Apple is giving up no value by by not making all these things itself Apple doesn’t own the factories that make
⏹️ ▶️ John them is it being made by Foxconn has been made by what is that other one? Quanta or what
⏹️ ▶️ John is the phone starts with a Q? Anyway, like that’s that’s how Apple operates as well even more so
⏹️ ▶️ John because it’s like we don’t want to go to hands dirty by actually Owning any factories we will spend millions possibly billions of dollars
⏹️ ▶️ John letting people will install equipment in the factories, they will slowly pay off
⏹️ ▶️ John through some complicated relationship or manufacturing stuff for us, but they let someone else handle that. So
⏹️ ▶️ John part of this rumor is that Apple is talking to this, what is this company called? Magna
⏹️ ▶️ John steer and decent. I can’t pronounce this name. It’s the name I’ve seen in car magazines for years, but
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco I’ve never had
⏹️ ▶️ John to say it out loud for a variety of reasons. A company that makes parts for
⏹️ ▶️ John fancy cars. And why would Apple be talking to them? Because they’re not going to make their I mean I suppose they could but
⏹️ ▶️ John like their inclination would be to operate somewhat like the rest of the industry is like if there if there
⏹️ ▶️ John are parts suppliers and manufacturers and assemblers for the automotive industry who already
⏹️ ▶️ John do this Apple can contract them to say can you make some stuff for us too
⏹️ ▶️ John and they can the other option is you know getting back to Marcos retelling of the grand theories
⏹️ ▶️ John that readers have is like I bet they’re gonna do it all in the United States and they’re gonna bring manufacturing back to the United
⏹️ ▶️ John States and they’re going to make their own factory with all US people because they’re always talking about employing people in the US and
⏹️ ▶️ John I suppose they could do that and that does fit with some of the things that Apple’s been doing but on the other hand
⏹️ ▶️ John every other thing that Apple makes tends to be made by what Apple thinks is the
⏹️ ▶️ John people who can make this best and if the people who can make this best are a company
⏹️ ▶️ John in the United States then fine but if they’re in China or if they’re in Germany or if they’re in any place else
⏹️ ▶️ John I think Apple will be talking to all the best people to who already know how to make car size
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⏹️ ▶️ Casey So John, if Apple wasn’t making a car, could they be working on something car-related,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey like maybe road signs or something like that?
⏹️ ▶️ John You’re skipping your own real-time follow-up about Magna making whole cars, yes.
⏹️ ▶️ John Magnum, or they count as like an assembler or whatever. They don’t just make transmissions or little parts
⏹️ ▶️ John that they ship to someone else to get the sound of Magnum will put your stuff together. And I’m not sure if they entirely manufacture
⏹️ ▶️ John and high end cars or do most of the assembly or anyway.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Oh, well, they did. They created the 4Matic Mercedes all wheel drive. Doesn’t that suck? I
⏹️ ▶️ Casey didn’t think it sucked. I’m not saying it’s particularly remarkable, but I didn’t think it sucked.
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah. Like the point about the auto industry is that The car that you think is made
⏹️ ▶️ John by a single company that sold to you under a particular brand is mostly made like as in Assembled
⏹️ ▶️ John the parts made or whatever by companies other than the company whose name is on the thing, right? They’re ultimately responsible
⏹️ ▶️ John the car they design it they decide what goes into it so on and so forth But who who makes that transmission who
⏹️ ▶️ John makes those wheels who puts them all together in the right shape? So that a car runs like a surprising
⏹️ ▶️ John amount of that process does not involve GM, BMW, Mercedes, Audi,
⏹️ ▶️ John any of these companies because it’s all outsourced to a bunch of other smaller companies. It’s mostly a symbiotic
⏹️ ▶️ John relationship because those companies like they they don’t no one else wants an 8-speed
⏹️ ▶️ John automatic gearbox except for people who make cars so they necessarily need to sell their parts to car makers
⏹️ ▶️ John and no you know I have the capability to assemble completed cars from a bunch of parts only you know they need car
⏹️ ▶️ John makers to use their capacity to do that so this is the relationship we we can build cars and we can
⏹️ ▶️ John build parts that go into cars, we need car makers to buy our parts or to tell us to
⏹️ ▶️ John assemble their cars. And of course, you know, there’s the Toyota and you know, Honda and all the Japanese
⏹️ ▶️ John things where they, you know, they run their own factories and they have a special way of doing it that ensures quality and so on and so forth. But
⏹️ ▶️ John even they outsource things and I think who’s it that licensed Tesla’s drivetrain and battery
⏹️ ▶️ John technology? I think Toyota did like, well, they tried to I think it fell apart. But yeah, well, there’s a surprisingly
⏹️ ▶️ John incestuous relationship between all these car companies. I mean, to to the point where the Ford Probe and what
⏹️ ▶️ John the hell was it? The Ford Probe and the Mazda 323? No, the 626 maybe.
⏹️ ▶️ John At various points, there have been cars. We even have it now, the Toyota Baru. It’s the
⏹️ ▶️ John same car sold by Toyota and Subaru, because Subaru does the engine and Toyota does the rest of the
⏹️ ▶️ John car. I believe that’s right. There was a relationship between Mazda and Ford where they were essentially selling the same car
⏹️ ▶️ John with different skins on it. I think I also couldn’t remember the name of this car. MX6, yes. I couldn’t remember
⏹️ ▶️ John this back in neutral either. I still can’t remember it. The Probe and the MX6 were the same car with
⏹️ ▶️ John different stuff on it. I mean, this has happened so many times over the years. So the auto industry is super weird. Like, if this happened
⏹️ ▶️ John in the tech industry, it would be like, well, you know the Samsung S3
⏹️ ▶️ John and the iPhone are the same phone, right? They just have a different skin on them. It’s like, what? That would never happen.
⏹️ ▶️ John Happens all the time in the auto industry.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yeah, my favorite was the Mitsubishi 3000 GT and the Dodge Stealth.
⏹️ ▶️ John Oh, yeah. That was that was I mean, it’s and it’s totally cross like cross country lines cross, you know, foreign domestic,
⏹️ ▶️ John like just Asia, Europe. There is no rhyme or reason other than just these executives,
⏹️ ▶️ John you know, deciding that there are certain deals that make sense in terms of,
⏹️ ▶️ John you know, engineering resources and manufacturing capacity. And, you know, I need this and you and you need
⏹️ ▶️ John that. And we can cross license and sell them to each other. By the way, I always like the Mitsubishi
⏹️ ▶️ John better than the stealth styling wise. But they look they look so similar. The only thing they changed was
⏹️ ▶️ John the headlight and taillight treatment and the weird fake Ferrari side streaks on the
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Did you ever see, there was a made for TV movie, Knight Rider 2000, which was like
⏹️ ▶️ Casey five, 10 years after Knight Rider ended. Hasselhoff came back and did this made for TV movie.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And the Kit 2000, I think, was a custom movie or
⏹️ ▶️ Casey TV car, but it was based off a Dodge Stealth, if I’m not mistaken.
⏹️ ▶️ John I think I did see that, but I can’t picture the car. I loved it as a kid. I’m sure
⏹️ ▶️ Casey if I watched it again today, I’d think it is just a waste of film.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey But man, I was obsessed with that little TV movie as a kid.
⏹️ ▶️ John I thought they just took the Firebird and just tacked a bunch of greebles, as they say in the business, to the
⏹️ ▶️ John that look different. But that might have been thinking of something else. Greebleys. Is it Greebleys? Yeah.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I don’t know. A while back, I had actually read a behind the scenes on the car. But
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I don’t have a link handy for that story. but we’ll put a link in the show notes.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey To Wikipedia for Knight Rider 2000, it’s a wonderfully bad made-for-TV
⏹️ ▶️ John says greeble. Gotta think I gotta write the first time.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I’m so glad there was no other tech news this week because that’s a disaster. Yeah.
⏹️ ▶️ John All right, so yeah, now that sidetrack aside,
⏹️ ▶️ John you’re talking about, this is getting into the meat of all the many, many
⏹️ ▶️ John very grand ideas ideas that listeners have about what Apple could be doing and like Marco
⏹️ ▶️ John said before the general theme was it’s not about cars man it’s about transportation
⏹️ ▶️ Marco right they’re gonna reinvent something somehow don’t really know how yet yeah well
⏹️ ▶️ John no they have they had specific things right so one entire angle is that
⏹️ ▶️ John Tim Cook loves the environment Apple loves the environment they’re building solar farms everywhere
⏹️ ▶️ John therefore the reason they would be interested in doing a car is because electric cars are better for the environment.
⏹️ ▶️ John And so because Apple is so environmentally focused, it makes perfect sense they would want
⏹️ ▶️ John to do an electric car because it fits perfectly with those attitudes of the company. I agree that that fits with
⏹️ ▶️ John the attitude of the company. That’s not the reason you do a car, because if you are going to try to be
⏹️ ▶️ John better for the environment of all the things that produce greenhouse gases, cars are significant, but you could
⏹️ ▶️ John get more bang for your buck by getting rid of cows or buses or the many other things
⏹️ ▶️ John or something. I saw some crazy Internet stat that may or may not be true, that like the 12
⏹️ ▶️ John biggest shipping like boats that they go across the ocean with shipping containers on them, like the 12 or 20 biggest
⏹️ ▶️ John ones of the world, ones of those in the world produce the same amount of CO2 as all the cars in the world.
⏹️ ▶️ John Really? It was on the Internet. Who knows if it’s even true. I saw it. That sounds ridiculous. Yes,
⏹️ ▶️ John it does. It sounds like one of those things that you read on the Internet that is totally not true. So next week I’m asking people
⏹️ ▶️ John to tell us whether that’s true or
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco not once. Yeah, just one person do it. Everyone get together and agree amongst yourselves
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco one of you is going to email. No, I
⏹️ ▶️ John don’t care. Send a million different kind of confirmations. Only five people are going to look it up anyway.
⏹️ ▶️ John So I agree that that is that that fits with Apple’s motto. I don’t agree that it is a strong
⏹️ ▶️ John motivating factor in deciding whether or not to build a car. You know, it could
⏹️ ▶️ John be contributing factor, but it’s like it’s in a long list of reasons. they would make a car because you could say that about
⏹️ ▶️ John a lot of things like this is good for them. I want to make why don’t they make something that you know
⏹️ ▶️ John that produces electricity like electric power plants that would do even more for the environment. Well because Apple
⏹️ ▶️ John doesn’t not into making power plants. Well you know but then why should I make a car?
⏹️ ▶️ John Another thing is if you’re going to make an electric car one of the big impediments to electric cars has been infrastructure
⏹️ ▶️ John like if I take it on a long trip where do I recharge it how do I recharge it? obviously has been
⏹️ ▶️ John tackling it with its supercharger stations that it’s trying to put all of the United States. This is the infrastructure
⏹️ ▶️ John problem. If I can make an alternative fuel vehicle, how do
⏹️ ▶️ John I make it a viable thing to drive across the country with? You need some place to refuel it. And infrastructure
⏹️ ▶️ John like that is, how many gas stations are there in the United States? This sounds like a tech job interview from 2003.
⏹️ ▶️ John How many Tesla supercharger stations are there? Far less. And so hey, Apple’s got a lot of money. They could tackle
⏹️ ▶️ John this. could, you know, they can make sure that there are places where you can charge the electric Apple
⏹️ ▶️ John car all across the entire country. I think they could do that Tesla has
⏹️ ▶️ John shown how difficult that is Apple has a lot more money than Tesla, they could do a better job. In fact, I think
⏹️ ▶️ John they may have to do something like that. But like Tesla, they will be forced just by reality
⏹️ ▶️ John to start start doing it in you know, just in the San Francisco
⏹️ ▶️ John area, just in the New York area, just in the eastern seaboard just up and down. Like, it’s just a
⏹️ ▶️ John humongous problem. Someone says it’s 388 supercharger stations, right? So how many gas stations
⏹️ ▶️ John are the United States slightly more than 388? Like it is a very big problem. It’s not like
⏹️ ▶️ John it. Look how many Apple stores have opened it just obviously, supercharger station is easier to open than an Apple Store. But
⏹️ ▶️ John boy, that’s a long road. And it will have to be addressed sort of collectively.
⏹️ ▶️ John If Apple makes a bunch of charger stations for its car, and Tesla makes a bunch of charger stations for its
⏹️ ▶️ John car and stuff like that, that’s terrible, because it would be like, well, if you get a Honda, you can only go to Honda gas stations. We need
⏹️ ▶️ John a common standard for this. And we’re in early days of this. But hopefully, this will shake itself out.
⏹️ ▶️ John I don’t think Apple’s not going to try to address this need, because if they sell electric cars, you’re going to have to need somewhere to charge
⏹️ ▶️ John it. But don’t expect, like, boy, now that Apple’s doing it, no matter where
⏹️ ▶️ John you live in the United States, I’ll be 10 minutes away from a place where I can charge up my Apple car. Unless you plan on going into people’s
⏹️ ▶️ John houses and breaking in and plugging it inside their house and waiting 12 hours to charge off their house current illegally,
⏹️ ▶️ John that is not going to be the case. What else did we have from the grandiose ideas? Oh, the
⏹️ ▶️ John thing about it’s about transportation, not about cars. What about a kind of ride
⏹️ ▶️ John sharing thing where you don’t own the car, the community owns the car, and well,
⏹️ ▶️ John let’s just throw in this the autonomous cars. The cars, of course, are going to drive themselves. All our listeners agree.
⏹️ ▶️ John Not Apple’s cars specifically, but just all cars will drive themselves. We don’t need a driver.
⏹️ ▶️ John autonomous. You don’t need to own a car, you just need to have like an app that can make the car arrive and we’ll just
⏹️ ▶️ John share cars together. And whenever you need a car, we’ll come and pick you up. Like what people are doing is slow motion
⏹️ ▶️ John fantasy. reinventing public transportation for first principles, only using cars
⏹️ ▶️ John and roads, which is perhaps the least efficient way to get lots of people from place to place.
⏹️ ▶️ John I think we talked about this last show, self driving cars. Yeah, they’re probably going to happen. Are they going to
⏹️ ▶️ John happen? If Apple introduces a car in the next five years I’m gonna say no no
⏹️ ▶️ Marco yeah I’m gonna agree with that ridiculous pronunciation of no
⏹️ ▶️ John all right like cuz we all agree like self-driving cars are a thing that’s probably going to happen maybe when we’re
⏹️ ▶️ John alive like in our lifetimes like do you think we that seems reasonable
⏹️ ▶️ Marco maybe I wouldn’t even say definitely
⏹️ ▶️ John yes I’d say maybe I mean like it may be in limited circumstances and so on so but I you know the technology is
⏹️ ▶️ John good enough now where you can see this is a feasible thing that could happen because effectively, do we have self-flying planes?
⏹️ ▶️ John Pretty close. Like, we have planes that do a lot and can almost land themselves
⏹️ ▶️ John and almost take off themselves and almost fly from the air. There’s a person involved, so on and so forth. Self-driving cars are an easier problem
⏹️ ▶️ John because you’d, you know. Well,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco self-driving cars are much more a regulatory and public perception
⏹️ ▶️ Marco problem than a technology problem for the most part. Like, I think we’re going to have the technology.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I mean, we’re not that far off today. we’re gonna have the technology to do them reasonably
⏹️ ▶️ Marco well, relatively speaking, fairly soon. Like in the grand scheme of things, fairly soon. You know,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco probably within the next decade, the technology will be pretty usable. But
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it might take a lot longer for not only regulation to allow
⏹️ ▶️ Marco them in different states and countries, but like the first time one gets in an
⏹️ ▶️ Marco accident and kills somebody, that’s gonna set them back like 10 years in regulation and
⏹️ ▶️ Marco how the public perceives them.
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah. I think they’ll be pretty resilient to that, because during
⏹️ ▶️ John the time we were doing this podcast, x number of people die in car crashes driven by people.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco But people aren’t rational. People know. It’s the same thing. People freak out about flying and then drive
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to the airport and not even think about their risk of dying driving to the airport.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco People are not logical and rational with calculating risk. and something that seems totally
⏹️ ▶️ Marco out of their control, like a self-driving car made by the people who want you to reset your password constantly.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Like, a self-driving car, like that’s, that is a very scary concept to a lot of people,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco myself included, I’m a technology guy. Like, it would be very hard, it’s gonna be very, very hard
⏹️ ▶️ Marco for people to be willing to trust self-driving cars, and the first time anything goes wrong with
⏹️ ▶️ Marco one, that’s gonna tarnish their image for years to come. Like, it’s gonna be, I think it’s gonna be a tough battle.
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, I mean, like a couple of things from the chat room. One, talking about, I was saying electric cars, you know,
⏹️ ▶️ John self-driving cars in limited scenarios. Like we already have that in some degrees, like as a
⏹️ ▶️ John very limited scenario and very vague definition of cars, all those robots that drive all over factories, right?
⏹️ ▶️ John That is obviously very limited. I would imagine the first place you’re actually going to see self-driving cars is probably someplace like Disneyland,
⏹️ ▶️ John like an amusement park, where it’s technically not really a car. Like it’s all contained within
⏹️ ▶️ John the park, going unknown routes. Like they basically have things like that now. You know, it’s like
⏹️ ▶️ John a monorail, but without the rail, right? That type of technology is coming quickly. And
⏹️ ▶️ John Google’s ones are able to do their area because they have mapped every inch of the terrain and stuff. It’ll just
⏹️ ▶️ John expand outward from there. And I made a comment about self-driving cars being easier than planes,
⏹️ ▶️ John mostly because, and this is contentious in the chat room, but I’m going to say mostly because if there’s any kind
⏹️ ▶️ John of problem with a self-driving car, it can stop and pull over.
⏹️ ▶️ John not an option in a plane. Like, say there’s no human available to drive. The failure
⏹️ ▶️ John mode of a self-driving car involving slowly coming to a stop and pulling over. That is not available
⏹️ ▶️ John to you. If the if the AI driving a plane loses its bearings and has no idea what the hell to do,
⏹️ ▶️ John there is no OK, well, I’ll just do nothing. And like, you know, I’ll just turn myself off and I’m sure we’ll be fine.
⏹️ ▶️ John Like that is at least a viable option in a self-driving car. Granted, cars behind you could rear end you.
⏹️ ▶️ John So it’s over, but you don’t fall out of the sky. Whereas the AI driving a plane, if there is no human available and you are over the middle of the
⏹️ ▶️ John ocean, and the AI is super confused and has no idea what to do, it does not have an option of saying, I’ll just turn myself
⏹️ ▶️ John off. I’m sure we’ll be fine.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey That’s mostly true. But you know, there are whole plane parachutes that will,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John I’m serious, for like
⏹️ ▶️ John Cessnas. That will let you drift slowly down into the middle of the Atlantic. Exactly.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey You’ll be fine. Wait, that works? Yeah, I’m not kidding. This is actually on the news a few weeks ago, that
⏹️ ▶️ Casey some like very, very small light aircraft, like Cessnas or things like that, you can apparently an entire
⏹️ ▶️ Casey parachute that will keep the entire plane from
⏹️ ▶️ Casey plummeting to the ground and rather just floating its way down to the ground or in this hypothetical, the
⏹️ ▶️ Casey middle of the Atlantic at which point you drown.
⏹️ ▶️ John People are posting things like that, the pilots who are, you know, self-flying planes are causing problems with pilots
⏹️ ▶️ John because they get out of touch with the plane itself. And that’s totally true. Self-driving cars will make people worse drivers,
⏹️ ▶️ John for sure. And if they become super complex three generations from now, no one will know how to drive anymore, but no one will care.
⏹️ ▶️ John It’ll be fine. But we’ll all be dead, so you don’t have to worry about it.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I don’t want to give up on driving, though. I like driving.
⏹️ ▶️ John so that was my meta point here. I was going to use a reference that neither one of you are going to get, but
⏹️ ▶️ John what else is new? The whole ideas of self-driving cars and ride sharing,
⏹️ ▶️ John and you use an app and a self-driving car just shows up, and you don’t have to own a car like we all own the cars, man, or whatever,
⏹️ ▶️ John just that whole sort of utopian future of driverless cars not owned by anybody.
⏹️ ▶️ John runs up against one very big problem, aptly pointed out by the seminal 90s movie that
⏹️ ▶️ John you two have never seen. And that reason is, people love their cars.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I don’t even know what you’re referring to, but I agree with that statement, literally.
⏹️ ▶️ John Yep, that was a running gag in this movie. I
⏹️ ▶️ John think his idea was called Super Train, I’m not entirely sure it might be. You should actually watch it to find out
⏹️ ▶️ John if there’s this deep-rotter connection. He had an idea for like a train that’s gonna this
⏹️ ▶️ John super train that’s gonna transport everybody I don’t remember it was super but anyway
⏹️ ▶️ John And he kept pitching it to people and the people would look at it and he had like a scale model and so how it would Be great and reduce commute
⏹️ ▶️ John times and blah blah and they’d be like, yeah, it looks like a good idea But people really love their
⏹️ ▶️ John cars like that was that would undercut him constantly The chat room saying it really was super train
⏹️ ▶️ John Anyway, we’ll put a link in the show notes of this movie but in the grand tradition of not telling you where sugar water comes from,
⏹️ ▶️ John we will not tell you what this movie is.
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⏹️ ▶️ John Looking at the origins of Super Train, the fact that it
⏹️ ▶️ John was from a movie that was about grunge people in Seattle makes it makes me think that that
⏹️ ▶️ John is almost certainly either unconscious or conscience a conscious origin of Roderick’s
⏹️ ▶️ John Supertrain thing because I can almost guarantee that he saw that movie and internalized it in some
⏹️ ▶️ John way so I’d be interested to know actually if if he was consciously referencing that
⏹️ ▶️ John Supertrain or or he has never seen this movie.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Oh you’re rocking my world man. Next year you’re gonna say BMW doesn’t make most of their cars. Yeah
⏹️ ▶️ John they do the important part but pushing the logo a little propeller logo on the front
⏹️ ▶️ Marco sort of what do you mean sort of we watch them make the engines seriously
⏹️ ▶️ John yeah yeah how many lots a lot of parts go into an engine do they make the spark plugs do
⏹️ ▶️ John they make the wires do they make the belts you know
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco doesn’t matter it’s a BMW car right
⏹️ ▶️ John it takes a village to make a car really
⏹️ ▶️ Casey right so where are we in this follow-up because I’m lost
⏹️ ▶️ John I think we’re still in people’s delusions of grandeur about what Apple can do.
⏹️ ▶️ John We just passed by the guy who was thinking that like we’re all share the cars they’ll be autonomous and you’ll just get in with your iPhone and the
⏹️ ▶️ John car will become your car because like your interface will spread out all over it.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah but then you get to like sit on someone else’s fart cushion and smell their cigarettes and their cat hair on the seat like come on.
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah well it’s San Francisco nobody smokes right? I hope. I’m led to believe.
⏹️ ▶️ John The other one here, alright so the next fantasy scenario is like there’s so much more to driving than just the car. You
⏹️ ▶️ John have to think about everything else like the traffic lights, the signs, the speed limits, communication with all
⏹️ ▶️ John of those things, communication with all the other cars, Apple traffic lights, Apple stop, I’m reading from an email
⏹️ ▶️ John people unless you think I’m making fun of something. Apple traffic lights, Apple stop sign. Wow, the list goes on. What
⏹️ ▶️ John a world. What a money earner worldwide. Yes, if Apple could snap its fingers and have
⏹️ ▶️ John interactive electronic traffic signals, signs and own every car on the road so they could all
⏹️ ▶️ John communicate with each other and all could communicate with the traffic signals and detect things from
⏹️ ▶️ John the signs without having to OCR the speeds off them like Marcos Fancy Car does. That would be an amazing
⏹️ ▶️ John utopian scenario. I think it’s a little bit of a tall order to think that Apple, I mean, what’s next? Why not just
⏹️ ▶️ John say that Apple should lay supercooled superconducting magnets throughout every road in the entire world? Then
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco have levitating cars.
⏹️ ▶️ John Like all these things are technically possible.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Well, also, like, if you imagine, like, the actual reality, like, can you imagine
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the business of selling traffic lights and stop signs to, like, every municipality around the country? Like, that’s
⏹️ ▶️ Marco probably a terrible, low-margin business.
⏹️ ▶️ John It’s like, wait, wait, so hear me out, okay? Step one, replace every traffic signal and sign in the United States. Wait,
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey out, because it’s a big payoff at the end of this. All right,
⏹️ ▶️ John step two, replace every car in the United States with an Apple car that all communicates with each other. Now, now,
⏹️ ▶️ John once you’ve done that, that’s the prerequisites, Now you can have a car that can talk to all the other cars that can talk to the signals
⏹️ ▶️ John that can make traffic flow intelligently. It’s like, all right, then. Yep. Yep. Okay.
⏹️ ▶️ John I’m going to say that that is probably in line with the idea like Marco
⏹️ ▶️ John was saying that I think it’s worse than the iPad being some amazing thing and not just being
⏹️ ▶️ John a big iPod touch like all this stuff like these are all technically possible. They’re all happening slowly
⏹️ ▶️ John like this stuff happens looking for Apple to be the savior to snap its fingers and make all these things that are going to eventually
⏹️ ▶️ John happen happen on a much abbreviated time scale. I can understand why people look for that, because like look what they did with the
⏹️ ▶️ John smartphone. We probably would have gotten to where the iPhone was eventually. But Apple sort of accelerated
⏹️ ▶️ John that massively by making a phone that was just leaps and bounds ahead of where everyone else was.
⏹️ ▶️ John And then everyone else said, Oh, yeah, we should do that. And then it took them a couple of years and they all did. And we’re all moving along with smartphones
⏹️ ▶️ John looking like iPhones now. Can Apple do that with things at the scale of
⏹️ ▶️ John traffic signals and signs? The best I think you could hope for even if Apple was aiming for this is to have
⏹️ ▶️ John something like this working Where the rich people live in California as a proof of concept
⏹️ ▶️ John in the same way that the Google’s have self-driving cars Driving around in a limited range to show that yes,
⏹️ ▶️ John this is something that can be done But it’s a big leap to go from getting this
⏹️ ▶️ John to work in Disneyland or where the rich people live in California Which is probably a lot like Disneyland
⏹️ ▶️ John to this works in the entire United States to this is the way transportation works in the entire planet
⏹️ ▶️ John So I’m not holding my breath for any of that.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey All right. Do you want to talk about China and the Apple car? Because clearly,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey if you can’t sell it in the United States, China is the answer. I
⏹️ ▶️ John think the China thing for this feedback from Rob Lewis is all
⏹️ ▶️ John the manufacturing and Horace went into this on a Simcoe as well. All the manufacturing capacity
⏹️ ▶️ John in China. If Apple was looking for someone to build their car, there’s a lot of car manufacturing capability
⏹️ ▶️ John and know-how in China that is ready to be tapped. They’re talking to Magna. I think Magna
⏹️ ▶️ John has locations in North America and Europe but not in China maybe. But as
⏹️ ▶️ John Rob points out, Apple has existing relationships with a lot of big manufacturing
⏹️ ▶️ John capacity in China so surely some part of the Apple car is going to be made or assembled in China because
⏹️ ▶️ John like you know that’s I don’t think Apple is building a gigafactory to build its battery
⏹️ ▶️ John starting from sand in the United States. I assume they’re going to contract out to somebody else to help them to make the parts
⏹️ ▶️ John for their stuff. And so yeah, I’m sure China will be involved. Will Apple be selling their cars in China? Does China
⏹️ ▶️ John need electric minivans? Probably. They’ve got a booming middle class. It’s a growth opportunity.
⏹️ ▶️ John There are a lot of people in China. I’m not sure if their
⏹️ ▶️ John entire strategy will hinge on China, but surely they’ll be involved, as they are with everything having to do with manufacturing
⏹️ ▶️ John these days, it seems.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey So is that it? Did we make it?
⏹️ ▶️ John We’re down to sugar water and the ASIMCO link explaining auto capacity utilization. I think he tweeted
⏹️ ▶️ John something. It was like a graph of like who has unused capacity for automaking. And China
⏹️ ▶️ John is at 64% capacity and everyone else is like it’s 70 or 80% and
⏹️ ▶️ John has a smaller overall capacity. So if you’re looking for somebody who’s got excess manufacturing capacity for autos, China
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So about that pebble time,
⏹️ ▶️ John I kept reading that name in the tweets and thinking is this like a pun or a
⏹️ ▶️ John joke or is this the name of the product but I guess stop pebble time yeah that’s the
⏹️ ▶️ John name of the product I mean it’s I guess it’s a good name for a watch
⏹️ ▶️ Marco yeah I mean I think everything pebble is doing right now is smart they are in a tough spot
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and given the tough spot they’re in they seem like they’re they’re making the right moves to not die or
⏹️ ▶️ Marco at least to prolong death right I I mean, because like, you know, like, so they started with the smartwatch
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that is basically a notifications display for mostly iPhones.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco You know, some Android people bought them, but I think most of the buyers probably had iPhones. You know, it became pretty clear pretty quickly
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that Apple was never going to give them the level of access they needed to the notification system to
⏹️ ▶️ Marco have any kind of like two-way communication or any kind of rich functionality. And so they tried having their own
⏹️ ▶️ Marco apps and their own SDK to custom integrate with it, But, and they still do, but I think the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco reality is that’s really not going to go incredibly far in the Apple ecosystem, just because of the limitations
⏹️ ▶️ Marco imposed by iOS and the hardware. And Apple’s never going to open that up. Once Apple makes a
⏹️ ▶️ John watch, then it’s time for people to go, all right, well, never mind
⏹️ ▶️ Marco then. Right. And so, you know, they’re not stupid. They saw this. And
⏹️ ▶️ Marco they, I think, pretty smartly are much more embracing the Android
⏹️ ▶️ Marco side. And I think that’s wise. I don’t want to go too far into into pebble stuff because
⏹️ ▶️ Marco our friends over at connected covered it way better than we could because They actually at least Mike actually has used a pebble I don’t
⏹️ ▶️ Marco know if the other guys have I forget but you know Mike has actually spent a lot of time using one and I’m frozen and
⏹️ ▶️ Marco none of us have right
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I’ve only seen one in real life, and it looked so incredibly giant and nerdy It’s like it. That’s even too
⏹️ ▶️ Marco nerdy for us, and that’s really
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John saying a lot I
⏹️ ▶️ John mean, don’t you think that’s a continuing problem with the pebble? I know they have the pebble steel which was an attempt to be fashionable that I think
⏹️ ▶️ John mostly failed because it wasn’t very fashionable it just looked like someone trying to be fashionable and they’ve
⏹️ ▶️ John I’ve seen people applauding maybe was you Marco applauding the idea that the pebble time doesn’t try to do that anymore and
⏹️ ▶️ John just looks like no I didn’t say that I guess maybe it was a reverse thing it just looks like a gadgety thing again it’s
⏹️ ▶️ John like I don’t understand like it’s fine to say you’re not gonna go like the fashion route like this is not a fashion
⏹️ ▶️ John accessory it’s a gadget accessory it’s fine like you’re smelling you’re selling these in a small volume
⏹️ ▶️ John nerds like Android it’s like a kickstarter type thing like yeah does it have to be so
⏹️ ▶️ John darn ugly though like you can make something that looks like a tech nerd toy
⏹️ ▶️ John that like i just all the pebbles the original one the steel and this new one
⏹️ ▶️ John do not look attractive to me and i’m not demanding fashion wise i just want it to like
⏹️ ▶️ John if they just made an unadorned box it would look better because these things just like weird,
⏹️ ▶️ John weird thermoses with like bulges and borders and things
⏹️ ▶️ John poking out of anyway. Yeah. I’ve, I’ve seen a lot of pebbles in real life. Uh, they haven’t particularly
⏹️ ▶️ John appealed to me, but you know, the smart move that pebble is making here is not even attempting to compete
⏹️ ▶️ John with any of the smart watches because they’re going to say our differentiator is our battery lasts for seven days because we have an E Ink screen
⏹️ ▶️ John period, the end done. Is anyone else going to do that? I don’t even know if they have any competition.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And I think it’s also fairly, it’s also more waterproof, right?
⏹️ ▶️ John I’m not sure. I mean, I suppose it could be but it’s like, you know, there’s less stuff inside it the screen
⏹️ ▶️ John is you know, the CPU is super weak everything about it is like
⏹️ ▶️ John We are going the opposite extreme because Apple is not gonna make a watch and their first outing the last with the battery last seven Days, they’re
⏹️ ▶️ John gonna be lucky if you can get through a day without charging thing, right? Pebble says we can go the whole week. Why because we have
⏹️ ▶️ John an E Ink screen E Ink screen You’re not going to be watching video on what do you mean video forget it? We’re just you know, we’re showing you
⏹️ ▶️ John information about calendars and notifications stuff like that that’s what they’re trying to do
⏹️ ▶️ John and even that like you know what was the Kickstarter stuff like 15,000 phones or 15,000 watches
⏹️ ▶️ John or something like that Apple sells 15,000 iPhones like every three minutes or whatever the hell it is like it’s you know
⏹️ ▶️ John the volumes are very small this is a boutique thing for gadget nerds and it has found a
⏹️ ▶️ John way forever it’s already
⏹️ ▶️ Marco like past 50,000 it looks like it’s raised almost 10 million dollars for whatever it’s worth
⏹️ ▶️ Marco at the time of recording and it’s going up still.
⏹️ ▶️ John So how long does it take Apple to sell that many iPhones? Like a day or two?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Sure, I mean it’s not the same game. Like that’s what I’m saying. Like they started out as a small company, it started
⏹️ ▶️ Marco on Kickstarter and in many ways it looks like that’s just the route they’re gonna continue on as long as they can.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And it might be indefinitely, it might be a long time. You know, they might be around for a while. There are a lot of gadget
⏹️ ▶️ Marco nerds, obviously. I mean look how quickly this thing, like it reached its goal in like something like 20
⏹️ ▶️ Marco minutes And now it’s way, you know, as I said, it’s raised almost $10 million right now. And there’s
⏹️ ▶️ Marco still a month left in the campaign. So, you know, this thing obviously, and this
⏹️ ▶️ Marco is all just pre-sales. Like once it’s out, if it gets good reviews, maybe people will buy it more. I mean,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco once it’s out, the Apple Watch will be out and that’s gonna take a lot of wind out of the sales here. But still, you know,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco if they embrace the Android ecosystem, the Android ecosystem is freaking huge. And
⏹️ ▶️ Marco if you look at the Android Wear watches that they’re competing with in that ecosystem,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the Android Wear watches really have not gone very far. Everyone who has tried them so far has had pretty
⏹️ ▶️ Marco mixed reviews of them. None of them have really taken off. And if they can, they’re
⏹️ ▶️ Marco obviously not gonna win on style. The rest of the Android Wear watches have a better chance than this does, and that’s not saying
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a whole lot. They’re not gonna win on style. But for all the other things, the battery life,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the possible water resistance, the durability, cost, I mean, these things are really cheap. I think they’re at 200 bucks, something like that, a little under 200 bucks.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, about 200 bucks. So these things are, you know, there’s a big market for this
⏹️ ▶️ Marco if smartwatches are gonna be a thing that takes off. And I think it’s pretty clear that’s probably gonna happen.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So I think they’re gonna do okay for quite a while. And I think it’s wise for them to push
⏹️ ▶️ Marco further into the Android ecosystem because iOS is just not gonna go that far for them.
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, and I think it’s really important that like, you know, saying, oh, this is a small market, it only applies to gadget nerds.
⏹️ ▶️ John you can’t even get the gadget nerds. If what you try to make is a gadget that
⏹️ ▶️ John is like the Apple watch, but worse. Because even the gadget nerds don’t want that. Like nobody
⏹️ ▶️ John wants that, right? So that’s why it’s so important. It’s like, well, if it’s just a, you know,
⏹️ ▶️ John 50,000, a hundred thousand people or whatever, who cares? Like, you know, these people obviously like it to be all gadgety and cool. But
⏹️ ▶️ John if you made something that was, had an LCD screen, needed to be charged every, like it was basically just a worse Apple watch.
⏹️ ▶️ John Nobody wants that. Not even the gadget nerds want that. Like they’ll just buy Android Wear if they want like an Android powered watch.
⏹️ ▶️ John So you have to do something different than everybody else, even if you just have a small market. And so that’s why they’re being super smart
⏹️ ▶️ John here because it seems like as far as I know, no one else is even trying to make a color E-Ink smartwatch.
⏹️ ▶️ John Like are they the only one in the entire world? Like regardless of how they’re doing it with the specific technologies, seven
⏹️ ▶️ John day battery. Nobody making an Apple or Android Wear style smartwatch
⏹️ ▶️ John would ever say seven day battery. There’s no way in hell you’re getting seven day battery from your Apple Watch. That is a big
⏹️ ▶️ John difference. and that will actually appeal to gadget nerds. Whereas if you made just a worse Android
⏹️ ▶️ John wear watch, now you’re competing with Motorola, now you’re competing with Apple, now you’re competing with all of them. So very smart
⏹️ ▶️ John move by that Kickstarter. And what they’re essentially doing is exploring an avenue for wearables.
⏹️ ▶️ John Because at this point we don’t know, like is it a deal breaker because you have to charge your Apple watch every
⏹️ ▶️ John day? Or do people not care?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And we don’t know yet. That’s the real answer. They’re like, we don’t know.
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, and Pebble has shown that like they, at least among gadget nerds, I see a lot of people
⏹️ ▶️ John wearing the original Pebble. You can’t miss it. Exactly. That was enough to get a bunch of
⏹️ ▶️ John people to wear smartwatches. I have only seen one other person wear an Android wear
⏹️ ▶️ John smartwatch, and that person happened to be reviewing that product. So I don’t know if that counts.
⏹️ ▶️ John But I see many Pebbles in my travels in nerd circles. So Pebble may
⏹️ ▶️ John be onto something. And if they are onto something, it’s bad for them because then all of
⏹️ ▶️ John the Android manufacturers, and maybe even Apple will just make a watch like
⏹️ ▶️ John that. And eventually it’s bad for them because presumably eventually the Apple watch will have at least a multi day
⏹️ ▶️ John if not seven day battery life, you know, five, seven years from now, but
⏹️ ▶️ John gather the rosebuds pebble. This is your time.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Thanks a lot to our three sponsors this week, Cocoa Conf Harvest and Lynda.com and we will see you
⏹️ ▶️ John And if you’re into Twitter, you can follow them at
⏹️ ▶️ Casey So that’s Casey Liss, M-A-R-C-O-A-R-M, and
⏹️ ▶️ Casey T. Marco Armin, S-I-R-A-C-U-S-A-C-R-A-Q-U-S-A
⏹️ ▶️ Casey It’s accidental, they didn’t mean to
⏹️ ▶️ John Accidental, accidental, tech broadcasts so long.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey So Marco, for the first time in your life, you actually did some homework?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I did. It was very hard. It was a lot of work. I really struggled through to
⏹️ ▶️ Marco do it for the show.
⏹️ ▶️ John I feel for you. It’s a difficult task.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah. So after the last show, we were talking about electric
⏹️ ▶️ Marco cars and what Apple might do and the Tesla and everything. And we got a number of comments in the chat and a number
⏹️ ▶️ Marco of emails immediately afterwards saying, you should really drive an electric car to know what you’re talking about.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So I had to do this. I had to go and test drive a Tesla on
⏹️ ▶️ Marco this past Saturday just so I could know for the show what we’re talking about.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey It’s so kind of you to take one for the team because God knows I would hate to have to go and
⏹️ ▶️ Casey drive a Tesla. God, would that suck.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I had to drive like 20 minutes to go to the place each way. It was hard.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So let me preface this by saying I’m
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a big fish fan as you know from listening to our show I like the fish I like fish music
⏹️ ▶️ Marco not the fish that you eat or that swim in the ocean I don’t like them at all.
⏹️ ▶️ John Okay I can’t wait to see how this connects.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah me too. Yeah now even though I’m a fish fan if you can think
⏹️ ▶️ Marco of what you think of when you think of fish fans I don’t care that much about going to the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco live shows even I listen to all the live shows. You’re not a pan man. I’m not a pan man.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I don’t do any drugs And the one time I did go to a fish show. I didn’t
⏹️ ▶️ Marco do any drugs there either and So well,
⏹️ ▶️ John you know not directly Okay,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco but according to other fish fans to the things they like the things they value I’m really like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a terrible fish fan. I’m just terrible so similarly, I’m also a
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a fan of BMW sports cars. But among them, so I really prefer
⏹️ ▶️ Marco all-wheel drive. I never bring my car on a track. I don’t take it anywhere and do donuts
⏹️ ▶️ Marco in parking lots. I always drive with traction control on. And I generally
⏹️ ▶️ Marco prefer luxurious, luxuries like, you know, comfy seats, even
⏹️ ▶️ Marco though they’re heavy, you know, stuff like that. Like motorized, sunroofs, you know, heated seats, all that stuff,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it’s all this heavy luxury stuff in cars. I like that. So similar to how
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I’m a terrible fish fan, I’m also a terrible sports car owner, according to the priorities
⏹️ ▶️ Marco of most other sports car owners. So I went to this Tesla driving
⏹️ ▶️ Marco thing where they just, they had a table set up at some health club and you could go in, you could sign up and go in
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and test drive it for a certain time slot. So I went up to this thing
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and I was told it would be the new P85D model, the super fast
⏹️ ▶️ Marco one that had that crazy reaction video that has the all-wheel drive and the super fast motor.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So, and it was, although unfortunately it was white. But,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco so going into this drive, I knew that I was about to drive this giant, heavy,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco but very fast all-wheel drive electric car, right? Now, I knew going in,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco academically I knew it was going to be significantly faster than my car. But I also,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco what I expected based on how we were talking about it and what I’ve heard from other people and what I saw
⏹️ ▶️ Marco in a Tesla mall showroom like two years ago, I was also expecting it to have
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a less luxurious interior and more importantly, to just be less sporty. Like I knew it would be
⏹️ ▶️ Marco fast, but I also was not expecting it to be sporty. I expected it to be just kind of more
⏹️ ▶️ Marco tame handling, more cushy and a little bit less luxurious on the inside. So the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco interior of the car that I saw actually very nice. I would say it is not as nice
⏹️ ▶️ Marco as a decked out high-end 5 series, but it was a lot less far off than it used to
⏹️ ▶️ Marco be. It was pretty close. I immediately got in and backed up out of the parking spot. I really, really missed
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the heads-up display and the top-down parking view.
⏹️ ▶️ John Top-down parking view. Boy, we’re talking about the automated cars make us bad drivers. You can’t even drive without a
⏹️ ▶️ John simulated bird’s-eye view of his car.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco No, well, look, with the Bird’s Eye View, I’ve never scraped a rim. Not once. I do a lot of parallel parking
⏹️ ▶️ Marco in really tight city spots. I’ve never scraped a rim. I don’t scrape my
⏹️ ▶️ John rims the old-fashioned way, by parking way too far away from the curb.
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco Well, yeah, okay, so…
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Anyway, yeah, because, you know, Boston’s known for its, like, wide, spacious roads, especially now with all the snow.
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, our roads are really wide now. We can fit one car barely through.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco If that, yeah. Alright, so it doesn’t have a heads-up display. It doesn’t have the side cameras to offer the top-down
⏹️ ▶️ Marco view. So that’s unfortunate in a car of this class, of this price range, but oh well,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco move on. They do offer some of the luxuries that I come to enjoy, like a heated steering
⏹️ ▶️ Marco wheel. Very few cars offer heated steering wheels. Once you have a heated steering wheel, it’s quite a… Like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco even my 3 Series had it before this, and it’s so nice. It’s amazing. Way better than air conditioned
⏹️ ▶️ Marco seats. Those are mostly useless. Anyway, I didn’t have a lot of time to play with the controls,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the touchscreen thing and everything because it was mostly just about it was like a 15 minute drive around this or in this course they they’d set
⏹️ ▶️ Marco up around these roads.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Now let me let me interrupt real quick. Do you find that 17 inch monitor
⏹️ ▶️ Casey whatever the crap it is in the center console does that look ridiculous to me to you because it looks freaking
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to me. It looks completely ridiculous when you look at it. In the drive like while driving
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I never had much of a reason to look at it because it’s it sits pretty low and this is like part of the problem is like the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco climate controls which are probably the most commonly accessed things for me are at the very bottom of that screen.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And so if I wanted to adjust the climate, I didn’t try doing this during the drive, so take all those with a grain of salt.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco If I wanted to just adjust the climate, I have to like look pretty much like almost at the floor. You
⏹️ ▶️ Marco have to look so far away from the road. I’m not crazy about that. And we’ll see in practice,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you know, maybe that’ll change or maybe I don’t know about some option you can turn on. A lot of this stuff is customizable. And
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I spent no time playing with the controls. I was all about driving. So I can’t really discuss the controls
⏹️ ▶️ Marco on any reasonable authority. I would say that though, the touch
⏹️ ▶️ Marco screen control do look a little bit dated. Like the whole theme of the UI
⏹️ ▶️ Marco is very much like pre iOS 7, pre Metro. It’s like, you know, it looks like,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco yeah, it looks like iOS 6 basically, but you know, less cartoony. Anyway, so
⏹️ ▶️ Marco get to the test drive. It’s in insane mode, So I get to fully experience the speed.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And so we stop, I have a clear road ahead of me, I slam on the gas, and wow.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, that good? Wow. Like, holy handbrake, wow.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah. So, the hard, so like it only does that super hard acceleration, like if
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you’re in the insane mode, at a complete stop, and you floor it. I’ve never felt anything like that before.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco there is no the reason why it’s so jarring is that there is no transition
⏹️ ▶️ Marco from zero like you’re like you’re at zero and all of a sudden you’re just going and
⏹️ ▶️ Marco once you’re going it just feels like an insanely fast car but when you from zero to going
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it almost feels like I’m getting hit in the face like it was actually unpleasant like I actually didn’t like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it like it was actually uncomfortable and unpleasant like it was like literally it’s it
⏹️ ▶️ Marco feels like you’re getting hit in the face. Like, if I actually owned this car, I don’t
⏹️ ▶️ Marco think I would really ever do that. Except to
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, except to scare passengers like once, you know, because it really, it was actually unpleasant.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco It’s too fast. And I did it a few times. I did it at the beginning and the end of the test drive, just so
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I would have some perception of like, is it just the first time that it’s unpleasant? Do I get used to
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it? Is it less bad? Nope, it actually is unpleasant every time.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey So to put things in perspective, according to Tesla’s website, the P85D
⏹️ ▶️ Casey does zero to 60 in 3.2 seconds. Just as a rough
⏹️ ▶️ Casey equivalent, the Aerosmith Rockin’ Roller Coaster at Walt Disney World
⏹️ ▶️ Casey does zero to 57 miles an hour in 2.8 seconds. So they’re approximately
⏹️ ▶️ Casey equivalent. This roller coaster takes pictures of everyone on
⏹️ ▶️ Casey the ride every single time the ride starts because everyone freaks
⏹️ ▶️ Casey out. It is matter of fact, reading from Wikipedia, the riders experience 4.5 G’s as they enter
⏹️ ▶️ Casey the first inversion. So in a lot of that is, I believe a combination of the acceleration and the, and the turn
⏹️ ▶️ Casey itself. That’s basically you’re driving a roller coaster.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah. It’s, I mean, as I said, yeah, this, that speed going from zero to full and insane mode.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I mean, it’s a gimmick. You don’t have any reason to actually do that in practice ever. But
⏹️ ▶️ Marco my God, like it was it was so fast. And as I said, like, I mean, that was actually unpleasant. Like, I actually
⏹️ ▶️ Marco don’t have any need or want to do that. I
⏹️ ▶️ John think the 911 Turbo does it 062.9 or something. So it’s not even the fastest
⏹️ ▶️ John production car that you can get from 60. Like there are there are below Sarah sub three supercars out there.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, but not a lot of them are these big heavy four door sedans. I mean, that’s that’s the big this I think this is the
⏹️ ▶️ John only one. Yeah, you don’t expect it to come out of there. But what I’m saying is that this, the three second,
⏹️ ▶️ John like being in the low to mid threes has been a thing for supercars for a long time. But it has not been
⏹️ ▶️ John a thing for a very long time for four door sedan looking
⏹️ ▶️ Marco things. Right, I mean, my car is ridiculous. And it does it in, I think, 4.2, 4.3, something like that. So it’s a pretty substantial difference.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Once you’re going, when you’re just driving normally, it just feels like a really fast sports car. I would say it
⏹️ ▶️ Marco is similar but faster than the M5. It feels very similar
⏹️ ▶️ Marco on the highway. If you’re passing somebody, it actually isn’t that different going from 60 to 80. It feels about the same.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco There actually is some responsiveness lag when you’re already going fast and you want to push
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it to go around somebody. So it actually is very similar to a gas engine. At highway speeds, it felt very
⏹️ ▶️ Marco similar to me. Do you think
⏹️ ▶️ John that might have just been the acceleration curves on the
⏹️ ▶️ John pedal? I don’t figure what they call it, but they have different curves. Like how much do you have to press the pedal to
⏹️ ▶️ John add some proportional amount of engine? And a lot of what car makers do to make their car
⏹️ ▶️ John feel more or less sporty is to change what happens in the first inch of travel. Is the second
⏹️ ▶️ John inch of travel add seven times as much gas as the first inch of travel or the reverse?
⏹️ ▶️ John So I can imagine that, especially since it’s all electronic, they can decide how
⏹️ ▶️ John that curve, like they can do a software update to change it, or maybe it’s the driving mode type of thing, Because that’s the one thing I wouldn’t
⏹️ ▶️ John expect from a Tesla is anything that is perceptible as lag having to do with
⏹️ ▶️ John the nature of the drivetrain, as opposed to just programming at a curve. Because there’s no turbo spinning up, right? There’s
⏹️ ▶️ John no gears being changed. It’s just merely give more juice to the electric motors.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I mean, maybe I was slightly decelerating right before I did that, and the regeneration thing was
⏹️ ▶️ Marco kicked in. Maybe I had to disengage the regenerative motor or the engine thing, something like
⏹️ ▶️ John that. Oh, yeah. And it’s weird that with the one pedal driving, How’d you like that? Or were you doing that?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco That actually, so the M5 has a lot of engine suction. So compared to the M5,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it just felt like it had a little bit more engine suction. Like it was, I didn’t
⏹️ ▶️ Marco do like all one pedal driving. I was using the brakes like a normal person. But you could do
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it. I could see how you could do it. I didn’t do it really to come to complete stops. I was just doing it to slow
⏹️ ▶️ Marco down the way I do with engine braking. So it was fine. But yeah, anyway, so like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco driving around the handling this now, John, you had mentioned that the handling feels like nothing else
⏹️ ▶️ Marco because it has the battery pack very low. This giant heavy weight sitting very low. So the center of gravity
⏹️ ▶️ Marco is very low and it handles very like it. The car stays very flat or is that a fair assessment of what you said?
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, just and it doesn’t feel the suspension doesn’t feel overly stiff because normally the car is flat. That’s like, you know,
⏹️ ▶️ John because they have very stiff suspension. And then when you go over bumps, you feel like you’re being jostled.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Right going through the turns. I would say that it actually didn’t feel noticeably different
⏹️ ▶️ Marco than my car because like good sports cars have always tried to achieve that. Like they always
⏹️ ▶️ Marco try to have like very little body roll and they’ll play tricks with bars or like the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco suspension, you know, like they’ll play tricks to make it better and, you know, to just minimize
⏹️ ▶️ Marco body roll and keep the car flat during cornering. So like it didn’t, it didn’t feel,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it felt great, but like it didn’t feel dramatically better in cornering than a good sports car
⏹️ ▶️ Marco would. Did you go over
⏹️ ▶️ John potholes, though? Because I think that’s where you’d notice. Because I’ve driven your car for short distances.
⏹️ ▶️ John And driving your car over the totally destroyed roads of Massachusetts, I could feel that
⏹️ ▶️ John whatever mode you had it in, that this car has sports car suspension. Because going over those potholes felt way rougher than
⏹️ ▶️ John it does in my Accord with its smushy, like every man’s suspension. Whereas in the Tesla, on the
⏹️ ▶️ John same crappy Massachusetts roads, it felt flat like your car in turns. But then you’d go over potholes,
⏹️ ▶️ John and it would also suck them up a little bit better. the spring rates are softer on the Tesla because
⏹️ ▶️ John they can afford to be because the center of gravity is so low and it’s just less jostling. But it may be
⏹️ ▶️ John a close thing. But having been a passenger in the Tesla and having driven your car,
⏹️ ▶️ John I think the Tesla wins on comfort over terrible roads. And I would assume yours wins in handling,
⏹️ ▶️ John but I haven’t driven either one of them to say what the handling is like at the extremes.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Well, OK. So the Tesla does have electric power steering.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Now, I said a couple shows ago, how I’ve never heard anybody say that electric power
⏹️ ▶️ Marco steering was even as good as hydraulic steering. Like everyone’s
⏹️ ▶️ Marco always like, well, it’s getting better, but no one ever says it’s as good. So this has electric power steering.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I would say it’s as good.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I wouldn’t say it’s better, but I would say it’s as good as the steering in my car. Now again, this was only
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a 15 minute test drive. And so maybe if I own one of these things and drove it all the time, maybe I
⏹️ ▶️ Marco would have a different opinion of it. But in that test drive, we had a lot, I had a lot of nice turns
⏹️ ▶️ Marco at low and high speeds, and I did not notice the steering.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Like I asked halfway through, I’m like, oh, is this electric power steering? I realized, oh, this is probably electric.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And I asked, and the guy said yes. And I was very impressed because it just,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it felt like a good sports car steering system. And the suspension,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I would say the suspension felt like it was very advanced because I
⏹️ ▶️ Marco was able to have a lot of fun with the steering and everything and the suspension and the speed
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and it never it never felt either too marshmallowy like alexis or too uncomfortably
⏹️ ▶️ Marco firm like the 1M was like it just felt good but you still felt the road you still
⏹️ ▶️ Marco felt what was going on and so I really had I have nothing bad to say about
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the steering or the suspension now the grip this so
⏹️ ▶️ Marco this is an all-wheel drive car as earlier I’m a fan of all-wheel drive this car has
⏹️ ▶️ Marco in my 15 minutes of test drive in 20 degree weather on snow tires
⏹️ ▶️ Marco this car has the most advanced all-wheel drive system I’ve ever felt by
⏹️ ▶️ Marco far by far in a way the best all-wheel drive I’ve ever felt as measured by
⏹️ ▶️ Marco by the by my previous xDrive3 series and a couple of Lexuses I’ve driven
⏹️ ▶️ Marco for parents and stuff and I think that’s I don’t think I’ve ever driven a Subaru to
⏹️ ▶️ John secret is they have a whole separate engine for the other set of wheels.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco The the all-wheel drive system in this thing was Shockingly good. I have like it
⏹️ ▶️ Marco was insane and the traction control system Now again, this was cold weather.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So the tires were a little bit a little bit hard cold weather there was, because it’s New York
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and it’s the winter, there was a bunch of gravel all over a lot of the roads and I would do things like, you know,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco turning, turning left at an intersection, so like making a 90 degree turn from a stop,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco just like really irresponsibly quickly, like just seeing if I could, like trying to
⏹️ ▶️ Marco lose grip. And I was able to lose grip occasionally, but what’s interesting about it is, not only
⏹️ ▶️ Marco is it very hard to lose grip, but when it does, it’s not like the gas systems where
⏹️ ▶️ Marco they just cut the engine power for a few seconds which really kind of ruins the fun and makes
⏹️ ▶️ Marco people want to turn off these systems.
⏹️ ▶️ John Or they use the brakes to brake individual
⏹️ ▶️ Marco wheels. If it was doing that, I don’t know if it was, if it was doing that I couldn’t tell. It just felt like,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it was the best feeling system I’ve ever felt. I mean it was the best all-wheel drive system ever. I cannot
⏹️ ▶️ Marco say enough good things about that all-wheel drive system and I don’t know how it does in the snow. I didn’t try it in the snow,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I didn’t have the chance. I’ve heard it’s very good, but I don’t know. But just trying
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to drive it in a fun, slightly irresponsible, spirited way,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it was amazing. It didn’t feel like a nanny. It felt like it was helping me do what I told the car to
⏹️ ▶️ Marco do. When you go from, you know, when you’re doing that insane mode acceleration from zero
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to a million, and it hits you in the face with how fast it is, at no point in
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that did I ever feel like it was unsafe or about to lose control and go off the road. I can’t, I have
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to imagine that a big part of that is this all-wheel drive system. The, when you go from zero to going so quickly,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you think like, how can the tires even do this? Like, it feels like, it feels like it should be beyond the limits of the tires,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco of the grip they can offer, but it, it still does it. So, traction control system, all-wheel drive
⏹️ ▶️ Marco system, incredible. I would even like, I would like, I would intentionally like, take a quick turn around like,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco for like a little bend, and like, intentionally put one of the rear wheels on gravel, so that when I
⏹️ ▶️ Marco floored it, it would, it should lose grip. And it did, but it would regain it so
⏹️ ▶️ Marco quickly. And you never felt like you were in any real danger of
⏹️ ▶️ Marco going off the road, or even slightly losing control. I mean, it was incredible. Overall,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco driving this car, I would say it is an amazing sports car. Like, I knew
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it would be fast. I did not know it would be this sporty and this fun. It was just
⏹️ ▶️ Marco an incredibly fun, sporty, fast, exhilarating drive. I cannot say enough good things
⏹️ ▶️ Marco about how amazing this car felt to drive.
⏹️ ▶️ John It’s like the Apple of cars, really. Oh,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Here we go. Anyway, I do have some concerns. You know, if I were to own one of
⏹️ ▶️ Marco these things, I, of course, do have range anxiety. You know, it goes like 260
⏹️ ▶️ Marco miles in ideal circumstances. I they have a calculator on their site and it’s like, OK, well, if you set
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the air conditioning to this and you actually drive this fast on the highway, you know, how much how much range can you
⏹️ ▶️ Marco actually expect? and mine was more like 200 miles. Because it’s like, all right, well, what if it’s 100 degrees,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I have the air conditioning on, I’m driving 85. You know, so then it’s like, then it’s down to like 200. So
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it’s not a deal killer, but it’s a big issue. I’m not sure I’d want this to be our only car in our
⏹️ ▶️ Marco family, you know. I know people who do that, but I’m not sure I could do that.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco The bigger issue with this, and this ties back into what Apple might possibly do in this, because I think the answer is Apple would
⏹️ ▶️ Marco do something pretty similar to what Tesla’s doing, because there’s not much else. because the problem is
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a bigger issue I think is charging speed and the reason why
⏹️ ▶️ Marco is because electric cars beyond like you know the battery tech
⏹️ ▶️ Marco in order just to move a car like this this far they just need a ton
⏹️ ▶️ Marco of power like by household electric power standards they just need a ridiculous amount of
⏹️ ▶️ Marco power. The limitation is not how quickly the batteries can accept a charge necessarily,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it’s much more limited by how much charge your household wiring is able to give
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it with the kind of outlet you have installed. Like that’s that’s the big limitation with these cars.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And you know, and they have special high-powered charges you can install, but biggest thing, like for me, like my concern
⏹️ ▶️ Marco with a road trip would be, you know, problem one would be range, but then the problem two is like where do you plug
⏹️ ▶️ Marco in when you get there? To give you some point of reference, I did a little bit of research here. So the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco common North American 120 volt outlet. If you plug into that with
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a Model S, you gain three miles of range per hour. Three.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco That’s not very good. It takes about four days to charge your car.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So suppose you drive your car to somewhere where the only place you can plug in
⏹️ ▶️ Marco is like through some long extension cord into somebody’s house or some hotel. You can plug into a regular
⏹️ ▶️ Marco outlet. Okay, then you have to stay there for four days to fully charge. So, you know, that’s
⏹️ ▶️ Marco probably not a great option for people. Now, what you’re supposed to do,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco if you have one of these in your house, is you’re supposed to get basically a dryer outlet installed,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a 200 volt, 40 amp outlet installed, which is common for dryers these days. Into a dryer outlet, you can charge
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the car up fully in nine hours, which is great, so that’s fine. But, you know, I
⏹️ ▶️ Marco drive frequently to places like upstate to in-laws’ house or my mom’s house.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I visited you guys at your houses before. How likely is it that you’re gonna drive somewhere
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and you’re gonna be able to plug into somebody’s extra dryer outlet and have that be within
⏹️ ▶️ Marco like 30 feet of where your car is parked?
⏹️ ▶️ John Did you look for supercharger stations along your normal routes?
⏹️ ▶️ Casey That’s what I was gonna say, because there’s one very close to our house, like 10, 15 minutes
⏹️ ▶️ Casey away. Now to be fair, that doesn’t necessarily mean you would want to ditch your Tesla 20 minutes away from the house.
⏹️ ▶️ John Oh, just leave it there? Well, the superchargers charge it in less than an hour, though, right?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, they give you, I believe it’s an 80% charge in about 40 minutes. So it’s not a full charge, but
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it’s enough in something like 40 minutes. Now, so I asked a couple Tesla
⏹️ ▶️ Marco owners, and I did some reading of, what do Tesla owners do? How do you take road trips? Because
⏹️ ▶️ Marco chances are, you’re not going to want to arrive at someone’s house nearly empty and then
⏹️ ▶️ Marco just not have anywhere to plug in. That’s not great. And you’re also
⏹️ ▶️ Marco probably not going to want to be bugging your hotel or your friend’s house or your parents
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to be like, hey, can I run this giant extension cord to your dryer outlets? If
⏹️ ▶️ Marco they even have one, how many people do have a spare dryer outlet, period?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Let alone one that you can use that is in range of your car, like physical range.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco That’s not a great solution. That’s not a great position to be in. I’ve heard from a number of people,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco thank you for all those people who’ve responded to me. I’ve heard from a number of people who have told me about various…
⏹️ ▶️ Marco There are apps and maps and there’s a thing called PlugShare, if I remember correctly. There’s a site
⏹️ ▶️ Marco where people can volunteer their houses to other EV owners. Like, you can use my
⏹️ ▶️ Marco charging point at my house if you’re passing through. That’s all cool and everything, but
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I really prefer to be independent and to not need to rely
⏹️ ▶️ Marco on going around some weird neighborhood at night trying to figure out, like, hey, where’s the nearest charge point? Can I
⏹️ ▶️ Marco charge up here? Like, trying to bum something off somebody. That’s not my style. I really feel very uncomfortable doing that.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So you can do it, but it’s not easy, and it’s not convenient, and it’s not great.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And from what I gather, what most people do is you basically supercharge right before
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you get somewhere, and then when you leave, like on your way out, you supercharge as you leave. And that
⏹️ ▶️ Marco way you have enough charge to do some local driving while you’re there, And then, you know, on the highway you’re fine. But,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you know, every time you stop at a supercharger, that adds like an hour to your trip. You know, like you
⏹️ ▶️ Marco gotta get there, stop, plug in. Hopefully there’s nobody already taking up all the spots.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco That’s a big problem if there is, because that adds another 40 minutes to your trip. You wait for them to come back.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Hopefully you plug in, you get 40 minutes of charge there. You know, you go in and have some lunch or whatever. But
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that’s a big delay for a road trip. Especially if the trip’s long. This is only every 250 miles or so. So
⏹️ ▶️ Marco like, it’s only every three or four hours, you gotta stop for an hour. Like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that’s, that kind of sucks.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Now, did they ever actually start doing the five minute complete
⏹️ ▶️ Casey battery swap? You know what I’m talking about? Yeah, they talked
⏹️ ▶️ Marco about that. I don’t know if it’s actually deployed anywhere. And I’m not sure that I would do it necessarily, but
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it’s an interesting idea. Cause you know, again, like the problem here is just
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the speed at which you can deliver this much power into such a tremendous battery pack.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And that’s going to be hard to solve. If Apple does a pure electric vehicle,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you could do a fuel cell. Fuel cells are options. I know Toyota announced, I think, today that they’re doing a fuel
⏹️ ▶️ Marco cell vehicle. So that’s interesting. But then you need hydrogen everywhere. That has its
⏹️ ▶️ Marco own set of challenges and issues. And anyway, so this is a problem.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco It’s not a deal killer for a lot of people, but it But it is certainly a major inconvenience. The fact
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that you can’t just fill up anywhere and that filling up takes so long. That
⏹️ ▶️ Marco is really a problem. And, again, not a deal killer for a lot of people, but a significant problem and a significant
⏹️ ▶️ Marco barrier to adoption. Anyway, so I have some reservations about
⏹️ ▶️ Marco whether I should own one of these things. The practical side of it, that would
⏹️ ▶️ John But you don’t have any reservations about whether your wife should own one of these.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco She likes her car a lot. If we bought one of these it would have to be my car.
⏹️ ▶️ John Did you look at the luggage space and like the general, you know,
⏹️ ▶️ John 3GT-ishness? Like I feel like the space in this car maybe not
⏹️ ▶️ John as cavernous as her current car, but like it’s in the ballpark, right?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I think it might have more total space even though the 3GT has a pretty nice wide opening to
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the back but the Tesla might have more overall space. Anyway, I would say it was
⏹️ ▶️ Marco was the driving experience of this overall was the best
⏹️ ▶️ Marco driving car I’ve ever driven. Period.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Better than yours?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah. Wow. I really would like to have more time driving one of these things, even though I
⏹️ ▶️ Marco have reservations about it in practice. So anyway, after the test drive, I went back to
⏹️ ▶️ Marco my car to drive it home for 20 minutes. from the P85D
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to an M5, it made the M5 feel like two words
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that nobody has ever used to describe an M5. Slow and light.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Those are two words that no one has ever used to describe an
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John M5. You’re absolutely right.
⏹️ ▶️ John I would add a third one, noisy, but that’s just the radio anyway.
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco Yeah, that’s true. Yeah.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Now, yeah, so going back to the M5, I, first of all, I immediately missed the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco all-wheel drive. Immediately. Because, you know, it was a cold day on the hard tires, even though both cars
⏹️ ▶️ Marco had winter tires on them, but I immediately missed the all-wheel drive. Going back to shifting gears. Now,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I have discussed many times in KCU2, you know, I always, I love manually shifting my gears.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I do it with the DCT now, I did it with the stick in the past, and I do this because I don’t like the way automatics
⏹️ ▶️ Marco feel and behave and they make the decisions for you. I want maximum responsiveness for
⏹️ ▶️ Marco what I intend to do with the car, and I can only really get that by shifting gears. I don’t shift gears
⏹️ ▶️ Marco manually because I like the actual work of managing what gear the car is in,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and how it matches up with the engine, you know, power and everything. Like, the actual work
⏹️ ▶️ Marco of shifting the gears, I don’t care that much about, which is why I’d have no qualms going to the DCT from the manual,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and why I don’t regret that move at all. I want the car to behave the way I want, and to have the power available
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the way I want, not necessarily do I need to be shifting gears constantly. Having no gears at
⏹️ ▶️ Marco all, and having infinite power available at any speed with very little lag,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I can honestly say, after 15 minutes of driving at least, that’s just better. Like,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it’s simply better. Like, I thought it would be less fun, or less like a driving experience, but
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it wasn’t. It just felt better. And, you know, it really… Overall,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it really felt like, when I went back to my car, it immediately felt like the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco clunky bad hack that gas cars really are. Like gas cars are such
⏹️ ▶️ Marco terrible hacks. Piles and piles of terrible hacks, on top of terrible hacks. And
⏹️ ▶️ Marco John, as you said last week, the Tesla has so many fewer parts, it’s such a simpler mechanical thing.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco You feel that, you can really tell that this all-electric drivetrain,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it is something else, it is really something else. And unfortunately, this something else, I think, has ruined me
⏹️ ▶️ Marco forever. just having driven it once like now I’m ruined. Now every gas car seems like an old
⏹️ ▶️ Marco clunky hack. Did you look in the front?
⏹️ ▶️ John I did, yeah. And the back? That’s what I was saying, like where’s the car? You open up all the doors and you open up all the things,
⏹️ ▶️ John you’re like, this is like a magic trick.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I know, well and like they have like in my mall showroom, which I went to the mall a few days ago for something else, so I stopped at the showroom
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to look at their paint and stuff. They have like a disassembled one where it’s only the drive train.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So and they had these, I’m sure, in most of their showrooms. It’s just like this giant silver rectangle of batteries
⏹️ ▶️ Marco with wheels on the corners. And that’s about it. There’s not much more to it.
⏹️ ▶️ John But it has the motors, though, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah. And so it’s like, you think, OK, well,
⏹️ ▶️ John this is just the chassis. And then you’ll have to add the engine. And it’s like, no, you could drive that thing if you
⏹️ ▶️ John put a steering wheel on it, right? It’s the car. It’s the wheels. It’s the suspension. It’s the battery. And it’s the power sources
⏹️ ▶️ Marco wheels. Yeah, exactly. So I mean, it really, I would say, don’t drive
⏹️ ▶️ Marco one of these. because it will ruin you like I mean it is
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you know my lease is coming up in a year and an all-wheel-drive M5 is
⏹️ ▶️ Marco probably gonna come out in about three more years but I think by the time an all-wheel-drive
⏹️ ▶️ Marco M5 comes out I will probably already be driving one of these and I won’t want to go back
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to a gas car like no matter how good of a gas car it is once you’ve driven one of these
⏹️ ▶️ Marco things it is shockingly different and shockingly good like again I thought there was gonna be major
⏹️ ▶️ Marco trade-offs in fun and sportiness and handling and there just weren’t
⏹️ ▶️ Marco at all like it was just better it was so much better and so much simpler and so
⏹️ ▶️ Marco much it’s almost more pure you know from a pure perspective like it’s more pure because there’s there’s
⏹️ ▶️ Marco like less there’s less stuff like managing all these different like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco hacks and and levels of power delivery it’s just you just push the pedal to go and you can
⏹️ ▶️ Marco do whatever you want with the steering and and it’s it’s just amazing
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and and so I think you know if I can make an analogy to conclude this whole long rant that’s
⏹️ ▶️ Marco now been almost a half hour long electric cars are a lot like SSDs and the transition to SSDs
⏹️ ▶️ Marco where you know as soon as you use an SSD for the first time it ruins you you know like you
⏹️ ▶️ Marco see an SSD you’re like oh man I can never go back to it and as soon as you have
⏹️ ▶️ Marco used one any spinning disk that you use after that it’s just like, oh, this is horrible. It’s so slow.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco It’s such a hack. You know, it’s terrible. So once you have you, once you’ve driven an electric
⏹️ ▶️ Marco car, it’s very similar. It’s like you just, it ruins everything else for you. But like the SSD
⏹️ ▶️ Marco transition, it also comes with significant cost and significant
⏹️ ▶️ Marco limitations up front. And maybe eventually down like years down the road,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco maybe we’ll be past that, but it’s going to be slower than the SSD transition was.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And so electric, pure electric cars are incredible in a lot of ways. Inconvenient
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and limited and expensive in other ways, but they’re just so much
⏹️ ▶️ Marco better at the core driving experience in so many ways
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that I think a lot of people are going to be willing to accept those costs and those limitations just
⏹️ ▶️ Marco like SSDs. And I think it’s very, very likely that I will get one of
⏹️ ▶️ Marco these when leases up.
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, I said last week referencing Tesla that I said that they were the first company that
⏹️ ▶️ John actually made a good electric car not like good for an electric car but a good car that happens to also
⏹️ ▶️ John be electric and it sounds like you agree.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Totally I mean completely totally agree I I like I’ve already looked at
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I like priced it out with the options I want and it is actually more expensive but what I’d like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to do I’d actually like to if I can find a dealer that has one I’d like to test drive the non P version
⏹️ ▶️ Marco just the just the 85D. So it’s still the all-wheel drive, but it’s less power,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco because I don’t intend to do the insane amount of acceleration from a stop like ever, because
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I actually didn’t like it, as I said. It was unpleasant. So I’m curious, the non-P1,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it still has all-wheel drive and everything, that is like $20,000 less and a good few hundred dollars a month
⏹️ ▶️ Marco less on the lease. So I’m going to look at that and see if I can drive one of those and see if I care about the the difference.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco But I’m pretty sure I’m gonna be getting one of these things. And Casey, never drive one because
⏹️ ▶️ Marco this will ruin you too. Like this this is how the manual transmission is going to die. We all thought
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that it was gonna die because everyone moved to automatics. In reality, the manual is gonna
⏹️ ▶️ Marco be killed by the lack of a need for a transmission.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yeah, you’re right. It’s wild to me that you liked it that much. The fact that you liked
⏹️ ▶️ Casey it, not really surprising at all. The fact that you liked it this much, I do find
⏹️ ▶️ Casey surprising, especially because, you know, I, I feel like BMW
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and Apple, and I know you guys think I’m crazy for, for comparing them and saying they’re similar, but I really do feel like they are in a lot of
⏹️ ▶️ Casey ways. And, and Apple in a lot of ways tries to get you invested in
⏹️ ▶️ Casey the experience of owning an Apple product with the retail stores.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And I’m trying to think of other examples, but I can’t, but, but just the whole experience of owning an Apple product. products. Similarly, BMW,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey maybe they don’t actively try to get you in a similar position. But, you know, when you and I and underscore went
⏹️ ▶️ Casey to the performance driving school, that was certainly an actual event
⏹️ ▶️ Casey that we learned things. But you could also say it was a two day BMW sales pitch that we paid for the privilege
⏹️ ▶️ Casey of going to see. And so in a lot of ways, I feel like you and I have bought into the whole BMW
⏹️ ▶️ Casey air quotes culture. And plus, we both drive like jerks. So that helps too.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey but the point is, you know, I, I feel like you and I are slash were all in on Apple,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey all in on the BMW, like experience. And for you to just violently
⏹️ ▶️ Casey say, oh my goodness, this is definitely like your, your head is swiveled around entirely.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And I’m not saying that’s a bad thing at all. In fact, that’s probably a good thing because I think this is the future, but.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey But I’m surprised how enthusiastic you are over this experience
⏹️ ▶️ Casey after having spent so much time going to Munich, going to the performance driving school,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey owning three different BMWs in the last 10 years, whatever it’s been. I’m surprised that you
⏹️ ▶️ Casey are this into it this quickly.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Well, that’s, you know, that’s, this is true disruption. True disruption is something that makes everything else seem totally
⏹️ ▶️ Marco irrelevant and useless and old. Like, that’s how good this was. It was incredible.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And as I said, the handling, the speed, and the all-wheel drive system were just incredible.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco This is going to be ridiculously successful, I think, among anyone
⏹️ ▶️ Marco who can afford it, which is admittedly a very small group, but it’s going to be really good.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I think what you just said, though, about buying in and being maybe a fanboy, maybe that’s the right
⏹️ ▶️ Marco word, just like buying in a lot to one company’s culture or products
⏹️ ▶️ Marco or identity. This is one of the reasons why,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco right now, I’m a huge fan of coffee and Apple stuff and BMWs,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco but there’s a reason why my Twitter username doesn’t include… It’s not like Coffee Marco
⏹️ ▶️ Marco or Apple Fan Marco. I never try to tie my identity
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to something that could so easily change over time. And I think
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it’s important for everybody to consider this, like, you know, with your own identities and with, you know, the teams
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you think you’re on, what you think makes you, you know, and
⏹️ ▶️ Marco if you consist of a set of, like, brand names and foods you like,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you know, that, don’t tie too firmly to that, because that stuff can change. You
⏹️ ▶️ Marco know, what if tomorrow I develop a digestive problem and I can’t drink coffee anymore? Like,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I don’t want to have coffee have been this giant part of my identity that all of a sudden I feel like I’m losing part of my identity.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco If BMW starts making cars I don’t like, I have no problem buying something for somebody else. If Apple starts making
⏹️ ▶️ Marco computers I don’t like, I have no problem buying computers from somebody else. I hope that doesn’t happen with Apple because these
⏹️ ▶️ Marco somebody else’s out there are not that good. But if that happens,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I’m fine changing those things. It is very important that I never
⏹️ ▶️ Marco lock my identity to some external affiliation to a brand or a thing
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that I can’t easily get away from. That’s unwise. And it
⏹️ ▶️ Marco makes people make bad decisions and have stupid conversations and leave stupid comments in people’s comment forms.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So yeah, I mean, look, right now I have a BMW because
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it was the best car in the world that I could get at the time that I got it. And
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I worked hard enough to get it and I was really happy about that. And I still am very happy with it. But now I
⏹️ ▶️ Marco found something that is substantially better in a few key ways that matter a lot to me. And again,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco in some key ways, it’s substantially worse. You know, my car can go 300, 400 miles easy on the highway,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and then I can stop and I can fill up in 10 minutes anywhere
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and go. And you can’t do that with a Tesla. And that’s not going to be the kind
⏹️ ▶️ Marco of thing that all of a sudden comes next year. That’s going to be a long-term thing that you
⏹️ ▶️ Marco might never be able to do. It’s not even guaranteed. Like, oh, eventually, it’ll charge in 10 minutes. It’ll be fine.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco That might never happen. Certainly, within the lifetime of the car that you buy today, that you own,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco within the lifetime of anything you buy today, that almost certainly won’t happen. But you need
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to be open to the possibility of something better might come along. And
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I think in this case, something did. If there
⏹️ ▶️ John are any wealthy benefactors listening to this show, please keep in mind that I still want the mid-engine
⏹️ ▶️ John V8 Ferrari, whatever the current one is. So that’s 488,
⏹️ ▶️ John and just keep up with the model. So just that has not changed.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Wow. Now, Marco, I think just to close this post show,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey just let this show you that every great once in a while, doing your homework is
⏹️ ▶️ Casey actually worth it.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, probably not. That was really long. I’m sorry. That was
⏹️ ▶️ John incredibly long. Talking about brand affiliation and everything. Everything you said is true, but
⏹️ ▶️ John in your case specifically, I think that what it highlights is that the aspect of your
⏹️ ▶️ John personality and your dealings with sort of products and brands
⏹️ ▶️ John that wins out over brand allegiance is your desire for new shiny
⏹️ ▶️ John And so That is the primary motivator of
⏹️ ▶️ John your actions. And then, ooh, this is better. Oh, is there something better? Oh, that’s better. Oh, that’s better. And that sort of nature
⏹️ ▶️ John of like, which doesn’t manifest itself in your programming language things, but totally manifests
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey itself in your choice of foods, cleaning materials,
⏹️ ▶️ John things that you buy, you know what I mean? Like the cars that you drive, the computers
⏹️ ▶️ John that you use, oh, I gotta get a new Mac Pro. Now the new iMac is shinier. Like just you are always looking
⏹️ ▶️ John for a product that’s better than the product you have. Testing a million light bulbs, is there a better light bulb than these eight light bulbs
⏹️ ▶️ John I’ve already tried? Is it better in some subtle way? I need to find the best light bulb. It’s
⏹️ ▶️ Marco been a while with light. I gotta find a new, I gotta look at light bulbs again.
⏹️ ▶️ John don’t have any brand allegiance to light bulbs. You’re just like, I just want the best light bulb. And if there’s a better light bulb out there and I don’t have it, I’m just
⏹️ ▶️ John replacing every light bulb in this damn house. Like I got
⏹️ ▶️ Marco It’s not crap, but it’s just like, I found something that’s just way better. I know, I
⏹️ ▶️ John know, but like I was saying, But that that that your personal drive to find the best
⏹️ ▶️ John one of whatever for the things that you’re into is is overriding what it is. I think you
⏹️ ▶️ John do have some allegiance to like, you know, you really like BMWs, you like what they do, you bought multiple BMWs
⏹️ ▶️ John or whatever, but it’s only until you find something that’s better than that, like it doesn’t that overrides the
⏹️ ▶️ John the well because you did have loyalty to BMW for you know, the Tesla has existed. And if you had test drive,
⏹️ ▶️ John test driven the non insane mode, non like high powered one of these years ago, you
⏹️ ▶️ John might have had the same reaction, maybe without the part where you felt like you were being punched in the face, but
⏹️ ▶️ John you might have had the same reaction. What was keeping you from
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco doing that? Well,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco but it only had all-wheel drive like two months ago and the high-powered motor and
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John everything. Yeah,
⏹️ ▶️ John I guess so too, but like, again, you’d have to drive the two-wheel drive one, see if it’s right. You already have a two-wheel
⏹️ ▶️ John drive car now. You bought a two-wheel drive M5, so there is a little bit of like the whole brand loyalty
⏹️ ▶️ John and the fact that you don’t want to keep looking for a new thing. Like once you find the thing you have, you want to enjoy it for some period of time before you revisit
⏹️ ▶️ John but I would say that that is the dominant part of your personality over overriding all the other parts. This is
⏹️ ▶️ Marco why I lease cars and also because I stress out too much when I don’t because I oh god
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I hate whenever I had a car that I owned I was such an incredible ball of
⏹️ ▶️ Marco nerves and just total wreck about it like any any little scratch oh my god I’m gonna look at this for 10
⏹️ ▶️ John years like yeah even when you own crappy cars
⏹️ ▶️ Marco yeah yeah because it because then it when I own the crappy cars it was less about this
⏹️ ▶️ Marco is going to destroy value and make me lose a lot of money and more about I’m going to look at the stretch of the next ten years.
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, no, I’m resigning to that. I have crappy cars and like I tried to keep my new car nice for a
⏹️ ▶️ John long time but it’s just, it’s impossible. Like this winter, like I
⏹️ ▶️ John can’t imagine what my car is gonna look like when I finally
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco clean it off in the spring and see
⏹️ ▶️ John what the hell is underneath all the road salt and grime and disgustingness but yeah.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I can tell you it’s gonna look like a very average, completely forgettable
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John car. I’ve already
⏹️ ▶️ John established it’s not average. It
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey is so average. It’s
⏹️ ▶️ John more of the average from a decade ago. But anyway, I keep my cars until they die or until their resale
⏹️ ▶️ John value is almost zero. Like, you know, oh, we better sell this because if I don’t sell it soon, I’m going to have to give it away and that may be
⏹️ ▶️ John difficult. Like that’s how long I keep my cars, right? So I’m not a car leaser.
⏹️ ▶️ John My Ferrari, though, I would drive very little, just so you know, and I would try to maintain its value. So
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco don’t feel like you’re giving me a Ferrari.
⏹️ ▶️ John Okay, now somebody will buy you one. Wealthy benefactor who’s listening, I will take good care of it. And you won’t park it
⏹️ ▶️ John under the acorn tree,
⏹️ ▶️ John Oh, no, never. I will
⏹️ ▶️ John different house for it to live
⏹️ ▶️ Casey So this is why you buy used cars, because by the time it arrives in your garage,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey it’s already been nicked or dinged in some way, shape, or form. And so the bets are already off at that point.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey You just have to embrace it. I don’t think you can do the 85D.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I think you’d have to do the P85D, because the performance difference is substantial.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco It’s a large difference, yeah. If it was if it was like if it was like in the four second range versus 3.2
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I’d do it. Oh, that would be plenty, but yeah, it’s it’s a pretty substantial difference. Yeah, I think you’re right unfortunately
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I mean you have to turn on insane mode
⏹️ ▶️ John you can you’ll try it because it may be what you like is the fact that There’s no pauses or noise
⏹️ ▶️ John or like just the sort of the whoosh You know the electric so try the slower quote-unquote
⏹️ ▶️ John slower one and see because again like is the slower wonder all that much slower from 50 to 80
⏹️ ▶️ John Maybe not that much that you would notice
⏹️ ▶️ Marco yeah well I’m a little concerned because the the the super P1 had it mentions
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a Different suspension in its description and what I liked so much about it was the suspension in
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the all-wheel drive system So I suspect I’m just gonna have to go with the big one. Well just you know test them all I’m such
⏹️ ▶️ John asshole Well, you know that you overcame that part that the part of you that was embarrassed
⏹️ ▶️ John to buy like the ridiculous car You overcame that for the m5 so you’re like you’ve crossed that hurdle now it’ll be easier to
⏹️ ▶️ John pull the trigger on. Just give me the, whatever the most expensive Tesla you have is, I want that
⏹️ ▶️ Marco one. Well, and this is actually, like, driving around my neighborhood, like, I do feel a little self-conscious because my car is very loud.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Because the M5, like, the M cars are all, they’re extra loud. You won’t have that problem anymore. I know, and yeah, exactly.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Like, and my neighbors have even made comments like, oh, we can hear you coming up the block, like.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Well, that might also have to do with you not shifting before 5,000 RPM. Why would I? Just