The Connected Car Challenge: Part 1

CarStuff host Scott Benjamin joins the show to talk about the latest systems in cars that are meant to keep us connected.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:04):
Get in touch with technology with tex Stuff from Comen.
Welcome to Text Stuff. I'm Jonathan Strickland, and today, once
again I am graced by the presence of our automotive genius,
Scott Benjamin Scott. Thanks for joining us on the show today.

(00:24):
I was going, Jonathan, I'm I'm honored to be welcome back. Yeah,
I am. I am trying to exert dominance because Scott
actually is way more knowledgeable in the area of cars
than I am. So I'm wearing my sunglasses to give
me this kind of sense of coolness and a loofness.
That's where you're in a tight shirt, your chest all
put's right. Yeah, I gotta make myself look big. Yeah

(00:46):
it's working. Yeah. Thanks. Thanks. I'm glad that I can.
I can dominate and then therefore maintain my my lead position.
But as always when I have a guest on, I
like to ask my guest if there are any particular
topics that trist them. And Scott, you picked an article
a list really, that appeared in Forbes Online and thought

(01:08):
maybe we should talk about and I couldn't agree more. Yeah,
it's say it's a topic that I think we're gonna
hear a lot more about in the future near future
as a matter of fact, um, connected cars. Yeah, and
not just connected cars. But this particular article is about
ten obstacles for connected cars. Because we've talked about connected
cars on car stuff on our show before and in

(01:31):
various ways. I mean kind of the slow progression up
to the point where we're actually calling them connected cars now,
because that's relatively new, right right, Because when you think
connected car, I mean that definition seems a little fuzzy
and vague, largely because we're still defining it. So you could,
if you wanted to be, you know, kind of technical,
you could say, oh, well, I've heard about entertainment systems

(01:53):
that you can have in a car that connect to
something like Pandora. Isn't that a connected car? But what
we're really talking about here, and it's it's something that's
not defined in that Forbes list. The Forbes list is
pretty bare bones when you get down to it. But
what we're really talking about here are cars that have
some sort of persistent Internet connection, and usually they also
have some sort of wireless local area network in the

(02:16):
car itself so that your devices can link into that network. Yeah,
that's right, and that network provides other benefits to the
driver and and right now, I mean you can get
vehicles that have elements of this right now. We're talking
about future developments that are coming down the line. And
you know, we'll get to all this as we go
through the top ten list. But um, which, by the way,

(02:38):
some of this we agree with and some of this
we don't. Yeah, some of these we question how they
could be labeled an obstacle. It makes me think that
this list was originally just a list about connected cars,
and that when they got to the point of trying
to come up with a headline to describe it, this
obstacles was the one that seemed like it was the
best fit because maybe there's like seven real obstacles and

(02:58):
the other three or just we're talking about connected cars.
So you know, some of the things that that you
know you may already see in cars. There are things
like automatic notification of crashes or um, you know, when
you're getting speeding alerts. You know, if you're you're in
a rural area and you're going a little too fast,
your car can actually tell you if you're going too
quickly for that road. Things that you know, navigation systems

(03:19):
have done in the past, you know, on their own,
but those are add in devices, things that you you
plug in. Now cars are doing that themselves, you know,
with the with the built in navigation devices, so um,
safety alerts, things like that. All all that stuff is
stuff that we can see right now that is part
of the connected car. But as you said, the definition
is constantly changing every time uh something new comes out

(03:40):
or some new advancement in UH in the design of
the vehicle or the architecture of the electrical system of
the vehicle. That's that's redefining what we consider a connected car.
And this vehicle to vehicle communication that we're talking about,
that's that's just now in the in the infancy state.
I think we're not really there yet, but we're getting
there quickly. And it's kind of and the way we

(04:01):
described it on on car stuff is that, um, it's
almost like the phone, the phones, you know, Like I mean,
I can think seven eight years ago when I was
using a flip phone and that was relatively new technology
and we know we're just getting into smartphone area, you know,
territory at that point. But um, I think how quickly
things have developed past that point or since that point.

(04:22):
In just the last five six years. That's the way
cars are advancing. And I've got other stuff that I'm
gonna site here as we go along. There was there
was a particularly eye opening article in Popular Mechanics that
we've covered in detail on our other show, and I
will I'll mention elements of that as we go through.
But some fascinated stuff that that even for me and Ben,
you know, when we were we were going through this,

(04:43):
we we talked about this all the time, you know,
throughout the week, even not just on the show. Uh,
some of the stuff was really eye opening. How quickly
things are happening. Yeah, and it reminds me a lot
of the discussion you and I had on the other
episode of Tech Stuff you joined me on about self
driving cars and how a lot of the elements that
are necessary to make a self driving car work are

(05:05):
finding their way into our vehicles today. Even though our
vehicles are not themselves autonomous right there, there's some autonomous
elements that are being worked in, whether it's something where
the car is still under full driver control, or it's
something where a computer takes over for like parking assists
to that kind of stuff. So it's very similar to that,

(05:26):
to that same sort of model, and without getting very
specific about it. Today there's even some some some more
news on that front as we go through this list today.
So um, I can tell you that, you know, based
on the other list, the the Popular Mechanics list, I
know we're kind of getting into two different things here,
but um, even based on what I read there, they're
talking about it's advancing even faster than what we had

(05:47):
talked about just a few weeks ago. It is amazing.
How I mean, that's the one drawback about doing any
sort of show about technology is that very quickly after
you record it, it becomes obsolete and you need to
do an update. Let's look into the actual list though,
So the Forbes list, it opens up with the statement
that cars take longer to design and build than smartphones,

(06:11):
so the development cycle is very different. So you might
say that if you look at smartphones in general, the
the innovation is is constant, right, You're constantly getting updates.
But even if you narrow it down to a specific
model of phone, you're still talking about essentially an annual
uh development cycle. You get a new iPhone every year.

(06:33):
I think we can all appreciate this I mean, how
often do you get, you know, the iPhone six and
then the six S comes out a month later. And
I'm bad at this naming, you know, devices, but you
understand exactly what I mean by when we get home,
the next one is on. You know, the television is
being the greatest thing, and that's what people are waiting
in line for tomorrow. Right in the United States, this

(06:53):
is particularly tricky, right because a lot of us get
our phones subsidized, and we get a contract that goes
along with it. The contract baseline tends to be two years.
So if you have a two year contract but your
specific model of phone updates every year, you always feel
like you're behind. Now I'm an Android user, and it's
even worse for me because there's a new Android phone

(07:14):
out multiple times a month, so I can't if I
settle with one model, I do that knowing that it's
going to be outpaced multiple times before I can upgrade again.
And I suppose it's similar in that, you know, Let's
say that you have a particular make of vehicle, you know,
so there's a general Motors will make a certain type
of vehicle and they will update it every year. Of course, Yeah,

(07:35):
still call it the same thing. There's gonna be the
two thousand twelve modle year, the two thirteen, and the
thirteen is likely going to have more features and functions
than the twelve, but they won't do a dramatic redesign,
and you know for several years. I mean it maybe
ten years away or whatever. But they're constantly working on
new products. Well, this article says that car manufacturers work
on five year cycles. Now I'm going to say that

(07:57):
it's probably a little bit less than that. Typically, know
that they've a while ago, you know, like maybe a
couple of decades ago, you know, they were working on
cycles that were seven years long. You know, they would
start out with the sketches on the drawing board. You
know that even the napkin, and you work up from
there with the clay models, etcetera. Well, cad drawings and
things like that have advanced to the point where that's
shortened that you know, the amount of time, the lead

(08:19):
up time I guess we'd be printing really cut it
way back, because now if your prototype didn't work, you
could just redesign it and print a new one exactly right.
So the cycles are getting much much shorter. But I'm
gonna say that five year cycles. That's if that's average,
I would believe it. I know that some are working
faster than others. So I've got this note here, and
this comes from that other popular mechanics article, and there's

(08:40):
a couple of these that will drop in here. But
I'm I think I'm about to blow your much Jonathan
pit Me. Yeah, you alluded to this before we came
in here, and you said, you know what, I'm going
to save this for the podcast, and I'm going to
I'm gonna ask you a question. Now. This is um,
this is McLaren. Alright, we're talking about So McLaren makes supercars,
they make Formula one cars, they make you know, million
dollar cars, I mean close to it anyways. Al Right,

(09:03):
so McLaren has been in this in the supercar world
since about nineteen nine two. They made a car called
the F one about nine again, it was a million
dollar car. They made like, you know, a hundred plus cars,
not really that many of low production. These are the
ones that are like handmade, that's that's right. And now
it's one of the many that are handmade. Right. But
since they've kind of been out of the game, but

(09:26):
then they came back again, and I want to say
it was around two I'll find the number here, but
I think it was around two thousand eleven when they
came back. Uh. Yeah, they jumped back in with the
model called the twelve seed supercar again, so the car
for the streets. But they had been building Formula one
technology all along, and they've got something that they call
a skunk work. And the skunk Works are outside of London,
and that's kind of their uh experimental area, tough secret

(09:49):
research and development. Lucky skunk Works is probably the most famous,
but there are several companies that do this still thing. Yeah,
exactly right, and this is Formula one for them, right,
They're interested in Formula one technology and they build road
cars there as well. I'm gonna ask you this question. Okay,
so they they develop new technology and test new technology there.
How often do you think that they test and develop

(10:10):
new technology out of this skunk works facility? Oh? Okay, Well,
all right. If you're talking about a company that is
uh largely concerned with designing cars to compete in and
win races, I would imagine who have to be Let's say,
I'm gonna I'm gonna go super conservative. I'm gonna say
eighteen months. Eighteen months, is your guest. Right, here's where

(10:34):
your mind is about to be blong, all right. McLaren,
the vaunted maker of supercars and Formula one racers, long
been known for nimble development. Right at this skunk works
outside of London, developers strive to engineer and test a
new piece of technology every twenty minutes. That that's incredibly

(10:55):
aggressive twenty minutes. Now. When I read that, I could
not believe it. I mean, it's it's predible how quickly
they do. They say that a new race car can
differ by as much as from the race car they
fielded the previous year. That's how fast, and you only
have similarity to the previous model. Is is phenomenal exactly
right now. They're also building, you know, these road cars,

(11:16):
so I'm sure that a lot of that is the
Formula one technology, right However, they've been introducing a new
car every year for every model years since two thousand eleven,
so they're quickly building these cars fast like this. And
the way they do it is that they have completely
stopped starting with the CAD set up and all that.
They didn't even start there. They start with a human
in a simulator and that's how they begin the whole

(11:38):
process and they get feedback from that and it's so fast.
I mean, it's just the the most rapid way to
do the whole thing, and they make adjustments as they
go and that's how they're able to do it so quickly.
And the thing is they say they don't waste millions
on prototyping. This guy, Jeff McGrath from from McClaren Applied Technology,
sees the vice president there and he says that we

(11:59):
can design the car is the future before we even
begin machining parts. So they don't even prototype parts. They
start with the simulator and a person and that's how
they are able to quickly do this. Now it's not
just for these million dollars supercars, which is exciting news
for all of us because I'm not in this this
arena to buy a car, but it's exciting for you
and I because it's not just for these million dollars supercars.

(12:21):
It's He says that I hope this time next year
will be free to name some of the passenger car
companies that are using our technology. So he's saying we're
sharing this, we can't really talk about it right now.
So some of these these big manufacturers, like I'm gonna guess, um,
you know, the big three here in the United States, maybe,
um who knows Pougeot or Mercedes or whoever they're they're

(12:43):
probably working with them, and they're developing technology just that quickly.
We're gonna see advances and cars way faster than we
ever had before, starting right now. So that gap that
is listed as an obstacle may not really be an
obstacle for well, it might not be an obstacle now,
and it certainly won't be an obstacle perpetually. I think.
Also another objection I have to that particular item, not

(13:06):
really objection, but maybe maybe a note a criticism perhaps
is that it doesn't really take into account the aftermarket either,
And the aftermarket could develop much more quickly because you
know you've you've got once you know the constraints you
have to work in for whatever model of car you're
developing your stuff for, Uh, you can really innovate very quickly.

(13:27):
And so some of these connected cars systems may not
be fully integrated with the entire vehicle. They could be
a kind of like a module, like an entertainment system
that you could take out and you would still get
a lot of the functionality you would get in a
car that was built to be a connected vehicle from
the start. Not everything, obviously, anything that that ties directly

(13:50):
into the car systems will probably be a little more problematic,
but at least like the entertainment, navigation, uh, WiFi access,
that kind of stuff, you could build that in. It
reminds me a little bit of open source technology, the
way that that that whole thing works out. I mean,
I'm sure you're way better at this than I am,
but open source the way I understand it is that
you know, you take someone's base idea and you build

(14:11):
on that and they allow you to because that's how
you get this rapid development of ideas, right, I mean
quickly um evolves. Yeah, it's the idea is that by
opening it up to the crowd, you allow for much
more rapid innovation. There's there's a guy here and I've
got a note, another note, and I promise we won't
go as along on the next few as we do
with that one, because that one I was excited about.

(14:31):
But um, there's a note here that I want I
want to talk about Ellen Musk at some point. So
when it feels right to talk about open sourcing again,
just tell me, and that's when I'll hit you with
this other thing from ellenor Ellen Sean, I shouldn't say Ellen.
It's Ellen, Yes, the genius behind Tesla and SpaceX. Uh,
someone that we've chatted about several times on this podcast,

(14:52):
and I'm sure we'll continue to talk about it. Well,
let's talk about the second thing on the list, which
was that new safety laws will dictate connectivity. This was
one of the items that the way it was worded
on the list made me question of whether or not
it was an obstacle. I guess it could be, depending

(15:13):
on your point of view. Uh. Specifically, they they elaborated
on this point by saying that in two thousand and fifteen,
all cars in Europe will have to be equipped with
a system that is named E call E C A
l L, which alerts emergency vehicles to crashes and location data.
So if you're in a really bad crash you're not

(15:34):
necessarily responsive, it will automatically send out essentially a kind
of a distress call, and so emergency vehicles can respond
to the emergency fantastic. Yeah. Now they say that this
will that they consider this an obstacle to the connected car.
I think of this as a driver to the connected car,
not a driver behind the right the steering wheel, but

(15:55):
something that is driving us towards this connected car. Because
it's a requirement, it's a mandate. It's something that you know,
like GMS on Star will already do. But that's an
add on feature. I mean, it's it's built in the cars,
I understand. But it's a subscription service, right, so I
understand what you're saying. I think it. I think it
is more of a driver than anything else. There's also
another thing called B call that is going to be

(16:18):
be prevalent in new cars, and that's that's for breakdown.
So so E call for emergencies, BE call for breakdowns
makes sense, right. But the cool thing about BE call
is that if you do break down, there's an automatic
service call that's made with details about where you are
and what part of the vehicles having trouble, what exactly
is happening, you know, can it be fixed on the
side of the road or does it require a tow truck?

(16:38):
You know, are interested to call you into town or
or back home or wherever you have to go. So yeah,
I think that's um, you know, along the lines of these,
you know, the next step after that would be like
a concier concierge service. It's tough for me to say,
but you know someone that's at a call center that
can actually help you find, um, you know, stuff that's
not critical like you know, these emergency call you know,

(17:00):
emergencies or breakdowns, but more like if you want a
restaurant or a hotel or a pharmacy, and you can
call at will and say, you know, I've got a
subscription to this for you know, six months or a
year or whatever, and I'm looking for a local restaurant
to serves Chinese food. Um, what do you recommend? Yeah,
that reminds me of the time with my wife and
I took a really long road trip and we didn't

(17:21):
have a hotel arranged because we didn't know where we
were going to be by the time it was time
to turn in. So that would have been a very
useful service in that in that case. Yes, you know,
at the touch of a button, you can get all
of that. I mean, this this E call, the be call,
the you know, the the possible concierge service, that type
of thing. I mean, all that I do see as
being part of this whole connected car thing because you

(17:42):
have to have connections in order to be able to
make that work, right, right, That's that's what That's what
the the on Star service relies on. Right now, why
not build that into other makes and models of vehicles
as well? Yeah, And I think when I think of
safety laws being an obstacle to connectivity, I think more
on the opposite side of this, not so much something
that is required to send out a message, but rather

(18:04):
what about the potential for driver distraction? So, in other words,
there might be laws that come out. We we often
see this in technology, right, We see where the technology
outpaces the law happens all the time, where we developed
these really cool tools or toys or whatever that just
when when laws were made, it didn't take that into

(18:24):
account because it wasn't a thing when the law was formed.
And then you suddenly realize, oh wait, this thing is
just different enough from everything else that we need to
figure out how the law applies in this case. So
if we have connected cars that have potential distractions to drivers,
I could see safety laws coming in that would affect

(18:44):
whether or not a car could be connected. But that's
a that's a different angle than what was in the list,
And you're jump ahead on the list because there's there's
a bit about distracted drivers later on. I've got a
specific question for you as we get to that too. Excellent. Well,
I look forward to being asked that question. I bet
you do. The next one, and this one, I think
is probably where an open source discussion can probably come

(19:04):
in as well. The carmakers need mobile partners, which means
that auto manufacturers obviously they're not the same company that
provides this connectivity service, right, And yeah, this is gonna
be strange, Yeah, because someone's got to be in charge
of delivering the connection to that automobile. If you've got
a cell phone receiver essentially built into your car, that

(19:28):
has to be working with some carrier somewhere. Yeah, this
is this is really weird to me because we're talking
about car subscriptions now at this point, and of course
we all know you know that that there's the the
satellite radio subscriptions are on Star or something like that, Right,
I understand all that, But we're talking about like being
able to bundle phone calls, streaming, music, navigation all into one,

(19:49):
one service where they'll be able to charge you X
number dollars per month. And let's say that you know
you want to add video conferencing, Well that's an additional
five dollars a month, but sure we can do that
for you as well. I mean, why would you want
to a video conference in your car? You may think
that's funny, but somebody who who is a salesperson or
works out of the car, they would find that invaluable.
I mean, it would just be would be fantastic for

(20:09):
them to be able to do something like that. It
would be a complete office right there on wheels. And
I'm sure that people are gonna be excited about this.
Other people are going to say, well, this is this
is a bad, bad idea. I mean, I can imagine
YouTube series coming up with this sort of thing. If
you have a system in your car where you can
do essentially a video call, then it's not a huge
jump to think of a live YouTube broadcast from behind

(20:31):
the wheel. And you think about all those those car
shows where it's someone behind the wheel of the car
occasionally looking over and chatting to a camera as they
navigate the car, especially once the do car reviews like
c NET. It's a great example. Then I could see
that becoming a thing where you have video series of
people behind the wheel. It doesn't even have to necessarily

(20:51):
be a car centric video series. That's just the gimmick
that gets people into the show, and it's built in.
The manufacturer will create this for you. It'll it'll have
the camera points right at the face of the driver.
And to be able to do this, because if they're
saying video conferencing, it's not gonna be something you're gonna
have to set up like the GoPro camera up in
the corner of the car or something. Right, it's going
to be there and ready to go. So um yeah,

(21:11):
there's gonna be uh, it's gonna be probably some new
laws that go along with this as well. Right, So
now you also have some other questions, right like if
you have like who do you partner with? What? What
manufacture partners with which carrier and and once you make
that decision, you're kind of locked in. It's not like
you're not going to find a car necessarily where it's

(21:33):
going to work on any carrier. I mean, I guess
they could technically build in transmitters for all the different
carriers and then you make a choice. But it's far
more likely that the cost for this development is going
to be spread across multiple UH entities, So you would
have uh, you know, a car manufacturer partner specifically with
Sprint or a T and T. Now this is interesting

(21:56):
because you you just brought up something that I hadn't
thought about. But what if you were interested in Volkswagen
and they their partnered with Sprint, but you don't like
Sprint service or it's not available in your area. And
then you think, well, I really want a Volkswagen, but
I also need this service because I rely on this,
you know, and I'm in this area that just simply
doesn't have good coverage or whatever. I'm gonna have to
go with the General Motors product because they've partnered with

(22:17):
a T and T and I've got better service there.
It does seem pretty weird to think that a person's
choice of vehicle could depend upon who there their service
provider is for their smartphone. And I don't know if
they would actually change that or not, if it would
just kind of sway them one way or the other.
Like if I had these two cars in mind, yet
this one has this provider and this one has the
other provider. Maybe it might push you in the direction

(22:39):
that you weren't leaning before, or maybe you just end
up resigning yourself to having a car that has features
that you simply can't access, which I know would irritate me,
like I to think that I'm essentially paying to have
these features that I can't access. And we'll get more
into how this could become a complication and a little

(22:59):
bit further down the list. But this is kind of
where that open source approach UH kind of fits in
because another element of open source is this idea that
no one has uh proprietary ownership of the the the
base code beyond a certain level, so that one you're
able to build upon this depending upon the licensing for

(23:22):
the open source material UH and and the benefit of
it is that you don't have this lockdown ecosystem, whereas
in these other approaches where you have a specific partnership
between a manufacturer and a carrier, it's locked down to
a certain experience. If you don't like that service, if
you don't if if the things you own are not
compatible with it, you're out of luck. Open source is

(23:45):
kind of taking the opposite of UH philosophy in some ways,
I mean, I'm kind of muddying the waters a little bit.
But ideally, with open source, you have an approach where
you can arrive to a standard that can apply across
multiple UH like the whole spectrum, so that you're not
forcing the consumer to pick one particular approach. They still

(24:08):
have ultimate flexibility and choice. See, could buy the vehicle
you want, but maybe with limited with limited features. Yeah, okay,
got it. Yeah, So that's that's one way I would
put that. And I think of this also with like
the connected home. So you probably have heard about appliances
like you could have your fridge and your stove connected,

(24:28):
and that your fridge has all the information about all
the foods that you have stored in there, and your stove.
You know, you end up sending a message to your
fridge saying, based upon the stuff that is inside of you,
figure out a recipe for dinner and send a message
to the stove to start preheating. But in order to
do that, you have to have all of these appliances

(24:48):
from the same provider, the same company. And didn't say
bad news, You're gonna have hot dog buns mustard and
that's it. Yeah. For me would be like, well, it's
a six pack of Jolt Cola and a bottle of catchup.
It's said, yeah, Joe Cola. Really well you know, yeah,
you know school. Yeah, alright. So our next one is that, uh,
this one I actually really do think of as a

(25:10):
true obstacle, which is that car dealers will need to
be tech savvy, that sales people will have to add
the network capabilities of the car to their knowledge base
when they're trying to sell a car to a customer. Yeah,
dealers go through a lot of training to sell cars
that are out there right now, and they're getting more
and more advanced, of course, I mean, uh, cars are
already very complex. I mean when you when you take

(25:33):
it a take a look at a new vehicle and
the level of complexity it has versus a vehicle that
was sold even seven eight years ago. UM. I've got
an example that I've mentioned a couple of times on
our show on Car Stuff that, Um, I have a
two thousand five Honda Civic SI and it's a hatchback
and it's the I mean, okay, it's it's the SI model.
It was kind of their sporty version. You had a

(25:54):
lot of stuff on it. But when I look at that,
it's extremely basic compared to a new vehicle. I've I've
said this before when I get I've sat in new vehicles,
you know, vehicles on the lot, just kind of poking around,
seeing what's out there, and it's as if I'm stepping
into a jet fighter. I mean, it looks like the
cockpit of a of an airplane. It's incredible the way

(26:16):
they've advanced from you know, just two thousand five to
now it's ten that's ten years, and I know that's
even been faster than that. But um, they can be
really really complex and complicated and and confusing for the customer.
And if the dealer doesn't describe that right away, doesn't
describe to you how everything works, you're gonna be the
one driving around the block with your left hand turn

(26:36):
signal on all the time and I know how to
turn it off. Or how many times have you seen
someone with the you know, the flashers on the hazard
lights and they have no idea how to turn them
off or other features. Or you get into a rental
car and you spend the first ten minutes wondering how
you turn the headlights on. Yes, it happens. I mean,
especially if it's a dark lot. I mean you're you're
really you've got to really familiarize yourself with the with

(26:58):
the controls in order to be able to function in
that environment correctly. And that's important. I mean it's a
safety issue. And at nighttime. You know, if you if
it becomes nighttime quickly and you haven't switched your lights
on and the interior is not illuminated and you have
a difficulty finding switches that you need to find, that
can be a safety issue. And dealers need to uh

(27:18):
definitely need to work on this. I mean I know
that they're they're already doing a lot. I mean dealers
are well trained, but um, with the way that cars
are advancing now, it's almost like they're gonna have to
go to monthly classes to keep up with what's happening. Right,
and you never know what the text savvy level of
your customer is going to be. Right, So if you
have a customer come in who is like a someone

(27:39):
who writes for Wired and they know this inside and
now you need to know at least enough to have
a decent conversation with this person that they have detailed
questions you need to be able to answer, but you
also need to be able to help the customer who
is like, you know, someone's grandmother who doesn't have any
knowledge of any of this stuff. And how do you

(28:00):
how do you make something as complicated as some of
these systems makes sense to some boyle, you just touched
on my other example because I have elderly grandparents and
they recently get this. Neither one of them drive, but
they well one is recently deceased, but um, they purchased
a new vehicle when neither one of them could drive,
so other people could drive them to places, right, a

(28:21):
brand new vehicle, So this is it's a little funny
to think of, but it's of course it's a Buick,
and my grandmother love Buick. So um. The thing is,
this newer vehicle had so many buttons and and small
type on the on the on the buttons themselves that
she couldn't really understand what, you know, all that stuff
was because she was accustomed driving a car that was
maybe five or six years older, and everything was where

(28:43):
she knew it was. You know, it wass very um
intuitive to her. Now this new one. I mean it's
it's like it's again, it's just too complex for them.
And it's not just elderly people, it's it's just anybody
that maybe doesn't have the experience with new cars versus
you know, driving an older vehicle like what I'm driving. Um,
I would have trouble kind of learning my way around
a new car. But that's all part of it. You

(29:04):
have to you have to learn this new system. And
that's exactly why the dealers. The dealer role is so
critical at this point. And with all the electronic features,
you're gonna have one area like one let's see one
screen area that's a touch screen that's going to be
able to do so many different things. It's not like
you can just look at it and understand what it
can do. You have to be able to dig through

(29:24):
that the different levels and realize what it's capable of doing. UM,
I don't know if I can. I'm probably overstating this,
but they've gone real high tech and we need to
keep up with it. That's yeah. So this this really
could be an obstacle. I mean obstacle in just the
sense of widespread adoption. If you can't intelligently explain the

(29:44):
the usefulness of these systems, then how can you expect
them to be adopted? That the transition from old car
to new car, old tech to new tech is very
difficult for some people, and they've got to really be
up on things to do that. I mean, I cover
technology and even I mean I'm reaching that age where
there's some new tech that comes out and I'm like, what, Well, Scott,
you know, this conversation has gone on really quite a

(30:06):
long time. So if you don't mind, Scott, I think
we're gonna just uh snip the episode right here, but
we'll rejoin shortly. Sounds like a good plan. Excellent. So, guys, uh,
if you want to get hold of Scott, if there's
something that you just have to know about cars, Scott,
where would they go to learn more about the stuff

(30:28):
you do? Any kind of burning question? Maybe you should
contact me via email car stuff at how stuff works
dot com. But you could also check out the website
I guess you know the stuff site that we have
that's car Stuff show dot com. It's an excellent site, excellent,
excellent stuff on there. And usually you know Facebook, Twitter,
that's car Stuff hs W, so accessible just like you
are fantastic and guys, if you want to get in

(30:50):
touch with me, that address is tech stuff at how
stuff works dot com. You can find me on Facebook, Twitter,
and Tumbler with the handle tech stuff hs W. What's
out to again really soon? For more on this and
thousands of other topics, does it have stuff works dot
com