Future Tech Debates: Safety, Automation, and Planned Obsolescence

This week:

  • we start by examining the hype around robo-taxis and their impact on public transportation
  • improvements in automatic emergency braking technology, citing a recent study by AAA, yet highlighting its limitations at higher speeds.
  • Automotive data privacy and consumers’ right to control data collected by vehicles, emphasizing the need for regulation.
  • the challenge of detecting and regulating marijuana impairment in drivers
  • a discussion on planned obsolescence and its implications for the longevity and safety of vehicles.
  • and more

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Transcript

note: this is a machine generated transcript and may not be completely accurate. This is provided for convience and should not be used for attribution.

[00:00:00] Introduction to the Podcast

[00:00:00] Anthony: You’re listening to there auto be a law, the center for auto safety podcast with executive director, Michael Brooks, chief engineer, Fred Perkins, and hosted by me, Anthony Cimino for over 50 years, the center for auto safety has worked to make cars safer.

Not how we’re going to start. Hey, listeners, good morning and afternoon as Fred Perkins would say,

[00:00:32] Fred: I’m going to go with afternoon. Good afternoon, everybody.

[00:00:35] The Debate on Robo Taxis

[00:00:35] Anthony: Okay we’re gonna start off this week with the wonderful world of robo taxis. You guys ever hear those things? Wow! Verbal guffaw from Mr.

Brooks. In Bloomberg, there’s a great article from David Zipper that talks about how Waymo, my recent gaslighter, keeps saying, hey, this is going to be great. We’re not replacing mass transit. We’re [00:01:00] going to enhance mass transit. And to do that, for anyone who gets dropped off In some imaginary radius of a bus stop, subway stop, we’ll give you three dollars off your next Waymo ride.

Huh. And then the article points out that they have no way to track if this actually does anything. But then further down, it turns out we already have all this data. That it doesn’t do anything. No one’s using taxi services of any kind to come and go from mass transit stations. And we know this because in 2016, the Federal Transit Administration funded five projects designed to see how many people would regularly use ride hailing cars to get to and from stations.

The answer? Not many. This is just more, I’m, they’re my gas lighter then. More Waymo. There you go. That’s a, yeah, Waymo. We’re not falling for it. You’re anti human behavior.

[00:01:57] Fred: That often happens when you’ve got a solution looking [00:02:00] for a problem. People think it’s a wonderful idea and they throw it out there and see if it sticks, and sometimes it does, and sometimes it doesn’t.

Betamax is a great example of that. It was absolutely much better than VHS, but of course, nobody wanted to buy it. Because VHS was adequate for the purpose. Robotaxis are about the same. They don’t do anything a taxi can’t do. It’s just they do it with more risk.

[00:02:26] Anthony: The problem that robotaxis are trying to solve is a lot of tech companies have a lot of money and they don’t like, what do we do with it?

We can’t legally just set it on fire. Let’s say we set it on fire by doing this. Hence, GM Cruise.

[00:02:44] Michael: It seems like they’re trying to align themselves with public transit and get a pass on what I think a lot of us are expecting, which is that, BroboTax is simply going to add more cars to the road running around, not [00:03:00] necessarily driving someone all the time, and, create transportation congestion and, Create some of the problems that we’ve seen in the cities that have so far allowed robo taxis in terms of congestion and, all the other little things that people in San Francisco are experiencing every day.

It’s, the writer of the article, David zipper, who is a fantastic journalist and is also senior fellow at the, at MIT and the mobility initiative there. He calls them out. He says it’s, it’s basically a PMAR move. In fact, he says it’s a smart politically political strategy, but make no mistake.

It’s greenwashing. So essentially Waymo is, trying to align themselves as part of the public transportation movement, when in fact, it’s just another car on the road.

[00:03:49] Fred: Oh, and I want to apologize to our younger listeners video recorders are a thing that your grandparents can tell you about, but yeah it’s like streaming, except it doesn’t have any [00:04:00] streaming capability.

Makes no sense. Never mind. Move on.

[00:04:04] Anthony: I don’t want to move on. I think we have a new topic for this.

[00:04:08] Michael: Yeah, they’re going to find it much more difficult to upload their camcorder feed to TikTok.

[00:04:14] Anthony: Oh, yeah. So the article concludes with Many city residents rightly value buses and trains for their ability to deliberate street space from cars and provide an affordable, convenient, and clean way to navigate dense neighborhoods.

Waymo’s hoping that everyone forgets how great this stuff is, and we go, Hey look, there’s no one behind the wheel! Or maybe hoping that if the company hugs Public transportation closely enough some of its urbanist glow might rub off on taxis. Oh my god Waymo’s hoping that hey man bus is cool. Like we’re like the bus Yeah, it’s yeah, I don’t again.

It’s not something I understand. I mean with Tesla I understand their approach because Elon Musk [00:05:00] hates bus Public transport. He said this as much repeatedly. He also, he hates a lot of things, but Hey, I don’t even think we have any Tesla topics as we do. We

[00:05:14] Michael: thankfully, I think we’ve seen our fill lately.

[00:05:18] Anthony: All right.

[00:05:18] Automatic Emergency Braking Improvements

[00:05:18] Anthony: In in the category of the, it keeps getting better in the future. Triple a came out with a new study on emergent automatic emergency breaking. And it turns out that according to test results, newer versions of automatic emergency braking are much better at preventing forward collisions.

Then older versions of automatic emergency braking. See, Fred, you’re right. Everything gets better in the future. Nice to be right. This is from an article we’re linking to in The Verge talking about how the, there’s a new federal rule requiring all vehicles to have the most robust version of automatic emergency braking by 2029.

[00:05:56] Michael: Yeah, AAA took a look at, essentially, they [00:06:00] looked at they compared the 2017, I think maybe 2018 model in some cases of a certain vehicle to the 2024 model and they did 3 types of test runs, 1 at 12 miles per hour, 1 at 25 miles per hour, 1 at 35 miles per hour, and the early to the 2017 models, Fared worse.

They had poor detection that they’re starting distance from the vehicle they were trying to stop to avoid was shorter and they weren’t detecting as soon and they weren’t stopping in time to avoid the vehicle while the 2024 models were in most cases. detecting and stopping much sooner than the earlier models that suggest that this technology is getting better and resulting in better outcomes.

Reading more deeply into the study some things that weren’t really talked about in the press too much are [00:07:00] the fact that they also ran tests At 35 and sorry, at 45 and 55 miles per hour, and there were mixed results on the newer models in that. In fact, a couple of the vehicles weren’t really able to do any.

It doesn’t look like any of the vehicles were very successful at 55 miles per hour. And They were okay for the most part at other than the jeep at 45 MPH. So yes, automatic emergency braking is getting better. But as we’ve shared with you before, we still have a lot of concerns around the higher speed crashes, which are going to be the crashes that are causing significant injuries and deaths on our roads.

Automatic emergency braking is not there yet. If manufacturers stick to the plan and stick to the rule that Nitsa just put out they will have, they should be performing at those higher speeds by 2029 when. [00:08:00] The technology is required on vehicles, so that’s good news. Although the industry is currently opposing that.

And it’s a rule and shame on them for that. We are not big fans of their opposition to the AB rule. Toyota already has the equal on the road and selling vehicles that can meet the. Regulation that was created by that’s a, 5 years early here. And yet the industry is still complaining about meeting, a rather long deadline of 2029 to get great emergency breaking into our vehicles.

This study shows that in only 5 years, there have been. Great improvements in how this stuff is working. And, they’ve got five more years to not make it perfect, but to hit the higher speed and no contact requirements that NHTSA has proposed. So we don’t feel sorry for the industry.

They need to get to work on this and keep improving it.

[00:08:56] Anthony: So what exactly is the higher speed? What’s the threshold? [00:09:00]

[00:09:00] Michael: The higher speed, the one tested? Oh. No, not the one tested, the one that’s coming. Up to this, I think it was up to 60 miles an hour high 50s. So these vehicles that are the, it’s a Jeep Nissan Rogue, I believe, and a couple of Subaru, and a Subaru that they tested at AAA.

None of those vehicles did a particularly great job at 55 miles per hour.

[00:09:23] Fred: Let me quote from the article. It says 100 percent of the 2024 vehicles break to before a collision. As compared to 51 percent of the older vehicles at 35 miles per hour, and 3 out of 5 missed the target at 45 miles per hour.

And none of them missed the pedestrian target at 55 miles per hour. Somewhere between 35 and 45, it seems to be the threshold for what the industry is able to do right now. But they’re not able to [00:10:00] avoid the collision at 55 miles per hour.

[00:10:02] Anthony: They got four and a half more years to get that right. I think they could do that.

You think it’s a do,

[00:10:08] Fred: yeah.

[00:10:09] Anthony: If they weren’t spending all their money on robo taxis and backup cameras that don’t work. Things like that. Know what you’re better off spending your money on, listener? Donating to the Center for Auto Safety. That’s right. Go to autosafety. org and click on the donate button.

It’s a red button that’s white text on it. And it’s button pill shaped and you click on it and it’s a whole thing. So Michael, speaking of you saying that Toyota is doing pretty good with their AEB.

[00:10:34] Top Safety Picks for 2024

[00:10:34] Anthony: There is a report out from the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety listing their top safety picks for 2024.

Guess who doesn’t make the list? Anyone? Anyone? That’s right, any car made by a US manufacturer. Wait, the US cars don’t make the list? They don’t make the Consumer Reports list of most reliable? They don’t make IIH’s list of most safe? What there’s a trend [00:11:00] happening here, isn’t there?

[00:11:01] Michael: Ford and Lincoln did get one each.

I think they’re the same vehicle, the Explorer. And I think the Nautilus is Lincoln’s SUV version of the Explorer. So the America got one or two, if you want to split hairs vehicles onto a list that was, essentially dominated by Japan.

[00:11:20] Anthony: Also the, don’t forget the Rivian RT one plus got it.

Or no, just the R1T. So I think, yeah,

[00:11:28] Michael: there you go. So Toyota had 10 vehicles on the list. Eight for Honda, eight for Mazda, Lexus had five, Acura had three. We’re seeing Japanese, Vehicles kick butt on safety and they’re leaving American automakers behind in those categories. Which is concerning and something, that I don’t drive an American car, so I can’t really comment too much on those guys and how they perform.

But it’s, certainly. concerning [00:12:00] to see that when we’re very concerned about, Asian markets and electric vehicles. We’ve talked extensively recently about China’s advances, not only in autonomy, but particularly in electric vehicles where they are, Functionally, they’re producing better electric vehicles and, frankly, more efficient electric vehicles because a lot of their production is sedans versus all the trucks we’re trying to do in America and they’re doing it.

And it’s a bad time for American brands. And when it comes to safety is the downside of the article.

[00:12:38] Fred: Hey, I got a question for you, Michael. I’ve got a Subaru that was built in Indiana. Is that a Japanese car or is that an American car?

[00:12:46] Michael: I believe the way they’re looking at it in this article, they would consider that a Japanese article because it was designed by a Japanese, the Japanese company.

I

[00:12:58] Anthony: gotta stop you there for a second. So [00:13:00] normally we record this in the morning and before we started recording the afternoon, Michael’s I like the afternoon better. My brain’s working so much better. And you just referred to a Jackanese company earlier. Maybe your brain’s working better, but I don’t think your tongue is.

This may not be an

[00:13:16] Fred: evidence based podcast. I’m not sure.

[00:13:19] Anthony: We’re Japanese. I like a new Japanese car.

[00:13:23] Michael: Yeah. That’s a fair, critique. I guess the money, all the money they’re making is going back to Japan versus, even though they’re. Providing for jobs in America and they’re doing some production in America.

A lot of, there are a ton of companies, Hyundai, Nissan, Honda, Subaru. A lot of them are producing cars in America, so that’s nothing too new, they are Japanese companies and these vehicles are being designed in Japan.

[00:13:52] Anthony: So Fred, I want to ask you an engineering question. If you’re. My suspicion is that there’s a correlation [00:14:00] between long term reliability and safety of a car.

So if you’re designing a car and you take the time to make it safe, you’re probably also at the same time being a thoughtful engineer and be like, Hey, Let’s make it reliable, too. Is that fair?

[00:14:15] Fred: I think that they’re completely different strains. An extreme example, a car that never runs is the safest car.

[00:14:23] Anthony: Ha. Okay, we’re talking the real world here, okay? Not any of your weird stuff in the lab, buddy.

[00:14:28] Fred: In the real world, those are all design decisions that have to be made, and engineers basically are agents for design decisions. The expansion of capital. So the people who, the golden rule for engineering is the one who owns the gold makes the rules.

And that’s true with safety as well as performance. So I think there’s no correlation, but except that high performance cars tend to be expensive and expensive cars tend to have advanced safety features, but those are [00:15:00] economically driven, not engineering driven.

[00:15:03] Anthony: I was just saying that the Japanese cars tend to be the most reliable and the most safe.

Yeah. That’s what I saw.

[00:15:10] Fred: I can’t verify that, that’s what we

[00:15:11] Anthony: verified through the IHS studies, and through Consumer Reports, and through the last 50 years of data we have on cars. Am I talking out of line? Is this

[00:15:23] Michael: No, I don’t think you’re talking out of line. I think there’s It’s definitely, obviously having a reliable transmission so that when you hit the gas, you’re going to accelerate at the rate you expect to so that, another car coming down the street won’t hit you.

There is an intersection. The Venn diagram for reliability and safety overlaps at some point but I’m not sure if they’re there. Causatively related,

[00:15:50] Anthony: I guess more of a, it’s a more of an engineering culture is what I would. It

[00:15:54] Fred: could be, a Porsche does not have an EDR.

Porsches are very expensive. Does the lack of an [00:16:00] EDR make it more or less safe than some other car? I, they’re just different strains, different engineering philosophies at different companies. All

[00:16:09] Anthony: right. Fair enough. Fair enough. Speaking of electronic data recorders.

[00:16:13] The Privacy Concerns of Car Data

[00:16:13] Anthony: I’ve got a really good, scary article.

So I’ve talked before on this show how I like the idea of my insurance company being like, hey, they can watch me drive and then they can adjust my rates based off of that. Because I’m not a crazy person and I’ve always thought this. I’ve never had any heartbreaking incident until about two weeks ago. I had a slam on the brakes because a deer jumped out in front of me.

It was the first time I ever felt the pulse of anti lock brakes. It was shocking. But then I was, as I did this, I thought, My insurance company, I don’t have this app on my phone or anything, but they’d be like, ah, hard braking incident, and without any context of me saying I didn’t cause any damage, and that was stuck in the back of my head.

And then Michael sent along this article, and I’m gonna quote from this article, and let’s play the game, who said this quote? Some cars are collecting a [00:17:00] thousand data points every millisecond, which means you’re collecting about a million data points per second over the course of your trip. That’s a ton of data being uploaded to the company.

I think that was our friend Michael, wasn’t it? Yeah, Michael Brooks, who said that?

[00:17:16] Michael: I said that, and I was mainly talking about Tesla, because they’re the company that does that right now. There are some manufacturers, I think Toyota is collecting a lot more data than some others, but connected vehicles are, Collecting just scads of data, and it’s they’re only going to be conducting.

I’m collecting more data in the future. And so this article was, focused. The story was focused on some of the consumers who had. Been signed up for GM on star during their purchase. And then found out through doing a privacy request with Lexus Nexus, all of the breaking events and hard Excel, hard breaking events and acceleration [00:18:00] events and miles traveled and all the other data that had been uploaded to Lexus Nexus by General Motors, I believe, through a data broker of some sort.

And they were asking the question, what do these things even mean? Obviously there’s going to be circumstances where you’re going to have to do more heartbreaking. If you’re driving in certain areas of a city where there are more bad drivers or, more unpredictable traffic, you’re going to have more events like that.

Or deer. That’s exactly. Yeah. Or deer. But that’s exactly the kind of thing that insurance companies would like to know, it might show that you’re not paying attention, that you’re distracted, that you’re driving in areas where, you probably should have your rates raised a little.

So it’s. It really comes down to how much of this are we comfortable with? And shouldn’t consumers have the ultimate right to determine whether that data is going to be shared with their insurance company? I think so. You’re driving on public streets. Technically they [00:19:00] could be collecting this data using other means than taking it directly from your car if they need it.

But I expect that in the future, as it becomes more common, a lot of this is going to be covered in terms of use agreements and in boilerplate language that consumers really have no control over because the auto industry wants to maintain control over that data because it’s valuable to them, not only because it helps them, engineer vehicles based on real world data, it’s valuable to them because other people want to use that data and they can see it.

Sell it for a profit. So that’s something that consumers in vehicles that collect a lot of data need to be acutely aware of.

[00:19:41] Anthony: Yeah. And so what happened here is like you said, they just bought a car. The dealer signed them up for this service, didn’t tell them about it. And there’s other cases. And so they’re getting all this data collected and other cases where people have seen their insurance rates go up.

So that’s what concerned me is okay. I like this idea of [00:20:00] adjusting the rates based off of my actual driving, but without that context of why I accelerated fast or why I had a slam on the brakes or why X, Y, and Z. That data is useless or it’s more, more often than not, it’s going to be dangerous from my insurance rates point of view.

[00:20:18] Michael: Yeah. It’s not useless. It’s a very useful. If you have that data on everyone driving, which vehicles and which owners are, being put at risk more often and who are more likely to be involved in crashes, whether or not the. Sorry. Whether or not consumers have access to that data or whatever use it, they should still have control over who’s able to see it.

I think people at bay should be able to control whether data generated by their car by their personal activity is going to be shipped off to a company that’s going to use it against them. So that’s ultimately, I think. The fix here is [00:21:00] to make it much clearer during the park during purchase of the vehicle when you’re working with the dealer, they need to be a lot more clear about what you’re being signed up for.

A lot of the folks who were part of this story just didn’t walked out of the dealership, not really understanding that they had been signed up for a service that was. Beaming their data to parts unknown and, we need better regulations at the state and federal level to ensure that, cars aren’t spying on us.

[00:21:29] Fred: I think you’re, I think that’s key because I would believe that the car salesperson had no idea that they were signing up the client to deliver all the data to some 3rd party. I’ve dealt with people selling cars and that understanding of legal structure is really not their forte. So I think that really needs to be a regulation at the, at some higher level that forces the issue.

And I think there should be regulations that say personal [00:22:00] data is owned by the person and, you should have an opt in. for any use of your personal data that generates profit for any other third party.

[00:22:09] Anthony: Agreed. The article talks about how Senator Jeff Merkel, a Democrat of Oregon, has introduced the Car Privacy Rights Act of 2024, which is doing what we just talked about.

It’s aimed at safeguarding consumers car data and enhancing transparency in data collection practices. Which would be great, because I know when I got my car a few years ago, there’s a massive stack of legal forms, and just you wanna walk away with this car? You agree to everything, cause you can’t negotiate nothin You know, we’ll get the next sucker in line.

And I look behind me, and there’s a line of other suckers, and I was like I’m first! I’m first, sucker, I’ll agree! You got a car of black? I like black. Let’s go.

[00:22:52] Gaslighting in the Auto Industry

[00:22:52] Anthony: And with that, I think it’s time for a little gaslighting, because I feel like all the stories we’ve talked about so far we’ve been a little gaslit on.

Not [00:23:00] really. Emergency, automatic emergency braking. That’s just more of it’s mild gaslighting from the manufacturer. Being like it’s hard. I’ve already mentioned mine. It’s my friends at Waymo again. I could throw in my friend Catherine. ARK. No, Catherine Wood at ARK Investments, because again, they’re claiming that Tesla’s robotaxi is going to be a trillion, three trillion dollars.

Three trillion dollars. Three. Shouldn’t the S That’s a lot of

[00:23:26] Fred: T’s. That’s a lot of T’s.

[00:23:28] Anthony: That’s a lot of just nonsense. So those are lightweight toss out the windows for me. I’m, I feel lazy in this segment because it’s just. It’s too easy. Mr.

[00:23:39] Michael: For you who you alternate between gm, Cruz and Kathy Wood.

You,

[00:23:44] Anthony: well Waymo Wood, and Waymo. And

[00:23:46] Michael: Waymo. These days when you have an evil triad going , whereas, the rest of us are looking for, we’re, I’m trying to spread around the gaslight blame,

[00:23:54] Anthony: look, I’ve got my genre and I’m sticking to it. Okay. I’m like ZZ Top. I like [00:24:00] that first album so much, or released it 10 more times.

[00:24:02] Fred: I’ve gone over to repeat. I’ve got Aurora on my list. And for those who forgot, Aurora is a heavy truck wannabe, and they are providing software for self driving trucks. On October 14th, one of their executives was addressing the trucking association down in I think it was Nashville. Anyway. Zach Andreoni is a very optimistic guy and he started by saying, we believe we’ll be able to significantly reduce the frequency.

And the severity of accidents on the road. I love beliefs. That’s an interesting belief system. But notice the subtle tense change. He goes from can to will when he says it’s something we can do, but we will be able to reduce that. They cannot do [00:25:00] it now. Good for them if it actually does reduce the hazards, but it’s by no means proven.

It goes on to say that while insurance coverage and crash liability. remain among the most common questions about the deployment of autonomous vehicles. And we only position those issues as areas of opportunity, especially in the industry threatened by nuclear verdicts. I don’t know what that all means, but, but it’s basically a bob and weave to avoid answering. The fact is that these issues are unsettled and fundamental to the business case for using these. As well as fundamental to the evaluation of safety for these vehicles. Remember, these are giant trucks up to 40 tons without a human being in control.

That’s a pretty scary thing. And remember, current laws exempt autonomous vehicles from almost all legal responsibility. Another open issue is the unpaid and unprotected use. Use of unwitting road users to be involved in these dangerous tests. [00:26:00] He did not address that in his presentation. But

[00:26:05] Anthony: the unwitting road users are not their customers.

They don’t care about them. They’re just collateral damage. That’s

[00:26:11] Fred: true.

[00:26:12] Autonomous Truck Incident Analysis

[00:26:12] Fred: That’s collateral damage. But, he gave an example. He said in one instance, the autonomous truck approached the intersection with a green light. But stopped despite having the right of way because it detected that a pickup truck on the intersecting road was traveling too fast to stop in time.

The pickup ran the red light and collided with another vehicle that continued through the green light, but the Aurora truck avoided the crash because it stopped short of the intersection. That’s a good thing.

[00:26:39] Aurora’s Safety Claims Under Scrutiny

[00:26:39] Fred: But it’s important to remember that the truck had a human driver at the controls, and he did not establish that this beneficial act happened because of the automatic driver.

Or because of the human driver who is overseeing it, the fact is that there is zero experience with a fully autonomous self driving truck [00:27:00] from Aurora. And so they’re using this human supervised experience as justification for saying that in the future, everything will be better. And this is only one instance.

There’s no statistics or, no generality that you can. Get out of this because just way too many variables and the fact that they’re using tractor mounted sensors Means that there will be inevitable dead spots around the trailer. Whatever the vehicle makes turn, they just can’t monitor all the surfaces from the truck.

So anyway I’m going on too long here, but gaslight nomination for Aurora was earned by mixing aspiration and questionable experience to confuse his dear audience, failing to speak to limitations on safety and failing to even define what they consider acceptable safety standards. No one attended self driving experience.

No UL 4,600 or equivalent third party safety evaluation, which by the way, their competitors have [00:28:00] engaged their competitors. Sorry,

[00:28:03] Anthony: is it’s only one of their competitors have engaged that, or is that

[00:28:06] Fred: only one? Yeah. Yep. Still but the competitor. Okay. Did not address competitors safety of installing currently available safety technology versus their pits pad.

Pitch is really all about replacing drivers with machines and stripping out operational limits without ever establishing safety or protections of the public. By asserting that safety is proven and that in the future everything will be better. That’s my nomination.

[00:28:32] Anthony: That’s pretty good. Mr. Brooks, you’re up.

[00:28:35] Ford CEO’s Controversial Praise for Chinese EVs

[00:28:35] Michael: Alright, my nomination comes from an article about Ford CEO Jim Farley, who Has been treating a Chinese electric vehicle, I think it’s Xiao Mi Speed Ultra 7 that he imported from Chicago. We’re sure he complied with all of the import regulations that NHTSA has put out. But beyond that he, here the gist [00:29:00] of the article is, he really loves these things, right?

He’s You know, continuing to make a lot of the claims that we’ve heard about Chinese EV makers, that they’re an existential threat to the American EV industry. But he’s, it sounds like he’s got a toy that he doesn’t want to put down and he can, he was very in his remarks and was, he was really admires this Chinese sedan.

Which is, the reason I would say I’m nominating for the gas light, despite him being fairly right on most of his points are is that Ford. Doesn’t make any sedans. They, this is the, they stopped making sedans in 2018. Granted Farley was not the CEO there, but he was at Ford in a pretty elevated position, I’m sure played a role in that move.

And. These Chinese automakers are making primarily making sedans. People love that experience. You’re ab absolutely [00:30:00] saving saving the earth a whole lot better in a sedan, SUV than you are in any of the large truck. SUV. That have come out in electric the F one 50 would be the one that’s the most striking example of coming out of Ford.

I guess this is just it’s pointing out kind of a I’m trying to point out a, a. Kind of a bad, it’s, I don’t know, I don’t know how to describe it, but it’s hard to see someone praising sedans that’s leading an American company, praising these electric sedans, but at the same time knowing that they’re not doing anything to adjust consumer expectations around EVs in America to offer more electric sedans for Americans to purchase.

They’re just going to continue to produce large trucks and, For those guys who are rich enough to import EV sedans from China, like for Farley is, they’re going to be the only ones that can get them if companies like Ford don’t get on that bandwagon sooner [00:31:00] rather than later.

[00:31:01] Fred: At the same time, you’re lobbying for high tariffs on Chinese cars to keep them out of the country.

They want to repeat the, their unqualified success in saving the United States from the horrible prospect of low cost, high speed rail transportation by also saving us from the horrible prospect of low cost, efficient electric propulsion in sedans produced by China.

[00:31:29] Anthony: Yeah, it’s a weird article. I don’t understand what Farley is doing.

Because there’s I’ll just quote directly from the article. Farley’s talking about how Xiaomi sells 10 to 20, 000 of these things a month and they’re sold out for six months. According from the article, Ford’s leader later added, ha, Ford’s leader later added that the company shifted to smaller, more affordable EVs after realizing the institution of Ford would have a really tough time competing with BYD.

So is he saying that Ford is [00:32:00] shifting to smaller, more affordable EVs? Because we, I don’t see any evidence of that.

[00:32:06] Michael: Ford also has, I think they have significant sales in China. Is that right? So I think he’s talking about, he’s referencing competing in China. Got it. They didn’t make that clear though.

No,

[00:32:19] Anthony: it’s not clear. Yeah. Yeah. So he’s been driving around this, the Xiaomi Speed Ultra 7, which we all know is so much better than the Xiaomi Speed Ultra 6. It’s one better. Anyway we’ll have a link to that article as well. It’s interesting and fun.

[00:32:34] Planned Obsolescence in the Automotive Industry

[00:32:34] Anthony: But for now, hey, mr. Fred, why don’t you come talk to us about planned obsolescence.

You’ve now

[00:32:40] Fred: entered the obsolescence, yes. It often comes up in discussion, why does my car wear out? What is this planned obsolescence? They just want me to buy another car? So I’m just going to run through a lot of the engineering considerations. Basically recognize that engineers work at the behest of capital.

And whatever [00:33:00] enhances capital is basically a good idea. for the engineers to pursue. But the reasons for things wearing out are different for physical parts and electronic parts to some extent. But every physical object has ultimate strength limits and every physical object has fatigue life limits.

Fatigue life is how many times can you bend it or start it or stop it or a good example is the low cycle fatigue is the ground air ground cycles for aircraft. They start on the ground. And then the wings pick up the load and they go in the air, then they come back to the ground and the wings go down again.

So every time it lands it reverses the load on the wings. And so this wears out the wings after a while. If you look at the numbers of airplanes in what they call the boneyards out in Arizona. That’s largely a result of the ground to ground cycles and the low cycle fatigue. But there’s also stochastic loads that [00:34:00] happen, like potholes and, things that you can’t predict exactly, over time, A certain number of them are going to happen.

And then you’ve got high cycle fatigue, things that happen really fast. Like for example wearing out the piston rods that are inside your engine. They travel a thousands of RPM, get loaded and unloaded thousands of times every minute. So over hours that’s a whole lot of cycles. So that’s one way things wear out.

Every moving part has some potential friction or abrasion. There are metallurgical choices. A friend had a Saab where the turbocharger was bolted directly to the exhaust manifold. And over time, it got so hot so frequently that the composition of the bolts changed. And everything fused together into one block.

So the only way you could get the turbocharger off to repair it is to literally cut through the manifold and get the then re tap the holes. And it was a [00:35:00] big mess. But so that’s 1 reason 1 thing that can happen too. And that’s a pretty much poor design. Then you’ve got manufacturing defects that happen.

Certain number of those will always happen. But hopefully they are kept to a low number by proper design and consideration of the parts that you select, but not always. Improper heat treatment, inclusions, chemical defects. Corrosion, rust and oxidation, electrolytic corrosion, thermal cycles, humidity, yeah, it goes on and on.

Then for electrical parts, you’ve got electrical shock there’s a certain amount of stress on the electrical parts every time you supply electrical power to them and turn it off every time you cycle the power. There’s fatigues of the electronic circuit board substrates the plastic parts that actually hold the electronic parts, deep manufacturing defects, impacts, water intrusion, corrosion, [00:36:00] sarcastic effects, even, for example, cosmic ray upset, a cosmic ray can ruin certain very small scale electric parts.

But what this has to do with planned obsolescence is that everything you do to make a part last longer costs money. And basically adds weight heavy trucks like highway trucks are designed for about a million miles of operation. Cars are generally designed at about 100, 000 miles is over time.

Manufacturers have found that people get bored with their cars. Number 1 and number 2 people accept the fact that after 100, 000 miles or so, it’s time to get a new car. Now, so as far as planned obsolescence goes, is that a question of consumer taste, or is that a question of just inadequate design? Cars could be designed to last a million miles.

But they’d be heavier, they would be bigger, they’d be more expensive, and until all of the [00:37:00] cars do that, whoever offers that car is at an economic disadvantage.

[00:37:05] Anthony: Is that planned on? Sorry, in terms of auto safety though, don’t we want planned obsolescence built in there? And the reason being is we keep improving things in terms of safety regulations for like seatbelts being required, airbags being required, AEB, and things like that.

So don’t we want People’s cars to eventually and I know this is coming out of my face right now, and I’m fighting with this argument

[00:37:28] Michael: But you don’t want I mean you don’t want every car made in 1990 to last for a hundred years It was an awesome year dude CD player But then nobody in 2000 and 88 is going to have automatic emergency braking or any of the lovely things that have been invented between now and then it’s going to take like things like we talked about this most, I think, in the area of vehicle to vehicle and vehicle to infrastructure communications, the process of building out that infrastructure and getting that technology into every [00:38:00] car is going to take at least 30 years.

So you won’t really see the ultimate benefits for at least 30 years after it’s been created. And it’s. You leave the same vehicles on the road without that technology, you’re never going to have it.

[00:38:12] Fred: Sure. There’s desirable technological progress. There’s also the potential that A company would put a component in place, knowing that it had to be replaced just because they can get you to do it.

The Volkswagen model is to put out a cheap car and then nickel and dime you with repairs throughout the life of the vehicle. Whereas other cars are designed to. Last a long time that could be more expensive up front, but hopefully they’ll last longer to compensate for that. So different approaches.

I agree that over time. A lot of these changes are beneficial. The question is, are they as often as needed being replaced, or are they being replaced as often as suits the economic advantage [00:39:00] of the company producing the car? Where’s the focus here is the focus on value for the consumers.

There’s the focus on profits to the manufacturers. There’s constant tension in the balance. So I think that planned obsolescence is a difficult thing to prove, but I think that, there is a case to be made that maybe the cars should be designed for, oh, I don’t know, 200, 000 miles rather than 100, 000 miles.

People are hanging on to them longer now and I think that only consumer’s taste can really drive that because there’s no way you could litigate that, I don’t believe.

[00:39:38] Michael: What about one thing that I keep going over on this topic is the computing power and processing power in vehicles. We saw a pretty good example of planned obsolescence with Apple when it introduced a software that basically bricked lower and older models of its phones a few years back.

Is that safe? I’m assuming that’s going to be happening in vehicles too. If you have [00:40:00] a, A 12 year old vehicle, the processing power of that vehicle will no longer be able to support the software updates that the company’s putting out. And it, there are many ways in which electronics can fail and computer systems can fail.

Is that another example of or something to be concerned about in this area?

[00:40:21] Anthony: Go ahead. I’m going to say yes. So the example I’m thinking of, we’ve talked about this a lot, is cyber security with connected vehicles or with any vehicle. And right now your phone, when you go out and buy a new phone, it will say, hey, you get software updates for it for the next 10 years.

Two years on average, four years if you’re lucky. One will still work fine, but now it’s unfortunately become a security nightmare. It’s easier for people to hack and get your information and all of your photos of your cats and your pets and your kids and whatever weird stuff you do. Imagine that with your car now where all of a sudden, hey, we’re not supporting Software updates on this anymore.

We’re not supporting [00:41:00] security updates on this. So your car can be fine. Your car can be great. Your car can be a rocket ship. Totally mechanical could all last perfectly. The electrical, all that can be fine, but you don’t have any software updates. And some kids have figured out a way to hack it with using USB cable.

And your car is gone now and worthless. So that’s

[00:41:21] Fred: I don’t think that’s a I don’t think that hacking is a question of planned obsolescence. So that’s something else completely. But

[00:41:27] Anthony: No. It’s stopping to Making the decision to say, we’re no longer going to do software updates on your car. That’s planned obsolescence.

And one of the big glaring examples of why you need software updates is security.

[00:41:38] Fred: Sometimes planned, sometimes unplanned. Our friends at the Ocean Manufacturer or Fisker, right?

That,

[00:41:45] Fred: that would be called unplanned obsolescence. But I think that if a company puts out a car that has, I’ll make it up, a 32 bit processor and all the connections are associated with the [00:42:00] 32 bit processor, knowing that in two years, they’re going to be putting out a 64 bit processor and everything is going to be required to be upgraded.

I would say that is a question of planned obsolescence.

[00:42:13] Anthony: That has never happened in the history of computing. I don’t know what you’re talking about.

[00:42:17] Fred: Yeah, I know that never happens. But and who knows what the next innovation will be that really requires our dramatic Update to the architecture based upon the enhanced computing capability that might be put in.

I’ll give you an example, quantum computing. I think a hundred years from now, everybody’s going to have a quantum computer sitting on their dining room table. When is that going to happen? I don’t know. It’d be planned ops lessons. If you knew what was going to happen in 10 years, but you restricted everybody to buying a poor old Silicon chip for, conventional computers this year.

So it’s a complex question. I think that the [00:43:00] best answer from the consumer perspective would be that the companies that give you some idea of what the design horizon is for the vehicle that you’re about to buy, rather than just saying it’s this year’s model and, take it or leave it. There seems to me that’s something that they could do.

And part of the information package they could provide, but I’ve never seen it.

[00:43:24] Anthony: No, I would think it would be great if manufacturers say, Hey, We’re putting this car out and we will support it with physical parts and software parts for the next 10 years. It’s like they do the 10 year, 100, 000 mile powertrain thing.

Shouldn’t be that hard. Software and hardware. Yeah. Software, hardware. Yeah. The whole thing. I think Tesla ran into that problem where the hardware is dying on their early cars and they’re like, yeah, tough.

[00:43:50] Fred: That does lead, that bleeds over to what Michael was saying about right through repair.

Right. Michael, you were talking about that

[00:43:56] Michael: earlier.

[00:43:56] Fred: Before you

[00:43:58] Michael: know, it’s [00:44:00] somewhat, inherently connected to planned obsolescence. We saw this, I think, I remember it as a kid. Where some manufacturers make parts that are harder to reach, use tools that aren’t standard, and other ways of preventing consumers from being able to repair the vehicles, which really just encourages consumers to go out and get something newer or different that’s either repairable or That works so that they don’t have to repair the current product.

The right for consumers to repair their vehicles gives, I think, gives consumers a little more control over when whatever product it is going to no longer be effective. And it’s something that if manufacturers and laws don’t allow or require consumers to have that ability, I think that manufacturers of consumer products get a little more control than they should have over the, in the end date of The functionality of those products.

[00:44:57] Anthony: Listeners, I have a plan for you to fight planned [00:45:00] obsolescence. Fight obsolescence. Go to autosafety. org and click on donate. We haven’t been obsolete yet for 50 years. Keep us going for the next 50 years. Yeah, I know it’s 52 years or what exactly it is. I know it’s more than 50 years, but yeah. Anyway, go there.

Donate. Tell your friends. 54 years. Oh my God. Michael flashed his fingers at me. I think he was telling me 54 or that he’s joined a gang. That was it. Or that my IQ is falling. that I’m actually four feet tall. All of the above. Great. So if this conversation has gotten you a little whoa, man, I’m overwhelmed.

[00:45:32] The Complexities of Marijuana and Driving

[00:45:32] Anthony: Let’s switch gears to a little weed man. Yeah. From an article in MLive. com. The chances that another driver’s on drugs have grown over the years among the 42,903 traffic fatalities in 20 21, 50 2% of drivers tested positive for illegal or prescribed drugs that could cause impairment. We’ve talked about this before, where with alcohol, there’s set standards.

We know how long it stays in [00:46:00] someone’s body. We know the blood alcohol content where you’re impaired and you shouldn’t be driving a car. We have easy ways to test for that. When it comes to marijuana, it’s the Wild West. There’s still no standards. There’s nothing. It. Unique almost to every person. And so this article talks about unfortunately the use of marijuana has increased in driving and it’s led to more and more deaths and police are just like we don’t really know how to test for this.

There’s no breathalyzer for marijuana.

[00:46:34] Fred: And yet there’s a conundrum in what you just said, because if there’s no test for it, how do they know it’s increasing?

[00:46:41] Anthony: I think through autopsies. Is they do the blood draws afterwards and there’s a lot of THC in the system.

[00:46:48] Fred: True, but the article says that there’s no correlation between THC content in the blood and the inebriation of the drivers.

So that’s one of the fundamental problems in [00:47:00] detection. And by the way, I’m not saying it’s a good idea to drive high, there’s some real problems associated with, This article and the basis for the article, because the article, if it’s accurately saying that there’s no reliable test for relationship between THC content in your blood and your ability to drive the car.

Then, how do the other conclusions flow from that?

[00:47:25] Anthony: What they have in the article is quoting from it, and referring to a crash in Oklahoma. In the Oklahoma crash that killed six teens, a test of the driver’s blood detected 95. 9 nanograms per milliliter of THC, while above cutoffs established in states with per se limits usually set below 5 nanograms per milliliter.

Now, you’re right. They’re pulling out these limits. out of the, out of their ass. Essentially because they’re, I think there’s been a problem in the US of saying, Hey, marijuana is illegal. We can’t do any research into it. We [00:48:00] know obviously to cause some level of impairment, but it’s illegal. So we can’t find any research into how it’s going to impair people.

Hey, man, you want some Funyuns? I still think the Funyuns test is the way to go.

[00:48:14] Michael: There’s one place where I don’t think the test is the way to go, or there are 18 states that are zero tolerance, which means that you could have smoked a joint two days ago and still have a trace amount of THC in your blood or urine, and you could be arrested for driving under the influence.

You could Presumably be charged for vehicular homicide or something else if you’re, you were involved in a crash. So there are other states that have, the 5 nanogram limit of blood THC, but the real problem is here. What does that mean? It doesn’t mean. The same thing is alcohol. There’s a pretty consistent relationship between the amount of [00:49:00] alcohol in the blood and, the driver’s ability to operate safely.

But there, there have not been any studies or any evidence that show that there’s a similar correlation with THC and performance behind the wheel. So that makes it tough. For a lot of people, it makes it tough for drivers who are accused of driving under the influence based on a blood draw that’s scientifically meaningless, but it’s also a problem for police who are trying to save lives and who can’t come up with ways that are accepted in court to punish people who were intoxicated while they were driving.

So this is, it is a real problem. It’s a problem that I think is only going to get worse as more states legalize recreational marijuana and more states legalize other things like the Delta 8, Delta 9 hemp derived versions that are still intoxicating. Or psilocybin. Yeah, or psilocybin or any other things.

How are you going, how are we going to establish tests to To prove that [00:50:00] someone is either intoxicated or not behind the wheel. If there’s so much gray area involved. And that’s something that, that really needs to be tackled.

[00:50:09] Fred: Yeah. I think the answer might be that. With the psychologist, I need to develop behavioral tests that are both reliable and deliverable by the police or trying to enforce safe driving limits because actually, the chemicals aren’t the problem.

The problem is the inebriation and focusing on the chemicals rather than the inebriation. Is probably not the best approach. Maybe it’s the only approach, but go ahead. Sorry.

[00:50:41] Anthony: I figured it out, man. Self driving cars. There you go. Robo taxis with bongs. Yeah, don’t drive high, please, because sometimes I’m out there on the streets, either driving or walking, and I don’t need you to be [00:51:00] like, dude, because I, that’s not how I’m going to die.

Okay.

[00:51:06] Latest Vehicle Recalls

[00:51:06] Anthony: Anyway let’s jump into some recalls.

How’s that sound? Recall sound great.

[00:51:14] Michael: Sounds good.

[00:51:15] Anthony: Great. Toyota, rare entrant. To the field of recall, round up 11, 890 vehicles. This is the 2024 Toyota Sequoia Hybrid and the 2024 Toyota Tundra, the Toyota Tundra Hybrid, and the issue is dealing with Their tires, Oh, tire may lose air pressure. Oh, they got structural damage with their tire.

Wait. So this is their tires of the problem. This what’s

[00:51:40] Michael: going on. They were shipped with they were shipped with tires. There was basically the assembly line where their rollers there that guide vehicles going down the assembly line. And at one of those areas, there was an exposed bracket that.

It’s apparently damaged, gouged some of the [00:52:00] inside of the front and rear passenger side tires. Toyota figured this out. Apparently they didn’t figure it out quick enough because 11, 000 or so vehicles got off the line, 12, 000 on this. Vehicles got off the line with these bad tires. But if you have a 2024 Toyota Sequoia or Tundra probably worth, giving your tires a good look on the passenger side, front and rear to see if you notice anything.

And it looks like the owner notification for this won’t be out for another couple of months. So if you do have 1 of these vehicles, it’s it may not be worth the risk of waiting. Sidewall damage can be. A really bad thing and a blowout at high speeds can be, can lead to terrible consequences.

So it might be something that’s worth having your dealer or your local independent repair shop, check out to make sure you don’t have damaged tires rather than wait a month.

[00:52:54] Anthony: Next up on our final recall today. Ford Motor Company, the last year’s champion of the recall roundup, [00:53:00] they’re in close contention right now with Stellantis, and Ford brings in 2, 416 vehicles, the 2024 Ford Ranger 2024 to 2025 Ford Bronco.

And this is a, they may have missing or improperly torqued nut on the ball joint, which as we know, is a not good. Cause it could cause the front upper control arm to the knuckle assembly. This is in the knuckle assembly is connected to the thigh bone. And

[00:53:28] Michael: I think what the biggest problem here is, if this happens, you’re going to have difficulty steering and controlling the direction of your vehicle So big problem, Ford, I can’t remember.

I don’t remember. I know that Ford has had some other issues with their ball joints recently, but I can’t remember if there was an investigation around this knot, but at any rate, owners are going to be hearing about this one really soon. It looks like, in the next day or so, if they haven’t already.

[00:53:56] Fred: This is nothing to fool around with. This is a catastrophic [00:54:00] failure if it occurs.

[00:54:02] Anthony: And on that positive note. Drive with your seatbelt, drive sober get high, but let somebody else drive. Until next time, thanks for all your friends.

[00:54:21] Michael: For more information,

[00:54:22] Fred: visit www. autosafety. org.