00:00SPEAKER- Do you look at that video I sent you last night?
00:02SPEAKER- No, no, I didn't.
00:03SPEAKER- Did you know, Brad, that researchers have trained people
00:06SPEAKERto use a robotic extra thumb?
00:08SPEAKERWhere would you put an extra thumb?
00:10SPEAKER- Well, I just looked at this picture.
00:12SPEAKER- Yeah.
00:13SPEAKER- And in between fits of revulsion.
00:17SPEAKER- Yeah.
00:17SPEAKER- I guess I have to say that where they put it
00:19SPEAKERis seems pretty sensible.
00:22SPEAKER- I mean, it would be cool to have two thumbs.
00:24SPEAKER- It's opposed to the other thumb.
00:26SPEAKER- Yeah.
00:26SPEAKER- It is literally, I mean, you know,
00:28SPEAKERpeople talk like humans evolved an opposable thumb,
00:30SPEAKERbut they didn't evolve two opposable thumbs
00:32SPEAKERthat oppose each other,
00:33SPEAKERwhich is exactly what this mechanical thumb is doing.
00:36SPEAKER- I wonder if you can like pinky and ring finger
00:39SPEAKERand hit the two thumbs.
00:40SPEAKERSo you can pick up two things at once.
00:42SPEAKER- This looks bad.
00:43SPEAKER- I think it looks cool.
00:45SPEAKER- There's a grotesque symmetry to this hand.
00:47SPEAKERLike literally, I mean, people will put this in the show.
00:49SPEAKERNow it's like the mechanical foam is literally extending
00:52SPEAKERout of the other side of the hand opposite the thumb
00:55SPEAKERso that there are thumbs on both sides of the hand.
00:57SPEAKERLike it is a symmetrical hand that should not exist.
01:00SPEAKER- It's thumb, pointy finger, rude finger, ring finger,
01:04SPEAKERpinky, robot thumb.
01:06SPEAKER- Yes.
01:08SPEAKER- I'm into it.
01:09SPEAKER- I don't know if I should click play or not here.
01:11SPEAKER- You should click play.
01:12SPEAKERIt's way worse when you watch the video.
01:13SPEAKER- Oh, it's very floppy.
01:15SPEAKER- Look, it's a cheap robot.
01:16SPEAKER- Look at that thing flop around.
01:18SPEAKER- Yeah, look at the woman.
01:19SPEAKERIf you got to the part where the woman grabs this stuff.
01:21SPEAKER- It's a 3D printed thumb.
01:23SPEAKER- Yeah, if you had a 3D printer,
01:24SPEAKERyou could have an extra thumb too.
01:26SPEAKER- What is it being controlled with?
01:27SPEAKERI sound is off, what are they controlling it with?
01:29SPEAKER- Wait, you're not serious.
01:30SPEAKER- I'm serious.
01:31SPEAKERThat thing on her wrist is checking nerve impulses
01:34SPEAKERat her hand so she wants to use it using, yeah.
01:38SPEAKER- Wait, I'm sorry.
01:39SPEAKERDoes the fake thumb literally mirror the real phone?
01:42SPEAKER- No, you can control the fake thumb independently.
01:45SPEAKER- This is horrific.
01:47SPEAKER- It's super cool.
01:48SPEAKER- I can't look at this anymore.
01:49SPEAKER- Watch the block.
01:50SPEAKERHave you gotten to the blocks where she picks up the blocks
01:52SPEAKERwith her fake thumb and the real finger?
01:54SPEAKER- Dude, this guy is playing a guitar with six fingers.
01:58SPEAKER- Uh-huh, this woman's playing Jenga, two things at a time.
02:01SPEAKER- This should not, this is not the kind of transhumanism
02:05SPEAKERthat I signed up for.
02:06SPEAKER- I would have, look, what if, hold on.
02:09SPEAKERHow many thumbs is too many thumbs?
02:11SPEAKERThat's the real question.
02:12SPEAKER- These are questions that humans were not meant to answer.
02:15SPEAKER- What if you could have like 10 thumbs?
02:17SPEAKER- We have to stop this right now.
02:19SPEAKER- Thumbs, thumbs, everywhere there's thumbs.
02:23SPEAKER- I want an extra thumb.
02:25SPEAKER(upbeat music)
02:54SPEAKER- Welcome to "Brad and Will Made a Tech Pod."
02:56SPEAKERI'm Will.
02:57SPEAKER- I'm Brad, what's up, Will?
02:58SPEAKER- Oh, not much, man, what about you?
02:59SPEAKERHey, I noticed you got a new chair.
03:01SPEAKER- I did get a new chair.
03:02SPEAKERWe were supposed to talk about my new chair
03:04SPEAKERfor the cold open and then you whipped out
03:05SPEAKERthis god-awful mechanical.
03:07SPEAKER- Look, right now I'm looking at the picture behind you
03:10SPEAKERof the old chair.
03:11SPEAKER- Oh no.
03:12SPEAKER- And it looks so sad.
03:13SPEAKER- Why did you bring that up?
03:15SPEAKER- Well, you're the one who stuck the freeze sign on it.
03:18SPEAKERIt's in your house still, man.
03:19SPEAKERHave some dignity.
03:20SPEAKER- Look, I haven't quite committed
03:22SPEAKERto putting it on the sidewalk yet.
03:24SPEAKER- You're still attached.
03:25SPEAKER- I put the freeze sign on it to open the door,
03:28SPEAKERthe metaphorical door, not my literal front door,
03:30SPEAKERalthough that will happen later.
03:31SPEAKER- That's phase one of letting things go?
03:34SPEAKER- I have started mentally psyching myself up
03:36SPEAKERto get rid of this chair that I've had
03:37SPEAKERsince I moved to San Francisco in 2003.
03:40SPEAKER- Okay, so I have an alternative
03:42SPEAKERto the freeze sign on the curb.
03:45SPEAKER- Okay.
03:46SPEAKER- Here's what I'm suggesting.
03:47SPEAKER- Go on.
03:48SPEAKER- Look, you are newly unemployed,
03:51SPEAKERso there's nothing holding you back
03:54SPEAKERfrom making some spectacularly bad decisions,
03:56SPEAKERis what I'm saying.
03:57SPEAKER- Oh, okay.
03:58SPEAKER- You have some roller blade casters on that bad boy,
04:02SPEAKERas I understand?
04:03SPEAKER- No, I took those off.
04:04SPEAKER- Oh.
04:05SPEAKER- Those are on the good chair now.
04:05SPEAKER- Okay, phase one, take the roller blade casters
04:07SPEAKERback off the good chair and put them on the old chair.
04:09SPEAKERPhase two, go to a very tall hill in San Francisco.
04:13SPEAKERPhase three, maybe borrow a helmet from someone.
04:18SPEAKERMaybe it's optional.
04:19SPEAKER- Okay.
04:20SPEAKER- Phase four, science.
04:24SPEAKER- I've been thinking about the classic question
04:26SPEAKERabout snowboarding in San Francisco,
04:28SPEAKERthe what if it snowed?
04:29SPEAKER- Yeah, it would be awesome.
04:30SPEAKER- I've been thinking about that for way too long
04:33SPEAKERto possibly entertain this idea.
04:35SPEAKERI'm not riding a chair down.
04:36SPEAKERI'm not taking this chair to Lombard Street, okay.
04:39SPEAKER- I have a new phase one.
04:40SPEAKERNew phase one is get disability insurance.
04:42SPEAKERNew phase two, roller blade wheels.
04:45SPEAKERNew phase three, helmet, question mark.
04:47SPEAKERNew phase four, excitement adventure, really wild stuff.
04:51SPEAKER- Okay, I don't do anything without a net.
04:53SPEAKER- Yeah, no, you gotta have that safety net.
04:54SPEAKER- Physical or insurance, at least.
04:57SPEAKERThis chair will probably go out tomorrow.
04:59SPEAKERI'm just gonna say that now.
05:00SPEAKERIf I say it on this podcast.
05:01SPEAKER- Oh boy.
05:02SPEAKER- This podcast will be up tomorrow morning
05:04SPEAKERand then I have no choice but to put the chair out.
05:06SPEAKER- People will ask, they'll be like,
05:07SPEAKER"Hey, where's your chair, Brad?"
05:08SPEAKER- Yes, people on the Discord are absolutely going to ask
05:10SPEAKERif I put this chair on this side.
05:10SPEAKER- Where are your chairs?
05:12SPEAKER- Also, just to be clear, every piece of furniture
05:14SPEAKERI've ever put on the sidewalk has disappeared in 20 minutes
05:16SPEAKERjust so people don't think I am dumping literal junk
05:19SPEAKERout on the sidewalk.
05:20SPEAKER- The San Francisco chair gremlins come fast, man.
05:24SPEAKER- This is a long standing San Francisco tradition
05:26SPEAKERto put your old furniture on the sidewalk
05:28SPEAKERbecause it goes immediately.
05:29SPEAKER- I got a little nook, like a shelf nook,
05:34SPEAKERlike a two shelf nook off the sidewalk.
05:36SPEAKEROne time it was great.
05:37SPEAKERI used it for a really long time.
05:39SPEAKER- Do you have to clean it up?
05:40SPEAKERSome of that stuff out there seems like it needs
05:43SPEAKERa good hosing down occasionally.
05:44SPEAKER- Use the bleach, dude.
05:46SPEAKER- Like the one thing you would not want to pick up
05:48SPEAKERoff the sidewalk here is a mattress, which you do see.
05:51SPEAKER- Oh God.
05:52SPEAKER- From time to time.
05:52SPEAKER- Do you think people really get those?
05:54SPEAKER- Somebody probably does.
05:55SPEAKERSomebody could use just about everything, you know?
05:58SPEAKER- Well, you know, we needed a new mattress
05:59SPEAKERfor the orgy room, so.
06:01SPEAKER- This chair has, I've gotten the good out of it,
06:04SPEAKERthey would say, back home, but I think somebody
06:06SPEAKERcould still get some more use out of it, so out it goes.
06:09SPEAKER- Put those roller blade wheels back on there
06:10SPEAKERand have an adventure.
06:11SPEAKER- Yeah, yes.
06:12SPEAKER- But search the disability insurance, probably.
06:15SPEAKER- What are we talking about today, Brad?
06:17SPEAKER- Your new car?
06:18SPEAKER- Oh, I got an electric car.
06:19SPEAKER- I guess that was the jumping off point
06:21SPEAKERfor this episode, at least, is your new car.
06:23SPEAKER- This also originally started as a cold open
06:26SPEAKER'cause my car texts me, which is weird.
06:29SPEAKERI've never had a car that texts me before.
06:30SPEAKER- Wait, what do you mean?
06:32SPEAKERYou gave your car a phone already?
06:33SPEAKERMost people wait till their cars are like seven or eight
06:36SPEAKERbefore they get their first phone, but only a--
06:38SPEAKER- Third grade.
06:39SPEAKER- Only a flip phone, don't give your car a smartphone
06:41SPEAKERuntil they're old enough to handle it.
06:43SPEAKERWhy does your car text you?
06:45SPEAKER- Third grade is the year for phones for kids.
06:50SPEAKER- Is that the standard?
06:52SPEAKER- We made a contact with our daughter's friends
06:55SPEAKERwhen we entered kindergarten
06:57SPEAKERthat it was gonna be third grade, at least.
06:59SPEAKER- Wait, you talked to their parents?
07:00SPEAKERYou all decided communally?
07:02SPEAKER- We had, so we had, like before the first week of school,
07:05SPEAKERall the parents got together and they brought,
07:07SPEAKERwe brought the kids to a playground
07:08SPEAKERso they could hang out and meet each other
07:10SPEAKERso they would have friends on first day of kindergarten.
07:12SPEAKERAnd the parents were all standing around
07:14SPEAKERtalking to each other, and that was one of the,
07:15SPEAKERI was like, hey, how do we all feel about phones?
07:18SPEAKER- Is that the new talk?
07:19SPEAKERIs that the modern version of the talk?
07:21SPEAKERWhen do they get a phone?
07:22SPEAKER- Fucking many talks now, like, hey, this is why,
07:25SPEAKERyou know how I won't let you watch YouTube unsupervised?
07:28SPEAKERThis is why.
07:29SPEAKERThat's one of the talks.
07:31SPEAKERThere's the, so your favorite influencer
07:33SPEAKERturned out to be a white supremacist talk.
07:37SPEAKER- There's the no honey, vaccines are perfectly safe talk.
07:41SPEAKER- No, sweetheart, the person who made "Minecraft"
07:43SPEAKERand "Harry Potter" are both shitheels talk.
07:48SPEAKERI'm looking forward to this sex talk at this point,
07:50SPEAKERto be honest, like, I'll be like, yeah,
07:52SPEAKERlook, when people love each other, like that shit's easy.
07:54SPEAKERI feel like people, part of,
07:56SPEAKERlarge part of our problems our generation have
07:58SPEAKERis 'cause we didn't talk about shit like sex.
08:00SPEAKER- That's true, that's true.
08:01SPEAKERGod bless today's children.
08:02SPEAKERThat's quite a bit more complicated than we had.
08:05SPEAKER- Yeah, but no, so Gina and I got a Bolt a month ago now.
08:11SPEAKERA month and change ago, 'cause we wanted a new car
08:15SPEAKERand we didn't want to buy gas cars anymore.
08:17SPEAKER- Hang on, I'm gonna guess who makes the Bolt.
08:19SPEAKERDon't tell me.
08:19SPEAKER- Who makes the Bolt?
08:21SPEAKER- My first guess was Nissan, but I don't think that's right.
08:23SPEAKER- Nope.
08:24SPEAKERThey go with environmentally friendly sounding names
08:27SPEAKERlike Leaf or Nexterra.
08:28SPEAKER- Oh, do they still like the Leaf?
08:29SPEAKERWe'll talk about the Leaf here in a little bit.
08:30SPEAKER- We will.
08:32SPEAKER- It's not a Honda.
08:33SPEAKER- Nope.
08:34SPEAKER- Is it cheating to ask the country?
08:38SPEAKER- All cars are made in all countries now, Brad.
08:40SPEAKER- Oh, I mean the country of origin of the parent company.
08:42SPEAKER- America.
08:43SPEAKER- Oh, well that narrows it down quite a bit.
08:46SPEAKER- Yep.
08:47SPEAKER- Okay, Ford Bolt, Chevy Bolt.
08:48SPEAKER- Chevy Bolt.
08:49SPEAKER- Chevy Bolt, there you go.
08:50SPEAKER- Got it.
08:51SPEAKER- Got it in four. - Nailed it in six.
08:52SPEAKER- Got it in four.
08:54SPEAKER- Yeah, so we got a Bolt and we'll talk about
08:57SPEAKERwhy we chose a Bolt in a minute, I guess.
09:00SPEAKERBut before we started this, you said,
09:03SPEAKER"Hey, can we talk about how gas cars work a little bit?"
09:06SPEAKER- Yeah, yes, I have a vague notion of engine to drive train
09:13SPEAKERto axle to wheels, but that's about it.
09:16SPEAKERAlso, before we get into it,
09:18SPEAKERI did look back in the annals of this podcast,
09:20SPEAKERwhich now are quite long.
09:21SPEAKER- Yeah.
09:22SPEAKER- We did do a self-driving car episode.
09:24SPEAKER- Early.
09:25SPEAKER- Long about episode 10 or so,
09:27SPEAKERso apologies if we repeat anything here.
09:29SPEAKER- I mean, it's funny, like I equate electric cars
09:32SPEAKERand self-driving cars in my head,
09:34SPEAKERI think mostly because of Tesla
09:35SPEAKERand their insistence on calling
09:37SPEAKERtheir driver assistance package autopilot,
09:39SPEAKERwhich it kind of is in the literal sense,
09:42SPEAKERbut it's not in the figurative sense
09:44SPEAKERthat everybody thinks autopilot means.
09:46SPEAKER- Yeah.
09:47SPEAKER- We don't need to get back onto that, but yeah.
09:51SPEAKERSo we're gonna talk about,
09:53SPEAKERwe're gonna try to do an overview of electric cars here,
09:55SPEAKERlike some experiences that I've had with hands-on time,
09:59SPEAKERlike the good and the bad of the electric car,
10:02SPEAKERhow it compares to gas cars, probably a brief interlude
10:06SPEAKERabout thermodynamics.
10:08SPEAKER- Always fun.
10:09SPEAKER- Efficiency, always good.
10:10SPEAKER- You know, some light weekend listening, thermodynamics.
10:12SPEAKER- And then, yeah, something to listen to
10:14SPEAKERwhile you're mowing your lawn
10:14SPEAKERwith your gas combustion two-stroke engine.
10:17SPEAKER- Oh, do they have electric lawn mowers yet?
10:19SPEAKER- I have an electric lawn mower.
10:20SPEAKER- Oh, wow.
10:21SPEAKER- It's the best thing.
10:22SPEAKER- I bet.
10:23SPEAKER- Like, it's not as loud.
10:25SPEAKERI do have to deal with the corks.
10:26SPEAKERI didn't spring for the battery powered one, but it rips.
10:30SPEAKERIt's so good compared to the gas lawn mower
10:32SPEAKERor the, I mean, I had a manual push lawn mower
10:34SPEAKER'cause we have a baby lawn,
10:35SPEAKERbut the gas one's, the electric one's strong.
10:38SPEAKERAnyway, but let's start at the beginning.
10:40SPEAKER- Okay.
10:41SPEAKER- With like the, again, the thing that was invented
10:43SPEAKERin the late 1800s by probably some German guy.
10:47SPEAKERI don't know.
10:48SPEAKERI was like, okay, I didn't look at this part of the thing.
10:50SPEAKER- Hans motor car created the first combustion engine in 1870.
10:55SPEAKER- It was Mercedes gas combustion was his name.
10:59SPEAKER- Okay, so the engine in a normal gas powered,
11:02SPEAKERICE, we'll call it, an internal combustion engine.
11:05SPEAKER- Oh, is that a common acronym I've ever heard?
11:07SPEAKER- That is a common acronym in the scene, in the EV scene.
11:11SPEAKER- Okay.
11:11SPEAKER- So ICE is the traditional acronym.
11:15SPEAKER- Do they say it with a sneer?
11:16SPEAKERLike as soon as you put that in context,
11:19SPEAKERI started thinking about who would say that
11:21SPEAKERand how they would say it.
11:22SPEAKER- Every time I drive by a gas station now, Brad,
11:25SPEAKERI look at it and I point out to the child and I'm like,
11:27SPEAKERlook, that's the thing we used to have to go to.
11:30SPEAKERWe still have a gas car in the driveway too,
11:31SPEAKERso it's not like we don't go there ever anymore.
11:33SPEAKER- Check out those filthy icers.
11:35SPEAKER- Yeah, yeah, exactly.
11:37SPEAKERSo, okay, normal car, it takes gas,
11:40SPEAKERit pumps the gas into the engine with a fuel,
11:43SPEAKERthe fuel pump moves the gas to the engine.
11:45SPEAKERThere's these things called injectors
11:47SPEAKERthat sit on top of, step back, a normal,
11:52SPEAKERthere's a bunch of different kinds of engines in the world.
11:54SPEAKERThere's Winkle rotaries, there's, I'm gonna,
11:55SPEAKERwe'll link a YouTube, this Lego video in the show notes
11:59SPEAKERthat makes Lego demos of a bunch
12:02SPEAKERof different styles of engine.
12:04SPEAKERBut the most common thing that you see in like,
12:07SPEAKERmost cars that you would see on the road
12:09SPEAKERuse either a four cylinder, a six cylinder,
12:12SPEAKERan eight cylinder engine,
12:13SPEAKERand those come in different configurations.
12:15SPEAKERSometimes they're all, the cylinders are in a line,
12:17SPEAKERsometimes they're in a V space,
12:20SPEAKERand those are basically just like space saving measures.
12:22SPEAKERThere's some, they have an impact on like torque
12:25SPEAKERand stuff that's generated,
12:26SPEAKERbut we don't have to worry about that
12:27SPEAKERfor the purposes of this conversation.
12:29SPEAKER- Is that why you'll hear about a V8?
12:31SPEAKERAre those V-shaped ones?
12:32SPEAKER- Yeah, all a V8 means is that the pistons are in,
12:35SPEAKERare on the two lines of a V
12:37SPEAKERversus being straight up and down in the car.
12:39SPEAKERSo like a lot of times in the '80s and '90s,
12:41SPEAKERyou would see front wheel drive cars with us inline six,
12:46SPEAKERor Jeep used to use inline sixes
12:48SPEAKERfor their four wheel drive cars.
12:49SPEAKERAnd they would, the motor would just be sideways
12:52SPEAKERso that the drive train is parallel
12:56SPEAKERwith the axle in some of those cars.
12:59SPEAKEROkay, so you have these pistons,
13:02SPEAKERthey're big cylinders with a piston inside,
13:04SPEAKERand the piston is just a smaller cylinder
13:06SPEAKERthat slides up and down with no space.
13:08SPEAKERThose are attached to levers on the bottom.
13:10SPEAKERAnd what happens is the fuel pump and the injectors
13:13SPEAKERsquirt a little bit of gas and a little bit of air
13:15SPEAKERin the right mixture and ratio into the top of that engine,
13:19SPEAKERand then mechanical forces push the piston up,
13:24SPEAKERa spark plug ignites the gas.
13:27SPEAKER- That's what a spark plug is for.
13:30SPEAKERI probably should have put that together at some point.
13:32SPEAKER- The gas explodes and the force of that explosion
13:35SPEAKERpushes the piston back down,
13:37SPEAKERand that transfers energy to the crankshaft.
13:40SPEAKER- I've always found it very amusing that the term explode
13:43SPEAKERis used to describe this action.
13:44SPEAKERI mean, I know that is literally
13:46SPEAKERin a technical sense what's happening.
13:47SPEAKERLike it's kind of the same way that like the,
13:49SPEAKERthe Saturn V is technically
13:51SPEAKERjust a controlled huge explosion, right?
13:53SPEAKERLike it's kind of the same principle, right?
13:54SPEAKERLike you were just harnessing the power
13:56SPEAKERof petrochemical explosions, right?
14:00SPEAKER- Yeah, you're like every time, so, okay.
14:04SPEAKEROn an internal combustion engine, like a four stroke,
14:07SPEAKERmost car engines are four stroke motors.
14:09SPEAKERSo that means there's four ups and downs of the piston
14:13SPEAKEReach cycle, and only one of those is the explosion.
14:16SPEAKERSo the other ones are pulling gas into the chamber,
14:19SPEAKERcompressing the chamber so that it's ready to explode,
14:22SPEAKERthe explosion, and then venting the bad gas
14:25SPEAKERback out of the chamber on the next stroke.
14:29SPEAKERSo the gas explodes, it pushes the cams up and down,
14:32SPEAKERpushes the cam down.
14:34SPEAKERAt the same time, the next cylinder is pushing up, right?
14:37SPEAKERSo the cylinders are running,
14:39SPEAKERthere's four ups and downs for each cylinder per cycle,
14:43SPEAKERand they all run cattywampus with each other
14:45SPEAKERso that at some point on each stroke,
14:48SPEAKERone of them is pushing down and the others are doing their...
14:50SPEAKEROne's pushing down, one's pushing up and venting,
14:53SPEAKERone's pushing down and sucking air in and gas in,
14:57SPEAKERand one's pushing up to compress the air and gas mixture.
15:02SPEAKERThat applies power to the drivetrain,
15:05SPEAKERthe crankshaft, the drivetrain goes into the transmission,
15:09SPEAKERthe crankshaft goes into the transmission,
15:11SPEAKERand then the transmission has a series of gears
15:13SPEAKERthat reduce, that turn a relatively small number of rotations
15:19SPEAKERinto faster or slower rotations,
15:21SPEAKERdepending on what you wanna do.
15:23SPEAKERIf you're a pickup truck,
15:24SPEAKERthen you might want a lot of torque to the back end
15:27SPEAKERso you can pull heavy loads,
15:28SPEAKERand that means that you'll do, you'll turn...
15:32SPEAKERIt's basically using gears and ratios to change spins
15:36SPEAKERinto power, yeah.
15:37SPEAKER- Much like with the spark plug, I'm sitting here going,
15:39SPEAKER"Oh, that's why they call it a gear shift."
15:42SPEAKER- Yeah, so if you have a manual transmission car,
15:44SPEAKERyou're literally pushing in the clutch
15:46SPEAKERand you move the stick around and that changes the gears,
15:49SPEAKERthat changes which set of gears are connected
15:51SPEAKERto which other set of gears
15:52SPEAKERin that big complicated transmission.
15:54SPEAKERThere's also a differential at the back end of the car
15:57SPEAKERthat changes, that can further reduce the gearing
16:02SPEAKERor increase it, I can't remember.
16:04SPEAKERBut the upshot is, gas explodes, pushes some levers,
16:09SPEAKERpushes some pistons down, those pistons turn a crank,
16:12SPEAKERthe crank goes into a transmission,
16:14SPEAKERthe transmission goes into a differential,
16:15SPEAKERand then the wheels turn on the pavement.
16:18SPEAKERAnd there's a bunch of other stuff too.
16:20SPEAKERLike there's brakes, there's cooling,
16:22SPEAKERthere's an alternator which hooks into this whole thing
16:26SPEAKERand there's all those belts in the front
16:29SPEAKERand those run things like the big fan
16:32SPEAKERthat cools off all the water, that cools the engine block.
16:34SPEAKERThere's those also hook into the alternator
16:37SPEAKERwhich generates electricity that the car uses
16:39SPEAKERto make the spark plugs work and recharge the battery
16:42SPEAKERand run the radio and the air conditioner
16:44SPEAKERand all the stuff that uses electricity in your car.
16:47SPEAKERThere's power steering and climate control
16:49SPEAKERand all that stuff too,
16:50SPEAKERwhich are all these separate systems
16:51SPEAKERthat all tie into the thing.
16:52SPEAKERBut, oh, and there's a flywheel
16:54SPEAKERwhich I think its whole purpose is to absorb vibrations
16:58SPEAKERso that it, I don't understand what a flywheel does,
17:01SPEAKERit's confusing.
17:02SPEAKERAnyway.
17:03SPEAKER- Fair.
17:04SPEAKERAlso, and also all very computerized,
17:07SPEAKERa lot of it runs on Linux these days.
17:09SPEAKERNot to go off on a tangent here,
17:11SPEAKERbut you hear about these carb plants being mothballed
17:15SPEAKERbecause they can't get enough computer chips
17:17SPEAKERto complete the cars that they're trying to make, right?
17:19SPEAKER- Well, and there's sensors at all different places
17:21SPEAKERalong the things that are off in solid state now.
17:23SPEAKERSo there will be sensors coming out of the exhaust
17:27SPEAKERthat look for hydrocarbons or high oxygen levels
17:30SPEAKERor high carbon monoxide levels or whatever.
17:32SPEAKERAnd from that, they can infer the state of the injectors
17:35SPEAKERand things like that.
17:36SPEAKERSo like, for example, the injectors are controlled
17:41SPEAKERby computers now.
17:42SPEAKERSo they know how much air is being sucked into the pistons.
17:45SPEAKERSo they know how much gas to squirt in there
17:47SPEAKERto get the optimal explosion for either fuel efficiency
17:50SPEAKERor power or whatever.
17:52SPEAKERThe diesel cars are a little bit different.
17:54SPEAKERThey don't have spark plugs.
17:55SPEAKERThe gas just ignites based on compression.
17:58SPEAKERSo it just works itself out.
18:00SPEAKERAnd then there's also-
18:01SPEAKER- Is diesel a more combustible fuel?
18:03SPEAKERIs that the difference?
18:03SPEAKER- Diesel has more energy, but is less likely to explode.
18:06SPEAKERIt requires pressure to explode is my understanding.
18:09SPEAKER- Okay.
18:11SPEAKERI'm sorry, let me jump in real fast last thing.
18:15SPEAKERJust because I've been living in the Linux world a lot
18:17SPEAKERlately and researching stuff.
18:19SPEAKER- You got to talk about SAE.
18:21SPEAKER- May it may, what is that?
18:23SPEAKER- They're one of the vendors that does a lot of that stuff.
18:25SPEAKERThey do standards for like computers and cars
18:27SPEAKERand all sorts of stuff in cars.
18:29SPEAKER- The only reason I bring that up is that so many cars
18:31SPEAKERare running Linux now that there is literally
18:33SPEAKERsomething called the Automotive Linux Summit
18:35SPEAKERthat just took place in Tokyo a couple months ago.
18:38SPEAKERThey literally have a trade show for Linux
18:40SPEAKERrunning on cars at this point.
18:41SPEAKERThat's how computerized all that stuff is.
18:43SPEAKER- That sounds awesome.
18:44SPEAKERI would love to go to that.
18:45SPEAKER- That's a weird confluence of things.
18:47SPEAKERBut anyway, sorry, we're more here to talk about
18:50SPEAKERmechanical stuff than computer stuff.
18:52SPEAKER- Yeah, well, I've learned some stuff that I didn't,
18:55SPEAKERhadn't really heard people talk about electric cars
18:57SPEAKERin the process of driving one for a month now.
19:02SPEAKER- I guess, so the things, the big takeaways here
19:06SPEAKERare that gas engines are not particularly,
19:10SPEAKERlike even after 120 years of active development
19:13SPEAKERand like 50 years of really trying hard
19:16SPEAKERto make them efficient, they're still mechanically,
19:18SPEAKERlike in a thermodynamic sense, not particularly efficient.
19:21SPEAKER- Yeah, you wrote the stat down in the notes here
19:24SPEAKERthat blew my mind.
19:24SPEAKERI'll let you say it.
19:25SPEAKERBut like the number on this for the efficiency,
19:28SPEAKERthe thermodynamic efficiency is like shockingly low.
19:31SPEAKER- Yeah, so, okay, well,
19:33SPEAKERfirst we should talk about what that is.
19:36SPEAKERAnd in this case, efficiency is,
19:41SPEAKERthis is complicated
19:42SPEAKER'cause it doesn't actually tell the whole story
19:43SPEAKERand we're not exactly comparing apples to apples
19:46SPEAKERwhen we're talking about gas to electric,
19:48SPEAKERbecause, you know, gas is a product that's refined
19:52SPEAKERfrom a natural resource.
19:54SPEAKERAnd as a result, it's not,
19:58SPEAKERlike it's pretty like turning oil from the ground
20:03SPEAKERinto gasoline that burns in a car
20:05SPEAKERis a relatively efficient process.
20:08SPEAKERAt the same time, electricity that you put into electric car
20:11SPEAKERis a tertiary or quaternary product of the electrical grid.
20:16SPEAKERSo that means, you know, the process for that
20:19SPEAKERis that somebody has to mine coal or natural,
20:21SPEAKERcollect natural gas or fuel oil.
20:24SPEAKERThey have to transmit that to a power plant.
20:26SPEAKERThe power plant burns it.
20:27SPEAKERThat's then converted and stepped up and down
20:30SPEAKERall over the way and transmitted through the electrical grid.
20:33SPEAKERAnd then it comes out at your house.
20:35SPEAKERAnd obviously there's in-betweens,
20:37SPEAKERlike there's, if you're someplace
20:39SPEAKERthat primarily does wind or hydro power,
20:41SPEAKERit's a different process.
20:42SPEAKERAnd how your power is generated
20:45SPEAKERaffects the efficiency of your electric car,
20:47SPEAKERwhich is like conceptually fascinating.
20:50SPEAKER- The point is there are, what would you say,
20:53SPEAKERlike second, third and fourth order externalities
20:56SPEAKERto driving electric car that people don't really think about.
21:00SPEAKERPeople fixate on the zero emission aspect
21:02SPEAKERand not so much on the, like,
21:03SPEAKERwhere's the power coming from
21:04SPEAKERand what are the environmental costs of that and et cetera.
21:07SPEAKER- Well, the zero emission aspect
21:08SPEAKERis really good in a local sense, right?
21:10SPEAKER- For sure, yeah.
21:11SPEAKER- 'Cause it means you're putting less air pollution
21:12SPEAKERin the place that you live,
21:13SPEAKERwhich seems nice as the person who lives where I live, right?
21:17SPEAKER- Sure.
21:18SPEAKER- But if your concern is,
21:20SPEAKERam I putting more carbon in the air
21:22SPEAKERthan I'm contributing to the global climate crisis,
21:26SPEAKERthen yeah, maybe an electric car
21:28SPEAKERis not gonna do you that much good
21:30SPEAKERif you live in, say, Australia,
21:31SPEAKERwhere they still generate a lot of power with coal.
21:35SPEAKEROkay, so efficiency.
21:37SPEAKERAnd again, this isn't super apples to apples
21:39SPEAKERbecause primary power, secondary power, tertiary power,
21:42SPEAKERwe're comparing across tiers.
21:45SPEAKERBut a really good gas car today
21:47SPEAKERturns about 20 to 35% of the energy
21:52SPEAKERstored in the gas as a chemical.
21:55SPEAKERWhen it explodes the gas,
21:56SPEAKERit turns about 20 to 35% of that energy
21:58SPEAKERinto propulsive motion.
22:00SPEAKER- Yes, that was the number that really jumped out at me.
22:02SPEAKERI mean, even after how many,
22:04SPEAKER100 and something years of making cars commercially,
22:07SPEAKERwe're still only getting like a quarter to a third
22:10SPEAKERof the energy efficiency.
22:11SPEAKER- That's really good for chemical to mechanical conversions
22:16SPEAKERfor what it's worth.
22:17SPEAKERLike a bulldozer is like 8% efficient.
22:19SPEAKER- Oh, wow.
22:20SPEAKER- Okay. - Yeah.
22:21SPEAKER- Okay, maybe I just lack the frame of reference here
22:22SPEAKERto realize that that's actually like not bad.
22:25SPEAKER- Yeah, it is.
22:27SPEAKERAnd two-stroke motors are, I think,
22:29SPEAKERI wanna say two-stroke motors are more efficient
22:31SPEAKERbut pollute way more
22:32SPEAKER'cause they don't as cleanly burn the gas.
22:35SPEAKERLike where a four-stroke motor
22:36SPEAKERhas a couple of extra strokes in there
22:38SPEAKERthat are for venting out the spent fuel
22:40SPEAKERand sucking in fresh clean fuel,
22:43SPEAKERa two-stroke motor just keeps squirting in more air
22:47SPEAKERand gas in with the garbage
22:49SPEAKERso that then the carbon dioxide and carbon monoxide
22:52SPEAKERin the exhaust end up reducing the efficiency of the burn.
22:55SPEAKER- So there's always a trade-off somewhere.
22:57SPEAKER- Yeah, two-stroke motors are often,
22:58SPEAKERthey're on old motorcycles and dirt bikes,
23:01SPEAKERbut also famously leaf blowers, weed eaters,
23:04SPEAKERgas-powered lawn mowers are often two-stroke motors,
23:07SPEAKERlike push mowers, not necessarily riding mowers.
23:11SPEAKERSo, okay, so with the gas,
23:15SPEAKERso 20 to 35% efficiency in terms of chemical energy
23:21SPEAKERto mechanical energy in a gas-powered ice engine car.
23:26SPEAKERThe extra energy is lost as exhaust in heat.
23:31SPEAKERIt's lost as heat of the motor block
23:34SPEAKERthat is then exhausted with the cooling system.
23:37SPEAKERIt's friction, it's all the other,
23:40SPEAKERlike running the air conditioner,
23:41SPEAKERall the other things that happen in a car.
23:46SPEAKERThe conversion of chemical energy stored in the battery
23:48SPEAKERto motive power is much, much more efficient
23:51SPEAKERin an electric car.
23:52SPEAKERIt's like around 90%,
23:53SPEAKERdepending on the batteries in the car
23:54SPEAKERand like the size of the car,
23:56SPEAKERthe weight of the car, the transmission.
23:57SPEAKERWell, there's no transmission in an electric car.
23:59SPEAKERWe'll get to that in a minute.
24:00SPEAKER- So like there again is another math problem, right?
24:02SPEAKEROf like, you know, generating the electricity
24:04SPEAKERmay not be entirely clean,
24:05SPEAKERbut you are getting much more out of that electricity
24:07SPEAKERin terms of motion than you would be from the gas.
24:09SPEAKERIt's sort of like, it's a very complicated comparison.
24:12SPEAKER- Well, and even if, like even if you're worst case,
24:15SPEAKERyour power from your grid is generated by coal plants, right?
24:19SPEAKERThey're still have like a coal power plant
24:23SPEAKERreleases a ton of carbon dioxide,
24:25SPEAKERbut they at least do scrub out the bad pollutants
24:28SPEAKERthat cause like acid rain and stuff like that,
24:30SPEAKERthat don't necessarily get pulled from a car exhaust.
24:33SPEAKERSo like you're at least not putting sulfur dioxide
24:37SPEAKERand you know, the nitrous, various nitruses
24:40SPEAKERout into the air and stuff like that.
24:44SPEAKER- Okay.
24:47SPEAKER- 90%.
24:48SPEAKER- The other thing that's interesting about the electric,
24:52SPEAKERusing electric versus using ice
24:54SPEAKERis that there are tertiary effects.
24:55SPEAKERSo because you charge your car at night, typically,
24:59SPEAKERso most typically what you do,
25:02SPEAKERif you're most power companies incentivize this,
25:04SPEAKERI guess that's the right way to say this.
25:06SPEAKERSo PG&E, our power company here in Northern California,
25:09SPEAKERif you sign up for a electric car plan with them
25:13SPEAKERand you say, okay, I'm only gonna,
25:15SPEAKERthen they will give you a dramatically reduced rate
25:18SPEAKERat nighttime when demand is lowest.
25:21SPEAKERAnd the reason they do that is because the power grid,
25:24SPEAKERwe've talked about this before,
25:25SPEAKERthe power grid is instantaneous use.
25:27SPEAKERSo when power is generated at say the Diablo Canyon
25:31SPEAKERnuclear power plant down South,
25:33SPEAKERthen that power is immediately consumed
25:35SPEAKERby somebody on the grid.
25:36SPEAKERThere's no storage mechanism for the most part
25:38SPEAKERin most grids around the world.
25:41SPEAKERThat's starting to change a little bit.
25:42SPEAKERLike we're seeing some storage mechanisms
25:44SPEAKERin terms of like large battery banks.
25:46SPEAKERWe're seeing some mechanical storage things
25:48SPEAKERwhere like people have two reservoirs
25:51SPEAKERand they'll pump water up to the top reservoir
25:53SPEAKERduring the nighttime and it'll come down during the daytime.
25:55SPEAKERAnd the reason it makes sense to do that is
25:58SPEAKERyou can't turn all the power plants on and off dynamically.
26:02SPEAKERSo for example, if the wind dies down
26:07SPEAKERand the wind generators slow down,
26:10SPEAKERyour nuclear power plants running,
26:11SPEAKERyou can't turn those on and off easily.
26:13SPEAKERThey have to spin up, say, a natural gas plant
26:17SPEAKERto cover the increased load.
26:19SPEAKERAt the same time, if it's really windy in Tehachapi
26:23SPEAKERon Tuesday evening at 1 a.m.,
26:26SPEAKERthey can't turn the nuclear power plants off
26:29SPEAKERto reduce the amount of energy that they're putting out,
26:32SPEAKERthe amount of power that they're putting out.
26:34SPEAKERSo the electric company has to balance that stuff constantly
26:38SPEAKERand often the way they do it is by turning on and off
26:40SPEAKERnatural gas powered plants constantly.
26:44SPEAKER- Which I assume, excuse me,
26:45SPEAKERare just the easiest to bring up and down quickly.
26:48SPEAKER- Those are the ones that you can bring up and down quickly.
26:50SPEAKERIt does add wear and tear.
26:52SPEAKERAnd as my understanding is that there are some,
26:55SPEAKERlike depending on how quickly they have to spin up and down,
26:59SPEAKERthere's costs associated with that
27:01SPEAKERin terms of like how much the power plant charges
27:03SPEAKERthe provider and stuff like that.
27:06SPEAKERThe other thing is that as we see more solar coming online,
27:09SPEAKERthe solar is, the spikes in usage for most places
27:15SPEAKERare like mid-afternoon.
27:16SPEAKERSo 3 p.m. to like 9 p.m., 10 p.m. at night
27:19SPEAKERwhen people start going to bed.
27:21SPEAKERAnd solar covers the first half of that,
27:23SPEAKERbut it misses that 6 p.m. to 9 p.m.
27:26SPEAKERas it's starting to go from dusk to nighttime.
27:29SPEAKERSo you set your car to not charge during those peak times
27:33SPEAKERbecause they give you a higher rate then
27:34SPEAKERand you get a lower rate from say midnight to 3 p.m.
27:37SPEAKERwhen people start turning on air conditioners.
27:39SPEAKERAnd as a result, I pay a fraction,
27:44SPEAKERmy rate at midnight is a third what it was
27:47SPEAKERbefore I had the electric car now.
27:50SPEAKERAnd that means that I fill up there
27:52SPEAKERand it saves PG&E money by having my car charged then
27:58SPEAKERbecause somebody is using the energy
28:01SPEAKERthat they need to get rid of
28:02SPEAKERor else they have to turn off the nuclear power plant
28:05SPEAKERwhich costs a lot of money.
28:06SPEAKER- And amazingly by PG&E standards,
28:08SPEAKERthey pass the savings along to you for once.
28:11SPEAKER- They used to pass the savings along a lot more.
28:13SPEAKERNow they said they pass it.
28:14SPEAKERThey've changed the EV car rate plan a couple of years ago.
28:17SPEAKERSo it used to be like fractions of a cent per kilowatt hour
28:21SPEAKERfor electric vehicles.
28:22SPEAKERAnd now it's like half the normal rate
28:24SPEAKERinstead of a 10th the normal rate.
28:26SPEAKER- All right.
28:27SPEAKER- But okay, so the upshot on all this for me as a customer
28:31SPEAKERis that I pay the equivalent of like 75 cents a gallon
28:36SPEAKERfor gas.
28:37SPEAKER- Okay, all right.
28:38SPEAKER- The amount of energy required to drive my car
28:41SPEAKER20 to 25 miles is like 70, 75 cents.
28:45SPEAKER- Wow, that's like right there at the magic number.
28:48SPEAKERI distinctly remember when I started driving,
28:50SPEAKERgas in our area was about 74 cents a gallon or something.
28:54SPEAKER- Wow, really?
28:55SPEAKER- Which has always been the ideal in my mind of like, man,
28:57SPEAKERremember when it was like three quarters a gallon?
28:59SPEAKER- I remember the first time it went above a dollar
29:01SPEAKERand I was like, oh man, this sucks.
29:03SPEAKER- Yes, right.
29:04SPEAKERHow things change.
29:05SPEAKER- Five dollars a gallon.
29:06SPEAKER- So I don't know if you're ready to get into your kind of
29:09SPEAKERhands-on impressions just yet,
29:10SPEAKERbut I did have one question about the overnight charging
29:12SPEAKERand you made it sound like does the car itself have a timer
29:15SPEAKERwhere you can just tell it when to accept a charge
29:17SPEAKERand when not, because otherwise like getting up at midnight
29:20SPEAKERto plug your car in does not sound appealing.
29:23SPEAKER- So every car is different depending on what your charging
29:26SPEAKERsituation at home is, and we'll talk about this later
29:28SPEAKERwith like the difference between the level chargers.
29:30SPEAKERLike the Bolt has, you tell the Bolt what your power,
29:35SPEAKERlike what the power situation is that you're at each
29:37SPEAKERlocation that you charge at.
29:38SPEAKERSo for example, when I plug in at the house,
29:41SPEAKERit knows where I am because it has GPS and it's like,
29:43SPEAKERoh, we're at home.
29:45SPEAKERYou have this amount of amperage and these are the times
29:48SPEAKERthat power is inexpensive.
29:50SPEAKERAnd you can say like, like if you're at your office,
29:53SPEAKERyou can say, okay, charge whenever I plug in.
29:55SPEAKERWhen you're at home, you say charge when the power
29:57SPEAKERis at the reduced rate.
29:59SPEAKER- That's very cool.
29:59SPEAKER- Yeah, it's good.
30:00SPEAKER- Also, how do they handle?
30:01SPEAKERI mean, maybe we're still getting ahead of ourselves here.
30:03SPEAKERHow do they handle, how like public charging?
30:06SPEAKERLike you're not just getting free electricity, are you?
30:09SPEAKER- Sometimes you are, yeah.
30:10SPEAKER- Wow, wow.
30:12SPEAKER- But so, okay, so the other thing you can do
30:15SPEAKERon most self-driving car, most not self-driving,
30:17SPEAKERmost electric cars is say, okay, I need to be fully charged
30:19SPEAKERby this time when I leave for work.
30:22SPEAKERAnd it'll make sure that you're charged by then if you,
30:24SPEAKERat whatever rate it has to, like the minimum expensive rate
30:28SPEAKERand then it'll do the slow, the cheaper rates.
30:32SPEAKER- Are we still in the territory of capacity and range
30:35SPEAKERon these cars that charging every night is critical
30:37SPEAKERfor people, like just for an around town kind of car
30:41SPEAKERfor driving back to work or to working back every day?
30:44SPEAKERLike, is that a, you're getting one day out of this thing
30:47SPEAKERand then you have got to make sure you charge that night
30:48SPEAKERto be good the next day or?
30:50SPEAKER- It depends on your commute.
30:51SPEAKERLike the Bolt is a 230-ish mile average range.
30:55SPEAKER- Okay.
30:56SPEAKER- I mean, that's a spectrum based on how you're driving,
30:58SPEAKERhow like how heavy your foot is and whether you're going
31:01SPEAKERuphill the whole way and stuff like that.
31:02SPEAKERBut yeah, like it's, we charge, we plug in basically
31:06SPEAKERonce a week, but we also, I mean, it's pandemic time
31:09SPEAKERand we're not going to school every day.
31:10SPEAKERSo like, I think we've driven five or 600 miles
31:14SPEAKERin the month that we've had the car,
31:15SPEAKERwhich is pretty low even for us.
31:16SPEAKER- Yeah.
31:17SPEAKER- Okay, so we talked about how gas engines work.
31:19SPEAKERWe should talk about how electric motors work
31:21SPEAKER'cause it's a little more straightforward.
31:24SPEAKERBasically there's a big ass battery in the car
31:27SPEAKERand then there's a couple of electric motors,
31:29SPEAKERwhich it turns out are the exact same as electric generators.
31:32SPEAKERIt's just that if you use the motor as a generator,
31:36SPEAKERthen electricity comes out of the motor
31:38SPEAKERand into the batteries.
31:40SPEAKERAnd if you use the motor as a motor,
31:42SPEAKERthen you have to apply, when you apply current to the motor,
31:46SPEAKERit makes the axle turn.
31:48SPEAKER- Okay.
31:49SPEAKER- And when you don't, then power and the axle still turns
31:52SPEAKERwhen you're not applying power,
31:53SPEAKERpower goes back into the battery.
31:55SPEAKERThere's more to it.
31:56SPEAKERLike there's voltage regulators and all sorts of stuff
31:58SPEAKERin that pipeline.
31:59SPEAKERAnd there's a lot of complexity
32:01SPEAKERin how the different electric car manufacturers
32:03SPEAKERapply this stuff.
32:04SPEAKERLike some of them are doing a traditional kind of axle
32:06SPEAKERwith drive train, some have motors at the wheels.
32:09SPEAKER- Interesting.
32:10SPEAKER- Like there's a lot.
32:12SPEAKER- Yeah.
32:13SPEAKER- And there's a lot of difference
32:15SPEAKERin battery technology as well.
32:17SPEAKERSo like we, Jean and I chose to do a lease A
32:21SPEAKERbecause it was basically free,
32:24SPEAKERbut B because I'm not super confident
32:28SPEAKERin anybody's batteries outside of maybe Tesla at this point,
32:31SPEAKERbecause we haven't reached 10 years of bolts at this point.
32:36SPEAKER- Right.
32:37SPEAKER- We've seen 10 years of leafs.
32:39SPEAKER10 year, the 10 year old leafs are not in great shape
32:42SPEAKERat this point.
32:43SPEAKER- Ooh, okay.
32:44SPEAKER- Because they didn't, like the batteries started out
32:46SPEAKERat 75 mile or 90 mile an hour mile batteries.
32:49SPEAKER- Right.
32:50SPEAKER- And when you think about what your phone battery
32:52SPEAKERlooks like after 1500 charges, you know,
32:56SPEAKERand it's down to 70% of its original capacity,
32:58SPEAKERthat means your 70 mile an hour,
33:00SPEAKERthe 70 mile leaf has now, is now like a, you know,
33:04SPEAKER50, 52 mile leaf and you've gone from,
33:08SPEAKERthis is fine for my back and forth commute
33:09SPEAKERand like driving to the grocery store and stuff
33:11SPEAKERto, oh, I kind of plug in.
33:14SPEAKER- We should, we should mention to be fair,
33:15SPEAKERthe, a 10 year old leaf is literally a first gen leaf.
33:18SPEAKERI think it was December.
33:19SPEAKERDecember, 2010 is when that debuted.
33:21SPEAKERAnd that was the first major manufacturer's
33:24SPEAKERelectric vehicle.
33:25SPEAKERLike the, I guess the Tesla Roadster created that,
33:27SPEAKERbut Tesla obviously was a new company.
33:29SPEAKERSo like a 10 year old leaf is about the oldest commercial
33:33SPEAKERlarge scale electric vehicle on the road right now.
33:36SPEAKER- Yeah, and it was, it was very much,
33:38SPEAKERlike it was very much pitched as a driving around town
33:41SPEAKERfor urbanites kind of car,
33:43SPEAKERlike places where you're going to do low mileage,
33:44SPEAKERbut lots of, lots of stop and go, stuff like that.
33:47SPEAKERSo I was gonna say the neat thing about this, this,
33:50SPEAKERthe idea that like power going into the same device
33:53SPEAKERmakes it go and power coming out of the, you know,
33:56SPEAKERmechanical energy going into that same device
33:58SPEAKERgenerates electricity is that you don't use brakes to brake.
34:02SPEAKERLike in an, in an ice car, when you mash the brakes,
34:06SPEAKERthat, that is turning your physical momentum,
34:09SPEAKERyour kinetic energy into heat, right?
34:11SPEAKERThere's no, there's no recuperating that.
34:13SPEAKERI mean, hybrid, hybrid cars do recuperate that
34:16SPEAKERand by putting that energy into the battery,
34:19SPEAKERbut with an electric car,
34:20SPEAKERyou do this thing called one pedal driving,
34:22SPEAKERwhich we'll talk about where basically
34:25SPEAKERwhen you let off the gas, it just starts,
34:27SPEAKERit starts slowing the car down and that slowing the car down
34:29SPEAKERadds energy back into the battery.
34:31SPEAKER- Is that a huge adjustment?
34:33SPEAKER- It's a little weird.
34:34SPEAKER- That sounds very weird.
34:35SPEAKERI haven't driven, to be clear,
34:36SPEAKERI have not driven a car in probably 12 years,
34:39SPEAKERbut that sounds very strange to me.
34:40SPEAKER- It took a minute, after a week, everybody was on board
34:44SPEAKERand like Gina was stoked about it 'cause it's kind of fun.
34:47SPEAKERYou get to watch the little number go up and down
34:49SPEAKERto see how you're doing.
34:50SPEAKER- I mean, is there a brake pedal?
34:51SPEAKER- There is a brake pedal, yeah.
34:52SPEAKER- Okay, okay.
34:53SPEAKER- You still have the brakes for like,
34:54SPEAKERif something runs out in front of you,
34:56SPEAKERyou definitely slam on the brakes.
34:57SPEAKERYou don't expect the regenerative braking to do its thing.
34:59SPEAKER- Yes, okay, I'm just making sure.
35:01SPEAKER- But like the regenerative braking,
35:03SPEAKERso when I'm driving, usually I hit the brakes
35:05SPEAKERlike twice a day, it seems like now.
35:07SPEAKER- Wow, that's wild.
35:09SPEAKER- Yeah.
35:10SPEAKER- I feel a little unsettled thinking about that.
35:13SPEAKER- It's weird, it's an adjustment.
35:14SPEAKERI'm sure that people have accidents doing it all the time
35:16SPEAKER'cause it doesn't seem, and that's optional too.
35:19SPEAKERLike if you want to drive the car like a normal ass car,
35:21SPEAKERlike the default D for driving,
35:24SPEAKERwhen you put the car into drive,
35:26SPEAKERis it just works like a normal car
35:28SPEAKERand use the gas and the brake like normal.
35:29SPEAKERIf you put it into the, what would be the L on an ice car,
35:33SPEAKERwhich is like the low gear, no overdrive type thing,
35:36SPEAKERthat's when you get into the one pedal territory.
35:38SPEAKER- Okay.
35:41SPEAKER- So the other thing about electrics is weight matters a ton
35:44SPEAKERsince that's directly related to efficiency.
35:47SPEAKERSo like BMW makes the i3 out of carbon fiber,
35:51SPEAKERwhich has some interesting costs if you get hit,
35:54SPEAKER'cause it's not just like normal body work,
35:56SPEAKERyou have to then get carbon fiber welded back on
35:58SPEAKERand you can see in the ass.
36:01SPEAKERThe compartment under the hatchback in my car
36:04SPEAKERwhere like the temporary charger and all that stuff is stored
36:07SPEAKERis made out of like closed cell foam,
36:08SPEAKERit's like hard styrofoam, so it's super light
36:12SPEAKERand doesn't rattle.
36:14SPEAKER- It's interesting, there's a lot going on.
36:18SPEAKER- Yeah.
36:23SPEAKER(laughing)
36:26SPEAKER- Well, that was a pregnant pause.
36:27SPEAKER- Who's gonna talk next?
36:30SPEAKER- You wanna know what it's like to drive an electric car,
36:31SPEAKERBrad?
36:32SPEAKER- Sure, why don't we get into it?
36:34SPEAKER- It's just like a normal car.
36:35SPEAKER- We have a lot of notes here to be clear.
36:37SPEAKERThis is a pretty information dense episode.
36:39SPEAKERThis is like three Google docs pages of notes.
36:41SPEAKER- Well, there's a lot of stuff to not forget
36:44SPEAKERand I wanted to make sure we didn't jack anything up
36:45SPEAKER'cause I know that the Tesla people
36:46SPEAKERwill yell at us either way,
36:47SPEAKERso at least I wanted to have the facts right.
36:49SPEAKER- Let's just not say the word Tesla again,
36:51SPEAKERthis is the whole episode and we should be fine.
36:52SPEAKER- Okay, fine.
36:53SPEAKER- Just very generically talk about EVs
36:56SPEAKERand we should be fine.
36:57SPEAKERI guess I'll throw this out there,
36:59SPEAKERI'm sure we'll touch on it more later,
37:00SPEAKERbut it's kind of a full circle sort of moment
37:03SPEAKERwhen you mentioned that the Leaf was pitched as a like,
37:05SPEAKERyou live in a city
37:06SPEAKERand you're just gonna drive a little bit each day.
37:09SPEAKERLike kind of, I think that the final thing
37:10SPEAKERthat occasioned this episode
37:11SPEAKERis the electric Ford F-150, right?
37:14SPEAKERLike kind of, I know it's not the only pickup truck,
37:18SPEAKERlike trust me, I'd come from the land of pickup trucks,
37:20SPEAKERI know people have their favorites and everything,
37:21SPEAKERbut like it is to me kind of the emblematic
37:25SPEAKERor stereotypical big, you know.
37:28SPEAKER- It's the market leader.
37:29SPEAKER- The big beefy truck, the big-
37:31SPEAKER- They sell $42 billion worth of those things a year.
37:34SPEAKER- Right, right, like it is the big oversized pickup truck.
37:37SPEAKERSo like the fact that there is an electric
37:39SPEAKERone of those coming now is sort of like,
37:41SPEAKERall right, electric vehicles are here.
37:42SPEAKER- It's like, it may not be the most
37:45SPEAKERtechnologically advanced or whatever.
37:47SPEAKERI think Ford partnered with Rivian
37:49SPEAKERor licensed stuff from Rivian
37:50SPEAKERfor drive train or batteries or something.
37:53SPEAKERI didn't pay, honestly, that stuff I care less about
37:57SPEAKERthan the fact that there's a pure electric option
38:00SPEAKERfor the most popular car in America.
38:02SPEAKERThat seems pretty good.
38:04SPEAKER- Yeah.
38:05SPEAKER- And not only that, but like,
38:08SPEAKERso one of the things that happens with electric cars,
38:10SPEAKERlike they're mechanically a lot less complicated
38:13SPEAKERthan ICE cars, right?
38:15SPEAKERThere's no alternator.
38:16SPEAKERThe alternator is just fundamentally part of the car, right?
38:19SPEAKERLike the thing that generates electricity
38:20SPEAKERfrom the motion is built in.
38:24SPEAKERYou don't have to have as much cooling.
38:26SPEAKERYou don't have to have as much,
38:28SPEAKERyou don't have to have fuel pumps.
38:30SPEAKERYou don't have to have all,
38:31SPEAKERa lot of the stuff that wears out and breaks on ICE cars,
38:34SPEAKERjust like there's no, you don't have to have oil changes
38:36SPEAKERbecause the lube is like the electric motors are closed
38:40SPEAKERand don't require new lubrication, right?
38:43SPEAKER- Right, like when you mentioned that some manufacturers
38:45SPEAKERare putting like small engines on each wheel,
38:47SPEAKERlike it really opened my eyes to like,
38:48SPEAKERoh gosh, there's so many fewer requirements
38:51SPEAKERthan you had in the past that you can get kind of weird
38:53SPEAKERwith these designs, can't you?
38:54SPEAKER- That's exactly it.
38:56SPEAKERYou don't, because you don't use the brakes as much,
39:00SPEAKERyou do have less wear on the brakes.
39:01SPEAKERSo like I have friends who had bolts for three or four years
39:03SPEAKERand are not even a quarter of the way through their first
39:06SPEAKERset of brake pads, right?
39:09SPEAKERIt's really the only thing it seems like
39:12SPEAKERthat can go real bad on these
39:14SPEAKERis if you fuck up the battery somehow,
39:16SPEAKERin which case you're looking at probably a totaling the car
39:20SPEAKERbecause the cost of the battery is often worse
39:23SPEAKERthan the cost of the resale.
39:24SPEAKER- They're really that expensive?
39:25SPEAKER- They are. - Holy crap.
39:26SPEAKER- It is 10 or 12 grand for a replacement battery usually.
39:29SPEAKER- Jeez, okay.
39:32SPEAKER- I mean, however, this is why A, I leased the car, right?
39:38SPEAKERIt's 'cause I didn't want to, you know,
39:41SPEAKERI can't destroy the battery in three years.
39:44SPEAKERBut B, I figure by the time I get done with this lease,
39:48SPEAKERwe'll know however these batteries are looking
39:50SPEAKERand we'll have a better idea of what's the right choice
39:53SPEAKERto be, I feel like, so I joked about Tesla a minute ago.
39:57SPEAKERThere's a couple of things Tesla, like none of this
39:59SPEAKERI think would have happened at this pace without Tesla, right?
40:02SPEAKERLike the thing that Musk did by making the luxury set,
40:06SPEAKERlike the desirable slash good slash reviewed
40:09SPEAKERwhile luxury sedan and coming out at the high end market
40:13SPEAKERand using the rich people cars to like expand logistics
40:17SPEAKERfor battery development and stuff like that
40:19SPEAKERis incredible and really good.
40:21SPEAKERAnd the fact that it's coming down to more normal cars
40:23SPEAKERand presumably they're gonna have a 25 or $30,000 car
40:28SPEAKERbefore too long is awesome.
40:31SPEAKERI think also because they've been doing this
40:34SPEAKERfor longer than anybody else,
40:35SPEAKERtheir understanding of what makes batteries last
40:37SPEAKERis probably better than anybody else in the space.
40:40SPEAKERThere's some things like,
40:42SPEAKERthere are some concerns with batteries.
40:44SPEAKERLike if you live someplace that gets very cold or very hot,
40:46SPEAKERyou need to think about whether which cars
40:49SPEAKERhave kind of climate control for the battery,
40:51SPEAKERstuff like that.
40:52SPEAKERIf you have a closed garage, it's less of a concern.
40:55SPEAKERBut like, if you live in Wisconsin,
40:57SPEAKERyour battery is going to be worse in the winter time
40:59SPEAKERjust because it gets cold and the chemicals do less work
41:02SPEAKERwhen they're cold.
41:03SPEAKER- Right, how does the battery health reporting
41:06SPEAKERin your experience, do they expose that pretty clearly
41:08SPEAKERor is that like you have to take it to the dealership
41:10SPEAKERto find out like they don't want you to know?
41:11SPEAKER- It's kind of like the phone.
41:13SPEAKERYou know how your iPhone says,
41:14SPEAKER"Hey man, your battery's fine."
41:16SPEAKER- That's just a percentage, yeah.
41:17SPEAKERIt's like, "Oh, your battery is 94%, thanks phone."
41:19SPEAKER- Yeah, I think I can get a kilowatt hour rating
41:24SPEAKERout of the battery still.
41:25SPEAKERBut yeah, I mean, it's kind of the same.
41:28SPEAKERI guess it's amp hour.
41:29SPEAKERI don't know how the battery reporting works on the car
41:32SPEAKERin that regard.
41:33SPEAKERBut it tells me how much energy is going in.
41:35SPEAKERI can go in the app on my phone and it'll tell me
41:38SPEAKERwhat my percentage is and what my estimated range is.
41:41SPEAKER- This is how long it's been since I dealt with cars.
41:43SPEAKERI just did another double take
41:44SPEAKERwhen you said the app for your car.
41:46SPEAKER- I've never had an app for my car before.
41:48SPEAKER- Of course there are apps for cars now.
41:50SPEAKEROf course that exists, I just had not considered it.
41:54SPEAKERBut the point is they don't obfuscate that data.
41:56SPEAKERThey are at least giving you a good enough sense
42:00SPEAKERof the condition of the battery, right?
42:02SPEAKER- Yeah, I can look at this and right now it says,
42:06SPEAKERI can get how much my efficiency is,
42:09SPEAKERwhich was 3.8 miles per kilowatt hour
42:13SPEAKERover the 80 miles I've driven
42:14SPEAKERsince it was last fully charged, right?
42:17SPEAKER- Okay, yeah.
42:18SPEAKER- I think I can get, I think if I dig in,
42:20SPEAKERI can get more information, oh, shit.
42:27SPEAKERI just set off the alarm.
42:28SPEAKER- Did you just, did you just destroy your car?
42:31SPEAKER- No, no, no, it's fine.
42:32SPEAKERSo like I get a diagnostic thing that basically says,
42:37SPEAKERhey, the battery's fine.
42:39SPEAKER- Okay.
42:40SPEAKER- And I think I can tap it, I can't tap into that.
42:42SPEAKERThat kind of sucks.
42:43SPEAKER- I mean, I guess like at some point,
42:44SPEAKERthat's just kind of the oil change light situation, right,
42:47SPEAKERof like it will let you know if there's a problem.
42:49SPEAKER- Well, except for now the phone will text me
42:50SPEAKERand is like, hey, man, you gotta,
42:52SPEAKERif you want to be ready to go to work
42:53SPEAKERat eight o'clock on Monday, you gotta plug in now.
42:56SPEAKER- I'm sure this is not actually the case,
42:58SPEAKERbut I love imagining that your car literally starts
43:01SPEAKERits texts by saying, hey, man.
43:03SPEAKER- I wish it did.
43:04SPEAKERThat would be more fun.
43:05SPEAKERLet's see, what does it say?
43:06SPEAKERIt's, here we go.
43:08SPEAKEROnStar, your 2021 Bolt EV has completed charging.
43:12SPEAKERFor help, call this phone number.
43:13SPEAKERType text stop to cancel.
43:16SPEAKER- I want to be the person who defines the texting identity
43:19SPEAKERof a line of car.
43:20SPEAKER- I would love that.
43:21SPEAKERThat would be so much better.
43:23SPEAKER- I want to write the brand Bible,
43:24SPEAKERthe like texting guidelines for the next electric vehicle.
43:27SPEAKER- You should be able to choose too.
43:29SPEAKERLike you should really, it's like choosing a Siri.
43:31SPEAKER- Like I want, I want, I want Australian lady Siri.
43:35SPEAKERI want, I want Australian lady Volt too.
43:37SPEAKER- Yeah.
43:38SPEAKER- Oi, mate.
43:41SPEAKERSo, okay.
43:42SPEAKERWhat it's like, the one pedal driving is cool.
43:45SPEAKERLike the way it's,
43:47SPEAKERwe've done a couple of long drives
43:48SPEAKERjust to kind of go around and see places
43:49SPEAKERwe hadn't been in a while.
43:51SPEAKERIt's a little tiring if you're going,
43:55SPEAKERif you're not stopping and going a lot,
43:57SPEAKERit's a little tiring 'cause you,
43:58SPEAKER'cause what ends up happening is you end up like
44:00SPEAKERwith the pedal kind of partially depressed
44:03SPEAKERin a way that's a little bit unusual.
44:05SPEAKERSo like, if you're going and it's flat,
44:07SPEAKERyou have to keep pressing down a little bit more
44:08SPEAKERthan you would normally.
44:09SPEAKERThere's no kind of coasting, right?
44:11SPEAKERYou're either, you're either accelerating
44:14SPEAKERor you're decelerating or you have the pedal pressed
44:16SPEAKERlike 10% or 20% of the way in.
44:18SPEAKER- That makes sense.
44:20SPEAKER- It, my, this is gonna sound weird.
44:24SPEAKERMy calf muscles had to kind of toughen up a little bit.
44:28SPEAKER- Okay.
44:29SPEAKER- 'Cause the first time we did like an hour and a half drive
44:31SPEAKERmy leg was fricking tired and I had to switch off
44:33SPEAKERof the one pedal mode for the back half of it.
44:35SPEAKER- Probably not the worst thing long-term, right?
44:38SPEAKER- I mean, I don't wanna get like one really ripped calf
44:40SPEAKERand one not ripped calf. - That's fair.
44:41SPEAKERIs that like the electric vehicle equivalent
44:44SPEAKERof like tennis arm or something?
44:45SPEAKER- Maybe, yeah, I hadn't thought about that.
44:48SPEAKERThe range anxiety is the thing I was kind of worried about
44:52SPEAKERcoming into this because like, you know,
44:56SPEAKERit's not like you can just pull into the gas station
44:58SPEAKERin three minutes, you're filled up and ready to go more.
45:00SPEAKER- Right, like there is what, 120 years worth
45:03SPEAKERof gas station infrastructure built up across the country?
45:06SPEAKERVersus like, I don't know what the charging infrastructure
45:09SPEAKERis like, but I'm sure it's pretty sparse.
45:11SPEAKER- Well, we have 10 years worth of charging infrastructure
45:14SPEAKERin California, it's pretty good.
45:17SPEAKERLike there's most, so there are multiple charge stations
45:23SPEAKERwithin about a mile of my house in the suburbs.
45:28SPEAKERWhen you pull into like Target, there's free charging there.
45:31SPEAKER- Wow.
45:32SPEAKER- A lot of cities in San Mateo County where I live
45:34SPEAKERhave municipal charging that is free or very inexpensive.
45:38SPEAKERNow often it's not particularly fast
45:40SPEAKERand we'll talk about that in a bit.
45:42SPEAKER- I was gonna say actually, maybe that's why
45:43SPEAKERthey're lax about charging you for it
45:45SPEAKERbecause the average amount of time somebody is likely
45:48SPEAKERto stay hooked up there, they're not gonna consume
45:50SPEAKERthat much probably.
45:50SPEAKER- Yeah, I mean, like the Target chargers,
45:53SPEAKERI don't know that we've used them yet,
45:54SPEAKERbut it seems like they're fast enough to,
45:57SPEAKERin the time that I would be at a Target,
45:59SPEAKERprobably put them out of energy that I spent
46:01SPEAKERgetting to Target and back into the car, which is fine.
46:07SPEAKERUsing stuff in the car reduces range,
46:10SPEAKERlike the radio and stuff doesn't make that much
46:12SPEAKERof an impact, but the air conditioner and the heat
46:14SPEAKERand the heated seats do for sure.
46:17SPEAKER- God, there's a lot to think about.
46:18SPEAKER- It's not a ton, it's like a 5% reduction,
46:21SPEAKERbut, and the thing is at least this car,
46:24SPEAKERthe cars, the electric cars I've driven,
46:25SPEAKERwhich is the ones I've spent any appreciable time in
46:29SPEAKERare like the smart car, the i3 and Teslas,
46:33SPEAKERbut mostly the older ones, not the model three.
46:36SPEAKERThey do a really good job of kind of like giving you
46:40SPEAKERa rolling average of how you're doing driving.
46:42SPEAKERSo like, you know, if you are light on the accelerator
46:47SPEAKERand like this card gives you a moment by moment read
46:51SPEAKERof how much energy is leaving the battery
46:54SPEAKERat any given moment.
46:55SPEAKERSo like you can tell, you literally see a number
46:57SPEAKERthat goes up and gets in the yellow
46:59SPEAKERif you romp it off the line.
47:00SPEAKERIf I hit the button on sport mode and accelerate fast enough
47:03SPEAKERthat it pushes us back in the seats,
47:05SPEAKERI can watch the battery go down.
47:07SPEAKER- Wow. - Right.
47:08SPEAKER- But you also see energy going back in
47:11SPEAKERas you're decelerating and as you're using
47:12SPEAKERthe one pedal stuff to stop at stop signs
47:14SPEAKERand stuff like that.
47:16SPEAKERYou know, we live in Pacifica,
47:18SPEAKERwhich is down a great big in a kind of valley
47:20SPEAKERand a cleft between the ocean and the mountains.
47:24SPEAKERAnd when we leave town, we are in the yellow every time
47:27SPEAKER'cause the car's yelling at us,
47:28SPEAKERwe're using too much energy going up the big hill.
47:30SPEAKERAnd on the way back, it's always all green
47:32SPEAKERbecause we coast down that hill.
47:33SPEAKER- That's right, just fast and loose.
47:36SPEAKERSo you're talking about all those readouts.
47:38SPEAKERWhat is your screen situation like in there?
47:40SPEAKER- There is one screen on the dash
47:43SPEAKERand then there's like an airplay slash dash
47:46SPEAKERentertainment screen that's like nine inches.
47:48SPEAKERIt's not one of the big stupid ones
47:50SPEAKERlike in the Tesla's or whatever.
47:52SPEAKER- That sounds unobtrusive.
47:53SPEAKERDid I assume, did you see this Mercedes tweet,
47:56SPEAKERwhich apparently has now been deleted.
47:57SPEAKER- I can't imagine why.
47:59SPEAKER- This Mercedes tweet going around this week,
48:00SPEAKERthis may very well become this week's show art
48:03SPEAKERfor people who haven't seen it.
48:05SPEAKER- It's the one with like 18 screens in it.
48:08SPEAKERAnd it looks like the person's gonna kill everyone
48:09SPEAKERaround them 'cause they're gonna be so distracted
48:11SPEAKERfrom driving.
48:12SPEAKER- Yeah, like it's, I mean, it doesn't help
48:13SPEAKERthat they gave it all this like purple and blue
48:15SPEAKERunder lighting to make it look extra future.
48:17SPEAKERBut yes, like this car is like nothing but screens inside.
48:20SPEAKER- This car has blue EL lighting that you can turn
48:23SPEAKERon and off around like the trim inside,
48:25SPEAKERwhich I'm not a huge fan of.
48:27SPEAKER- I mean, that's more energy.
48:28SPEAKERI mean, granted LEDs take like next to no energy,
48:30SPEAKERbut still like this.
48:31SPEAKER- It's nothing, yeah.
48:31SPEAKERBut you can turn it off if you really care.
48:34SPEAKERBut I just don't like, the blue is bad
48:35SPEAKERfor your night vision, I think so.
48:37SPEAKER- Yes, yes.
48:39SPEAKERLet's see, so we haven't had to use a fast charger yet.
48:43SPEAKERLike using L1 or L2 chargers, you can put any,
48:46SPEAKERwe'll talk about that actually in a minute.
48:48SPEAKERBut we haven't used the DC fast charge yet,
48:52SPEAKERwhich we did pay more for to get as an option.
48:56SPEAKERAnd that lets you use higher voltage and higher amperage
48:59SPEAKERto charge and like charge up 80% of the battery
49:03SPEAKERin a fraction of the time that you would take
49:04SPEAKERin a normal AC charging situation.
49:07SPEAKER- Is that something you can take with you?
49:08SPEAKERLike what is that?
49:09SPEAKERLike an attachment?
49:10SPEAKER- It's just a different plug.
49:11SPEAKERIt's a like extra dongle on the, you know how like,
49:15SPEAKERremember how USB-C originally had that extra little hat
49:17SPEAKERon the connectors?
49:19SPEAKER- Yeah.
49:20SPEAKER- It's like that.
49:20SPEAKERIt's just a little bit taller connector.
49:22SPEAKER- I see.
49:26SPEAKER- Like the other thing about the little car,
49:28SPEAKERso the Bolt is a small car.
49:29SPEAKERI've never owned a car this size before,
49:32SPEAKERbut it's really big inside 'cause there's no motor.
49:34SPEAKERLike the amount of space devoted to making the car go
49:36SPEAKERis very small compared to the rest of the car.
49:39SPEAKER- I bet that means pretty good leg room.
49:40SPEAKER- Yeah, like the backseat, front seat,
49:42SPEAKERit's all spacious inside.
49:43SPEAKERThere's not a ton of cargo space,
49:46SPEAKERbut there is like, there's no spare tire
49:49SPEAKERbecause they're concerned about weight.
49:50SPEAKERSo you have like run self-sealing tires basically.
49:56SPEAKERAnd it's like there's a little hidden area
50:00SPEAKERunderneath the back of the, like by default,
50:03SPEAKERthe hatchback area is flat,
50:05SPEAKERbut there's a little hidden area you can pull out
50:06SPEAKERif you want to put more stuff in.
50:07SPEAKERI was able to put six 20 pound bags
50:10SPEAKERof dirt in the other day, no problem.
50:13SPEAKERSo like, it's not like a pickup truck,
50:16SPEAKERbut it holds a fair amount of stuff.
50:18SPEAKERAnd you can fold the seats down if you want more.
50:20SPEAKER- Yeah, that is a lot of considerations
50:22SPEAKERto add to the driving experience though.
50:24SPEAKERLike you don't normally think about adding weight
50:26SPEAKERto the car being something you really need
50:28SPEAKERto think hard about, but.
50:30SPEAKER- Well, it's like they do a lot of stuff
50:32SPEAKERto make it manageable.
50:34SPEAKERSo for example, in the built,
50:37SPEAKERwell, I think most people who drive electrics a lot
50:41SPEAKERprobably have one of the apps
50:42SPEAKERthat like with their charging provider of choice,
50:44SPEAKERso that if they have to charge while they're out on the reg,
50:47SPEAKERyou just hit the button on the app
50:48SPEAKERand it tells you where the near one is
50:49SPEAKERand you go over and plug in to go have lunch or something.
50:54SPEAKERIf you're going to places that you can top off
50:56SPEAKERon the reg as you go, like most Bay area,
50:59SPEAKERlarge workplaces have charging.
51:02SPEAKERAnd like, if you go to Facebook or something for a meeting,
51:04SPEAKERthere's charging valets.
51:05SPEAKERSo you pull up, you give the guy your key
51:08SPEAKERand they'll plug you in for as long as you,
51:10SPEAKERuntil you're topped off
51:11SPEAKERand then they'll move you into another space
51:12SPEAKERand put somebody else there.
51:14SPEAKERIf there's, if those spaces are contested.
51:17SPEAKER- Presumably it is a pretty rare situation nationwide.
51:21SPEAKER- It's, you know, you say that,
51:23SPEAKERbut like you can drive almost, you can drive,
51:25SPEAKERI think the entire, most of the interstate system
51:26SPEAKERis covered by Tesla superchargers at this point.
51:30SPEAKERThere's EV2Go and PowerUSA or Power America or something.
51:34SPEAKERLike they're charging stations.
51:36SPEAKEROnce you start looking for them,
51:37SPEAKERyou see them all over the place.
51:39SPEAKER- Okay.
51:40SPEAKER- Like I can drive, I could drive to LA really easily
51:44SPEAKERand stop once probably.
51:46SPEAKERSo, and like, and with 230, 200 mile range,
51:50SPEAKERyou don't have to stop that often.
51:52SPEAKERLike it's kind of turns out it's the amount of time
51:54SPEAKERyou'd normally stop to get gas or whatever.
51:57SPEAKERIt just takes a little bit longer.
51:58SPEAKERSo I guess, I don't know, charging next,
52:01SPEAKERwhat do you want to do?
52:02SPEAKER- Sure, yeah.
52:05SPEAKERThe, they call, they base the charging on levels.
52:09SPEAKERSo there's L1, L2, and L3 charging.
52:11SPEAKERL1 is the slowest and L3 is the fastest.
52:13SPEAKERL3 and beyond kind of.
52:15SPEAKER- Are these, are these industry standard terms and ratings?
52:18SPEAKER- These are the, these are standard terms.
52:21SPEAKERThe ratings vary based on the car.
52:23SPEAKER- Okay, that makes sense.
52:25SPEAKER- So on the charging front,
52:27SPEAKERyou have two things that matter
52:29SPEAKERas to how fast you can charge.
52:30SPEAKERThe power coming out of the wall,
52:32SPEAKERout of the plug, out of the cord
52:34SPEAKERand the charger that's built into your car
52:37SPEAKERand how fast it can accommodate.
52:39SPEAKERSo both, it's just like your phone.
52:41SPEAKERLike if your phone doesn't support quick charge,
52:43SPEAKERthen it's not going to like,
52:45SPEAKERdoesn't matter what you plug it into.
52:47SPEAKERIf your plug doesn't support the highest standard
52:49SPEAKERthat your phone supports,
52:51SPEAKERit's not going to charge any faster than it goes.
52:55SPEAKERThe L1 is 120 volt
52:58SPEAKERand it's usually between eight and 15 amps
53:00SPEAKERfrom a normal 120 volt socket.
53:02SPEAKERUsually they have to be grounded.
53:04SPEAKERSo like you have to have your three-prong
53:06SPEAKERground fault plugs don't work if they're not grounded,
53:10SPEAKEReven though that's up to code.
53:11SPEAKERAnd the plug for this and L2 are the same.
53:15SPEAKERIt's called a J1772 plug.
53:18SPEAKERThat's an industry standard now in the US.
53:20SPEAKER- Ah, the old J1772.
53:22SPEAKER- Yeah, it looks like a little gun
53:24SPEAKERwith like three or four points in it.
53:26SPEAKERIt's really easy, my daughter loves plugging it.
53:28SPEAKERIt's really fun.
53:29SPEAKER- My grandpappy passed his down to me.
53:31SPEAKER- Brad, it makes a real good clunk.
53:33SPEAKERWhen you put it in there, it goes clunk.
53:35SPEAKER- Oh, I bet.
53:36SPEAKERI bet that's a fun plug.
53:36SPEAKER- And then the car, then the car usually beeps
53:38SPEAKERand it's like, yo man, I'm charging.
53:40SPEAKEROr sometimes it says, this is delayed charging time.
53:43SPEAKERI'm not going to charge now
53:44SPEAKER'cause the power is too expensive.
53:45SPEAKERI know, I'm cool.
53:47SPEAKER- Man, your car has an attitude.
53:49SPEAKER- On that delayed charging stuff,
53:52SPEAKERsometimes your charging station is aware of that too.
53:56SPEAKERSo like if you have an L2 charger,
53:57SPEAKERwhich is the thing we're going to talk about now,
53:59SPEAKERwhich is like, you see those,
54:00SPEAKERthis is like the thing at Target,
54:01SPEAKERlots of state cities have put them in.
54:04SPEAKERIt's usually 240 volts.
54:06SPEAKERThey range from 16 to 40-ish amps, same plug,
54:11SPEAKERbut they're AC, so alternating current.
54:14SPEAKERAnd where the level one charger
54:17SPEAKERwill do 40 or 50 miles of range per night,
54:20SPEAKERlike from midnight to say 9 a.m., 8 a.m.,
54:22SPEAKERthe L2 will do about 25 miles an hour.
54:26SPEAKERSo it's four to eight times faster
54:29SPEAKERdepending on the amperage that you have.
54:34SPEAKERIt's the same plug usually on the backend.
54:36SPEAKERSometimes you hardwire them in.
54:38SPEAKERSometimes it's the same plug as like an electric dryer
54:41SPEAKERor a heavy-duty electric appliance.
54:44SPEAKERElectric stoves, electric ranges have the same thing.
54:47SPEAKERAnd like I said, 25 miles an hour.
54:51SPEAKERUsually if you're paying for charging when you're out,
54:54SPEAKERit's L2 or L3.
54:56SPEAKERMost of the time L1s that I've seen
54:57SPEAKERseem to be complementary or very inexpensive.
55:00SPEAKERAnd then the L3 is the DC charging,
55:03SPEAKERand those are 480 to 1,000 volts depending on the vendor.
55:08SPEAKERAnd typically you're looking at somewhere
55:11SPEAKERbetween 20 and 90 minutes to get to 80 or 90% of the battery.
55:16SPEAKERAnd it's the same thing as with phones.
55:18SPEAKERYou can charge the middle portion of that charge fast,
55:22SPEAKERand then once you get to the end,
55:23SPEAKERyou have to slow down and you'll tank the battery.
55:25SPEAKERSo the cars have the chargers that know how...
55:29SPEAKERUnlike the car charger knows not to destroy the battery,
55:34SPEAKEReven if you try to.
55:35SPEAKERThe car will turn off if you try to run it too low,
55:38SPEAKERthe car won't let you overcharge it, stuff like that.
55:41SPEAKER- For 12 grand, I hope so.
55:43SPEAKER- Yeah, they're expensive.
55:45SPEAKERNow, Tesla is the exception for all of this stuff.
55:48SPEAKERTesla has their own plug on their car.
55:50SPEAKERThey're using the lightning adapter.
55:53SPEAKERThey're the lightning adapter of this world.
55:55SPEAKERThey're the Apple of cars.
55:56SPEAKER- Yeah, the adapters are mechanical only, I believe.
56:00SPEAKERI think there's an electrical component,
56:02SPEAKERbut it's confirmation.
56:04SPEAKERIt's data, not necessarily signal or anything like that.
56:07SPEAKERSo you can buy physical adapters that you...
56:10SPEAKERI think Tesla's actually come with an adapter
56:12SPEAKERthat lets you plug the J1772 into it.
56:18SPEAKERThe DC standard is CCS in the US.
56:23SPEAKERThere's a different one for Japan, I believe.
56:25SPEAKERBut everybody that's shipping cars in the US now
56:27SPEAKERthat have DC options is using CCS or their Tesla.
56:32SPEAKERAnd I don't know what the adapter situation is
56:34SPEAKERfor Teslas to...
56:36SPEAKERLike other things.
56:37SPEAKERMy understanding is that the Tesla supercharger network
56:39SPEAKERis supposed to become available
56:41SPEAKERto people who have the appropriate adapter in the US
56:44SPEAKERat some point in the not too distant future.
56:46SPEAKERI don't know what you need to do that.
56:50SPEAKERThe neat thing about the Tesla stuff is
56:52SPEAKERyou don't...
56:54SPEAKERIf I plug my car in, there's no...
56:55SPEAKERThe authentication has to happen with my phone.
56:58SPEAKERSo I walk over to the dongle
57:01SPEAKERand I tap the NFC thing on the thing
57:04SPEAKERand it talks to the app and it's like,
57:05SPEAKER"Okay, I know who you are.
57:07SPEAKER"Here's how much you're authorized for.
57:08SPEAKER"Go."
57:09SPEAKERAnd then it charges my credit card.
57:11SPEAKERWith Tesla, it just knows that the car belongs to you
57:14SPEAKERand it charges you
57:15SPEAKERwhen you plug into the supercharger network.
57:17SPEAKERThere are ways around that.
57:18SPEAKERIf you loan your car to somebody
57:19SPEAKERand you want them to pay for the electricity,
57:21SPEAKERbut it's like 10 bucks to top off the car.
57:23SPEAKERSo who cares?
57:24SPEAKERIt's really inexpensive.
57:27SPEAKERAnd like I said, the DC charge speed
57:29SPEAKERdepends on the charger and the car.
57:31SPEAKERMy bolt is only a 50 watt charger.
57:38SPEAKERSo that's the cap at how fast it can charge.
57:41SPEAKERSo I think it's like 90 minutes to fill it up
57:43SPEAKERbasically instead of 60 or 30.
57:47SPEAKERSo that's like...
57:49SPEAKERIt's weird.
57:50SPEAKERIt's a change, but it hasn't been stressful yet.
57:52SPEAKERWe haven't gone on any kind of long trips.
57:53SPEAKERWe're going to drive it to Petaluma
57:54SPEAKERor something next week in college.
57:55SPEAKERI'll report back, I guess.
57:56SPEAKER- Okay, yeah.
57:57SPEAKERSeems like LA, I mean, at least here.
57:59SPEAKERThat's kind of the window maker, right?
58:03SPEAKERThat's a six hour drive straight through.
58:05SPEAKER- Yeah, we would have to stop and eat,
58:07SPEAKERhave a hearty lunch at some point along the way, I think.
58:09SPEAKER- Right, like a strip like that
58:11SPEAKERis going to be the real determining factor.
58:13SPEAKER- But I would totally drive to San Luis Obispo.
58:16SPEAKER- Sure, just like what, three-ish?
58:18SPEAKERThree hours, something like that?
58:18SPEAKER- Yeah, it's like three hours.
58:19SPEAKER- Like halfway down the coast,
58:21SPEAKERlike stop and charge and have lunch halfway along the way,
58:24SPEAKERbut like not have to sit down for an hour and a half, right?
58:27SPEAKERJust kind of top it off and then plug in
58:29SPEAKERwhen we got there and be fine.
58:31SPEAKER- Suddenly I'm having a...
58:33SPEAKERI just had a real like used future vision
58:35SPEAKERof the future gas station as the electric station,
58:38SPEAKERyou know, where it's like, you know,
58:39SPEAKERlike the Star Wars or Alien version of the future,
58:41SPEAKERwhere it's like, everything is the same as it is now,
58:44SPEAKERexcept for the technology at the center of it.
58:46SPEAKER- Yeah.
58:47SPEAKER- It's still some greasy old, like, you know,
58:49SPEAKERgarage backwoods sort of gas station setting,
58:52SPEAKERexcept it's all plugs coming out of the ground.
58:54SPEAKER- But the thing is, the electric cars aren't greasy.
58:56SPEAKERThere's no green.
58:57SPEAKER- I know, I know, I know.
58:58SPEAKER- But it's weird, you open up the engine compartment
59:00SPEAKERand it looks like a RC car or something, it's ridiculous.
59:03SPEAKER- Right.
59:04SPEAKER- 'Cause like there's no lube to break down
59:06SPEAKERand there's no lubricant that leaks.
59:07SPEAKERAnd there's just, yeah, it's a trip.
59:10SPEAKER- Yeah.
59:13SPEAKER- So the thing I'll say is there's a ton of differences
59:17SPEAKERbetween the different brands in terms of like efficiency,
59:19SPEAKERin terms of miles per kilowatt hour, per kilowatt,
59:22SPEAKERbecause the batteries, the drivetrains, it's all different.
59:26SPEAKERLike the size of the car is gonna make a big difference.
59:28SPEAKERLike the Lightning has, the Ford F-150 comes
59:33SPEAKERwith these ridiculously huge batteries.
59:35SPEAKERIt'll do like 350 miles or something.
59:39SPEAKERAnd they weigh a thousand pounds or 1800 pounds
59:42SPEAKERor something like that.
59:43SPEAKER1800 pounds, not 18,000 pounds.
59:45SPEAKERI was shocked the entry level cost of that thing.
59:49SPEAKERGranted, like this is like the absolute bare bones,
59:52SPEAKERcheapest model you can get.
59:53SPEAKERLike you can get it out all day long, I'm sure.
59:56SPEAKERBut it's like 39,900.
59:58SPEAKERIt's under 40,000 for the base model.
1:00:01SPEAKER- And that's without the subsidies.
1:00:02SPEAKERSo you get a ton of tax credits and subsidies
1:00:04SPEAKERand stuff like that, depending on the manufacturer
1:00:07SPEAKERand where they stand on, where they are
1:00:09SPEAKERin their electric car adoption curve.
1:00:12SPEAKER- Interesting, like when you said earlier
1:00:14SPEAKERthat it was like practically free to lease this thing,
1:00:16SPEAKERI assumed it was just like pandemic
1:00:18SPEAKERhas depressed their business enough
1:00:19SPEAKERthat they're like giving them away.
1:00:21SPEAKERBut I didn't even think about all the tax credits and stuff.
1:00:22SPEAKER- So yeah, there's like a,
1:00:27SPEAKERso there's a federal credit that is valid for the first,
1:00:30SPEAKERI think several hundred thousand cars.
1:00:32SPEAKERThe people who've been making electric cars for longer,
1:00:34SPEAKERthat no longer applies to, I think Ford,
1:00:36SPEAKERpeople who buy Fords this year are expected to get that.
1:00:39SPEAKERAnd then next year it'll probably go away.
1:00:41SPEAKERBut like California incentivizes the living shit
1:00:44SPEAKERout of these cars.
1:00:46SPEAKERWe got multiple, I mean, I didn't have a lot of income
1:00:48SPEAKERlast year because of pandemic stuff,
1:00:49SPEAKERbut we got multiple subsidies and like the only thing,
1:00:57SPEAKERbasically on the lease, if you work with somebody
1:01:00SPEAKERwho knows how to do this, there's a site called Lease Hacker
1:01:02SPEAKERthat explains this and there are comparable sites
1:01:05SPEAKERfor purchases, but the deals weren't quite as good for that.
1:01:09SPEAKERThe upshot is in California, ICE car manufacturers
1:01:12SPEAKERhave to sell a certain amount of electric cars every year
1:01:14SPEAKERor else they start getting, they have to pay more tariffs
1:01:17SPEAKERon the, or more taxes on the gas cars.
1:01:20SPEAKERSo like Chevrolet is incentivized to sell the living shit
1:01:24SPEAKERout of these bolts so that they don't have to pay penalties
1:01:28SPEAKERon their truck sales.
1:01:31SPEAKERAnd as a result, we were looking at like a hundred dollars
1:01:34SPEAKERin change a month for a lease.
1:01:37SPEAKER- Wow. - On a really nice,
1:01:39SPEAKERdecked out bolt.
1:01:41SPEAKERSo the upshot is that we're spending less on the lease,
1:01:45SPEAKERthe insurance differences and the electricity
1:01:47SPEAKERthan we were spending on gas before.
1:01:49SPEAKER- That's pretty good savings.
1:01:50SPEAKER- It's a pretty good savings.
1:01:51SPEAKER- That's a pretty good savings.
1:01:54SPEAKERIs that a good cue to segue into kind of a quick wrap up
1:01:57SPEAKERabout like we pulled some just basic stats
1:02:00SPEAKERabout where we're at with the penetration
1:02:02SPEAKERin the market of the stuff?
1:02:03SPEAKER- Yeah, I'm curious.
1:02:04SPEAKERI'm super curious actually.
1:02:06SPEAKER- Yeah, I went and just straight up Googled,
1:02:08SPEAKERyou know, like how many electric cars are out there?
1:02:10SPEAKERIt's kind of lower than I expected,
1:02:12SPEAKERbut maybe my expectations were inflated.
1:02:14SPEAKERAt the end of 2020,
1:02:16SPEAKERthere were 10.9 million electric cars worldwide.
1:02:20SPEAKERSo just under 11 million globally.
1:02:23SPEAKER- That sounds- - Doesn't sound like a lot.
1:02:26SPEAKER- It's not, I mean, yeah, I mean, it's the normal curve,
1:02:29SPEAKERright, where we're getting to the part of the heel
1:02:31SPEAKERwhere it's gonna turn up.
1:02:32SPEAKER- Okay, we're gonna hockey stick soon, you think?
1:02:35SPEAKER- I mean, the thing that the car people were saying
1:02:39SPEAKERis that if the F-150 takes off,
1:02:43SPEAKERthat can be a part of the hockey,
1:02:44SPEAKERlike that'll be responsible for a big chunk
1:02:47SPEAKERof a hockey stick, yeah.
1:02:48SPEAKER- Sure, sure.
1:02:50SPEAKER- And like the way they pitch that thing isn't like,
1:02:54SPEAKERhey, this is like a normal truck,
1:02:56SPEAKERbut it's nice for the environment.
1:02:57SPEAKERThe way they pitched it was because of the benefits
1:03:00SPEAKERof the electric motors, this car rips for people
1:03:03SPEAKERwho actually use their trucks.
1:03:05SPEAKER- They definitely know who they're marketing to with that.
1:03:08SPEAKER- Right, like-
1:03:10SPEAKER- They know their audience.
1:03:11SPEAKER- Like there was a Madhouse segment on it the other night
1:03:12SPEAKERwhere she was like, look, they rolled this thing out
1:03:15SPEAKERby showing it pull a million pound train.
1:03:18SPEAKER- Yeah.
1:03:18SPEAKER- And then also, by the way, if you live in Texas
1:03:21SPEAKERand your infrastructure collapses,
1:03:23SPEAKERyou can power your refrigerator
1:03:25SPEAKERand your heater on this for a few days
1:03:26SPEAKERso you all don't freeze to death.
1:03:28SPEAKER- Yes, you're selling that truck
1:03:31SPEAKERto Tim "The Tool Man" Taylor, right?
1:03:32SPEAKERNot environmentalists.
1:03:34SPEAKER- Well, like you can plug, it has 120 volt AC on it
1:03:39SPEAKERso you can plug in like a welding rig, it's nuts.
1:03:42SPEAKER- I mean, that's cool, that is legitimately very cool.
1:03:44SPEAKER- Yeah, there have been multiple times
1:03:50SPEAKERsince I bought a house that I was like,
1:03:51SPEAKERman, it would be really convenient to have a pickup truck,
1:03:53SPEAKERbut I don't wanna have a pickup truck in the Bay Area
1:03:55SPEAKERbecause parking is a problem.
1:03:57SPEAKERLike if they sold a Ranger equivalent
1:04:00SPEAKERthat was electric like this,
1:04:01SPEAKERI would buy one of those in a heartbeat,
1:04:02SPEAKERthat sounds awesome.
1:04:04SPEAKERAnyway.
1:04:04SPEAKER- That's pretty cool.
1:04:06SPEAKERSo yeah, 11 million cars on the road,
1:04:09SPEAKERover 5 million of those are in China.
1:04:11SPEAKER- That's more than I expected.
1:04:13SPEAKER- Yeah, same, 1.77 million in the US,
1:04:16SPEAKERGermany is number three with a little over 500,000.
1:04:20SPEAKERI saw, this is just analyst predictions,
1:04:22SPEAKERthis could be anything,
1:04:23SPEAKERbut there are predictions floating around
1:04:25SPEAKERthat there'll be up to like 145 million worldwide by 2030.
1:04:28SPEAKERSo that would be the hockey stick for sure, right?
1:04:31SPEAKER- Yeah, I mean, it's the beginning part of it for sure.
1:04:35SPEAKERSo here's the question is,
1:04:36SPEAKERhow many cars are in the US total?
1:04:38SPEAKERDo we know?
1:04:39SPEAKERI'm looking for that right now.
1:04:41SPEAKER- Question.
1:04:42SPEAKER- It looks like in 2019,
1:04:44SPEAKERthere were 276 million cars registered in the US
1:04:49SPEAKERand obviously not all those are being driven all the time,
1:04:51SPEAKERbut like, so like, you know, it's not an insignificant,
1:04:57SPEAKERit's not a double, it's not a single digit percentage yet,
1:05:00SPEAKERbut we're getting there, half a percent.
1:05:03SPEAKER- Yes, something like that.
1:05:08SPEAKERThere's kind of been a little bit of movement
1:05:10SPEAKERaround some state governments,
1:05:12SPEAKERsome of the more progressive ones,
1:05:13SPEAKERlike the, you know, here in California,
1:05:15SPEAKERNewsom issued this executive order, when was this?
1:05:18SPEAKER- Last year, or was it last year?
1:05:20SPEAKERTimes it means nothing now.
1:05:21SPEAKER- Yes, yes, indeed.
1:05:23SPEAKERYeah, Governor Newsom here in California issued again,
1:05:26SPEAKERjust an executive order, this is not actual legislation,
1:05:30SPEAKERthat by 2035, all new vehicle sales in California
1:05:33SPEAKERhave to be zero emission vehicles.
1:05:35SPEAKER- Have they required that state owned cars are electric?
1:05:40SPEAKER- I didn't see anything to that effect, but I don't know.
1:05:45SPEAKERAlso, that's just an executive order,
1:05:46SPEAKERlike if he gets successfully recalled and replaced,
1:05:49SPEAKERlike the next governor could just rescind that
1:05:51SPEAKERon day one, right?
1:05:52SPEAKER- Yeah, immediately.
1:05:53SPEAKER- So that's not exactly binding.
1:05:55SPEAKERThis made a lot of headlines though,
1:05:56SPEAKERI don't know if you saw this going around like a month ago,
1:05:58SPEAKERWashington State, the legislature actually passed a bill,
1:06:02SPEAKERlike they were well on their way to passing a law
1:06:05SPEAKERin Washington that by 2030,
1:06:08SPEAKERall cars had to be either electric or hydrogen.
1:06:10SPEAKER- Ooh, I like that.
1:06:11SPEAKER- But Governor Inslee vetoed that bill.
1:06:15SPEAKER- People love Governor Inslee, they're real fans up there.
1:06:18SPEAKER- Are they? - No.
1:06:19SPEAKER- Keep up with Washington State politics.
1:06:21SPEAKERI mean, you know, he was like one of the also ran
1:06:23SPEAKERpresidential candidates.
1:06:24SPEAKER- Why did he veto it?
1:06:25SPEAKER- Last cycle.
1:06:26SPEAKER- He cited, because if you remember when he,
1:06:29SPEAKERfor the brief minute he was in the presidential race,
1:06:32SPEAKERlike the environment was very much his pet issue,
1:06:34SPEAKERif you remember that, like zero emissions,
1:06:37SPEAKERclimate change stuff was his thing, that was his platform.
1:06:41SPEAKERI guess there was some kind of road usage charge attached
1:06:44SPEAKERto this requirement, like is that a straight up tax?
1:06:47SPEAKERLike, is that what that is?
1:06:48SPEAKERIs that essentially, or is that tolls?
1:06:51SPEAKERIs that a per use like?
1:06:53SPEAKER- So, okay, yeah, so those are, so, okay,
1:06:56SPEAKERso here's what they're talking, here's what this is about.
1:07:00SPEAKERMost road, not most, but a lot of road maintenance
1:07:03SPEAKERis funded by gasoline taxes right now,
1:07:05SPEAKER'cause presumably if you're using, that's why in the South,
1:07:08SPEAKERyou often would see the gas pump that's the farm use pump,
1:07:11SPEAKERand then there's also the normal gas pump.
1:07:13SPEAKERThe farm use one bypasses the road use taxes,
1:07:16SPEAKER'cause that gas is to be used on farms only.
1:07:18SPEAKER- I see.
1:07:19SPEAKER- The gas, sometimes it's also shittier gas
1:07:23SPEAKERfor like it's leaded gas or whatever,
1:07:25SPEAKERbut for the most part, it's a tax thing.
1:07:27SPEAKERYou're just not paying the tax on those pumps.
1:07:30SPEAKERThe road use charges fund paving and road maintenance
1:07:35SPEAKERand stuff like that, and electric cars don't pay them
1:07:37SPEAKERfor the most part.
1:07:38SPEAKER- Right.
1:07:39SPEAKER- So one of, like with less than 1% of cars on the road
1:07:42SPEAKERbeing electric, who cares?
1:07:44SPEAKERBut as that number starts to increase,
1:07:46SPEAKERit's going to impact the revenue to the DOT and that stuff,
1:07:50SPEAKERand they have to figure out a solution for that.
1:07:51SPEAKERSo one of them is road use charges
1:07:53SPEAKERthat are like mileage-based user fees, basically,
1:07:56SPEAKERso that you report how often,
1:07:59SPEAKERhow many miles you drove that year,
1:08:01SPEAKERand then you pay a flat fee based on that.
1:08:06SPEAKERYeah, I don't know.
1:08:07SPEAKER- Yeah, I don't know if he was actually
1:08:09SPEAKERphilosophically opposed to this program,
1:08:10SPEAKERor if he just thought he was gonna get eviscerated
1:08:12SPEAKERpolitically for being a part of instituting something
1:08:16SPEAKERlike that, it's hard to say.
1:08:17SPEAKER- I mean, it could be also that he didn't like
1:08:22SPEAKERthe mechanisms that they were using to collect the money.
1:08:26SPEAKER- That was sort of his, well, his stated reasoning was like,
1:08:29SPEAKERthis is too important to get hung up in the process
1:08:31SPEAKERof trying to institute a program like this.
1:08:33SPEAKERLike, we can't attach this.
1:08:34SPEAKER- Oh, it seems like those things should be separate,
1:08:36SPEAKERis what he's saying.
1:08:36SPEAKER- That's kind of what he was saying,
1:08:37SPEAKERbut who knows what the real motivations are there.
1:08:40SPEAKER- Yeah.
1:08:41SPEAKER- And also like the state level regulations,
1:08:42SPEAKERlike, is this not just going to,
1:08:44SPEAKERor is this going to send people across state lines
1:08:47SPEAKERto buy cars, or is that very complicated
1:08:49SPEAKERbuying a car out of state?
1:08:50SPEAKERI don't know.
1:08:51SPEAKER- I mean, look, in Tennessee, we lived on the state line,
1:08:55SPEAKERand I feel like if you got caught trying to go
1:08:59SPEAKERacross state lines to avoid paying sales tax or something,
1:09:01SPEAKERyou'd probably be in trouble, but maybe not, I don't know.
1:09:04SPEAKERI don't know. - Yeah, I don't know.
1:09:05SPEAKER- Like you're entitled to go get the best deal, right?
1:09:07SPEAKER- Like, right.
1:09:08SPEAKER- If, yeah, that's complicated.
1:09:11SPEAKER- Like, yeah, I mean, the point is,
1:09:12SPEAKERI don't know how binding these regulations
1:09:14SPEAKERwould actually be on a per state basis.
1:09:15SPEAKER- Like what benefit to, like, we didn't sign anything
1:09:19SPEAKERthat said, "Hey, we have to stay in California
1:09:20SPEAKER"for the next three years when we got the deal
1:09:22SPEAKER"with all the incentives from California
1:09:26SPEAKER"to buy this electric car," or at least this electric car.
1:09:29SPEAKER- Yeah, but you know, at least the point is
1:09:30SPEAKERthere are some state governments
1:09:31SPEAKERthat are dipping their toe in
1:09:34SPEAKERas far as starting to regulate this stuff,
1:09:36SPEAKERstarting to force the issue.
1:09:38SPEAKER- Yeah, but you know,
1:09:39SPEAKERaccording to looking at these analyst predictions,
1:09:40SPEAKERlike maybe the market is just gonna solve the problem itself
1:09:42SPEAKERif it just becomes appealing enough to people.
1:09:46SPEAKER- I mean, I think what'll happen,
1:09:48SPEAKERUtah has enacted a road use fee
1:09:50SPEAKERfor alternative energy vehicles.
1:09:52SPEAKERThere's a couple other states
1:09:53SPEAKERthat have done something similar.
1:09:54SPEAKERLike, the nice thing about the fuel tax
1:09:59SPEAKERis it actually, it's not really a mileage tax,
1:10:02SPEAKERit's more kind of an efficiency tax.
1:10:04SPEAKER'Cause like, if you put your gas in a Prius
1:10:06SPEAKERand you're getting 50 miles to a gallon,
1:10:08SPEAKERyou're effectively paying a lower rate per mile
1:10:11SPEAKERthan somebody who's driving an F4, F350.
1:10:14SPEAKER- Right.
1:10:15SPEAKER- That's a heavier car
1:10:16SPEAKERand it's presumably doing more wear and tear on the roads
1:10:18SPEAKERfor the same amount of gas.
1:10:21SPEAKERI don't know that like a per kilowatt hour charge is,
1:10:26SPEAKERlike I don't know what the equitable way to do this is, so.
1:10:30SPEAKER- It's not an easy problem to solve.
1:10:31SPEAKER- It is not an easy problem to solve.
1:10:33SPEAKER- Speaking of problems that are hard to solve.
1:10:36SPEAKER- Yeah.
1:10:37SPEAKER- What else?
1:10:38SPEAKER- Recycling, recycling these batteries
1:10:39SPEAKERas they go out of service.
1:10:40SPEAKER- You just put them on top of the,
1:10:42SPEAKERyou put them in a Ziploc bag on top of the recycling bin
1:10:44SPEAKERand then they take them when they get the trash.
1:10:46SPEAKER- Somebody will just pick it up.
1:10:47SPEAKER- Yeah.
1:10:48SPEAKER- Who knows where it goes?
1:10:48SPEAKERNobody knows.
1:10:51SPEAKERYeah, the little bit I read,
1:10:52SPEAKERI pulled up an article from Science Magazine
1:10:54SPEAKERabout this topic and it really sounds,
1:10:57SPEAKERaccording to the researchers dealing with the problem,
1:10:58SPEAKERit really sounds like these batteries
1:11:00SPEAKERwere not designed with recycling in mind at all.
1:11:02SPEAKER- Well, everybody uses different formulas, right?
1:11:05SPEAKER- Yeah, so like there are all kinds of problems around this,
1:11:07SPEAKERlike different manufacturers use different chemistry
1:11:09SPEAKERin their batteries, different layouts of the cells.
1:11:13SPEAKERAlso the way the cells are bound together
1:11:16SPEAKERis different across different manufacturers.
1:11:18SPEAKERA lot of them use like a very heavy duty glue
1:11:20SPEAKERto bind the cells.
1:11:21SPEAKERSo like pulling the cells apart to recycle them is difficult.
1:11:24SPEAKERThere's no, the upshot of all that is there's no real,
1:11:27SPEAKERlike one size fits all easy recycling process.
1:11:30SPEAKERLike it's kind of varies by battery.
1:11:33SPEAKERAlso, it's pretty risky.
1:11:34SPEAKERI think you probably know more about this than I do,
1:11:36SPEAKERbut like piercing those cells is a big no-no.
1:11:38SPEAKER- I've been, I've seen BattleBots, I know how this works.
1:11:40SPEAKER- Right, right.
1:11:41SPEAKERSo like cutting those cells apart again,
1:11:43SPEAKERwhen they're bound so tightly together,
1:11:44SPEAKERlike just literally pulling them apart is risky
1:11:46SPEAKER'cause if you pierce the cell, it's like,
1:11:48SPEAKERyou know, you're letting toxic fumes out,
1:11:50SPEAKERthere's a risk of fire,
1:11:51SPEAKERthere's all kinds of problems there, like it's...
1:11:53SPEAKER- Yeah, you have to do it in an environment
1:11:54SPEAKERwithout I think water vapor maybe, I can't remember.
1:11:57SPEAKERThe problem is it reacts with water and oxygen
1:12:00SPEAKERand some other stuff.
1:12:01SPEAKER- Yeah, so like the, you know,
1:12:02SPEAKERone of the basic problems this article pointed out
1:12:03SPEAKERis that it's cheaper for manufacturers
1:12:05SPEAKERto just keep using new materials and making new batteries
1:12:08SPEAKERthan it is to recycle them.
1:12:10SPEAKERAnd of course, as we all know, our friends,
1:12:11SPEAKERthe corporations are gonna do whatever's cheapest.
1:12:13SPEAKER- No, no, here's the way this works.
1:12:15SPEAKERFirst, we throw this stuff in the landfill.
1:12:17SPEAKERAnd then in like 30 years, when we were like,
1:12:19SPEAKERoh shit, we threw all this valuable stuff in the landfill.
1:12:22SPEAKERThen we hire kids to mine it out of the landfill.
1:12:24SPEAKER- Oh, okay.
1:12:26SPEAKER- We're basically, when you throw something in the landfill,
1:12:29SPEAKERBrad, you're not polluting the environment.
1:12:31SPEAKER- No, you're just socking it away for later.
1:12:33SPEAKER- Yeah, you're making a future resource
1:12:36SPEAKERis the way to think about that.
1:12:37SPEAKER- So actually, I mean, you're being flip here,
1:12:39SPEAKERbut there was something this article pointed out
1:12:41SPEAKERwas that a lot of the materials in these batteries
1:12:44SPEAKERare pretty rare and in a lot of cases,
1:12:47SPEAKERcontrolled by a small number of countries.
1:12:49SPEAKERLike you hear about that stuff all the time, right?
1:12:50SPEAKER- I was gonna say, they're called rare earths,
1:12:52SPEAKERbut they're not actually that rare.
1:12:54SPEAKERThey're just hard to, they're difficult to get.
1:12:57SPEAKER- Or they're, yeah, yes.
1:12:58SPEAKERAnd they're pretty concentrated
1:13:00SPEAKERin a small number of places, right?
1:13:01SPEAKER- Well, I know there are like, there is a supply in the US,
1:13:04SPEAKERbut the problem is it's difficult to produce them
1:13:08SPEAKERwithout environmental impacts
1:13:09SPEAKERthat we're not as keen on in the US.
1:13:11SPEAKER- Aha, I see, okay, but may also be part of it.
1:13:14SPEAKER- Yeah, so like a lot of them come from China, it turns out,
1:13:18SPEAKERwhere they're a little more lackadaisical
1:13:21SPEAKERabout their environmental processing
1:13:23SPEAKERof potentially toxic metals and things like that.
1:13:26SPEAKER- Yes, I think South America,
1:13:28SPEAKERthere's a decent quantity available as well, is that right?
1:13:30SPEAKER- I feel like that's one of the other places, yeah.
1:13:33SPEAKERWe have, the thing that happened with rare earth mining
1:13:37SPEAKERin the US is that it became less expensive
1:13:41SPEAKERthan the material, it became more expensive
1:13:43SPEAKERthan the materials were worth to produce them here.
1:13:47SPEAKERSo we offshored all of that stuff
1:13:49SPEAKERto places where they didn't give a shit
1:13:50SPEAKERabout whether they poisoned people, which is gross.
1:13:53SPEAKER- Yes.
1:13:54SPEAKER- But now we're paying attention to that in a new way,
1:13:56SPEAKERand we're starting to bring that stuff back online.
1:13:59SPEAKER- Yeah, the point they made,
1:14:01SPEAKERand it seemed like a good point is that,
1:14:03SPEAKERfor whatever reasons, environmental, economic, whatever,
1:14:05SPEAKERthose materials are not easy to come by,
1:14:07SPEAKERand so creating another stream of those
1:14:10SPEAKERby recycling them out of old batteries
1:14:11SPEAKERinstead of having to continue mining them
1:14:13SPEAKERand all the impacts that go along with that
1:14:15SPEAKERis very worthwhile, even though it is definitely expensive
1:14:18SPEAKERand difficult at the moment.
1:14:19SPEAKER- Yeah, and so like everything else in electronics,
1:14:22SPEAKERlike the weird thing about electric cars
1:14:24SPEAKERis that the supply chain works more like electronics
1:14:27SPEAKERthan traditional cars, which are mechanical
1:14:29SPEAKERand are closer to steam engines or something than a phone,
1:14:33SPEAKERis that the supply chain stuff works in the same way.
1:14:36SPEAKERSo, you know, as there's more demand,
1:14:38SPEAKERthe supply increases and the cost for each unit goes down
1:14:42SPEAKERas the supply increases and so on and so forth
1:14:44SPEAKERuntil we race to the bottom,
1:14:45SPEAKERand eventually we're buying $15 cars again.
1:14:47SPEAKERI don't think that's actually gonna happen,
1:14:49SPEAKERbut like the cost per kilowatt hour of battery
1:14:51SPEAKERhas gone down dramatically in the last 10 years
1:14:53SPEAKERbecause the supply has gone up dramatically.
1:14:55SPEAKER- Yeah, this stuff always moves forward, it just takes a while
1:14:58SPEAKERthat moves more slowly than you would like.
1:15:00SPEAKER- Yeah.
1:15:01SPEAKER- But like that article pointed out,
1:15:03SPEAKERyou are starting to see some national governments
1:15:06SPEAKERstart to regulate around this stuff
1:15:07SPEAKERand start to invest in R&D for battery recycling
1:15:10SPEAKERand stuff like that.
1:15:10SPEAKERSo as these things penetrate the market,
1:15:13SPEAKERhopefully we will get there.
1:15:15SPEAKER- Yeah.
1:15:16SPEAKER- And hopefully all of our cars don't explode
1:15:19SPEAKERand kill everybody before then.
1:15:22SPEAKER- So you're talking, are you talking?
1:15:24SPEAKER- Yeah. - It's the last bullet point
1:15:25SPEAKERon this list.
1:15:27SPEAKER- I don't want my car to explode, Brad.
1:15:28SPEAKERWhy would my car explode?
1:15:31SPEAKER- I mean, maybe don't drive it into a tree for starters.
1:15:34SPEAKER- Well, my car doesn't have, my car's not self-driving,
1:15:36SPEAKERso it's all on me if I do that.
1:15:38SPEAKER- Yeah, okay, well, I can't help you there.
1:15:41SPEAKER- Are you talking about the Texas?
1:15:44SPEAKER- Yes, yes, there was this,
1:15:47SPEAKERwhat you describe as a somewhat sensational report
1:15:50SPEAKERfloating around, gosh, what was this, like six weeks
1:15:52SPEAKERas I wait for its page to load?
1:15:53SPEAKER- Yeah, it was about six weeks ago.
1:15:55SPEAKER- So here is a really predictable pattern for,
1:15:59SPEAKERI'm gonna sound like a Tesla guy now and I apologize,
1:16:02SPEAKERbut there's a really predictable pattern
1:16:04SPEAKERfor covering new technologies by local news sources.
1:16:07SPEAKERNew thing bad and scary,
1:16:09SPEAKERlocal advertisers who mostly are local car dealers
1:16:12SPEAKERwho sell Ford and Chevrolet and Dodge and Toyota vehicles
1:16:17SPEAKERare worried about this.
1:16:19SPEAKERTherefore, the local car explodes in fiery explosion.
1:16:25SPEAKERLet's make this sound like it's a real problem.
1:16:28SPEAKERThis is somebody who crashed their car,
1:16:30SPEAKERthe battery's ignited.
1:16:31SPEAKERIt's one of a handful of electric car battery ignitions
1:16:35SPEAKERthat happens every year.
1:16:36SPEAKER- Yeah, it's a Tesla, you should point out.
1:16:38SPEAKER- It's a Tesla, yeah.
1:16:39SPEAKERI mean, probably they were doing something stupid
1:16:40SPEAKERwith autopilot, who knows?
1:16:43SPEAKERThe thing about this is you have to look at the number
1:16:47SPEAKERof the explosions per 100,000 miles driven
1:16:51SPEAKERand kind of do a per capita assessment of this.
1:16:55SPEAKERAnd it turns out fewer cars on the road,
1:16:58SPEAKERso who knows how this will shake out
1:16:59SPEAKERwhen 25% of the cars on the road are electrics.
1:17:04SPEAKERBut currently the number of catastrophic explosions
1:17:09SPEAKERfor battery related issues versus number
1:17:14SPEAKERof catastrophic explosions for driving around
1:17:16SPEAKERwith a bomb in the back of your car.
1:17:20SPEAKERI feel comfortable with my choices is all I'm gonna say.
1:17:22SPEAKER- With an acceptable tolerance, is that what you're saying?
1:17:25SPEAKER- I would say everything is working as intended
1:17:27SPEAKERand I do not feel like I'm taking an incredible risk
1:17:30SPEAKERby driving around with lithium batteries
1:17:32SPEAKERunderneath my driver's seat more than I am
1:17:35SPEAKERby driving around with 20 gallons of gas
1:17:37SPEAKERin the back of the car.
1:17:38SPEAKER- Sure, so the thing that caught my eye about this story
1:17:41SPEAKERwas not the fact that the car ignited.
1:17:43SPEAKERIt was what happened in the aftermath.
1:17:45SPEAKERThis is the quote from the story
1:17:47SPEAKERthat really jumped out at me.
1:17:48SPEAKER"Authorities said they used 32,000 gallons of water
1:17:51SPEAKERto extinguish the flames
1:17:52SPEAKERbecause the vehicle's batteries kept reigniting.
1:17:55SPEAKERAt one point, deputies had to call Tesla
1:17:58SPEAKERto ask them how to put out the fire in the battery."
1:18:01SPEAKER- Yeah, so here's an interesting thought.
1:18:03SPEAKER- That was the part for me where like first responders
1:18:06SPEAKERdid not know how to deal with this that really stuck with me.
1:18:09SPEAKER- Yeah, so here,
1:18:14SPEAKERI don't want to suggest that the firefighters
1:18:16SPEAKERwho poured water on a battery fire
1:18:18SPEAKERwere yahoos who didn't know what they were doing
1:18:20SPEAKER'cause that would be unjust and unkind of me.
1:18:22SPEAKERHowever, holy shit, don't put water on battery fires.
1:18:26SPEAKERIt's like, you know, if you have a grease fire
1:18:28SPEAKERin your kitchen, what do you do to put it out, Brad?
1:18:31SPEAKER- Don't pour water on it?
1:18:32SPEAKER- Don't pour water on it, yeah.
1:18:34SPEAKER- Smother it?
1:18:34SPEAKER- You smother it, exactly.
1:18:36SPEAKERSame thing for lithium polymer battery fires.
1:18:38SPEAKERYou do not pour water on them
1:18:40SPEAKER'cause it just makes the lithium reacts with the water
1:18:42SPEAKERand makes more fire.
1:18:44SPEAKER- It just makes the lithium angrier.
1:18:46SPEAKER- The lithium, like lithium, it's like Nirvana said,
1:18:49SPEAKERlithium and fire don't go well,
1:18:50SPEAKERlithium and water don't go well together.
1:18:52SPEAKER- Yes.
1:18:55SPEAKER- And yeah, like, yeah, anyway,
1:19:00SPEAKERjust don't, Jiminy Christmas, if you're a firefighter
1:19:04SPEAKERand you feel like you're gonna be in a situation
1:19:06SPEAKERwhere there might be a battery fire, don't, yeah.
1:19:11SPEAKERJust yes, much more like with the recycling.
1:19:16SPEAKERLike this is all fairly new to people
1:19:18SPEAKERand we will get there in time.
1:19:19SPEAKER- I mean, you would think this,
1:19:20SPEAKERbut like I wouldn't have been surprised
1:19:22SPEAKERto see this story 10 years ago,
1:19:23SPEAKERbut we've had electric cars driving on with these batteries
1:19:25SPEAKERfor 10 years now.
1:19:26SPEAKERAnd the fact that there's a fire department someplace
1:19:28SPEAKERin the third biggest city in the country, in Houston,
1:19:33SPEAKERthat doesn't know not to squirt water
1:19:35SPEAKERon the lithium batteries is incredible to me.
1:19:38SPEAKER- Yeah, I guess so.
1:19:39SPEAKERSo again, less than 2 million electric cars
1:19:41SPEAKERout of almost 300 million cars.
1:19:43SPEAKERSo that's still a pretty small, pretty small spread.
1:19:45SPEAKER- This was also a crash that happened
1:19:47SPEAKERwhen there was nobody in the driver's seat
1:19:48SPEAKERbecause the, anyway, yeah.
1:19:51SPEAKER- Yeah, that's fine, you don't do it.
1:19:54SPEAKER- I don't, like, okay, just to be clear,
1:19:57SPEAKERthose people are dumb asses.
1:19:59SPEAKERI still think it's Tesla's fault
1:20:00SPEAKERfor calling it fucking auto.
1:20:02SPEAKERLike it's, we talked about this the 10th episode
1:20:05SPEAKERis asinine that somebody can come out
1:20:07SPEAKERand market something as, hey, autopilot.
1:20:10SPEAKERYes, I realize that the Tesla fanboy line
1:20:14SPEAKERof the autopilot and a plane works exactly
1:20:17SPEAKERlike this in the car.
1:20:18SPEAKERIt's like, it's a user helping feature,
1:20:20SPEAKERnot a replacement for an actual pilot.
1:20:23SPEAKER- Well, I'm sure that's a great comfort
1:20:25SPEAKERto all of the trained pilots out there
1:20:26SPEAKERwho have Tesla's and actually understand that distinction.
1:20:29SPEAKER- Yes, normal human beings hear autopilot
1:20:31SPEAKERand they think, oh, the plane flies itself.
1:20:32SPEAKERPerfect, I bought that for my car.
1:20:35SPEAKERCar, take me to Portland, please.
1:20:38SPEAKER(sighing)
1:20:42SPEAKER- Okay, watch your cars, they seem cool.
1:20:44SPEAKER- I like my car, I wish it wouldn't text.
1:20:46SPEAKERI gotta figure out how to turn off the texting,
1:20:47SPEAKERit's annoying, I wish I hadn't turned that on.
1:20:49SPEAKER- Yeah. - But yeah.
1:20:51SPEAKERThis is the part of the show where we thank the 2000,
1:20:54SPEAKERlet's see, how many people?
1:20:56SPEAKER2000,
1:21:00SPEAKER2,363. - 63, yeah.
1:21:03SPEAKER- Wonderful listeners who support the tech pod
1:21:06SPEAKERand make it happen every month.
1:21:07SPEAKER- Yeah, goodness gracious, thank you so much.
1:21:10SPEAKER- We've had a lot of new folks over the last couple of weeks
1:21:13SPEAKERand it's awesome to see them integrating
1:21:15SPEAKERin the community that was already there.
1:21:16SPEAKERWe opened up some new channels, we had to open up,
1:21:18SPEAKERpeople wanted a crypto channel this week, Brad.
1:21:22SPEAKER- I saw that you created the crypto channel.
1:21:24SPEAKER- I had mixed emotions about the crypto channel.
1:21:27SPEAKER- Okay, okay, that makes me feel better
1:21:28SPEAKER'cause we didn't talk about it ahead of time
1:21:29SPEAKERand I hung my head when I saw it, I'm hearing you say.
1:21:31SPEAKER- Well, look, we also had a problem
1:21:33SPEAKERwith people talking about eating people in the general chat
1:21:38SPEAKERand I felt like that was discomforting
1:21:39SPEAKERfor people who may not be aware of the fact
1:21:42SPEAKERthat it's a long, now unfortunate and long running joke.
1:21:46SPEAKERSo the crypto channels opt in, Brad.
1:21:48SPEAKER- Yeah, I didn't know you could do that.
1:21:50SPEAKERI guess I could opt in automatically
1:21:51SPEAKERas an admin of the server, but that's a cool discord thing
1:21:54SPEAKERthat you can have, require people to do a thing
1:21:58SPEAKERbefore they see that channel.
1:21:59SPEAKER- Yeah, normal humans, not gonna know
1:22:01SPEAKERthat either of those things are there
1:22:03SPEAKERand now that problem is off to the side
1:22:04SPEAKERwhere we don't have to worry about it anymore.
1:22:06SPEAKER- That's all that matters.
1:22:07SPEAKER- Solve the problem.
1:22:09SPEAKER- Yeah, that's a neat thing.
1:22:11SPEAKERThank you so much to everybody for supporting us
1:22:12SPEAKERand also I just wanna say a thank you
1:22:14SPEAKERto everybody already on the server
1:22:15SPEAKERfor being so welcoming to new folks coming in.
1:22:18SPEAKER- Yeah.
1:22:20SPEAKER- They have cultivated a very nice, welcoming,
1:22:22SPEAKERwarm, friendly culture for new folks to join
1:22:25SPEAKERand it's really nice to see.
1:22:26SPEAKER- It's very pleasant, it always makes me happy
1:22:28SPEAKERwhen I check in and see what's going on.
1:22:31SPEAKER- And as always, thank you to our executive producer,
1:22:33SPEAKERto your patrons, the Bunny Fiend, Jacob Chappell,
1:22:37SPEAKERTwinkle Twinkie, and James Kenway, thank you all so much.
1:22:39SPEAKER- Yes, thank you very much.
1:22:42SPEAKER- And yeah, this is a listener supported show, Brad.
1:22:45SPEAKERThis is, as of right now, this is your job.
1:22:48SPEAKERI don't know if that will remain the case, but...
1:22:50SPEAKER- Yes, Saturday morning, here we are recording.
1:22:55SPEAKERI had to tell my girlfriend, I gotta go to work.
1:22:57SPEAKERI know it seems like Saturday to you,
1:22:59SPEAKERbut this is work for me now.
1:23:00SPEAKER- Time to go to work.
1:23:02SPEAKER- That's right.
1:23:04SPEAKERSo you had a work change a couple of weeks ago.
1:23:06SPEAKERI've had a work change too.
1:23:07SPEAKER- Oh?
1:23:08SPEAKER- Yes.
1:23:10SPEAKER- Tell me about this thing that you've definitely
1:23:11SPEAKERnot told me about already, what's going on.
1:23:14SPEAKER- So a friend of mine reached out a few months ago
1:23:20SPEAKERand was like, "Hey, are you available for consulting?
1:23:22SPEAKERI wanna talk to you about communication, community stuff,
1:23:25SPEAKERand things like that."
1:23:27SPEAKERAnd he started a game studio.
1:23:30SPEAKERSo I'm working with Stray Bombay, working for Stray Bombay.
1:23:34SPEAKERIt started out as like a consult thing,
1:23:36SPEAKERand now it's just my job, it turns out.
1:23:38SPEAKER- Cool.
1:23:39SPEAKER- So we're making a as yet unannounced video game.
1:23:45SPEAKERAnd I think that's all I can probably say.
1:23:47SPEAKER- Okay, that's fair.
1:23:48SPEAKER- Yeah, but I'm working with Chet Falisek and Kimberly Voll
1:23:51SPEAKERand some other awesome people up there.
1:23:53SPEAKER- Heck of a pedigree.
1:23:54SPEAKERCongratulations, I have avoided pumping you for info
1:23:57SPEAKERabout the game as curious as I am.
1:23:59SPEAKERI know about as much as everybody else listening right now,
1:24:03SPEAKERbut I'm very curious to see more.
1:24:05SPEAKER- Well, hopefully I can talk about that.
1:24:06SPEAKER- Or see anything, I should say.
1:24:07SPEAKER- Yeah, hopefully I can talk about that in the future.
1:24:09SPEAKERBut until then, that's what I'm doing now with my days.
1:24:15SPEAKERSo if I'm around to discord a little bit less during the day,
1:24:17SPEAKERthat's probably why.
1:24:18SPEAKER- Oh, hey, I've got some time to kill.
1:24:20SPEAKER- Yeah, you're there.
1:24:21SPEAKER- So I've been on there quite a bit.
1:24:22SPEAKER- Look, it's really funny 'cause as you were leaving
1:24:25SPEAKERGiant Bomb, I was literally doing interviews with the team
1:24:29SPEAKERthere to meet people and see if I wanted to come in
1:24:31SPEAKERfull-time and see if they wanted to have me in full-time.
1:24:34SPEAKER- Yes, funny how life works out sometimes.
1:24:36SPEAKER- Yeah.
1:24:37SPEAKER- This should not affect this podcast at all.
1:24:40SPEAKER- Yeah, so that's one of the things that is important
1:24:43SPEAKERto talk about is it doesn't affect the podcast,
1:24:45SPEAKERit doesn't affect my streams.
1:24:48SPEAKERI mean, it does affect 'em 'cause I'm a little bit
1:24:50SPEAKERmore tired now, but yeah, everything's more or less
1:24:54SPEAKERthe same and I'm happy to talk about as much as,
1:24:57SPEAKERobviously I'm not gonna answer questions about games
1:24:59SPEAKERand stuff, but if people have questions,
1:25:00SPEAKERI'm happy to answer them in the discord or on Twitter
1:25:02SPEAKERor wherever, but I wanted to let you all know first.
1:25:06SPEAKER- Exclusive.
1:25:07SPEAKER- And I'm really, I'm very excited to share more
1:25:10SPEAKERwhen the time is right.
1:25:12SPEAKER- Yeah, I'm excited to see it.
1:25:13SPEAKER- Yeah, so that's it for us this week, I guess.
1:25:18SPEAKERWe'll be back next week with more
1:25:20SPEAKERBrad and Will Made It tech pod.
1:25:22SPEAKER- You bet your sweet behind, we will.
1:25:26SPEAKER- Behind.
1:25:27SPEAKER- Bye everybody.