B/F: The Drive Thru #17

• Ford's Mustang Mach-E Trounced Tesla in Norway Last Month
• 1,100 HP Ford Mustang Shelby GT500 Shows Tesla Model S Plaid It’s Not Invincible

• EV start-up Rivian beats Tesla, GM, Ford as first automaker to produce electric pickup

• Mercedes Starts Building Its Tesla Model S Fighter

• Tesla moving headquarters to Texas from California
• Tesla tempted drivers with 'insane' mode and now is tracking them to judge safety. Experts say it's ludicrous.
• A West Virginia city is taking a Tesla patrol car for a test drive
• Another Tesla in autopilot hits parked emergency vehicle (state trooper)
• Tesla is under investigation because its cars keep hitting emergency vehicles

1000hp McLaren vs Tesla Plaid

Tesla Roadster Door Handle – Reveal!

Tesla “Easter Eggs” discovered in voice command system

[00:00:00] Hello and welcome to the Gran Touring Motorsports podcast, break Fix, where we’re always fixing the break into something motorsports related. The drive-through is GTMs monthly news episode, and is sponsored in part by organizations like h hpde junkie.com, garage riot, american muscle.com, hooked on driving and many others.

If you’re interested in becoming a sponsor of the drive-through, look no further than www.gt motorsports.org under about and then advertising and sponsorship. Thank you again to everyone that supports Grantor Motorsports, our podcast, break Fix and all the other services we provide, which sadly brings us into our favorite section.

Used to be called A Side of Golden Nuggets. It was, would you like Fries with that? It’s changed names several times, but now thankfully it’s called We would be remiss. So Tanya, what would we be remiss about this month? If we didn’t talk about it? [00:01:00] We would be remiss. So I don’t wanna cover this one, but it’s here so we will, right.

Much like Brad doesn’t want to cover Corvettes, you get stuck with Teslas now. That’s your thing and And I’m fine with that. It’s just the latest. Gimmick that they’re doing. You know, some people think it’s quite clever. There’s those that would say it’s genius. I have a different definition for something that’s genius.

Being able to say, open butt hole for my electric charger door to pop open to me as a fully formed adult is not genius. For a 12 year old, yes, I could see this being quite hysterical. Thank you for bringing this to us. And you know, some people might think, oh, this is just a joke. It came out in April.

April Fools, no, I fully believe this [00:02:00] is no joke because I have ridden in Tesla with the fart sounds turned on for the turn signals. So instead of click, click, click. So this is completely on par. With something Musk would do. So I fully believe that you can say open butt hole. Oh, but it gets better because if you watch the video that accompanies this particular episode, a gentleman goes through and reviews this particular voice command feature.

There are variants to it. If you say open butt hole, it opens the charge port. If you say close butt hole, it closes the charge port. If you say, open my butt hole, it will open the trunk. Did you know that? You also wanna know why this isn’t genius. We’re gonna anthropomorphize a vehicle. It’s butt hole would not be on the side of it.

Where energy is going [00:03:00] into. Thank you. That’s, that’s my, my, that was gonna be my point. It shouldn’t be open butthole. It should be put in your mouth.

Oh yeah. Because that makes it better. I mean, this is, the mouth also isn’t on the side if you were going to like it rear end, but the mouth of the car to be the mouth is where fuel and energy goes in. I don’t know. I mean, don’t have, personally, I think this is just foreplay and dirty talk between Elon and, and Grimes and it just kind of translated into, you know, Tesla production.

Somebody he probably was, you know, getting down with, with Grimes and uh, he butt dialed somebody and uh, somebody at work, you heard him say, oh yeah, open your butt hole, open your butt hole. And they were like, Okay. I guess we’ll implement that into the car. Yes. Mr. Musk? Yes. Mr. Musk Right away. Mr. Musk. We’ll take care of that.

Yes. We’ll open the sir. I mean, clearly it sells. People are into it. I don’t know. I hot [00:04:00] take. It’s dumb. Speaking of dumb, let’s talk about the new door handles on the Tesla. Oh, that’s not gonna break, right? The video, you kind of get a sneak peek here of the new Tesla Roadster. We heard about this on the drag racing episode with Bobby Parks.

He’s really excited about this stuff. That steering wheel is effing useless. I love, like, I love that the Tesla Roadster is a coop. You’re right on all counts. But this new door handle, you know, the current Teslas, the door handle kind of pops out at you. It’s like electromechanical, and then you grab it, you know, all this kind of thing.

This new one is swipe, and the best part of it is you get the glimpse of the new quote unquote Roadster or coop rather. And you get to see this guy trying a new door handle and he must swipe it like, Four or five times and it doesn’t react. And I’m like, what is it? This would be the most infuriating thing on the planet for me if this is how I have to now open my door.

Well, apparently he was swiping up and you should have swiped down. I mean, I thought it was left and right. That’s different. But it [00:05:00] could be be like I together of in sw instead of swipe, they should call it foreplay. And he just didn’t know how to, how to get the car to do what he wanted it to do. Oh my god.

Uh, he should have swiped right. Oh, man, I, I, you know, I get, I get that. That’s where technology and innovation is taking us, but it’s just like the more things get so technically complex like that, it’s like. There’s simplicity in simple things that will always work. Like a door handle, like a button o on a, on a phone or, or, or on something.

Not some touch tone thing. But then the screen breaks and then you can’t turn your AC on or off or something in your, your car. All these infotainment systems, you know, a dial a button, it’s mechanical. Yeah, you can break it off if you’re an idiot, but for the most part, these things last decades, you know, I feel a rant coming.

I mean, if you’ve ever used one of those Samsung TVs, and I’m sure there’s other brands that do this with the touch front where there’s no buttons. I have one of [00:06:00] these, I’ve had the luxury of owning it for many years. I refused to touch it anymore because it’s infuriating to hit the volume 9,000 times.

Let me just go get the remote. So hopefully my key fob for Tesla will allow me to open the door without touching the stupid thing, because if it’s anything like the Samsung TVs, it’ll drive you nuts. That’s all I’m saying. And now how about, how’s it gonna handle rain when it’s pour down rain and there’s water flowing down the side, or ice it ices on the winter morning and you’re, you’re chiseling the ice off of it or pour, pouring warm water to melt it because I can’t open my door.

Cause you’re, you’re wearing a gloves, so I can’t sense that you’re opening the door. You gotta get the new, you gotta get those new gloves with the, the, the touch pads that you can use on your touchscreens. Or you just don’t buy a Tesla. How does that work when it’s wet? But I’ll just leave that there.

Let’s just leave that. I don’t know. I mean, I guess I, you know, maybe you, I mean, why don’t you just make an app on your phone? Un click the button and it opens. Swipe your phone. Then how do you get in when your phone’s dead? You say open butt [00:07:00] hole, and then a, a charging wire comes out and you can plug your phone in enough juice to, to recharge.

Open my butt hole. No. My butt hole. No, no, no, no. My butt hole. Can you imagine you’re standing at the charging station. Open my butt hole. Somebody doesn’t know what’s going on. Oh my God. I I’m thinking about the scenario where you go golfing with your boss and then you’re going back to the cars after you’re, you’re, you’re round 18, and then you walk up to your car nonchalantly with your boss parked right next to, and his, uh, S 600 Mercedes, because that’s what he’s going to drive.

And you just walk up and say, casually Tesla, open butt hole. What is your boss gonna think? He’s gonna say, do you have any gray poop on? Aw, he’s gonna say, he’s gonna say, uh, okay, you’re going to, this is your last day. Goodbye. You know, chances are [00:08:00] he’s a 12 year old boy on the inside too, so he’d probably like it.

I don’t know. Meanwhile, on planet Tesla, In other Tesla news, very unfortunate. There was a recent accident not too far from my personal stomping grounds, where a Tesla crashed into some trees that crash caused an explosion, fire, et cetera. The car engulfed in flames, varying reports saying the fire burned for four hours before it was put out, versus, oh no, it was put out immediately and the fire department just there for four hours, quenching re-ignition of the batteries, blah, blah, blah.

Regardless of whether it was minutes or four hours, that thing definitely burned long enough that there was nothing practically left. There was no interior, there was no roof, there was no hood, there were no body panels. I mean, granted, they might have ripped the doors off and everything and pushed them aside and weren’t seen in the picture, but [00:09:00] it was charred.

The mystery of this right now, this happened in a neighborhood. This happened on a neighborhood street leaving essentially a dead end, a cul-de-sac, an S-shaped street, not even probably too long as it was negotiating the first of the curve, the car loss control ended up in this patch of trees directly in front of people’s houses.

So obviously people heard the commotion or whatnot and called the fire department and called the police. The mystery of this is there were two people, uh, involved in this, obviously. Unfortunately, they did not survive. There was a passenger in the pa, front passenger seat, and there was a person in the back seat.

The authorities are very adamant in saying that there was nobody in the driver’s seat. So does that mean that this. Tesla was put on autopilot somehow. I don’t know how, cause I don’t know enough about their autopilot system in engaging. It [00:10:00] somehow got up to a high speed. Okay? And it must have been a high enough speed to Careem off the road and then explode into trees.

Cause I would hope that the neighborhood speed of 20 miles an hour, if you hit a tree, you wouldn’t burst into flames. Cuz every fricking accident would be Chernobyl. How did that happen? You know, the initial report, you know, the authorities contacting Tesla, et cetera. Elon is being very, you know, he’s saying that no, the, the data that we pulled the autopilot was not engaged.

This, that and the other. I mean, you know, how can that be possible if there was no, but no, no body found in the driver’s seat, you know, how did this happen? And these weren’t 20 something year old folks. These were older gentlemen. 59. 69, you know, so, you know, if they were 20 year olds, you, you could argue, oh yeah, he was in the driver’s seat.

He’s showing off. He jumped into the back seat. Oh, look, my car drives itself. I have a hard time believing, you know, a 59 or 69 year old’s gonna pull that stunt. [00:11:00] I could believe that there are people, unfortunately silly enough to be like, oh, look at my car. It can drive itself. I’m not gonna sit in the driver’s seat.

I don’t know why you do that, because you could still prove my car drives itself and sit in the fricking driver’s seat, like a sane, rational person in case something goes wrong. I don’t know, maybe. There was someone in the driver’s seat. Maybe they left the driver’s seat after the accident somehow trying to get out from the back of the car.

For some reason, I. With the fire and all that. I, I mean, I don’t know. It, it is very strange. It’ll be interesting to see when the, the official black box and all that stuff, you know, other third parties get to see the data to confirm or, or not confirm whether autopilot was on or not. I mean, this is a very bizarre, tragic accident that didn’t need to happen.

Nobody’s gonna comment on this story. No, I had nothing to say. I mean, I don’t, I don’t, I, there’s not much more to say on this. I’m sure more things will develop out of it. It’s, it’s very bizarre. Very unfortunate in [00:12:00] advertising, in such a way that makes it sound like it’s fully autonomous and it, again, people, it, there is no such thing right now as a fully autonomous personal vehicle out there.

Okay? None of the manufacturers have them. They, they are driver assist. And it’s not just Tesla, Cadillac, and Volvo. I mean, all these companies are using this, not deceiving marketing, but uh, I think, you know what I’m trying to say. Well, they, they’re all, they all misleading marketing. They all claim that they have, you know, the driver assist and all that.

But I, I really think Tesla’s been the most negligent in the way that they advertise it. Yeah. Where they very much have always made it sound like it’s this fully autonomous thing. No, it’s not. Guys, I, the other, the other people, and maybe it’s their learnings from Tesla, I don’t think quite go that far.

They make it a little bit more clear that it’s, you know, level whatever, and it’s just driver’s and, and that’s what they are. You’re still supposed to be in control of the vehicle. You’re not supposed to be reclined back and [00:13:00] sleeping. You should still be paying attention. At any rate, please do not just blindly let your car that doesn’t know what it’s doing, drive down the road because these people unfortunately, you know, lost their own lives, but, This was a neighborhood, granted it was I think pretty late at night, but what if it wasn’t and there were children out, or you know, a family coming home in their minivan and you know, you crash into somebody else.

Like don’t do stupid stuff. People Public service announcement, we’ve mentioned this before. Tesla profitability is all very confusing, isn’t it though? Because they’re quote unquote, we sell so many cars, blah, blah, blah. Ooh, our profits are so great. But without personally having gone, gone through their financial sheet, not the first time, you know, allegedly, you know, most of their profits come from the carbon credit selling that they do and not from their actual car sales.

And so they’ve been selling credits, carbon credits to some of the major manufacturers such asis.[00:14:00]

And you know, and others, and not surprisingly as STIs or you know, Ford or GM or Volkswagen or all these people start generating their own EVs. They’re going to be getting their own credits and Tesla. And Solanis has already said that they’re going to save themselves some Dore knee and pull out of whatever purchasing agreements they have, which will cost I think somewhere near to the tune of 240 million to Tesla that they will lose.

So considering apparently first quarter 2021 was something like five 33 million pre-tax income, now they’re gonna lose two 40. That’s pretty significant chunk of profit sheet. Now, if you’ve been continuing to follow our sub thread of Unsolved mysteries with respect to STIs, which Brad usually prefaces by saying, how the hell can they still maintain 700 horsepower V8 s on 400 year old [00:15:00] Mercedes chassis?

No, no, no, no. My, I usually say, thank God they can still produce 700 horsepower V8 monster mucks. But this is the reason why they can remember we said, they walk in the door and we, they go, ah, yeah, I give a shit about anything. They’re buying these credits from Tesla so they can continue to produce things like the Hellcat.

I mean, it all makes sense now. So if what Tanya’s saying is true and Chrysler is going back on that, or Solanis rather, that means that might be the death knell for cars, like the track hawk, the Hellcat, the, you know, the demon, all that kind of stuff. Whatever’s got that engine that Hemi 700 horsepower Hemi in it.

Why couldn’t they use those credits for their diesels? Nope, that’s, that’s a sore, sore subject though, my man. Moving on.

Oh, but as we said months and months ago, as the majors were waiting to see what [00:16:00] happened and begin to tool up and develop their EVs, they’re going to take their pot shots at Tesla. So what’s coming next? Donya? This question was asked last month because it was like, Hey, What is Mercedes doing? I haven’t heard anything yet.

Well, funny that was asked because they’re coming out in 2022 with their Mercedes-Benz e Q s, which is going to be their all electric entry into this realm. Brad, you look puzzled. Do you mean the Mercedes volt? Because that’s exactly what it looks like. Mercedes Chevrolet Volt. I’ll give you that. It does look like a volt.

It is being labeled a Tesla fighter. I don’t know what that means. I will say, when I was like, oh yes, Mercedes. Oh, and then when I saw it I was like, Ooh. Oh no, Mercedes. What have you done? Oh no, couldn’t you? Oh really? Maybe it’ll look better in person. No, no it won’t. No, it won’t. It looks like [00:17:00] you know what it looks like if you’ve ever been to a sporting event and they’ve got those, the inflatable flying around drone vehicles, that’s exactly what it looks like.

I expect to see this floating around at Capital’s game at the arena someday. No, I, I just want them to get rid of the EQs or whatever they’re calling it and put a b l a, so we can just go, what do you drive? I drive a block, blah. Unfortunately from its profile, it has some very, ugh, Tesla reminiscent lines to it.

And it’s like, come on Mercedes. Yeah, no fair. And then from the back, I don’t know from the back if the, if the Mercedes emblem wasn’t on there, I’d think it was Buick. But not even like the Buick of today, which is actually like they’ve been, that’s a Buick, that’s your grandfather’s grandfather’s Buick.

But this is like 10 years ago Buick. Don’t forget, we still got like the Lucid air and like all these other cars that are back there that are, that are chomping at Tesla’s bit, you know, trying to get in there and, and so, I don’t know, Mercedes, come on. We just talked about the [00:18:00] Brits. Just take a, a GLA or a C class and dump an EV in it and go boom.

And everybody goes, ah, it’s amazing. It’s kinda like Theron idea, right? It’s like, Revolutionize on the design you already have, and then retrofit the EV power plant into it. Everybody expects a certain level of design, quality and style from Mercedes. But this thing, I’m with you, Brad. It looks like something from GM 15 years ago.

I, so basically, when it comes to Tesla competition, I’d say Audi and Porsche winning. They’ve got the best looking Yes, uh, testified. Especially the ta I, I, I gotta, I gotta tip my hat to the tecan. It’s way better than the Panama from every angle. It’s not bad. You’re kind of like, Hey, we got the four door nine 11 finally, right after 35 years of trying and it doesn’t look bad.

It’s got good numbers and Porsche, it’s gonna take ’em a minute. Maybe they’re not necessarily concerned with 600 miles of range or whatever, but they’re gonna build a fighter jet. So I stopped listening to you for half a second cuz you said g L a and then something [00:19:00] else. And if they’re gonna go retro, can we like a 300 SL goal wing, or even in like an amg, go wing all electric.

Like, please, please, are you listening to that Sounds like a prime candidate for the Electrogenic motor swap. I give you that too. It’ll be unaffordable, but I would love to see it. Oh, not Tanium. Absolutely. I’d like to see that in, in more cars. That’s for sure. Without further ado, the uh, plaid edition of the Model S is finally slated to arrive.

It is happening and it is going to be the fastest production car ever, according to Mr. Musk, until the Roadster hits the street. Until something else. Yeah, I don’t know. Until the Lucid air, the labor Dunno. I mean, come on. This is, well this is the one that you know, all alleged, the thousand horsepower, blah, blah, blah, which I think the lucid air alleges 1100.

So the Lucid Air is supposed to debut, I think this year. So if it does [00:20:00] come out, maybe. That will be the fastest production car ever. Now, there was a Plaid plus edition, which was the one I think that got you that extra a hundred horsepower, but that has apparently been canceled because the regular plaid is just so awesome as it is, there is apparently no need for the plus edition according to Musk.

So they’ve canned that. Okay, maybe somebody can answer this. If you’re listening, you know, comment, write us, call us, text us, whatever. When I hear the word plaid, Two things come to mind. Braveheart and boring, right? And not because Braveheart is boring, but plaid is boring to look at. So what is the deal with this plaid name?

Like what is the significance of this? Maybe, maybe Edson can tell us. He has told me, and my understanding is I think it’s a space balls reference. Like they go beyond Lightspeed and they go plaid. I think something along those lines. So it’s some kind of. In the know kind of, which is why there’s ludicrous mode and all that other stuff.

Uh, yeah. Yeah. I might be wrong. It’s something like that [00:21:00] though. But I can tell you the, so we do mountain runs, uh, Edson has a model three, and then we have another friend that has a model s uh, the performance or perfor or whatever they call it. And that car is no joke. I mean, that one is, it’s a couple years old now, but it’s zero to 60 and two two, and it is just crazy.

But I feel like they probably discontinued the plaid plus because of what we were talking about earlier with the Roadster that’s gonna do zero to 60 and sub 1.1, although I know they wouldn’t get a full second out of it. You know, at some point you start eating in, in your own, uh, market share there. I think there’s the Roadster that does it sub 1.1 with the cannons and then otherwise it’s like 1.8 or something.

So the Cannons, I, I mean, you know, Tesla’s lovely. They’ve done a lot to disrupt. The car culture and technology and all that. And that’s wonderful and that’s great, but for $114,000, I still want something else. I don’t care if it has a thousand horsepower and does 2.2 seconds, zero to 60, like I wanna, you [00:22:00] know, what has a thousand horsepower?

It costs, you know what has a thousand horsepower, it costs half as much challenge. Your Hellcat just gonna put it out there. Well, that’s a good argument though. I mean, and, and the argument both ways is, well, you know, and I’ll keep using the Roadster as an example. The Roadster’s gonna be two 50 and it’s gonna smoke any car.

There is Bugatti, all of those who’s buying these? Here’s my problem with it though. All of these cars are not particularly attractive. I think they’re pretty vanilla. So you pull up in a roader of valet and they park you in the back because they don’t know any better, right? So you pull up in your, your hurricane, or your guy Ardo, or your even, you know, older stuff, and they’re gonna go, oh wow, that’s special.

You know, even a 360 Ferrari, which you can get for a quarter of this, for half this price, you’re gonna be up front. That plaid is gonna be in the back somewhere collecting dust. I mean, honestly, the vanilla on the outside, the vanilla on the inside, and the vanilla on my butt in the seat because I’ve driven a model three before and I felt like I was driving a Nissan Altima that I got outta the Hertz rental lot.

I mean, other than [00:23:00] the fact that if you stop on it, yeah, you get thrown back in the seat because there’s so much torque. Yeah, the acceleration is ridiculous in an ev, but. I don’t know, maybe I need to drive a different one, but I, I say it if you’re just cruising around town, it was no different than anything else.

It felt like a rental car. I wasn’t blown away. I didn’t feel like I was in this luxury for spending tens of thousands of dollars. And I’m with Tanya where the Tesla doesn’t give me anything back. It hasn’t convinced me yet that I can get rid of A G T I and have more fun. It’s the fun factor for, at least for me, there’s that straight line performance, but there’s not that overall performance that I think, you know, like you said was visceral, you know, Tanya.

And it’s, to me, that’s what I keep going back to is yeah, it’s fast than in a straight line. And yeah, it’s faster than my car, but, uh, you know, I want to hear it. I want to hear that. I think I’d rather be in a, that TransAm we talked about earlier, right? You feel like, well, I’m supposed to be going fast. It sounds like I’m going fast.

I’m probably doing zero to 16, eight seconds. But man, it sounds good, you know? And it’s smoking and I can smell, smell it. Do you remember when eight seconds was fast? Like, [00:24:00] wow, it just in eight seconds. It’s incredible. Yeah. We can take the plaid to the next level with the, uh, Pikes Peak Racer because as we mentioned last year in the attempt at Pikes Peak, you know, we kind of joked about this.

There were several episodes where we captured this and reported on it. Randy Popes hooked up with unplugged performance, made several Pikes Peak’s attempt. One time it went airborne. They did complete the run up to the sky and all that. They are returning. With a modified Tesla plaid edition and are going to attempt the race to the sky yet again, taking to the plaid to the entire next level, probably into the stratosphere because it’s gonna, you know, completely launch into orbit.

Good on them. That’s awesome. Curious to see how it turns out. I was gonna say, I’m pretty sure Randy is doing it again. I saw a video that he posted a, a day ago, so that’d be interesting to check out. And there’s a really great show on MotorTrend about, uh, last year about them running and, and wrecking and things.

So it’s pretty cool. Boring company. Take that as you will the name, wait, that’s a real thing, right? That’s, it’s called The Boring Company. She sounds excited, but it’s like boring [00:25:00] through something. This is the boring company that’s making the underground hyperloop. If you remember tunnels in Las Vegas where the Teslas were gonna ride on skates at high speed, fully autonomous, and zip you through, you know, these underground tubes so you could move out Las Vegas without walking around in the a hundred million degree heat and all the traffic and congestion and all that.

So they finally, uh, completed a 1.5 mile loop and it’s not quite as promised. So yes, of course, as, as most things, yes, there are these tunnels underground. Yes, a Tesla vehicle drives through them, but no, they’re not on whatever these alleged skates were gonna be. No, they’re not self-driving and no, they cannot go at high speed.

So they are driven and it cannot exceed 35 miles an hour. And it’s basically a car that drives through an underground tunnel. So what you’re telling me is Tesla has a Uber service [00:26:00] in Vegas right now, and it was replaced by the existing monorail that already does everything you described, taking people from, you know, one place to the other, doing a loop and they don’t have to walk or be in, you know, the sun.

You know, the way I read it and the way I looked at it, it’s like the scariest small world ride you could have ever presented to me being trapped in a Tesla with, as a Johnny Cab going around in Las Vegas. So I’m kind of glad. It’s just an Uber, I mean, it’s not done yet. There’s plans for the next segments to be added on.

I don’t recall how all of that is super boring. I mean, if you’re claustrophobic, I can’t imagine this is fun, but here’s my issue with it, right? So it’s a mile and a half and it takes you from one side of traffic to the other. So it’s not like it’s avoiding all of the traffic. So basically you’re just the asshole that cuts line and a mile and a half to get up in the front, just like the guys that ride down the emergency lane in traffic.

I, I don’t understand the logic here, right? It’s great you can speed through [00:27:00] the tunnel, but you’re still gonna stop at the end, which means you’re just gonna back up model threes all the way back through that tunnel. So well be, because we all know that Vegas is really Disney World for adults. I mean, so it’s just another attraction ride amusement to add to the amusement park, right?

I mean, it’s whatever. It’s, it’s, it’s a novelty. I mean, why not? If you have the technology to allegedly make the tunnel boring, way more cost effective than doing something above ground. See, and this is where the frustrating thing of all this is, it’s like if you have this technology, why don’t you just freaking build a subway?

Why don’t you build a train that can hold people on a rail that would be autonomous? Because a lot of the metro rail systems actually drive themselves. Yes, there’s a conductor in there to monitor, but for the most part, it’s like a plane. You put ’em on autopilot and they go and use that technology to bring the cost down and actually move people.

Not like this gimmick of throwing a Roadster space to be space junk. [00:28:00] This gimmick to like, oh, the Tesla drives in the tunnel. Like, who gives a crap? How many, how many people do you fit in the, you know, you just described, you know, what you just described. The monorail. Yeah, it’s autonomous. And guess what?

It’s an ev. It’s already there because we’re, we like recreating the wheel. Okay. That’s what it is. That’s where we’re at right now. Well, and the thing is, if they’ve uncovered technology that makes it more cost effective to do it underground, safely, and you don’t have to do it above ground and be in the way of putting cranes, blocking traffic, disrupting everything, it’s kind of outta sight.

Like, okay, well let’s do it in a way that makes sense. Not in a way that’s a gimmick. I’m getting the feeling through this entire episode that Tanya’s not sold on Tesla. I could be wrong. Oh, uh, I mean the entire series of the drivethrough, I think at this point. Sure. Yeah. I’m making enemies. I’m making enemies.

I mean, as we switch gears, there is some good news in the electrified world, more progress being made [00:29:00] in terms of Electrifying America. Literally Uhhuh Uhhuh. So Electrify America has hit their 600 station mark in trying to electrify America. That’s good. You know, we need that because that’ll help people with range anxiety and, and obviously even without that, we need charging stations.

If electric vehicles are gonna be more of a thing, people can’t rely on being able to just go back and forth to their home all day. So this is good news and there’s more companies than just electrify America that are building, charging stations and whatnot. And actually to follow up on this, I know I’m jumping ahead.

I hate to be remiss, but Tesla actually. Announced that they’re opening their charging networks or they’re going to plan to open their charging networks to other EVs. That’s if you have the adapter, right? Because they have a proprietary connector or whatever. That’s how they’re gonna get you. You gotta buy the adapter from Tesla to be compatible.

Oh, the Apple model a hundred percent E [00:30:00] Exactly. That. That’s all. That’s all. I knew it was coming. You know, it honestly, it doesn’t specify, but that’s a great point. That very well could be the the case. Oh, order your Tesla adapter now for the low, low price of 10 million Bitcoin. Um, and you too can charge on our ultra fast charging network.

How many carbon credits. Do I get if I buy the Tesla adapter? They have a glut of those now, right? Because everybody’s giving them back. Moving on. We’d be remiss if we didn’t move on. It’s time to talk about Tesla. Oh God, here we go. So there’s three points to hit here, and I think it ties back to some things we were already talking about earlier around supply chain issues, microchip delays, things of that nature.

So the Tesla semi-truck, was it just me or did that thing drop off the face of the earth? Because that that thing was coming like I thought five years ago already. It was hot and heavy and orders were made and we were gonna make so many of them in. Crickets, which is, let me offend some people, kind of par for the Tesla course, right?

Because every time like we’re announcing [00:31:00] something, it’s, it’s always like six years later that it actually comes to fruition, whatever. But you know, that boy who cried wolf gets a little old after a while. So the. Tesla’s truck is once again delayed and it’s very unclear as to what the delay is, but it sounds like it is essentially supply chain issues and refocusing, kind of what we were talking about earlier with Ford is they’re refocusing their energy and the supplies that they do have, the semi and the cyber truck, as they both are delayed, they, they do kind of talk a little bit about, we believe we remain on track to build our first model y vehicles in Berlin, in Austin in 2021.

Well, 20, 20 one’s almost over folks. The pace of the respective production ramps will be influenced by the successful introduction of many new product and manufacturing technologies, ongoing supply chain related challenges and regional permitting to better focus on these factories, and due to the limited availability of battery cells in global supply chain challenges, we have shifted the launch of the semi-truck [00:32:00] program to 2022.

We are also making progress on the industrialization of cyber truck, which is currently planned for Austin production subsequent to Model Y. I mean, it goes hand in hand. The cyber truck is also delayed. The cyber truck was supposed to come out this year. It was supposed to be in production. That’s not happening.

That one’s vague too. I would assume the whole we’re shifting to model Y is part of it. There’s also question as to are they having problems with the design of the OR or. Could it be? They gotta figure out how to resell those carbon credits that they sold, everybody that got returned. Woo. Or B, is it because they’re under investigation for Tesla’s hitting emergency vehicles?

Let’s unpack that one. Or before we unpack that C, they’re seeing how well the F-150 is already putting pre-sales in and they’re like, Hmm, maybe this triangle, blob thing. Polygon from Nintendo, 64 days isn’t what people want as a pickup truck. That’s [00:33:00] specifically why I put a hundred dollars deposit in.

Can we get a from Brad? I mean, Beau’s in the eye of the beholder, so I mean, Whatever. Those people are all blind. You like the look of that thing, I guess, to each own, I mean, I’m not a pickup truck fan, but gimme the F-150 all day every day. If you, you can haul. I have, if you’re telling me so much mulch. If you’re telling me I have to have a pickup truck, I would like a traditional looking pickup truck.

So gimme the f150, give me a rivian, give me whatever. As long as it looks square body Chevy Dan will get you one tomorrow. It’s hot. I do not want one. So they are also under investigation right now because of the number of times their Teslas have struck emergency vehicles while operating in the autonomous mode, which yeah, we get it.

They’re still claiming is fully autonomous. And then also Elon Musk recently tweeted in the last day or so how their autonomous beta testing version, whatever the heck, they’re on 9.2 or something, eh, might [00:34:00] not be that great. He’s like literally said something to that effect. In my opinion, it’s not so good.

Oh, okay. Yes. That’s what the rest of us know because A, it is not. Fully autonomous. There’s no such thing yet. There’s no vehicle that you can lay down in the back seat and get to where you’re going without dying. Okay. I mean, you might get there once, but I wouldn’t put my face that more than once. But at any rate, it becomes a hearse at that point.

You go straight to the funeral home coffin. Yeah. Converse into a casket and you’re done. I guess it’s not like there’s been like hundreds and hundreds of these accidents, but I mean there’s been like almost like a dozen or so over the last five years, which is more than enough to make people go, why is it always happening when there’s an emergency vehicle on the side of the road with their lights flashing, particularly in in night or low light conditions?

What is wrong with this technology that’s not seeing what it should be seeing? Right. And I mean, I think it’s. Tesla themselves need to investigate this. That’s pretty serious. Often when there’s an emergency vehicle on the side of the [00:35:00] road, there is a human being on the side of the road. Outside of that emergency vehicle.

It does seem to be a reoccurring theme, whether it’s police, cars, ambulances, et cetera. It’s like the camera system on the Tesla target, fixates on those flashing lights. It must freak out the camera in such a way that it causes the thing to become basically like a homing beacon or like a, like a targeted missile.

I mean, it’s just, it’s nuts. It, something’s happening. It’s blinding. Something there. I have read, he’s very adamant in it. Teslas are only going to be using the camera technology as opposed to other people’s autonomous vehicles are a combination of the camera radar, lidar, all these things or, or, so my understanding is the, it’s kinda insistent that it’s gonna, the cameras, it’s like, okay, maybe one day, but it doesn’t seem like the camera technology.

Quite as good as the human eye that’s paying attention. Plenty of people at the hands of the wheel that have struck emergency vehicles also. So I still think the biological alternative, you know, the organics in your head are still far superior to any camera and any computers. [00:36:00] Well, and that’s part of the debate too, is just a computer, they’re not sophisticated enough to have that reason component and to understand and to get the other clues that can warn you about something not on a computer that small.

I mean, yeah, sure if you got big blue from IBM in the backseat. Yeah, of course. Yeah. I mean, if you’ve got three stories of massive mainframe Yeah, mainframe computers, I’m sure it can be better than the human eye. But yeah, no, at any rate, and we’d be remiss if it wasn’t a drive-through episode where we didn’t talk about.

Tesla, that was your best Siri voice yet. Yeah, that was pretty good. Thank you. I tried Tesla. So what, uh, you know, it’s just kinda a quiet month for Tesla in a way. I mean, the cyber truck’s still delayed. They’re not doing this, they’re not doing that. The little Roadster, who knows, it’s still floating in space hashtag with those chips, however, They’re still dealing with a little teeny problem [00:37:00] with their autopilot and the autopilot hitting parked emergency vehicles, particularly police cars, and yet again another Tesla.

That is not fully self autonomous, even though they think it is sideswiped. The police car nearly hit the police officer who I think at the time happened to be getting out of the car, so thankfully he wasn’t killed or severely injured. But it’s just adding to the list for the N H T S A to investigate what the heck is going on, where the cars are seemingly getting very confused with the combination of, it’s always happening in like low light settings.

So this was like early morning, so it was still dark outside and it’s seemingly like darkness. Plus the flashing of the emergency vehicle lights is just, it’s like a, a fly to the electric bug zapper.

And they’re just, they’re just going. They’re just going. And you know, again, the [00:38:00] morons. Offense or no offense, I don’t care because you’re not paying attention. What are you doing that you’re letting your car sideswipe? A parked vehicle? Yes. Must wanna leave it there. I can’t believe I’m falling in the role of Tesla apologists.

I’m definitely not one. But it doesn’t make national news when anybody else sideswipes a cop that’s pulled over on the side of the road, and usually they don’t pull over very far. Sometimes they do that defensively to try and protect the car in front of ’em. They. Hang their ass out over the line or whatever to, you know.

Right. And in a lot of states it’s illegal for you to stay in the lane adjacent. Correct. To be pulled over emergency vehicle. And if you cannot exit that lane, you have to reduce your speed by like 50% or something. They do definitely need to program something into their autonomy that would move the car in the opposite direction.

Not towards the right, but then it would just sideswipe the car in the lane next to him. So what? Fair, fair, fair enough. But it doesn’t make national news when a Ford Escape does it. Right? I think the problem is it’s not, it’s not so much Tesla, it’s [00:39:00] so much that it’s always the car is in self-driving mode.

That’s the always the common denominator. Yeah. Because if it was just like, oh, dumbass Tesla driver was driving and texting and they sideswiped a car. Yes. That’s no different than Ford Explorer driver dumbass was. Texting side, swipe park car. You know when you are somebody like Tesla that’s claiming how awesome their self-driving capabilities are and they’re fully autonomous, you’re putting a target on your back and you are making it such that you are going to be the attention of every little thing that happens because.

You’re claiming you’re something that you really aren’t. See Mark, this is the lesson we all learn about the drive-through. Remember I mentioned in our, in our pre-session, we just don’t go there with the Tesla. You let Tanya do her thing. You let her rant, let her get system. It’s like, I haven’t heard the actual empirical argument yet.

It’s pretty simple. Insurance companies insure all these different cars. How many payouts do they make [00:40:00] relative to mile driven on these cars? Autonomous driving, no autonomous driving. Is it doing better or worse than other expensive sedan? I haven’t seen anybody release that data set. I don’t, I don’t know if that, I mean, obviously they have the data.

They absolutely have the data. You know, I haven’t seen any, any news around that. I mean, certainly, what do they call it? Autonomous level three or whatever. It’s, it’s a very dangerous point where it’s, it’s hard for a human. It’s hard to have the discipline to pay attention. It really is. So you either turn it off so you have to pay attention all the time, or you try to have the discipline to pay attention the entire time while you’re also kind of screwing around because what else are you gonna do?

I was gonna say, it’s called driving, but I mean, I’m not gonna open that can of worms. Yeah, I mean, I, I don’t disagree with you that we don’t have the numbers and there’s a lot of unsubstantiated claims that just say that there’s far less accidents with, you know, these self-driving this, that and the other, and all these nannies and aids that lane assist and all that stuff.

And, and then that might be very true. Cause I do think there is a subset of the population that is incapable [00:41:00] of clearly keeping their focus on a single task at hand, which would be driving. And some of these are beneficial to the people around them to keep them safe, but, I just get very annoyed by, I love the way you worded that, right?

That was awesome. Are you a lawyer? I have no idea what you do in real life. That was very, that was very specific wording. I just get irritated by the, the ignorance or arrogance of people, of the self-driving. Like, stop calling it fully autonomous. It’s not, we’re not there yet. It does not exist. It’s full autonomous.

It’s called a monorail. It’s something like a rollercoaster where the thing is tied to a track that is full autonomous. But we are not yet at a point where we can just take a nap in the driver’s seat, roll the seat back, put on Netflix and chill, and not kill somebody going down the road at two o’clock in the morning and you’re on a country road and you wanna go risk your life.

And drive off a cliff or into a tree. By all means, live your best life for as long as you can. [00:42:00] I don’t know, don’t put other people’s lives unnecessarily in danger. And, and maybe one day we’ll get there, but we’re not in. Yeah. You know, it’s only like 11 accidents in the grand scheme shore, but it’s a black eye in the whole autonomous vehicle thing.

And I hate the way that they face the market with it, where it’s like, if they were just going to the market where they’re like, yeah, accidents are happening, and they do happen. They will happen and pay attention. Assholes, uh, hang up and drive, use the future responsibly. But instead they react so defensively and so aggressively, yes.

Against whoever ba, you know, whoever raises concerns. Like, Hey, there appears to be a pattern to these accidents. If they were more just transparent about the challenges with the current software Exactly, I think they would get a lot further. I, I wanna say this, and I don’t wanna belabor the point, but the one thing that I take from all this is I approach it the opposite way.

You know, I was jokingly saying, hang up and drive. You talked about, you know, being respectful of the future and the technology and stuff like that. When [00:43:00] I look at driving, I think about the era in which we came up as drivers. Again, petrolheads of a certain age. We were the last of the analog generation, so we didn’t have a lot of tech, but we were early adopters of technology.

But I see driving still as a freedom, as a privilege, things like that. And I don’t want to get into that debate, but what I also see it as is that moment, those 20 minutes, those 40 minutes, whatever it might be, where I get to disconnect from the grid. I don’t have to think about work. I don’t wanna answer emails, I don’t wanna see your text message.

I just wanna turn on the radio. You know, my mix tape cruising in my five, oh with my carburetor and my hand crank and get where I’m going and just have a moment of decompression and driving gives you that opportunity. So think about it that way. Disconnect for just a moment, even if it’s to go to the local target or drop your kid off at school, put the phone down and just focus on driving it.

Actually driving becomes very much second nature. And you do relax. It’s, it’s not a high stress thing as long [00:44:00] as you’re situationally aware. We talk about that a lot in racing, keeping your eyes up and just being aware of what’s going on. But you do kind of let the rest of the world fade to gray and it’s a moment of clarity that I don’t think we can get or harvest.

In a lot of other ways these days. Unfortunately, we could tangent on, on that train of thought for a long time, cuz I flat out there’s people that have said they just hate to drive. So for a person that just does not wanna drive or be bothered with it, then get an Uber. Right. You’re you’re not, you’re not gonna, you’re not gonna sell them on.

It’s their moment to disconnect because they don’t wanna disconnect. They don’t even wanna be behind the wheel. I gotcha. Like if they could have somebody else driving them, they would. Right. So And that’s for those people. Yes. Self-driving when it actually happens will be wonderful. So let’s, uh, let’s switch gears.

We’ve hit on this already a couple times. Electric cars and police cars and apparently West Virginia. Um, yeah, the city of Nitro, West Virginia. I didn’t know such a city existed. What a fancy name which is near Charleston. For those who are geographically not challenged for West Virginia [00:45:00] has bought a Tesla model three.

To be used as a police cruiser. Hold on. I got questions. I got questions. And they spent an additional 10,000 on top of the 40,000 to buy it, to outfit it with the light sirens and additional police equipment. Whoa, whoa, whoa. So not the sport model then. None of that is important based on the previous topic we were just talking about.

We have a Tesla that’s a police car with lights and sirens and we’re gonna use it on patrol day night weather withstanding. Does it just like implode what? The second autopilot’s engaged, it actually collapses in on itself in, in like a black hole. And it just, it disappears and the police officer becomes like quantum leap since it’s all downhill from there.

He now goes, he now goes backwards in time to write histories. Wrongs. Oh my goodness. I think that’s all we need to say about that. I just, [00:46:00] I, let’s follow this and see where it goes and how long this car actually lasts. I mean, my biggest question with all these electric police cars and, and I believe we’re gonna hit on, on this topic actually later, what do you do in a high speed chase?

Like if you’re outrunning the cop? I mean, you probably could get away with it now because you only gotta outlast the battery charge. And I tell you what, a, a Tesla full tilt, I’ve done this on track and I wrote an article about it. It doesn’t last a half an hour at wide open, we’ll call it wide open throttle.

Well then you gotta consider the battery was probably not fully charged to begin with. Ding, ding, ding, ding, ding. I mean, you can’t outrun Motorola. I’m not condoning any of this, but no, I not. You can outrun those batteries. I’m not saying you should outrun the cops, but we know it happens. It’ll be a Florida man story coming up, but I mean, it’s fine.

It’ll be West Virginia, man. Last Tesla topic, last bit of Tesla news is interesting. Not necessarily indicative of anything. electric.co. They issued an article that says Tesla [00:47:00] obtains patent on its wild idea to use lasers. Lasers as windshield wipers. And there’s just. So much fear one could unpack. This is definitely Austin Powers like sharks with fricking lasers on their head.

Exactly. And if they need to put one of those sharks like a, like it’s a windshield wiper. Yes. Back and forth. It, it’s all very confusing. And the take that it could just be that they came up with this idea and they’re patenting it because that’s what you do. If you think you have an idea, put a patent on it so nobody else can take it.

And you might not yet know what you’re actually going to use it for, but they framed it in this manner that really makes no sense. Talk about it specifically for debris on your windshield. So think dead bug, mud bird dooo, if you will. I see it all falling apart very quickly. So my windshield wipers are misaligned, so my car blinded me and then my windshield melted from the heat.

Oh. And then the [00:48:00] car got confused by the laser beam lights that were flashing at night during the rain. And then you crashed. Yes, it’s obvious and very apparent that the patented trade office is full of bad ideas, and this is just yet another one on that list. I would’ve thought they’d use it for heat and like some kind of anti fog.

No, it’s to give you, it’s to give you like LASIK and cataract surgery. While you’re a room. We’re gonna, we’re gonna burn dirt off of your windshield. That just can’t be efficient. That can’t be energy efficient at it can be efficient. And it sounds like they would not have a traditional windshield wiper blade going across the windshield.

It almost reads that way, but that would be impossible because what do you do during a torrential downpour? There’s no, shoot, the la you shoot, there’s no amount of laser, the water, there’s no amount of lasers that are gonna clear the water and to do it, the laser would be so powerful that yes, it would burn your retina.

Like it looks like a freaking, like Calvin Harris midnight [00:49:00] rave. It’s like lights everywhere, laser beams and shit. You might as well get off the glow sticks at that point. I mean, it’s gonna, it’s gonna be a travesty though. It does beg the memory. The cyber truck does not have windshield wipers, I believe.

No, it has that, it has that etcher sketch thing where it moves, does some crazy thing on the, on the windshield. Absolutely mental. And the cyber truck was delayed. Maybe it’s delayed for laser beams. Chips because laser beam, the, the Model X was the falcon doors and the cyber truck will be the. Stupid windshield.

I guess we gotta move on since we’re already talk, you know, we’re talking about these new EVs. Well, I mean, nothing bad this month. We already knew that Elon moved to Austin, um, personally or year or so ago, I guess now. And he lives in one of these solar iven things. No, there’s too many round edges on, on the, uh, eho and solar power.

The glass won’t break if you throw something at it. Yeah, there’s not, they didn’t put the laser beams on the windshield, so to wipe the [00:50:00] water away. Yeah. So he personally moved to Texas to be closer to SpaceX and all this other stuff. I’m sure he had issue, you know, other issues. Being angry at California has been recently announced that he is going to move the headquarters.

Out of Palo Alto to Austin. Nice. So is every other Californian along with every other big California company. And part of it is citing the fact that California is just ridiculous in different ways in terms of just congestion and cost of living, you know, aside from the very stringent regulations that they have in place and whatnot.

So, uh, it’ll be interesting to see how happy those California workers will be to move to Texas. They don’t plan on shutting down the facilities they have in California. If anything, they’re, you know, alleging to ramp up production in the, in the manufacturing plants there. So what I am hopeful here on this one is Tesla moves to Austin.

Steve Wynn owns DeLorean, which is also in Humboldt, [00:51:00] Texas. Not too far. They get together and we get an ev. DeLorean. This is what I’m waiting for people we should have always been a hundred thousand percent on, but in other Tesla news, there’s another drag race. And it’s this 14 minute video that you gotta fast forward to the nine minute mark and then again to like the, I don’t know, which minute mark do you see anything remotely interesting.

But it’s between the thousandth horsepower, McLaren, whatever the hell it is, and a Tesla plaid S version. I believe they did three runs. They did a standstill drag race run, which the Tesla obliterated the McLaren, which off the line to no one’s surprise. Right? I mean, and, and was to, no one’s surprised that was present for this drag racing.

I mean, off the line electrics have the advantage, we already know this. Then they did a rolling start drag due to the fact that of course the McLaren’s gonna suck off a, a dead stop line and the Tesla still really obliterated it. Yeah. And then their third one [00:52:00] was a rolling start. With advantage to the McLaren.

So I think it started with however many feet ahead of the Tesla and the Tesla still caught up basically. And I think it was ended up being like a nose to nose kind of finish. Hey, I gotta add to the funny part of the end of this. Not only did the Tesla outrun the McLaren, it also apparently has better breaks.

Yes. Because the guy in the McLaren must have had a code brown moment. Cause essentially he ran outta, he was still racing. He ran outta runway or whatever they were drag racing on. He ran outta drag race. Space and, and apparently literally managed to stop the McLaren an inch from hitting like a, a fence or a wall or something.

The barrier at the end of the end of the trash strip, I have, he did. He did some late breaking, I have to say. I mean, you know, we talked about Ken Block earlier. Obviously he’s sold off Hogan. This is another Hogan video. He’s kind of distanced himself from that, even though he is. Kind of still affiliated or whatever.

It’s still Hogan stuff, it’s whatever. You’re right. The first like seven minutes is all about like cleaning [00:53:00] products and, oh, isn’t my car cool? And all this kind of thing. It’s, it’s whatever. I looked at the clickbait, you know, McLaren versus plaid and this is the same as the Corvette one they did, which the Corvette also got obliterated.

It was some like 2000 horsepower, you know, nitrous injected quad turbo Corvette or whatever. And it was like, all right, yep, the, the Tesla wins every time. And I went, great. Hey look, yet another stupid drag race between a Tesla and something else that’s gonna get crushed. But you’re right, that ending made the whole video worth it.

So I just tell you guys to skip like the first 13 minutes and just watch that last poll cuz it’s the best after I lost interest after about five seconds. Cause like you said, there’s a bajillion of these. I had an idea. That’s not drag racing anymore, right? Nobody cares. I wanna see a Triumph TR seven and a Fiat X 19 drag race.

Yes. Old school stuff. Do you think that video was long? Wait till they figure out how to keep those running long enough to get to the end of the drown. That’s the drag race I wanna see. What do they smell like? Like fire and oil and [00:54:00] they’re running rich, that’s for sure. There’s other Tesla news this month, which it’s kind of funny, but also kind of scary.

Uh, you know, honestly, this is more, I feel like sensational click bait than anything else. The way the headline reads Tesla attempted drivers with insane mode and now is tracking them to judge safety experts say it’s ludicrous. Honestly, that title has nothing to do with the point that’s trying to be made here.

And so what’s happening is Tesla’s doing another beta test of their, you know, full autonomous driving bullshit that. Again, even Elon is admitting doesn’t really work yet. Okay. It’s not full self-driving. They’re doing like another beta rollout and they want to do actual testing with Tesla owners as opposed to just dummy vehicles going around.

And so he’s created this vetting process where he’s created this checklist, if you will, of grading scale for judging who will be allowed to beta [00:55:00] test this new software update. So essentially he is tracking how people are driving. It’s a very stringent grading scale to the extreme of any kind of like hard breaking, you get docked points.

And so you have to get like a perfect hundred hundred score or however a scale is to be allowed to beta test a new full self driving software. And he is doing this because he only wants safe, trustworthy people to be trying this out to be the Guinea pig, if you will. So it’s not so much that he’s trying to spy on everybody and, and, and track their every moves and control their driving habits.

Not to say that things don’t morph into other things, but it’s supposed to be this vetting process for people to pilot the new beta software. And honestly, this isn’t new. If people are gonna get all on there, oh my God, everybody’s spying on me. Guess what? Who was it Progressive? Did this already like.

Five, 10 years ago where they gave you that little sensor to plug into O B D port and they were tracking how you drive and you were supposed to save on your car insurance [00:56:00] and all this bullshit. So guess what? People, it’s already been out there, been there, done that. Let’s not go conspiracy theory.

Ancient automotive enthusiasts contend that it is Skynet at the end of the day. But Donovan, go ahead. How many ways can we rip this part article apart? Right. It’s just, um, first of all, experts say it’s ludicrous. That was, that’s obviously a Tesla mode, right? So either somebody scanned an article and they’re like, oh, there’s ludicrous.

Let’s give somebody the fastest mode in the car, and if they don’t drive it safely, then we’re gonna do what? I don’t think it even has anything to do with the mode in the car. It’s just nowhere have I seen where it says the beta’s being tested in the cars with the ludicrous mode and, and, and whatnot.

It’s just a thousand Tesla owners. Are going to get to pilot the new software and he’s vetting them by tracking how they’re driving. So, so two things on that. First of all, all those dudes from Hogan that we just talked about, they’re out, they’re off the list. Second of all, I’m wondering, can you game the system by using the current, we’re gonna quit air, air quotes around autonomous driving, you know, level [00:57:00] whatever.

To get the perfect score. So you’re actually using the current system to qualify yourself for the new system? Probably not, cuz I assume he’s able to track that. We definitely need Edson for these particular articles, but you know, I don’t know if you guys have ever noticed, like every te Tesla article you read is something they’re doing wrong or something That’s great.

And then you, you get in the actual cars and realize they’re doing it all right. And this article looks just like another attempt to twist it. Tanya, like you were saying, around to make it seem like, oh, they’re at it again. They’re doing something dumb. They’re, you know, you don’t wanna buy a Tesla. I don’t understand why everybody has the hate for the Teslas, but.

I don’t know. I think it’s Sson Paul’s, we keep calling him Edson, on, on Garage. Rat, you know, showed me things like his, in his model three where, you know, there was a, a feature somebody asked for, Hey, can we get these cameras now? And, and I’m gonna butcher it for the Tesla owners out there. But there’s like the rear view and then there’s like the corner ones that weren’t normally on and somebody tweeted it or something and Musk was like, oh, that’s a great idea.

Sent the software upgrade and boom, now they’re there. He also thought [00:58:00] that open butt hole was a good idea. I mean, come on now. Open butt. Yeah. You remember that for the gas tank, it’s, yeah. You open the gas tank voice command, you say open butt hole, and then it’s open my butt hole to like open the trunk or something ridiculous.

He, he thinks everything’s a good idea, but still, you know, the fact that we’re quick to market with something, somebody made a suggestion, that’s a great idea, let’s do it. That to me makes Tesla the winner in, in the automotive market. So yeah, but it’s also kind of scary too that your car is controlled by a over the air software update so they could render you useless.

I also heard about something that came across my desk earlier about. That Uh, Tesla’s also talking about the cars will put in their own orders for maintenance parts. Can you imagine if the car ordered its own set of tires suddenly and then you got docks, you know, 1200 bucks? Cuz it’s the only tire that’s available for Tesla.

No, thank you. There’s certain parts of that I want to be disconnected from. There’s all kinds of, and you should get pull on here and do maybe just a specific Tesla interview. But there’s all kind of things about eventually, like he can’t buy his car. My understanding is he can only lease it because they [00:59:00] plan to have those back as a fleet later automated.

That’s the Ferrari, that’s the Ferrari pyramid scheme. Well it’s so, it’s so they can basically have him as automated Ubers down the road and they’ll be able to go, you can send it, pick up your dry, clean, all kind of crazy stuff. So I, I don’t know. It it, I think it’s pretty interesting, but I’ll take that 84 g t i you were talking about earlier.

Me too. That’s all I need. Me too. We’ll split. But, but, but what about the fact that this wasn’t breaking news on every major news outlet and thrown in your face every two seconds? I mean, if this had happened to Tesla, we would’ve been hearing about it for weeks and weeks, and it would’ve been the hot news on every major news outlet and on TV would’ve, it would’ve broken in as.

Breaking news in the middle of, you know, Netflix and binge. I mean, what the heck? Come on. Why is it always Tesla? Well, we already know that they burned down in parking garages, right? We’ve seen that time and time again. So, I mean, is that really news anymore? Well, you know what I’d like to address because it kills me.

You wanna know why everyone makes a big deal [01:00:00] about Tesla is because when you put. A bullseye on your back. Yeah. That’s what’s gonna happen when you’re selling cubic zirconia at the price of diamonds. Yeah. People are gonna pay attention to you. And maybe it’s my perception, but I don’t think Chevy Ford and any of them have ever pretended that their cars are perfect and that they don’t have recalls and they don’t have issues.

They don’t sit there saying that their cars are the best thing since the invention of sliced bread. So if you act like you’re the hottest thing and then you’re using Home Depot to build your cars, of course you’re gonna get more attention. I mean, I know I, I am probably offending people when I say that, but it’s just like, you know, I don’t know, it’s just whatever.

It’s a shift in the status quo, I suppose.

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