Ep12: How Safe is Apple Vision Pro While Driving? And Genius Charging Contest
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- Statement saying that driving with these headsets is reckless. - This might cause some hate, but I disagree because I feel like people are using their phones regardless. - There was a traffic holdup, the Waymo stops right there, someone gets up on top of the hood of it and starts bashing it. - So did they get pissed that it was causing traffic? - This is why the robotaxi model for Tesla may not work in the US because there's so much craziness in some of these major cities that's going on. - Yeah.

We have to talk about what is going on with the Apple Vision Pro because there are so many TikToks and shorts about it. And then people are actually driving their Teslas with full self-driving with the Vision Pro goggles on. And Nitsa definitely has something to say about it.

They've already released a statement saying all vehicles for sale in the U.S. require human drivers to be fully engaged at all times. There's no such thing as a self-driving car at this point, including those equipped with Tesla's autopilot. And it's even followed up with a statement saying that driving with these headsets is reckless and it's disregarding the safety of everybody else around you on the road.

Now, I kind of disagree. Gosh, Kim. I know. And this might cause some hate. But I disagree because I feel like people are using their phones regardless. And they're looking down. And with the Vision Pro goggles, you actually see...

see through them. It's an augmented reality. So to me, what is the difference between wearing your sunglasses or wearing glasses and having the heads up display? So you've used this. Okay. So you've used this before, the Vision Pro, and you're seeing as clear as day right through it with all your apps and everything in front of you. Yes. So the stats here, not to go with exactly what you're saying here, I did pull up some stats on safety. Of course.

According to data from 2022, drivers interacted with their phones 58% of all trips inside their car. That's up from 54% in 2020. Regardless of the fact that it's illegal to do so, they're still doing it. And incredibly, this is the scary stat right here. 34% of phone distractions with people in the car were happening at speeds above 50 miles an hour.

So the stats basically say that about two out of every three people that take any duration of a trip, whether it be from here to the grocery store, checks and plays on their phone. And one out of every one of those three people is doing it over 50 miles an hour. So people are using their phone regardless. That's what your point is here. I'm not necessarily with you on let's get the headsets on, but it would be interesting to see pedestrian safety numbers long term once this becomes viable and affordable and more people end up wanting to use it.

Of course, you can't get away with it as much if it's illegal and it's on your face. But maybe Apple can actually disable some of the apps that could be distracting and then just allow like a heads up display or, you know, Google Maps or Waze as like a heads up for like a driving mode. And then I think it would actually be very helpful to...

Obviously it looks really weird, but at the same time, it's like a weird goggle sunglass if you think about it. So I don't know. What do you guys think about that? Like at first I'm like, yeah, you should definitely not do that. It's very unsafe. But then when you actually think about it, you're like, well,

well these people can see yeah at the same time the stats are incredible here especially as the younger population gets phones and gets driver's licenses we need to get fsd looking down here though or like being able to see the road at the same time if you're going to do it regardless and obviously we can have these laws but people have no self-control if they're going to do it anyways we need

FSD here as soon as possible. And then something like the Apple Vision Pro where it's in your sight line. Potentially it could be beneficial. Long-term, yes. And we're not talking Vision Pro 1 here. I think once you get to Vision Pro 7 and it's a $1,000 unit or less,

and a lot more people have them like they have phones, then... But let us know in the comments below what you think about all that and what you see as the future. All right, so let's get right into it with the Model Y because Tesla has come out and said that the Model Y refresh known as Project Juniper is probably not

going to be coming, not probably, but it's not going to be coming in 2024. - Yeah, very definitive statement here. They've sent emails to delivery advisors at Tesla service centers and showrooms saying, make sure customers know that they should not be waiting for Project Juniper, the refreshed Model Y. This is really interesting because this whole thing came from a Reuters article

that specifically noted October of 2024 being the period where Model Y refreshes would begin to roll out. Maybe it had an Osborne effect where people kind of slowed down adoption of Model Ys. But they did say North America, that it's not coming to North America. And perhaps...

They're planning to do what we saw with the Model 3, where they bring it to Asia and Europe first, and then to the U.S. Let us know also in the comments below what you guys think about when the Model Y will come to the U.S. So I'm also curious if they're going to bring some of the tech that we now see with the Cybertruck. In the past, Elon Musk actually talked about wanting the 48-volt architecture inside of the Model Y specifically.

This was way before Cybertruck. A lot of people don't know Elon hinted at 48-volt architecture coming to the Y first, and of course it never happened. What I will say is what I've learned from Sandy Monroe talking to Tesla execs during the Cybertruck delivery event, they made it very clear that Tesla has no intentions of

of bringing 48 volt to Model Y, at least during a midlife refresh cycle, which would be this one right here. They said it's going to take an entire ground up sort of structure. - So I'm guessing that they're going to try to keep the Model Y refresh kind of similar to what they do with the Model 3, because we know they like to keep those two vehicles very similar.

All right, Kim, did you see over the weekend the Model Y prices actually dropped yet again from the last couple of weeks? And interestingly enough, the Model 3 refresh had its second price increase in the last nine days. So clearly demand is increasing for the new 3s. It's slowing down as people wait for the new Ys. It's basically airplane tickets now, right? It's like the prices just fluctuate. You're doing it again, Kim. I know. I'm such a fidgeter.

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So Tesla is definitely doing some interesting marketing moves. We talked about this last week with the FSD transfers and supercharging, and now they're doing a competition for supercharging. - As the kids would say, this is a 200 IQ sort of competition because what they're doing essentially is giving a prize to a Tesla owner who uses the most superchargers between now and March 31st. Understandably, some of the European Tesla owners made some valid points that, hey, if you're in the United States,

California mainly, you're going to be able to utilize quite a few superchargers without going that far. The catch is that you can't use the same supercharger. So you've got to go into unique superchargers. So you have to do a road trip. But then not pass the chargers in route, right? If that's what you're doing because you want to utilize the most. So do we need to drive...

cross country for our spring break. Is that what you're telling me? - I know. - Will the kids hate us or will they love us? - Well, I was thinking about it. In California, they have the most superchargers of any state in the US. They have about 400 superchargers. That's 20% of all superchargers in the US are in the state of California. - So it's not really fair. It's rigged. - It's not really fair. So you don't need to drive across the country 'cause you'll only utilize 30 or 40 superchargers.

Well, we might because we live on the East Coast. What they're saying is the prize is actually going to be an Easter egg that is downloaded into the owner's vehicle.

I think we need to try to get this. I'm super interested. What do you think that Easter egg is going to be? I know. I mean, it could be something as simple as FSD or something like that where it doesn't cost Tesla anything. Or it could be something very unique that commemorates your car as being a very unique car. Like new farting noises or something. That only your car can do. They're adding diarrhea. Yeah.

What do you guys think that this Easter egg is going to be and what kind of Easter eggs would you want to have in your Tesla that it obviously doesn't already have? It has some cool stuff. So did you see the commenters? They're actually making some interesting points here. One of them saying, so Tesla wants everyone to run around and charge at different superchargers at the cost of about 34 cents a kilowatt hour. And they're giving a software update as a prize. They're money geniuses.

- Oh, it is. They're actually making money and it doesn't cost them a single thing and it's that free advertising that they're famous for. - And somebody else said, "Elon wants to make sure that you run your battery pack module life so it lasts even less than it's supposed to so you can charge $25,000 to replace it. Absolute genius." - But it's not quite that much to replace it. We know how much it is. They are geniuses when it comes to this kind of stuff

Really, really good marketing. But you know who is having a bad week in terms of press and marketing? Waymo. Oh, yes. They have a driverless vehicle over in San Francisco that was vandalized. So we've been to San Francisco. We've seen these Waymo self-driving cars. We did a video on it. We made a video. We'll pop it up right here. But essentially, these are Jaguar I-Paces.

And what happened is on Saturday night at the Chinatown district, there was a traffic holdup. The Waymo stops right there. Someone gets up on top of the hood of it and starts bashing it. So did they get pissed that it was like causing traffic? Do we know those details? See, I don't know the details of what started it.

But San Francisco definitely got to it. Yeah, if you watch some of the videos, someone let off a firework in there. The whole top of the car was missing. These people went crazy on it. Do you think that is just haters of electric cars, haters of self-driving vehicles? Why do you think that they did this? Do we know? Gosh, I don't know. I will say that I know that San Francisco has gotten a bad rap recently. I remember like Elon on X, he said that it feels post-apocalyptic.

now and people have had quite a discussion on how San Francisco has really changed over the years. So I think there are certain pockets that are really dangerous. Yeah. Yeah. I don't, I don't necessarily think it's an Evie hate thing as much as it is,

So I don't even know if Waymo has responded to this yet. It's kind of crazy. Now, do you think that it's like a bigger picture, though, about driverless cars in the US? Do you think that they will work in the US?

Yeah, that's the optics, right? I think some of the commenters were saying that this is why the robotaxi model for Tesla may not work in the US because there's so much craziness in some of these major cities that's going on where they compared it to Tokyo or even Moscow where maybe they're a little bit more civilized in some ways. Yeah, I mean, the fact that there is nobody in the vehicle makes it like, you know, a

house with its doors wide open you know like come rob me come attack me and I don't really know like but there is that possibility because it's nobody physically there to look after the vehicles so I don't know I really don't know I'm curious what you guys think about that it's kind of a bigger discussion to be had about these vehicles but it's really sad because I love the idea of it the technology is almost there and it's it's really cool to think about but then we have

morons out there that just kind of ruin it for everybody, right? Moving on from that, let's talk about Stellantis because they are finally the last ones to join on and go NACS. But there is a little bit of a catch because they don't want to use Tesla's superchargers. Yeah, Stellantis, as you said, is the last major one. You've got to keep in mind, this is the conglomerate that represents automakers like Chrysler, Dodge, Fiat, Jeep, Ram, just to name a few. They're on board, but

they kind of don't want to have anything to do with Tesla's superchargers, at least the stations themselves. They're going to put the NACS ports on their cars beginning in 2026, but it seems like Stellantis is actually betting on its own charging network. It's called the Iona charging network. They just announced recently they are partnered up with Kia, Honda, GM, BMW, Mercedes, to name a few, again, using the NACS port, but on this Iona charging network.

which will be independent of Tesla. So a lot of companies have said, okay, hey, Tesla, we'll shake your hand, we'll show up with our cars at your stations. Essentially, you're the gas station, whereas Stellantis and the other vehicles I just stated are saying, we don't wanna have that agreement with Tesla. We'll take your port,

But do they need to have the agreement for their vehicles to be able to use Tesla chargers? Yeah, that's not known, but I would imagine some sort of agreement needs to be had, right? Because the communication between the car and the charge port needs to take place. It just seems weird to me that you would go ahead and do NICS, but then not pick the best, most reliable charging station to go ahead and partner with. Go ahead and do your own. Like Rivian, they have their own as well, but then...

- That's a great point. - Why not partner with Tesla? I think that honestly having that partnership with Tesla is a big selling point for a lot of EV owners because they know Tesla supercharging stations are so reliable and that's the big reason why everyone goes NACS, right? It's for reliable supercharging stations. I do think for the plug and play to be able to work properly, there has to be some kind of communication there. Like I think that there does need to be something and I think that's why

there's sort of a catch with this whole thing but let us know what you guys think in the comments down below. All right Kim you're gonna like this one. Tesla just announced that the yoke on the Model S and X is getting a refresh and an updated yoke is going to be available beginning in March and that's also going to have a horn in the middle. It's also going to have new stitching on it to be more durable. You might remember a lot of early yoke owners in 2021 Model S's and Model X's

had peeling on the edge of it. We've got photos of what that looked like. Never happened to ours. Didn't happen to ours. No, we were August 2022 in our delivery, but it looked like 21s were getting those issues. They now have revamped this and built it with a better quality, it looks like, a thicker stitching there as well to give it more durability. But the horn is right there in the middle underneath the Tesla symbol with the airbag, so no more button on the side for the horn.

I love this so much because it means that Tesla is listening to their owners. And that was a big thing when they came out with the yoke was that people wanted the horn in the center. And obviously it's taken them a little bit longer. There was an update at some point where I think you could...

You could put your hand on the side of the entire thing and it would go off. Yeah. Yeah. But Elon had said all Tesla S's and X's built after November of 2021 would be able to get an update for the horn to be in the middle. Clearly that wasn't accurate because that didn't happen. And now it looks like you've got to pay to go into a service center. Are we going to have to pay? No, I don't think it's under warranty unless your steering wheel needs a replacement.

because it's damaged. So it's almost better if it had the peeling on it, so we kind of should peel it away. Is that what you're telling me? That's what I'm saying. All right, lastly, a story here from an engineering student who may have found a way to double the range of EVs, but it's in lithium metal batteries, not lithium iron batteries. So what is the difference between lithium...

which is what we have in our Tesla right now and most EVs versus lithium metal. Yeah, lithium metal essentially does have more capacity, but its life cycle is dramatically reduced to just a couple of life cycles, which is why it's not used. Lithium ion batteries, they have the two electrodes, the anode and the cathode. They're able to really give you a longer life cycle, but of course at the expense of

of reduced range. This student here, a Stanford University PhD student for material sciences and engineering said, "We were looking for the easiest, cheapest, and fastest way to improve lithium metal cycling life." They said they discovered by resting the battery at a discharge state, you'd lose the entire capacity right there, but you can recover the entire life cycle

through algorithms, through software with the battery itself. So essentially you're reprogramming the battery management system. There's no additional cost or changes needed to the equipment, the materials or the production flow. That's interesting. So this is really the opposite of how we think that we should be treating our batteries of our cars right now. Yeah, the lithium ion being very different, the lithium metal, again, you discharge it fully, but through reprogramming the battery management system through software, you're able to then recoup

that extended range, but it really only after a couple of cycles. The car could possibly automatically do this. The question is, if this was a long-term thing, would this be something that could be quick? So you're on a road trip, you've met your three charge cycles, and now you need to reboot. And can the car reboot itself at zero while you're charging to quickly get you that double range? And it also makes me think about maybe this is where battery swapping comes back in. Oh, yeah. So you could fully discharge your battery, have it sit for a couple hours, and then take a new one

pop it in i'm not really sure or maybe the range will be so good if you can actually double your range that you can get to your destination faster yeah and then you know if you sit for an hour or so you would be ready to do that at that point i'm not really sure but it's really cool the battery breakthrough potential is going to be insane you know everybody talks about fsd and full self-driving potential long term i'm super curious to see where battery technology goes because

I think that's limitless. As far as gasoline, how much fuel you can put underneath the car, a gas car, that's limited to physical space where battery technology could continue to improve and get you a thousand miles range possibly. I mean, we always say that range is king. We always say that. And I think that's why so many people were disappointed with Cybertruck when it came out with the range numbers not being what Elon said.

said they could be. So to see these improvements, it's huge. It's huge. And actually I wanted to talk about Cybertruck because last week we did a poll on our Patreon about the Cybertruck resale ban. And I think it's really interesting because

44% of you actually disagreed with me and they thought that it was a good idea because it stopped people from creating the second market and crazy prices. So, you know, that's fine. You can disagree with me. That's what these discussions are all about. Personally, you know how I feel about it. I'm not a fan of it.

Pretty interesting comments from Patreon supporter Mark Larson. He said,

I mean, I agree with that fully. But again, some people have different opinions on there. So definitely go check out our Patreon. Let us know what you guys think. We're running that new poll this week about the Model Y to see when you think the refresh will be. And we have all kinds of goodies for our patrons over there. Yeah, never before seen content early released of this podcast. We've got possibly another Cybertruck unreleased video that's only going to go out to Patreon supporters as well. So we'll link that below.

and you get a shout out. So let's start with some of those shout outs for the Patreon supporters that make these videos possible. I want to thank Adam Herman, Cody, Robert Stokes, David, Philip M. Stewart, Randy McLeod,

and Dave Beckwith. And a huge thanks to our highest tier Patreon supporters. Those are Kolata, Burt Kullberg, Ben Z, Graham Arnold, Richard Spitz, Gold Lover, and Travis Headley. Gold Lover.

I'm a gold lover too. And a special thanks to our newest members, Brian and Martin Johansson. And that wraps up this week's podcast. You can also listen to this on all major streaming networks as well. And thank you guys for joining us. If either you're watching this or you're listening to this and we will catch you next time. Major streaming networks. What do you call it? Platforms. Platforms. It's fine. We're going to keep it. Platforms. No. Platforms. Take my voice. Platforms.

It's fine. Can you dab my voice in there?