Kyle Conner - Out of Spec Studios | Munro Live Podcast

foreign welcome back to the Monroe live podcast today we have a really awesome guest Kyle Connor from the out of spec channels I say channels because you have a whole Suite of channels even your dad's on YouTube and Twitter so go ahead and introduce yourself to our viewers and then we'll get into some hot topics yeah so I'm Kyle I'm just a car Enthusiast in general and really lucky that somehow it found myself into YouTube being work and we've yeah like you mentioned developed a few different channels across our Network and um yeah my dad is killing it he works harder than anyone he is just pumping the videos right now so it's great yep most of our stuff is electric focused um yeah trying to get some some data gathering on the cars not doing anything nearly as crazy as what you guys do here but range testing charging testing practical real world tests that's where our place is yeah and what I love about the content that you produce is that you have essentially become the expert on charging lately like I I consider you the author Authority on charging experience and how the vehicles interface with the different charging infrastructure players so that's been a huge thing that's dominated the news lately particularly the Tesla charging port but I find it really interesting when I watch your videos you know everything about the version of the Tesla charging station that you're at you know the kilowatt rating you know the system that backs it up so if you haven't seen any of his videos I highly recommend checking them out and also you get access to a lot of press Vehicles so I recently watched your review of the Silverado work truck and I want you to kind of talk about that 450 mile range and and I know you were really high on it I'd like to get kind of expand on that compared to the Cyber truck prediction right yeah so so hard to know exact facts about the Cyber truck like you mentioned it's still early days but excited for it really excited for this I drive an electric truck every day a rivian r1t do a lot of towing with it so so yeah had the great opportunity to go drive the Silverado work truck I was one of the first of I don't know 10 or 20 people that were able to experience it did yeah did Towing did hauling did you know normal cruising around just in this area actually I would have brought it by knowing you were so close and now I know swing by here could have put it up on the rack and pop the battery out of it or something yeah no it was fascinating you know they put in a what's weird is GM won't tell you the battery pack size but I hooked up some stuff to it that I wasn't supposed to hook up to it and it's basically a Hummer EV battery pack roughly as far as I can tell there might be some differences uh in terms of like little chemistry changes here or there from what I'm gathering but generally it's a 212 ish kilowatt hour usable battery pack which is Juicy and that is good news for people who tow I mean in terms of just like throwing a massive ton of batteries in a vehicle to get from A to B it's not efficient it doesn't make sense uh you know probably if you look at the overall picture the cost of Towing especially on a trip it's cheaper to do it with with your diesel as an example but I mean it's kind of cool that you can have all these batteries in a truck I know it's not the most efficient thing and from someone who tows a lot you need a lot of batteries to tow yeah and then when you think of a battery that big and a vehicle the Hummer has not you know GM has not been delivering Hummers at the rate that would even satisfy the orders I know we have a Hummer on order and I haven't heard anything from GM so what's your thoughts on these big batteries in the truck so the Cyber truck could be 160 to 200 kilowatt hours you have these 200 212 kilowatt hour packs in the GM products that could be three packs for three or four packs for a smaller vehicle so with EVS trying to penetrate the market do you think oems are kind of playing these games where they want to sell the bigger vehicles because they're going to make more profit but they could also make four smaller EVS so what's your thought on on that yeah well well definitely Tesla has mentioned that before we've heard you know lots of topics around you know you could build how many model threes for one Tesla semi as an example and you know the amount of uh local emissions reduced by those model threes could actually have more of an impact than that one semi uh et cetera there's lots of calculations you can do you know a an electric pickup truck with a 200 something kilowatt hour battery pack is probably the wrong tool for the job for towing over distance even so you know at that point just trying maybe have a range extended electric vehicle perhaps like with this Ram situation is going to be that could be interesting where your electric 95 of the time and then have a fairly efficient generator running at 100 throttle you know at Peak efficiency to charge up the battery yes there's losses that's appealing to me um you know I think if you look at the overall EV adoption you know sensibly yes you should build a small efficient uh car at the cheapest cost and the highest volume but for someone who likes cool stuff and just like the Hummer EVS like the coolest Tonka truck you can buy it's really dumb and I've watched all your videos on it and like I get it but when you drive it it's like I can just drive over the car in front of me and that's really fun so there there is a balance of like let's have a little bit of fun let's push the tech let's see what's possible with new technology but in Practical large numbers yeah you can't this is not the right application for electric yeah what I like about your viewpoint on electric vehicles that you you own them you drive them you have a lot of them in your Fleet even your dad I think has a lucid and then you also own some internal combustion engine Vehicles so a lot of people it's like religion it's like EVs and EVS only but I drive a diesel Yukon I get crap all the time or people don't say anything to my face but I just drove to North Carolina and it was 800 miles away and my vehicle said 750 miles of range as I'm getting 29 miles to the gallon it was really nice not to have to stop at all like ever and so my question for you is as this transition happens to EVS do you think the age of cars will grow and grow as you have this either majority at first and then minority that just won't let go do you picture a future where you have 20 and 25 and 30 year old vehicles that that there's a huge repair Market just to keep these vehicles going like Cuba for the 1950s you know you know Chevrolet Bel Air so what do you think about that yeah I mean there's definitely going to be that Niche there's going to be a club where you know the I'm not switching to EV club and ultimately like the you know maybe 10 of Hardcore combustion folks out there is that going to alter the market that much no but there is going to be this like I think Enthusiast car owner curve where we're going to see more manual transmission sports cars for weekend track days or Canyon blasts that may not in the you know the long-term future may not be able to go into inner cities we're already seeing you know emission zones in certain cities especially in Europe but uh yeah I think we're gonna see yeah definitely a combustion Resurgence in small groups you know yet that's a really good point because I grew up driving Nissan Maxima I had a third gen I loved it I actually bought like four or five of them I had a red one a black one a white one all manual transmission it was like 2 800 pounds with 200 horsepower and I actually had more fun driving that than our model 3. sorry Tesla I know the model 3 is way faster and handles better really but there was something about it that I loved and if I were to buy something to have fun right now I'd either buy a new Nissan Z because I could have a Nissan guy or a Supra and I drove a plaid for two months and I took it on a 5 000 mile road trip and it's fast and it's it's cool but it's like I don't know there's something about that and I know this is kind of an EV podcast and here we are reminiscing about internal combustion engine vehicles but I think the transition will be longer than than just when we hit 50 EV sales because you have a fleet a global Fleet of what a billion cars or something billions of cars yeah well globally of course yeah and other markets will be way behind this transition as well because there are certain markets that that you know I'm thinking like certain parts of India South America especially parts of Africa that just like haven't even thought about electric cars yet um manufacturers are still going to have to service those markets by producing vehicles um you know it's kind of fun being here in the U.S on the bleeding edge of electric adoption of course we we spend a lot of time in Norway and Germany and there it's like combustion is just not even a word used other than the occasional sports car that drives by and they're heavily taxed and that owner uses it you know probably for a small portion of time and has a model X or Model S as is daily and yeah that's a great use case for a combustion car for the occasional fun times but I think even more interesting than this is the new car enthusiasm my world you know I come from Old School manual transmissions drifting around Flames out the exhaust um but we're starting to see this new enthusiasm around EVS which I think a lot of car enthusiasts like a lot of my friends are like well who likes electric cars who would be into that and I'm like well I don't really care what you're into as long as you're into driving or into your car or Transportation so it's exciting to see all these new technology focused enthusiasts that are coming to the market and for auto racing and we were at the formula e-race together and I was a little bit disappointed because it was so quiet they were actually playing music while the cars were racing because otherwise it would have been just silent as you wait for the cars to come around and I know we had brought up the topic of you know what will F1 do and I actually had a journalist reach out to me afterwards and said hey Corey just let you know F1 is going to keep uh internal combustion engine vehicles for a long time and they've stated that and I really didn't know that because I don't follow F1 that that closely but do you think auto racing will kind of go the way of horse racing where people used to ride around on horses and the Kentucky Derby still exists and the horses eat hay and they you know they still have all the stuff Associated but we look at it almost more as like this past time so I hope auto racing retains at least some noise making internal combustion engine yeah I mean there will always be that around for sure I mean we look at vintage racing today you're racing cars from the early 1900s up to 1950s those cars are still racing around the cars from today will eventually make their way to Vintage racing and I think it also is cool because it allows for new electric racing series as well and maybe even an intersection somewhere where you can have electric versus combustion that would be at least for today a really interesting topic for like rallycross they have these like electric rally things be so cool to put them right up against a combustion rally car see how they do yeah so I want to switch gears and talk about charging a little bit so Jim Farley's been interviewed several times and he's talked about how once the charging infrastructure is built out and you have Chargers everywhere the need for these big batteries will decrease what do you think that average range will be the average uh battery size and range will be in 15 years do you think it'll steadily increase or do you think it'll it'll decrease or stay the same right now I feel like it's in the high 200s if you were to average them I don't know you may have an idea of like where they're at do you think it'll it'll go up to 300 or stay or drop so the short answer is I think it'll drop uh I think the right now the biggest challenge at least in our Market is charging infrastructure and so you know the ability on your normal trip to skip Chargers leaving at a full charge getting to your destination charging overnight is a really nice thing but we also Drive really long distances in America so if you're doing the super long distance road trips doesn't matter what car you're driving you have to stop and charge and that's unfortunately a poor experience unless you drive a Tesla regardless of any charging Network that you're on it's always a question of will it work and how fast will it work but deep into the future especially with Tesla now bringing other automakers in and I'd like to get your opinions on that because some Tesla owners and I own two Teslas are like well hey we kind of like had the network for this long now we're going to be parked next to a bolt charging for two hours like what's this going to look like but on the flip side I also have CCS vehicles and I'm like great I can actually use them yeah properly so I feel both sides of the equation personally but it deep in the future let's just say charging does get solved why would you need to carry around a huge 120 kilowatt hour battery pack for if 99 of your driving is just from here to the store and back put in a low-cost High you know resistance to degradation battery pack that's relatively environmentally friendly to make and to recycle use that for you know most of your driving and then hopefully the technology is there to quickly recharge that on a trip yeah and I feel like most families don't own five of the same Vehicles you may have a truck to do truck things and then you have a little car to commute to work in but you wouldn't take your car and do truck stuff and and you but you could put stuff on the roof and I've seen it could jam it filled with boards and you could commute in the truck and get worse few you know worse economy whether it's gas or electric it doesn't matter right so there's a right tool for the job so if you have four kids and you want to take road trips buy the 130 000 150 000 Escalade EV with 450 miles of range where you can put everybody in and that's going to be sweet we need a full-size electric truck I mean you do yeah I could see you getting one of those Escalade IQs so I think if you if you want that you want that nice experience buy that and now the fact it can be on the Tesla charging Network that's actually appealing to me to get a Suburban or a Yukon or a Escalade that has a big battery prefer most likely built on the same platform as the Silverado that you know really no matter what it costs I almost just kind of want one sure to get the first EV big EV uh SUV we need it r1s is too small yep for you know your family size we have three massive dogs like we can't fit into an r1s easily um you know it's a very American problem is what it sounds like but you know we've I grew up with Suburbans we've always had them we we review them all the time we have them on loan just like having an extended wheelbase full-size SUV is once you have it you can't go back yeah so how do you Electrify that yeah and then back to Tesla owners being upset that they're charging you know networks are going to be filled on my phone I took pictures of every charging station I saw on my road trip to North Carolina so I stopped along the Pennsylvania Turnpike which every almost every single one has charging stations and there's like 12 or 16. it's amazing most times they're completely empty of course I took pictures there's no one there so I'm like you know the thought of like oh they're going to be overrun the only time I mean I've charged at a Tesla Supercharger station at least a hundred times you probably charged hundreds yeah probably thousands of this style yeah so Sandy and I did two big road trips it was like 48 on one and then like 30 on the other only one time did I pull up and all the stars stalls were filled and I had to wait for like 15 seconds as I'm driving before a a Tesla drove away and I backed in and it was all full and then as we were charging it became 70 80 full and that was in Las Vegas by the airport where all the cabbies were charging yeah so all the cabs would come and they would charge for 20 or 30 minutes to get a couple hundred miles of range and then they'd go do their cab stuff that was the only time only one time was it completely full it's very if you look at the whole country it's very uncommon at a Tesla supercharging station to arrive to a full charging station if you look at segmented areas south Florida L.A of course San Francisco that's it's almost the opposite equation it's almost likely that you'll arrive to a full charging station but these are very concentrated areas of the country where a lot of Tesla owners live and a lot of other EV owners live who are also going to be trying to use that Network so there's there's definitely some things Tesla needs to figure out when it comes to you know for example they really are the only viable option to a network wide Country-Wide high power charging solution for every electric vehicle not just their own because we've you know Electrify America has proven we can't easily rely on them evgo is in cities but in very small numbers and still quite buggy Alyssa took her e-tron this week did she just needed to you know 10 more range to make it home that's a very e-tron problem to have but she needed you know just a quick top up and she gets to a charging station it's empty great well two of four were down and the one she used was completely mislabeled based off of the current output of the cable so she was expecting 150 kilowatts she got 80 it really extended the time and so everyone's just going to get frustrated with this and go straight to Tesla and so now it's up to Tesla to support all of these cars and what's interesting is all of the version 2 superchargers which there are plenty won't charge North American charging standard Vehicles they don't speak ISO 15 11 8-2 really yep so it's only version three superchargers and higher version four of course that will work with all the new vehicles right because uh right now when you plug in a Tesla they speak over can communication which is what version two knows how to speak version three superchargers also speak over can when they communicate with Teslas but when you plug in a Silverado with the North American charging standard Port it's not speaking over can it's speaking over the current CCS communication protocol and so version 2 Chargers don't speak that do you think there'll be some logic built into the plug that Tesla sells that'll help that communication no and that's that's part of that 12 000 superchargers that every company is announcing it's just v3s okay yep so as far as my understanding goes and everyone in the industry that that I've spoken to it's version three and version 4 chargers that will be open up do you think that the version 2 will all eventually be retrofitted and upgraded over the course of a decade yet we've seen certain sites that have like there's one in I think Prim Nevada as an example where they have a whole bunch of version 2 Chargers with then a whole bunch of version threes behind it oh so you could show up and if they expand there could be version twos and version threes where the Teslas could charge at either yeah it I don't know what Tesla's plan is we haven't seen them really removing version twos yet they've just been expanding with new v3s and so occasionally some stations will be labeled you know 150 kilowatt 250 kilowatt um but there's also um you know drivers don't seem to understand that I was you know drivers this is the big problem is the education portion of this because I was charging in Edwards Colorado just a couple days ago and it's a site that has four Cigna EA Chargers next to an eight stall V3 supercharger like right next to each other and a Tesla owner noses into the Signet EA station ignores the eight Tesla charger she just drove by and it's a rental car because everyone in Denver has a rental model 3. and like tries to stretch the cable that like she doesn't even have the adapter for I'm like lady you got to go over there didn't even know did not even like she was just like what I gotta go to that one this one won't work I'm like yeah it says Tesla you're driving a Tesla but her car probably directed her there well yeah because it's right next to the supercharger man so there's a huge human component here that you know you just can't fix stupid sometimes so you get access to arguably more press Vehicles than than we do we we struggle sometimes because we're an engineering firm too so I learned a lot that makes them uncomfortable yeah putting them on hoists yeah poking and prodding I mean even we sometimes get a little pushback with like oh you're gonna do what with the car and I'm like well here's what we're going to do we can either use yours or we can borrow viewers and we've always gotten cars we've never had oh that's smart a little bit of pressure you hear that Eric yours or viewers it's like do you want one that's like you know representative of a production build or and it's not every time I mean we really do know most all of the contacts that the manufacturers they love what we do because I feel we're pretty unbiased they know when they fall short and we certainly show that all the time we're very fair uh and I think that's just the most important thing from our side and what's your thought on the software of all the different oems because software and how the software interfaces with the EB experience I know I think you're a little critical on Ford thinking it wasn't really as EB friendly as maybe GM's new uh software or even there's this kind of garbage anyway oh really yeah I know it took you forever to find the Energy Information yes and then the video ended and you finally came back and we're like oh I finally found it and it wasn't of help of the GM employees there either because I was like guys do any of you know where to find a trip computer we're all poking around and like everyone there had no idea and I'm just like well just give me five minutes and I found it like deep buried in a menu which is I'm usually good at finding stuff like that that was annoying it's crazy that it'd be so buried you know who so there's there's two companies that understand software truly and it's Tesla and rivian in my impression and you know Tesla by far is the best integration with the app uh you know with third-party apis allowing me to you know log the data from my cars it's the gold standard rivien I think really saw that copied it did a pretty good job yeah sending constant over-the-air updates keeping in contact with the uh owners it's a touch point for them and sometimes even if a rivian owner will make a suggestion they'll even say like thanks John in the release notes which is really cool wow so I love that you're never going to see that from a Volkswagen or a Porsche or any of those yeah yeah there's this guy that I I talked to quite often in Jacksonville Florida he had a big uh GM truck and it kept going into the shop and it kept breaking down it had battery issues kept he was driving him crazy and he had a Riven on order and he didn't know whether or not to take it and I talked to him probably once or twice a week and I said oh dude you should just take it Sandy loves us he took it and he absolutely loves it he talks about it all the time he's like letting his friends and neighbors drive it and they're all converted he just can't believe how amazing the software is that's one of the things he's really impressed with but he did find a couple things here and there that he that he wanted to improve but I think he likes the fact that it keeps improving just like you mentioned so yeah rivian's really nailed that I mean uh the truck when I have mine now I have almost 40 000 miles on it and I you know have a lot of issues with my truck still like just things that I think they should have engineered better the four motor system their battery thermal management system things like that and so I'm excited to watch as they expand but they've been so cool because um and and we've talked about it on on shows like on our podcast and stuff but like rivian reached out to me it was like hey um you use your truck really hard 25 of my 40 000 miles have been Towing and so like you know can we like do a little call and like get your impression and everything and so you know they you know I gave them specific time stamps as to where I had issues or concerns they pulled logs from my truck they showed me charging curves they showed me temperature data the battery pack um and then they were like give us a few weeks and they issued a software update and then it starts to improve and get better and the reason I love rivian so much I mean what really sold me on it early on was when we had a review truck we were one of the first ones to review the r1t we did a whole hour-long podcast about what we would want to improve on the truck and literally in exact number by number order rivian two you know three or four weeks later issued a software release fixing like 90 of our issues and I was like well if they value our coverage this much well this is amazing and they I think you know they do that with other owners not just us as well yeah that's really good that some of these new startups uh whether that's rivian or Tesla I think they're open to criticism because they don't have 100 Years of like pound the table this is how we've always done internal combustion engine vehicles or this is how we've built bodies if you think of Tesla doing the Giga castings or the structural battery pack these like wild things that we've never seen ever before because EVS are so new I think there'll be a convergence maybe 20 30 years from now where all these different ways that people are doing thermal systems all these different levels of of charging units or charge modules you'll find The Sweet Spot because you can always go Overkill so like the Lucid does a lot of things really really really good but is it Overkill you know with their uh the high voltage of their system it kind of almost overshot the infrastructure and there is like a sweet spot that I think will be found and I explained this to someone it's like brake system so I've done probably a hundred break jobs because my dad was a mechanic and I had all the tools so not only on all my own vehicles but all my friends vehicles and in college all my friends BMWs there's never been a brake job that I couldn't figure out just by looking at it it's either a fixed caliper or a sliding caliper you reach around the back if it's a BMW it's an allen wrench if it's a GM or Ford product it's a big hex bolt it's usually like a size you know M16 like it's so easy they all converge to what worked best if you go back to the 70s or 80s you had drum brakes and all these horrible systems and I think you'll see a convergence so Toyota BMW Mercedes all of them are very similar braking systems because it's really what worked best and I think you'll see this with Evie EV technology particularly thermal systems Battery Systems charging systems and then software interface I think but we're we're like decades away from that that process well you're totally right because in what world let's just use this we've been talking about the Silverado work truck for a little bit let's use that as an example in what world would a combustion truck launch with an engine that's twice as powerful as the next closest competitor where this work truck launchers with twice the battery pack of the neck I mean this is a huge jump that just doesn't happen in the internal combustion world anymore because everyone's just incrementally improving their stuff you know you go 6.2 liter now 6.8 liter and and oh I got 400 420 horsepower and uh you know that that's the crazy world we're living in with EVS you can have a lucid air as an example that has all the range in the world I mean we've tested you know close to 450 miles at 70 miles an hour very impressive but then is completely let down by the charging infrastructure which means it's actually not as good of a road Tripper as a Model S which has much less range but a better charging profile and better infrastructure a bigger battery means more charge time people forget about that yeah it may charge faster in the middle because you know but Lucid doesn't they really need to work on their charging curve yeah you would know yeah but and that's where Porsche gets it so right with the taikon where it's a small battery pack it's like only 85 kilowatt hour usable but it holds 270 kilowatts all the way to 50 percent so you're able to onboard so much energy you know it's zero to fifty percent in 10 minutes zero to seventy percent 14 minutes and so that's why the the taikon is the ultimate Road Tripper a assuming you have charging infrastructure that can power it yeah that's kind of crazy yeah it's a wild time with EVS for sure yeah so cyber truck yeah now this may get a little bit so what do you what is your prediction on the different battery sizes for the Cyber truck you think there'll be a smaller battery and then a bigger battery because I know they talked about 500 miles of range at one point I heard someone estimated 331 miles of range with 167 kilowatt hour battery pack so do you think it'll be closer to that 2.2 miles per kilowatt hour or two miles per kilowatt hour what do you think the efficiency will be what's your thought on where that'll enter the market dude I have no idea it could be this thing could be so out of left field that it could be you know closer to almost 2.8 miles per kilowatt hour if they play their cards right or Tesla could just say we're throwing batteries at it screw it and it's going to be inefficient I don't think that's the Tesla way so um I will say in mixed driving my r1t which I think is a comparable size to the Cyber truck overall and weight and things like this gets roughly two miles per kilowatt hour um I think the Cyber truck has to beat it that's the thing I mean they Tesla was the first to announce the last to come to Market they know what they know everyone's cards at this point no matter what the Cyber truck is they're going to sell every single one they can make at least for the next few years because there's a lot of in Tesla enthusiasts who have never owned a truck buying it as a cool device to play around with but they still need to compete on some sort of truck level because Tesla's always been the best they need to continue being the best so it needs to be the most efficient needs to be the fastest it needs to be the most capable people needs to have off-road cred we know it's going to have rear steer really cool stuff going on with it but I think it's just too early to know because with Tesla I don't even think Tesla knows half the things you know a lot of people within the company I should say I think they're keeping it fairly tight a lot of the specs yeah and the advantage Tesla has is I think it'll be lighter than Arabian because it'll have aluminum in the front aluminum in the rear um what they've released so far you can deduct what the structure will be like underneath it'll have pretty basic steel cradles I think there's a picture someone took rear cradle be steel the front cradle be steel which is good which they're prioritizing cost it's like a cost balance with uh functionality like a lot of Toyotas and Kia products they have steel subframes even BMW so with rivian you get a body on a frame and aluminum cradles and quad motor and ridiculous travel and this special like so yeah it's everything to the max yeah Sandy and I had a conversation today and I think Tesla will not go after all of the things the ribbian does particularly the suspension travel I agree and the that kind of Patagonia style off-road feature set with like the pass-through tunnel and all this cool features I think they're going to be more Spartan meaning it'll just be you know that stainless steel that kind of minimalistic model 3-esque feel where it'll do the things that Tesla does well so software range and charging I think you're I don't know about 2.8 miles per kilowatt hour yeah no I don't think so if they can get to 2.5 or 2.4 yeah with a battery that's twice as big as a model y now there's only about 1600 or 1700 cells in the pack and you if you can get 2.4 times that usable I don't know with regen you'd be at 360 to 380 miles of range and then have a some slightly bigger version where you get a bigger pack yeah the only reason I have a bigger battery pack than that would just be for towing in my impression because I just did a range test yesterday which sucked in a Mercedes eqs SUV and it went 375 miles on a charge at 70 miles an hour constant which is huge for only 108 kilowatt hour usable battery pack wow um so like crazy efficient for a you know you know three row seven seater SUV but that took six hours and it was terrible and like you don't need to drive that far the only reason you need more range is for towing which I think a lot of cyber truck owners are going to tow because I think a lot of people have that F-150 or Tacoma or some other truck and they're waiting for the Cyber truck to replace some of that capability I agree with the not going as heavy in the off-road Department because we live in Colorado on the off-road trails and even uh like we're like Mecca of off-road and maybe 10 of trucks ever see a trail yeah yeah um one other thing with oh man I just had a thought cued up and now I forgot well while you're thinking I have a question for you when you comes because you guys a really fascinating walking through here by the way and seeing the shop and everything um I certainly am nowhere near an expert when it comes to manufacturing a vehicle or engineering a vehicle from the ground up but if you had to pick a company you know particularly among the startups of lucid rivien uh Tesla of course who do you think has the engineering ability to basically vertically scale their whole operation we've seen Tesla do it from a manufacturing process all the stuff you guys talk about blows my mind as to what they're capable of doing it seems to me like they're just so far ahead of everyone else but I don't know if that's just me only seeing certain videos or if the others are also pretty competent and skilled in these areas or is Tesla truly that far ahead I think Tesla's truly that far ahead but it's for reasons that are Beyond just the engineering capability it starts with leadership and it may seem cliche like oh leadership you truly have to have your organization bought into a mission and if you look at what Elon stated the mission for Tesla it's to transform the world to sustainable energy and he does things that are actually contrary to profitability like when they're starting to drop prices to get sales up it actually is because they don't have any bona fide marketing getting the cars out there and sold at a half a million per quarter that is the most valuable thing because everyone I know that owns a Tesla they let all of their they drive all their friends around in it my mother-in-law bought a model why all of her relatives have been driving it and you know how many of her relatives bought model wise I think too oh nice both of her sisters sure they just ordered them and got them and they love them I've seen it too my whole family you know for they're all tested people to me uh Elon and Tesla's emulating what Apple did so nobody knew they wanted an iPhone when they when Steve Jobs really you know launched one that it would actually take over how the world operates think about the trillions of dollars of of ecosystem and and economy that's built off of the app industry Uber Lyft ubereats all of these apps and all of the money that flows through what and I see you have an iPhone 14 pro probably I have an iPhone 14 pro every one of our videos is filmed on these devices same here this films every out of spec video yeah and when we go visit places they're like well here's all your all your stuff sure and I have one two three there's five iPhones sitting here and I feel like Tesla they've kept their styling very similar but it's just something people want to have even if hundreds of thousands and soon millions of people have model threes and model y's and soon to be that low-cost Bev and the Cyber truck is Conquering a different part of the segment they're not they're not converting Silverado owners to cyber trucks sure or uh F-150 owners to cyber trucks they're converting people who have model threes model y's machines so so many people I talk to when I go to these shows they're like oh I drive a a whatever a monkey but I'm just waiting for my cyber truck I hear it all the time it's like the most common thing I hear and I'm not talking 10 people I'm talking hundreds probably close to a thousand times I've heard that oh you know it's coming but they're waiting patiently like religion like the the second coming of Christ right yeah is the birth of the Cyber truck and it's good and bad a lot of it's bad just because of commenters always just like oh cyber trucks you know the one to get but it's like you can't get it now so what are you gonna get today yeah is what we deal with a lot but yeah dude it's pretty wild how there is uh so so you think it's less to do with the manufacturing capabilities and more to do with this Aura around Tesla and this integration and how nicely everything works but then they back it up and not only they back it up with the products they deliver their ability and rate of change is much faster than we've ever seen in the automotive industry so out in our shop we have a model 3 that we took delivery of in January of 2018. we have a model y that was one of the first model wise men number 3000 uh with the Giga castings in the rear but it was the split one it wasn't even the single one yep and then they sent A year later they made a change where it was one big casting and now we have a Texas model y with casting in the front and the rear now the Cyber truck is a huge casting in the front two big castings in the rear and this you know exoskeleton design even though sanding I think it's a traditional body side outer engaging disgusting so um and then the structural battery pack you know has not been in that many model wise you know roughly 10 000 because they they said oh we've made ten thousand cells well if you do the math they made 10 million cells if you do the math that's only like 10 15. it was it was 12 something when I calculated it up yeah yeah not that many no so I think they're piloting the 4680 in the model Y is really to prepare for the Cyber truck which will be 4680 only in my opinion right well it was a little bit disappointing with 4680 was during the battery Day presentation and everything I mean it was touted to be the best you know Top Line thing and then they put it in the base model Y and like even then it charges very poorly and like didn't have like there was nothing material that I could go to someone and say Here's why this is the Clear Choice over a 2170 long range and it was just not the Clear Choice other than watching your videos and seeing that whole thing come out as one piece which was so cool I mean so I have some friends who are very connected with the you know German Legacy car building way if you will and they're uh a great Swiss company their futurist is called future matters and these guys are really good friends of mine and you know we were talking about this and they're just like everyone is freaking out over here over this over your videos on this uh the way this model y was constructed they're like Volkswagens losing their mind daimler's losing their mind is crazy so you're telling me all those people saw me in those videos yeah you are famous yeah because Sandy was traveling he was still we were in Italy we visited idra yeah and our vehicle showed up and we knew it was such hot news that the vehicle rolled in this facility and I said get it apart and they literally were ripping it apart I showed I came back early from Italy and I walked in and it was ready to drop and we were like well should we wait for Sandy it's like screw it yeah this is such a big news so we did like seven videos until Sandy came back and he was in video seven I think we got like four or five million views on those like it was epic 15 videos yeah it really shocked not just the Tesla Enthusiast which I think you know a lot of them every one of them watches your videos but we have some not very many but we have a pulse some what's going on in the car industry not only from a PR Communications marketing side but also from you know an engineering side just friends that I've made along the way and everyone's losing their mind I mean it was and and you know you can always tell like who's a really cool engineer when they're like that's awesome it was crazy it's crazy I still technically owe Sandy a steak dinner because when we first saw the image they released from Giga Berlin actually they showed the seats mounted to the pack and I go ah Sandy no way because because here I'm thinking of all of the challenges you have to overcome with wiring with plumbing of HVAC with the Assembly of the the center console the carpet would have to fold up and I'm like well I don't know and he's like oh no they're gonna do it and of course they are and then another thing that Sandy predicted was hairpin stator on the 4th gen Drive Unit for the model y the model 3 and presumably all future Teslas and he's like oh no no I swear and I said well I don't know and of course he's right there so don't doubt Sandy have you pulled apart one of these brand new drive units that are coming out the hardware for yeah no that I'm really curious to see what the heck is going on in there we could get one but it's one of those things we have to find a vehicle it's easy to find out you climb underneath to see if the oil filter is gone and it's like the integrated part of the case I did see all of the model y's being built in Berlin had the new Drive Unit okay installed and I that was the one thing I was able to see with my eyes that was actually kind of Juicy and um I think the Texas ones are being built with it but they're like very slowly rolling I don't know what that means is we've heard from people that it's a better unit it's more efficient it's more powerful so if they're releasing vehicles with this more powerful more efficient unit yet the range Remains the Same yet the power Remains the Same at what point do they unlock that potential or are they software locking the vehicle so that you don't have I forget what the effect is where people don't buy the old thing because right I know what you're talking for it yeah but but um on that topic of rating range Tesla rates range in I would say an unrealistic way because if you you've driven the model 3 you've driven the Plaid around if it says 300 miles you've got to drive around town to get 300 miles you're not getting that on the highway whereas yesterday I did again that eqs SUV taikon's the same way BMW IX is this way as well the Germans really tend to vary or perform very poorly in the EPA number because there's multiple Cycles you can choose from but and then in the real world it's an over deliver then you sort of no matter how you drive taikon you will get 50 to 80 miles more than EPA sometimes a hundred more and in eqs SUV I got 75 more just sitting at 70 miles an hour on the highway cruising so do you think that they're like Tesla rates range fairly because they're obviously just going to maximize the system rates range fairly I have found that when I drive other vehicles because I because I've driven Tesla so much I've come to expect underperforming the mileage so it says 300 I'm like I'm probably gonna get 260. yeah I've come to expect that and then I'll get in oh I got a Lexus RZ 450e sorry to hear that yeah I got one and I I what do you think of that yeah so I always like Japanese Vehicles so I got I thought the door was really tall and I haven't driven one yet so I don't know oh fine I've only driven a bz4x and a soltera oh I it was it was okay yeah uh Toyota and Lexus do this thing with their screens where some of them have like that Haze that kind of hazy look oh that's almost like a screen protector that you want to pull off yeah they had that on one of the screens I didn't like that okay um it was decent um I really like the center console believe it or not because it flipped uh up like this you mean sideways yeah no no so the German ones will split yes so that you don't have to fight with your you know wife or girlfriend or whatever you can open just half this one hinged like that way okay but it also hinged the other way oh so you could choose it was a double hinge it was crazy what happens if you unlock both hinges at the same time so I thought they could actually do a hinge this way a hinge that way and then have it flip up in the back but they didn't okay so I don't know I didn't try that would have been really fun just pops up so I like that but I thought it was so Corey's review of the Lexus RZ is all about the center console I did a whole video I did a whole video I did a whole review it got like 20 000 views sure are it doesn't do very well but the one thing when I got in it had like 125 miles of range and in my mind I took a BMW uh the 5 series electric one home and a lot of times I'll get in them and they'll have 120 miles of range because people drive around here yeah that thing like drained so fastly the BMW like by the time I got home went to my in-laws it was at like 40 miles I'm like what the hell there's an i4 M50 yeah that one the blue one it's really nice yeah but it just wasn't efficient or something that one it adds a pilot super sport tires yeah whatever but this this Lexus I do the same thing I took it home I took it to my mother-in-law's because she has a Tesla she loves seeing them so yeah then I drove home and I parked and it said like 122 and then I like drove somewhere else to the store drove home drove to work and I got back to work the next day and it said like 1 12. so like really efficiently it like over performed so to your point it it didn't drain really quickly it was like real world they wanted to make sure I wasn't scared it like instilled confidence that I can drive around a lot and what may have happened in that case is you know maybe the the Press Car Guys ripped it on the highway and it started to adjust yeah so so then that comes into the conversation of gesometer versus rated range calculation which is a topic for a different podcast yeah but yeah did you play around with that sunroof thing no oh it has this uh like electrochromatic uh sunroof which is really cool Eric I I didn't know it because I saw um our friends at Maki Vlog had had one on test and they were playing around with that there is one in the Denver press Fleet we can grab I just thought no one would be interested so we haven't made a video on it yet I don't think people were that interested Eric how did it do no come on producer it's got 40 000 oh 40 look at that okay yeah maybe I don't know that's not good for us yeah our average is like a hundred yeah you guys are doing great I would say probably won't see an out of spec review you on it anytime soon unless maybe when I'm out of town the guys can play around with it and make some videos yeah I saw one at the Chicago Auto Show and we did like a little bit of a walk around and it was silver but the one we got in the press press fleet was blue and was kind of funny it actually was like bin number like 120. oh really on the visor it actually said pre-production prototype sure so Toyota will do that they'll say that yeah it's they're still serious production yeah but they they don't actually sell them after they do Crush those oh really yep so if it says pre-production they can't they're non-salable yeah that's what it was which which is the first one we've got normally they don't say that when we get it from press Fleet yeah have you guys done any other cars recently we got a Prius well what'd you think of that I I didn't do any reviews on it Sandy and I travel you travel a lot yeah Sandy and I aren't here like we were in Portland yep we were in Vancouver we visited recyclico the recycling plant right we saw that yep that was actually really cool full videos coming soon good and tomorrow I'm headed to proterra in South Carolina see what they got going on they make bad they make buses and batteries they have a cool test track there oh you've been there you can drift a bus have you been there no but I've heard about it oh man look at that we looked at the ionic six recently oh yeah the ionic six yeah kind of looks it's just uglier than the ionic 5. I like the rear of it oh that's the worst part how because it kind of looks like a Porsche from the from the 80s it's like okay maybe someone described a Porsche over the phone and like you know they just were had a warped perception but I yeah sure I mean it's a great car technically I think you know charging from a EV user standpoint the Hyundai keyogenesis stuff is very fast charging uh and that's that's the key metric of that car great driver assistance very quiet ride's really nice all that stuff Have you had one yeah yeah I thought it was okay yeah we had a white one yeah I I just went on the first drive for it in Phoenix so I haven't done any testing on it but I've driven ionic five a bunch as well so and you said earlier uh before we got on the podcast you're headed to China so what do you what are you gonna do in China we're gonna drive a bunch of stuff so yeah we've been waiting on visas and stuff that's just like taking way too long I was supposed to be there already friends of ours already are in China basically waiting for us to get there um but uh yeah it's just like uh you know long long process crazy process but uh yeah so gonna be in Germany for a couple weeks around uh end of August early September and then we're thinking straight from there popping over to China I want to do the world's longest road trip using Neo battery swap I think that would be a really fun video go see the Great Wall go up to Beijing like do a huge Road Trip Around China look at charging infrastructure along the way stopping a bunch of factories bunch of automakers Shanghai is of course like the Detroit of China so want to go drive a bunch of weird cars that they have over there and stuff we've never heard of my friend Drew who owns Martian Wheels is there now and Drew was just saying like he's been counting the number of electric cars since the last time he was there and it's like he's like it's 10 times as many really just huge explosion he's like stuff I've never heard of and he's like you don't see eqes or eqs or i7s you see Tesla and you see like stuff that just like never he never knew what that was yeah I've seen someone did a chart of all these EV startups in China I think there was like 600 at one point but there was like the top they did a chart at the top I don't know 50 or 70 or something and a lot of them had access through that had gone out of business or merged or whatever so even they're having a paring down moment as well and I think the U.S doesn't it hasn't really gotten there yet we have Lordstown you know yeah bankruptcy we have a you know there's Nikola had their problems with Trevor Milton and yep I think uh Lucid their sales I think no one wants one of those things is what we're finding they're expensive they're expensive they're great I mean I just did uh you know 12 000 miles an hour lucid and my dad just took it back and um you know the car itself is is from a driving perspective the almost the best I mean the compromise of having a non-air suspension ripping up a Canyon from a performance standpoint but then also you know in terms of its compliance on road and just its manners are really Next Level good and of course the range and the efficiency for a car that big is next level good um but like it's 155 000 for a Grand Touring with you know dream drive and all this stuff but they charge ten thousand dollars for it to do Lane centering what yeah and it doesn't even do all the lane changes uh I mean they claim software updates will come but you know we've we've had our car uh for a few months and they've been out for over a year and it just you know just got auto screen brightness when it gets dark outside oh my God so there's still a lot of work to do on that thing and um I think we're almost at an hour um one big question that I have for you is at Tesla's recent shareholder meeting or investor day I forget what it was Elon kind of mentioned he may have mentioned on Twitter that they're thinking about licensing their autopilot software who do you think that OEM is I saw a poll online and it was overwhelming they won but who do you think is everyone thinks it's Ford yeah I have no idea yeah I could totally see it being forward uh I know Sammy the guy at Ford who who runs their Adas program uh he's a cool cool guy and um came from Argo AI I believe and based in Pittsburgh and talked to him a lot about these blue Cruise things it's just like um that makes it more real the FSD situation at least the autopilot sack because in terms of the car's competence on the road no one can match what Tesla can do but there are a lot of systems that can just stick in the middle of the lane and do adaptive cruise without Phantom breaking and all these things it's almost like Tesla's doing too much boy the cars are getting confused and it annoys me driving to arrive fsdmi Model S and never use it personally but there is definitely no question that they are farther ahead than anyone yeah but that also puts them into a little bit of a sketchy category so yeah I don't know which automaker would do it I didn't think any of them would but they said major automaker so that's not Arabian that's not a lucid that's not a new startup that's a Ford GM situation yeah and it could be a big win for Mary Barra if GM surprises everybody and and they are the first because I think Ford kind of one-up them with the with the nacs plug yep and I felt like jam was a fast follower this is an opportunity for Mary to actually maybe I don't want to make any predictions because I just genuinely don't know but uh would I could see it going any direction and it would be fascinating to understand the conversations that are going on so do you think the dominoes will fall as quickly as they did with the charge port because with nacs now I don't care who announces now that they're switching to Tesla's network is old news whatever everyone's going to switch yeah everyone's switching so it's like you don't want to be the 6th 7th 8th 9th 10th you want to be one two and three said you think if let's say Ford or GM announces they're switching and now you're forward your mercy your Mercedes this is different because they're working on their system with like mobile eye and you have all these the hardware maybe won't work as well this is this is totally different because if you look at a traditional OE mindset it is we produce the vehicle the customer fuels the vehicle so they don't want to be in the fueling business yeah and that's why I think it was such an easy decision to say yeah throw an export on our cars be and get access to the supercharger Network we don't want to deal with it we've never dealt with it yeah with driver assistance those are all separate competing systems being built in-house and I agree back to your point on consolidation it's going to happen this is the beginnings of it but don't know who it's going to be but it is going to be you know some automaker is going to have to walk away from a lot of money invested a lot of time invested a lot of convincing a lot of you know their own internal safety or you know standards that they want to include in the system and maybe it'll be like a nerfed version of autopilot yeah yeah yeah that that's I think will be that I think will be bigger than the charge port totally the charge ports it's a non it's a big deal yeah the port is is not a big deal but the access to the network is the big deal and I tried to explain that to someone like well what's the difference in costs and what's this and I said Ah that's all relatively menial it's the user experience of a GM a Ford Arabian owner that now they can buy the vehicle and take a road trip totally so that may actually hurt uh the Tesla sales a little bit because now you've actually their biggest Advantage you've now opened it up yeah you know so that Walled Garden that that Elon uses that he's like I didn't want a Walled Garden and well there's the proof yep and that it really takes a lot of humility for him to offer that Olive Branch to the other oems like hey use my Kick-Ass Network totally I mean uh you know I'm pretty involved in the charging side like you were saying and I was at this event called Char in uh you know they do these testing situations and you know we kind of saw the the forward charging people and the Tesla charging people kind of Buddy Buddy and Tesla had a pretty big Presence at this for the first time I mean they've been to other events but there's like a lot of people from the Tesla charging team yeah so you have a little inclination I was just like what's going on here I didn't think it was because Ford was going to switch to Tesla I thought actually it was because Tesla was at the time I was thinking well Tesla's putting magic dock on their stations they want to make sure they're interoperable with all of the cars that are on the road do you think that was when was that timing wise a month before this was right after magic doc launched oh so that would have been a couple months before yeah actually maybe closely yeah maybe one one month somewhere around there to the announcement actually yeah yeah it was fascinating so now I don't think magic Doc's gonna be a thing awesome yeah all right uh one last question and we'll we'll keep it more personal um what's your favorite thing to do not related to automobiles or electric vehicles I don't know if there is one this is like when I asked Sandy what do you do for fun and Eric and I were on a road trip and his answer was one word emails right he was actually serious that you know so yeah I I to be totally transparent there is nothing I do outside of this so you know what that reminds me of it reminds me of an answer that uh Mr Beast gave on an interview who's being interviewed I think by Joe Rogan okay and he he talked about how him and three other people for like three straight years all they did was do these slack calls or Zoom meetings and talk about thumbnails and the length of videos and the brightness of the thumbnails and they were they were just studied it and he essentially implied that that that's what he loved and that's all I did so it's kind of good that you're passionate about yeah I love the business of of Automotive media I love cars love driving stuff and so like anything around Adventure off-roading track driving Towing hauling I mean that's what we do for fun like our fun day out is we're either hitting the trails or we're hitting the track yeah pretty cool job you have what's your fun thing to do other than go to North Carolina hang out with the Outer Banks which is great did you go to duck I stayed in duck duck is the best place yeah technically I stayed on the border of duck okay Corolla yeah so yeah I was right there and you'd get to drive on the dunes at all no no I think I could have I had an all-wheel drive Yukon I could have deflated the tires or whatever yeah on the southern tip when you go down you can you know just cruise up and down it's amazing no yeah I stayed right there yes what do I do for fun I like to run actually I knew this yeah yeah I I think since I since we were you were in Tesla takeover last year since that point I think I ran 2200 miles and I've lost like 50 pounds so I was going to say and and huge congratulations to that you look amazing you really have gotten you know now that you were totally out of shape but you look great yeah uh it's giving me inspiration to do something similar and um also as a thank you to you I mean you're one of the I would say most well-educated well-rounded people in the EV Community oh because uh yeah when everyone asks like who who you know they come to me they're like who's the real expert I'm like Corey Corey is the guy no yeah true true yeah you really are the guy and so I love your videos when you're in them love the stuff you're doing I mean everything here at this business I mean I know how much of an impact you've had over the years it's pretty crazy um and so yeah you deserve every bit of success that you have I appreciate it sure all right I think we'll wrap it up with that it's been about an hour and I'm gonna go give you a tour of the rest of the facility after this great and I got a six hour drive going to Indianapolis that's right oh man real fun Eric you want to take us out here no no all right I'll do it you can do it all right so thanks for watching Monroe live podcast yeah we'd really appreciate if you subscribe and you can find our podcast everywhere where you find your podcast like apple music or Spotify thank you very much foreign

Channel: Munro Live Podcast

Views: 25,937

Keywords: EV, BEV, Sandy Munro, Munro, Electric Vehicle, Benchmarking, Electric, Insight, Lean Design, Design, MunroLive, MunroLive.com, ElectricCars, Review, Automotive, Automotive Review, Teardown Titan, Tesla, video review, Elon Musk, Munro Live, Ask Munro, Teardown, All Electric, Munro Live Podcast, Engineering, Podcast, YouTube, Cybertruck, Ford, F-150 Lightning, Ford Lightning, Electric Truck, EV Truck, EV Chargers, CCS, NACS, CEO, Rate your charge, Chargers, charging

Id: 62qpd3pGlsM

Length: 60min 58sec (3658 seconds)

Published: Thu Aug 03 2023