Tariffs, Tesla and Transit

Introduction to the Podcast

[00:00:00]

Anthony: You are 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.

Michael: Is it.

Anthony: All right. Hey everybody. to another episode as we try out brand new podcast software to see if it will make life better. we feel it’ll make life better? Fred just muted himself, so we’ll see how that goes. Michael, do you think your life’s gonna be better?

Fred Perkins: It don’t get no better

Michael: All right. It’s gonna take a lot more than podcast software to do that.

Anthony: there we go. See right there is the good attitude.

Discussing Auto Tariffs and Their Impact

Anthony: All right, let’s start with, something not going on in the world. Auto [00:01:00] tariffs from the Wall Street Journal, president Trump’s auto Tariffs won’t just make buying a car more expensive. They would make simply owning a car more expensive too. Levies on important ported vehicles stand at 25% and tariffs are the same size or plan for auto parts in early May. we talked about that last week I think. And Michael were talking about like, yeah, if you need parts to repair your car which is crazy and they still haven’t figured out what makes a car and, ’cause there’s nothing made purely in one country like 40 years. And I think no one told the Donald this, so is not gonna be great for consumers, even for your insurance rates apparently. ’cause insurance companies like it’s gonna cost us more, so it’s gonna cost you more.

Michael: Yeah. Yeah, there’s a a lot going on here and a lot of uncertainty really because what it looks like the administration is doing well,

Anthony: [00:02:00] Best we

Michael: best we can tell other than it looks like, you know, a toddler’s gotten hold of a tariff light switch and is flicking it on and off.

Anthony: we don’t

Michael: We don’t really know where

Anthony: sheriff

Michael: tariff situation stands because it looks like they’re applying it to each manufacturer.

Right. We saw Hyundai kind of, you know, prostrate itself or, or

Anthony: throw

Michael: throw itself at the mercy of the president, start promising to build factories in America, more factories. Even though Hyundai and Kia, I believe are both up in the, up in the list, pretty high in, in the amount of American made vehicles that they produce.

But.

Anthony: kind two

Michael: kind of two parts to this, right? There’s the, the tariff on new cars

Anthony: the

Michael: and the production of new cars, and those parts that will be crossing borders in new cars.

Anthony: the

Michael: And that’s the tariff that has supposedly

Anthony: into

Michael: into effect first. And then there’s a separate tariff simply on parts that’s gonna come into effect, I believe in may.

The Rising Costs of Car Repairs

Michael: And that’s really where you’re looking at driving up some costs for things [00:03:00] like, you know, you get in a crash, your insurance company is ultimately going to be the one footing the bill for the tariffs, and we know that the insurance company is then going to raise. Insurance rates across the board to cover all those parts.

I mean, the insurance companies are already stomaching some things that the auto industry has created, right? They’re,

Anthony: When you get your

Michael: when you get your windshield replaced now, for instance, no. No longer do they just have to replace your windshield. As Fred found out about after he, he, the deer hit him,

Anthony: have

Michael: they have to go in and recalibrate and fix the a DAS systems, you know, anything from, adaptive cruise control, blind spot monitoring, automatic emergency braking. Anything that works with

Anthony: cameras

Michael: cameras or sensors that are, that are embedded or work with the front windshield. Insurance companies are already kind of taking those costs on to make sure your car is recalibrated. I think like 90% of the recalibrations are covered by insurance,

Anthony: that’s

Michael: that’s [00:04:00] ultimately raising rates already.

But then beyond that, the.

Anthony: crashing

Michael: crash parts that are gonna be used to repair your vehicle

Anthony: a

Michael: after a crash

Anthony: are, you

Michael: are, you know, many of them come from overseas and many of them are going to jump

Fred Perkins: is

Michael: price. And those that’s, you know, this, so, so the,

Anthony: guess what

Michael: I guess what I’m getting at is this isn’t just about buying new cars, it’s about, you know, the entire auto marketplace.

I mean, you’re gonna see things affected like car seats. You’re gonna see, you know.

Anthony: of the

Michael: All of the electronics that are going into our infrastructure and the safety infrastructure around us. All of the things that police and firefighters and EMS workers use

Anthony: you

Michael: in, you know, extracting crash victims and saving lives,

Anthony: of these

Michael: all of these things are going to be going up in price.

And so safety is getting a lot more expensive. And it, you know,

Anthony: we’re still trying

Michael: we’re still trying to figure out who’s in favor of this, the auto industry, I think. Is kind of sitting on the fence saying, no, we don’t really like these [00:05:00] tariffs. But at the same time they’re

Anthony: trying to

Michael: trying to, you know,

Anthony: make

Michael: make friends and play nice with the administration that ultimately is clutching their pearl.

So.

Fred Perkins: know, we know

Michael: It’s a crazy situation. It’s

Anthony: You know,

Michael: just, you know, we know the auto industry hates uncertainty

Anthony: just bound

Michael: is bound to create more of that you know, with these policies. And, and not only that, it’s this, this individual effort where certain companies seem or maybe getting favorable treatment. You know, it’s, it’s almost like the government is picking winners and losers, which makes me wonder if, are we being led down a new path of socialism?

Anthony: Oh, I like it. Corporate socialism,

Michael: Yeah.

Anthony: Fred, thoughts

Fred Perkins: a catalytic converter, which is a very very common crime, is to have your catalytic converter stolen off your vehicle in a parking lot. Those nominally cost over a thousand dollars. So with the import duties, [00:06:00] they’re automatically going up to what, 1200, $1,300? again, it gets even worse than that because they’re filled with precious metals, most of which come from overseas. So the, the platinum and potentially

Anthony: come from

Fred Perkins: them,

Anthony: so

Fred Perkins: becomes

Anthony: platinum that potentially already

Fred Perkins: So you’ve got

Anthony: comes more

Fred Perkins: or

Anthony: expensive

Fred Perkins: 30%, 40%, a hundred percent

Anthony: or

Fred Perkins: tariff on the precious

Anthony: 30%, 40%, hundred percent on.

Fred Perkins: Catalytic converter, and then the process catalytic converter itself comes to you and know, all of a sudden you’re up to 2000, $3,000 for a part that some jackass stole and brought into a refinery. So yeah, this is, this is going down the road. We really don’t

Anthony: So yeah,

Michael: Right.

Anthony: going down road don’t travel. Yesterday

Michael: yesterday China said that they were considering halting, [00:07:00] completely halting export of, of rare metals and minerals to the United States, which could be disastrous particularly for electric vehicles. I think.

Anthony: Well, yeah, that’s because the

Fred Perkins: advanced electric motors and

Anthony: going

Fred Perkins: is

Anthony: of

Fred Perkins: rare earth metal cobalts generally. from Congo, I think is where they find that maybe some of it up in Canada as well. So this is

Anthony: Yeah, this is

Fred Perkins: it makes sense to people way smarter than I am, but to me it sounds like

Anthony: sure

Fred Perkins: disaster.

Michael: But I mean, the point of, supposedly the point of these tariffs is if you, if you follow the administration’s line, is it’s going to bring

Anthony: all of

Michael: all of these jobs back to the United States. But there’s some things that you just can’t do that with, right? I mean, we don’t,

Anthony: we do

Michael: if we do have a large cobalt supply here, we certainly haven’t

Anthony: found out

Michael: found out how to access it.

And doing that takes a lot of time [00:08:00] and.

Anthony: it’s,

Michael: know, it’s, it seems like the horizon for tariffs to actually accomplish bringing manufacturing back to the United States is, is a very long timeline. You have to prop up a lot of, a lot of other industries that are gonna. You know, mine this material and take the raw material and turn it into the other materials that are used to produce batteries and that type of thing.

So it’s, it’s, it’s not something that’s going to happen

Fred Perkins: could be

Michael: on a, on a, on a very near term basis.

Fred Perkins: who’s got billions of dollars in his pocket that would need to be raised by other companies who are trying to build the factories to respond to these terror. So you know this, it is going to, it’s gonna go one or two ways.

Either we’ll have a war to resolve this, which is what happened with the smooth haw ultimately through the Depression into World War ii, which eventually restored the economic balance in America. [00:09:00] Or you’re just gonna have to empty everybody’s bank account to, you know, help somebody build a factory somewhere. I don’t see much good coming from this.

Anthony: Oh man, I thought we’d, we’d have something to cheer for this week, and we just start off with this. Aw. Aw.

Michael: Well, I mean it’s, it just doesn’t seem like tariffs are going to have any, any positive safety impacts. I mean, and as far as consumer finance, I don’t see a whole lot of, you know, light on the horizon there. So, yeah, bad news, tariffs are bad news for auto consumers and possibly auto manufacturers. We’re still trying to figure out who their good news for.

Public Transit vs. Driving: Safety and Costs

Anthony: Well with that, I mean, maybe we just should stop driving cars and move to Mass transit. do you think about that? That’s right. Scientific American. according to the data, driving a car in the [00:10:00] US is far more dangerous than taking public transit in terms of crash risk and crime. part surprised me still, quoting from the article, public transit Travel requires people to travel with strangers in a confined space, also known as a GM cruise box, and a zoox, especially in large cities with very diverse populations, it’s easy to feel intimidated by that experience. So MAs, it’s safer, it’s cheaper, god dammit, you know, I don’t get to pump my own gas when I’m on the subway or on the bus, it’s, not fun.

Michael: I mean, there’s a lot you know, I think most of us are aware that, you know, traveling by train or bus or by plane is, is safer than traveling in cars. And much safer. In fact, I think, I think when I. The statistics mentioned the article. I think we have a it’s about what, eight times more dangerous, six to eight times more dangerous.

[00:11:00] My math is fuzzy to travel in rural areas than it is to travel on bus about four times more dangerous in urban areas. We’ve talked about this before. You know that there, there are higher speeds in rural areas. Urban areas are typically more congested. You don’t reach the higher speeds, and so you, you, you.

Tend to have fewer fatalities. We’ve talked about small roads and road diets and how those contribute to that. Rail transit is, you know, about half as it’s dangerous. I think. I mean, it actually, a lot of people are, are, well, it, it’s kind of hard to visualize how these statistics are being presented, but it, it looks like, you know, clearly the automobile is the, the most dangerous mode of transport in the United States.

And one thing that the article goes into detail on, to try to point out some of the, the. I guess the bad way that public transit is associated with crime and other things, and they actually show that there’s a [00:12:00] long-term trend of crimes dropping fairly significantly on public transit and, and even when you.

Even when you factor in the number of crimes on public transit into the experience versus the, the ones you experience in your car there, there’s really no comparison. I mean, public transit is, is absolutely going to be safer. I guess the problem is here, public transit is not available to a lot of us. Particularly those of us who are in metro areas that, that don’t have good public transit systems or.

Who choose not to live in the city and really have no form of public transit at all, where we’re ultimately forced to rely on vehicles in in one shape or fashion.

Anthony: I look at it as most people in the United States live on the coasts, both coasts, you know, have pretty good mass transit options, so I don’t think there’s any excuse. Sure. If you live out in

Michael: I.

Anthony: of the country, you might not have good transit. but I hate [00:13:00] to bring it up. Just, just not as many of you.

Michael: I mean, you, you, you live in the city with the best mass transit on earth, or, or at least in America, right? So I don’t th I mean other large cities on the East Coast do not have that great of a system, right? I don’t think Atlanta or, you know, Miami or Ryan.

Anthony: to,

Michael: Or Yeah, even, I mean, DC the metro is, is adequate, but I mean, it’s, it’s not even, it’s not even close to as integrated into the city as, as I would say New York’s is.

I mean, there’s still a lot of places out in the DC suburbs where you’re driving, you know, 20 minutes to get to the train and if you want to take it, and it’s, it’s generally. Going to be a much faster commute if you drive into the city instead of taking the metro. And you know, most people, you know, even me, when I look at my commute and you know, right now I am out about, you know, an hour and a half outside the city and if I wanted to take the metro, I could drive.

[00:14:00] Around 40 minutes and then get on a metro and take a 75 minute ride into the city, which basically means my commute’s two hours, or you know, it’s an hour and 20 minutes for me to drive directly. So, you know, a round trip that’s 40 minutes each way that I would save in a car gives me an hour and a half of my life back every day.

That’s, that’s, it’s hard to compete with those numbers when you’re a, a public transit system and people value their time.

Anthony: But you can know in public transit, you can read a book, you can listen to an audio podcast. You listen to this

Michael: Yeah.

Anthony: and then you can go, oh, while I’m waiting on the train, I can go to auto safety.org and click on that red donate button. And, oh, I, I’ve done something better with my life and I haven’t covered the inside of my windshield spittle and no one’s waving a gun at me. ’cause this Scientific American article it’s really good. It’s even just worth just glancing at. ’cause the thing that surprised me was on crime versus public transit versus on the road. And basically motor vehicle theft is crazy and it’s going up and then they’re talking about [00:15:00] the number of road rage incidents involving guns. It’s like, oh my God. Like, these things are off the scale compared to the crimes you get on public transit. So, you know.

Fred Perkins: To act in private. They don’t really, they don’t, if they plan things out, they don’t really like to do it in public you know, witnesses and all that sort of stuff. There’s kind of inconvenient for the criminal enterprise except in the case of Donald Trump.

But that’s, that is clearly a special case.

Anthony: That’s just the New America. My wife tells this story about how years ago she was in the subway and it was outside crossing the bridge, crossing the east river. And these teenagers came on with guns and were robbing everybody. And these people on the subway wanted to pull the emergency stop. And she’s like, no, do that.

’cause then the train will stop on this bridge. No one can get to us. Like, what is wrong with you? So public transit’s safe, but they gotta remove that emergency stop thing ’cause it’s [00:16:00] stupid. Anyway no one disagrees ’cause I’m right.

DMV’s Role in Allowing Dangerous Drivers

Anthony: Let’s move on to the things that the DMV allows that it shouldn’t allow.

This is an article from Cal Matters titled Seven Takeaways, how the DMV Allows Dangerous Drivers to Stay on the Road. And, oh my God, what a horrific article. I’m gonna start. Irvin Wyatt’s History Behind the Wheel spreads across two pages of a recent court filing, fleeing police, fleeing police, again, running a red light, causing a traffic collision, driving without a license, four times a dozen speeding tickets. Yet the California DMV issued him a license in 2019, promptly got three more speeding tickets. Court record show prosecutors said he was speeding again in 2023 when he lost control and crashed into oncoming traffic, killing three women. He now faces murder charges. This is another thing that we’ve discussed here is like, why, I mean, we talked about this with speeding last week.

It was, why do people keep getting to drive their cars [00:17:00] if they’re doing so poorly? Like, not gonna keep driving a a, a train. If you have an incident, you’re not gonna keep flying If you’re like, ah, you know, I landed halfway on the wing, like, no one’s gonna do this. But with cars it’s just like, ah, just go right ahead.

Keep going out there and bling from the police.

Fred Perkins: Article, which is about

Michael: Yeah, and this is.

Fred Perkins: Apparently not all the agencies are able to access all of the data that other agencies have, including that’s those relevant to driving operations. So was a, that was a problem. But yeah, clearly this is something that needs more attention. whole idea that somebody who’s a chronically bad driver, I. Continue driving with a license that has not been even suspended or revoked.

Michael: Yeah, and this is, I mean, [00:18:00] this is a California. This is a California focused article. I mean, that’s what Cal Matters writes about, but I would imagine that similar, similar issues exist across almost every state. I mean, we’ve, we’ve seen problems with getting speeders off the road in Washington, dc we’ve talked about it in a number of different states and, and there just doesn’t seem to be.

A really good mechanism that exists in these states for tracking bad drivers and getting them off the road. I mean, we have in this article, you know, numerous examples of people who are injured or killed, killed by reckless or speeding drivers, and those reckless or speeding drivers still have licenses that are still being issued licenses.

So there’s just, there could be a disconnect in the communications between law enforcement and the Department of Motor Vehicles. There could be a lot of reasons for this, but those reasons need to be looked at really closely across the United States so that we can [00:19:00] hone in because we know that the people who speed and are the most aggressive and who are the most intoxicated are the ones killing the most people on our road.

So. You know, the, the, the, the smart thing to do here is to make sure that the systems that are tasked with keeping that behavior in check are working and they don’t appear to be.

Anthony: How does that happen? Because you know, you think if you get DUI, at least I think in New York, like they take your license away and you have to go for some period of time or know, even minor traffic violations, they’ll put points on your license and if you collect a certain number of points, they’ll yank your license. Is that just a more of a New York specific thing? No, because I remember living in dc, DC had like zero tolerance. Like your blood alcohol level was over 0.0, you were getting a ticket and a

Michael: Yeah.

Fred Perkins: More of

Anthony: which great. is, so is this more of a, more of a California DMV thing, which we’ve discussed about the issues of California’s DMV [00:20:00] being inadequate or is what’s, is there something being done to, to change this behavior?

Because in California if, if you get pulled over driving drunk, I imagine they’ll yank your license.

Michael: Yeah, I gotta think that they tip they do as part of the DUI process. I mean, this looks like, you know, this looks like a lot of this might be people who are involved in a crash. Say you’re in a rollover crash and you have a passenger in your car and that passenger dies and you were speeding. But for whatever reason, the police, you know.

Don’t find you at fault, or maybe you’re even prosecuted and you, you know, the case falls through, you’re not guilty. Your license then wouldn’t be suspended. So it’s, you know, there, there has to be some kind of finding by a court that you are at fault before you can have your license revoked. And so maybe a lot of these are people whose cases weren’t prosecuted for whatever reason, [00:21:00] or, you know,

Fred Perkins: judge.

Michael: who hired a, a great lawyer to get them off or whose.

Daddy is the judge. You, you just really don’t know, but the it, it makes you think that maybe there should be a more direct connection between DMV and law enforcement so that as soon as someone gets a reckless driving ticket or a DUI, you know, the licenses should be being looked at at that point based on, you know, a determination made by the DMV of whether you have the privilege to drive and then your criminal charges should be considered separately.

Anthony: I imagine like why couldn’t it be like if you try to use your credit card and they’re like, oh sir, your credit card’s been declined. can you try it again? Oh, it, it’s still declined. They’re asking me to cut it in half. Why can’t the, the police do that with your driver’s license? I’m sorry. It’s been

Michael: Yeah.

Anthony: ’cause you’re drunk and Yes, you’re driving a Ford SUV Explorer and it rolled over. We know it’s gonna roll over, but you should have known by now ’cause you should have been supporting the Auto Center for auto safety.

Michael: Well, and, and ultimately this comes back to something I think we talked about last [00:22:00] week or maybe two weeks ago, was, you know, even if folks have their licenses suspended or don’t even have a license at all, many of them are still going to choose to drive. And there’s no way to stop that unless we implement Anthony’s put your license in a slot in the car to turn the car on system.

Anthony: I still like that one.

Fred Perkins: one.

Anthony: do you not? Not like that one.

Fred Perkins: I guess Trump wants to send them all to El Salvador. Maybe that’ll work better. But you know, there is the, another consideration, which Michael has talked about earlier or in earlier episodes, rural people they’ve gotta get to the Piggly Wiggly to buy groceries and they’ve gotta be able to get somewhere to work. And in a country that has virtually no public transportation, particularly in rural areas, you pull somebody’s licenses, you’re pulling the plug on all the resources they need to live. you people, I think judges tend to [00:23:00] consider that very carefully in their. Assessment of whether or not to pull somebody’s license. the conversation here seems to be moving in the direction of, you know, let’s just hang them and figure out the consequences later. I don’t

Anthony: Yeah,

Fred Perkins: it is a

Anthony: no,

Fred Perkins: in terms

Anthony: I’m being unreasonable.

Fred Perkins: who have to live, people who have to live with the circumstances of their real life, and balancing that against the consequences of people who are lousy or dangerous drivers being allowed to continue to drive.

And of course, as you just stated, the people who are prohibited from driving legally are not physically prohibited from driving. will likely continue to drive illegally because they’ve got a job to support, they’ve got a family to support. So that’s a complex situation. There’s no simple answer to it, I don’t think.[00:24:00]

Anthony: Robo taxis.

Fred Perkins: That’ll be great. Mu

Anthony: That will solve it all.

Michael: Yeah, when, when Robax make it to Rural America in, in twenty one hundred and forty three.

Anthony: Well, don’t tell people where you are. Oh, you said Beckett. Ah, they’ll never find you.

Tesla’s Broken Promises on Full Self-Driving

Anthony: With that, I’m gonna enter my Gaslight of the week. How’s that sound?

Fred Perkins: Hit it.

Anthony: I said robo taxis. It is. Mine is. A little company called Tesla. See, back in old 2016 when we were young, we were naive, we were bushy tailed and whatnot. A little man from South Africa with a fake chin and hair plugs, said, the cars you buy from me today have all the hardware you need to become fully autonomous.

And people lined up and gave him wads of cash. then he’s like, [00:25:00] nah, but I’ll upgrade your computers in those systems for free and that will work. And then it’s like, no. so now, if you are one of these people who fell for the scam Tesla, you know, should be replacing your internal hardware, your computer system. That would be what, 4 million cars? More than 4 million cars. And so if I go out and I buy something. And it says this is gonna work. And turns out it’s not. Who’s gonna pay for it? ’cause Tesla’s like, that’s $4 million. Like, that’s like a half a billion dollars. that’s, you know, that’s like what Elon spent on lunch.

I, so that’s

Michael: I mean, they went from saying they were going to, you know, they said they were gonna upgrade. Upgrade everyone’s system who actually bought self-driving, is now how they’ve classified. So the people who didn’t subscribe to it, even when [00:26:00] it was promised that your car is, is, has all the hardware for full self-driving, you know, eight years ago are, are outta luck because they didn’t buy into the full self-driving act.

At the time, I mean, at the time I believe they were even saying that Teslas, you know, are, are the first car that’s, that’s not going to depreciate. It’s an appreciating asset because one day it’s gonna be fully self-driving. You’re gonna be able to send your Tesla out at night while you sleep to pick people up and make you, make you some money.

None of that happened and none of it. Going to happen because, you know, these cars with, they’ve got a lot more problems than just the computer before they get to full self-driving. But, you know, there is an ar a very good argument here that, that a fraud was, and there’s a lot of fraud arguments around Tesla.

This is one specific one, but that, you know, when you say these compu, these vehicles come with all the hardware necessary for full self-driving, and then a few years later when you haven’t delivered on that promise, you’re, you’re not. [00:27:00] Providing satisfaction to those people who have bought into that lie.

There’s a problem, and, and I, I, I’m sure there’s a lawsuit on going around this, I, I didn’t notice if that was mentioned in the article or not, but it’s clearly false advertising. And not only that, but the retrofitting vehicles is an incredibly expensive process. I mean, here you’re maybe popping a computer in and out.

Isn’t that difficult? The computer’s gonna cost money. The technician time’s gonna cost money. We see automakers fight tooth and nail to avoid recalls where, you know, the cost of the repair is going to be, you know, $500 or so or more. Because when you multiply that times, you know, 4 million vehicles we’re talking about here, that gets super expensive really fast and can turn into bankruptcy pretty quickly.

So I, you know, I expect Tesla is going to keep hedging its bets and, and trying to. Replace as few of these computers as possible. And, you know, continue along one [00:28:00] of its many fraudulent paths that it started years ago.

Anthony: consumers, if you fell for this, and I’m not faulting you for falling for this back in 2016, but if someone says, Hey, we have all the hardware work on a problem that we don’t understand and we don’t have a reliable solution solution for, not gonna work. I mean,

Michael: Yeah, we, we have all the hardware. We just don’t know what software it’s gonna be running yet. Right. Does that make any sense on any planet?

Anthony: don’t have any sort of basic heuristics of what the driving desk is really about because it’s a lot more complicated than, than you think. So for that, Tesla my gaslight of the week. Mr. Perkins, what do you got?

Fred Perkins: Apparently Forbes Magazine

Michael: Oh.

Anthony: School.

Fred Perkins: of people.

Questionable Autonomous Driving Safety Audit

Fred Perkins: I’m not sure, I’m not a subscriber myself, but recently published an article called gic, which is the name of an autonomous driving [00:29:00] company’s key milestone in industry, first third party safety audit. So it’s very interesting because it’s not the first, and yet it says it’s the first. It’s written by a guy named Richard Bishop who happens to be an investor in Waymo, Aurora, and Gick. So clearly something that’s made me questionable from a dispassionate viewpoint. Let’s

Anthony: He’s got the trifecta. Yeah.

Fred Perkins: the dominant player in autonomous middle mile logistics, is interesting because there is no autonomous middle mile logistics industry that exists.

So being a dominant player in non-existent industry, I guess you can be that if you want to be they say a comprehensive safety assessment framework. Were independently validated by who Anthony, you had some observations about that company in the past. For our listeners [00:30:00] who

Anthony: I do remember.

The Problem with Non-Existent Standards

Fred Perkins: in an audit, when an audit happens, you audit something relative to some specification, right?

Like you’re audited by the IRS, you’re audited relative to the federal tax code. you’re a industry being audited for. We will say manufacturing competence. You might be audited relative to a standard called ISO 9,000, and you’ve probably seen the placards outside businesses ISO 9,000 or ISO 9,001 compliant. The problem with the supposed audit, the audit they have here is that, there is no standard against which you can compare the AVS performance. They, he goes on to state as part of the company’s commitment to transparency and accountability across all aspects of this to to safe testing and [00:31:00] deployment. Gick will soon be publicly sharing further information on progress made towards completion of the safety assessment framework to deployment. So what he’s saying is they’ve been audited, they still don’t have the standards. For which it’s being audited. the audit is a work in progress. why would they then announce that it’s been completed and everything’s okie dokie. Could be

Anthony: They hired Waymo’s PR firm.

Fred Perkins: Gick Safety Assessment Framework encompasses over 700 identified safety portfolios. What the hell? Just a bunch of word salad because in my experience, UL 4,600 a standard that has normative content. Now, normative content means that’s something that you need to do, like when you go to buy gasoline at the gasoline pump, right?

It’ll say [00:32:00] 87 Octane, for example, 90 octane, 95 octane. That octane rating is a. Per a standard that was developed by, I think the American Petroleum Institute. And you as a consumer don’t need to worry about whether or not the 87 Octane that Amoco is offering is different than the 87 Octane.

That’s, we’ll say Sunoco is offering they’re both audited to same standard produced by a third party, which has normative consequences. People can take the standard, put it into a laboratory and come up with a number, the fuel is 87 octane or it’s not right. So that’s what a normative standard means.

It means it has consequences. The automotive industry has been very careful and very active to make sure that all of the putative standards for autonomous vehicles actually are not standards. They’re what they call best practices. [00:33:00] They’re not normative, they just have suggestions.

Defining Safety in the AV Industry

Fred Perkins: Let me give you the fundamental one, which is. The definition of safety that is universally adopted the AV industry is the safety, is the absence of unreasonable risk. Well, what’s the problem with that? every company is free to determine what is reasonable, so there’s no universal standard as to what in fact is reasonable, and opinion is as good as everybody else’s. other part of that is that risk. Remember, they say unreasonable risk has two parameters. One is the frequency of an occurrence, the second is the consequence of the occurrence. So let’s consider a baby crossing, crawling across the street. Now, you as a human being would say, hell, I, I can’t accept that. So you stop your car, you pick up the baby. This is real by the way. [00:34:00] This happens in Carjackings, where, where the carjacker will take the baby and just throw ’em out of the car, or take the car seat and put it by the side of the road. And Jeanette Fennel actually had this happen to her. this is a, this is a real thing.

Even though it sounds hyperbolic, if you allow a constant, a consideration of risk to dominate your approach to that, you could say, well, it’s very unlikely to occur, hardly ever happens. So we’re just gonna say that’s an unreasonable risk because it’s so remote, we don’t have to consider that. So when you look at the definition of safety as absence of unreasonable risk. You’ve got two weasel words in there that companies can hide behind. there’s no affirmative statement of what safety actually means within the industry. So when they talk about this, the standards being used to [00:35:00] GIC for safety, they’re really talking about a bunch of best practices that have Weezer words built in. So I’m, I’m running on here more than I really should, but for claiming, for claiming audit successes, proof of safety

Anthony: Well.

Fred Perkins: vaporware and non-existent AV safety standard conformance, while also stating that the safety analysis is a work in progress. Forbes is this week’s nominee for Gaslight of the Week.

Anthony: Here, here, and they shouldn’t allow babies to crawl across the street. Brooks, what do you got?

Michael: I may have got, I think this is our first gaslight that uses a, an anonymous source.

Tesla’s Reporting and Safety Controversies

Michael: So in the, in the, so I’m not sure who this gaslight is. But this comes from, I believe it was a Financial Times article. We also have a link to it from ours, Technica about Doge [00:36:00] and their impact on Nitsa, which we’ve already discussed some of the, the staff losses at Nitsa.

But one of the quotes talks about the reporting that, that NSU requires of. Semi autonomous and autonomous vehicles. The standing general order, which we also talk about a good bit on this podcast. And. One of the, the one person familiar, right? We, we know that, that Elon has never really liked the standing general order because Tesla is collecting a lot more data and better data than other companies.

And so I. It reports a lot more crashes to the standing general order because it also has a, you know, its entire fleet is, is enabled with technology that qualifies for the standing general order. Both autopilot and its full self-driving, whatever they call it now, full supervised, self-driving qualified for the state general order anytime there’s a crash in those vehicles.

And so. Tesla reports all those crashes to the [00:37:00] government. And then when reporters do stories on it you know, sometimes the data is taken outta context because Tesla’s reporting so many more crashes than everyone else. People assume that it’s the Tesla systems that are, that are always at fault in those crashes.

It’s not always the case. But we’ll go into what this person said. They say reporters see that we are reporting more in incidents, many of which have nothing to do with autopilot and have told the wrong story about our safety record. There is a healthy amount of frustration about that dynamic. The idea our bar for safety is lower, is just wrong.

Well, it’s not wrong. I mean, even if, even if you take away all of those. You know, reports about the, the, the magnitude of the numbers you’re reporting to government. You still have a significant chunk of the deaths and injuries that have been caused by level two technology. You know, this is, these are convenience systems.

Autopilot and full [00:38:00] self-driving have not been proven in any way to be safer than a decent human driver. And you’re telling us that you shouldn’t have to report these. Because the media is somehow misreporting things rather than saying, you know, we, none of these incidents are safety related, but a lot of them are.

So the fact that you’re, you’re claiming that, that, that the mass number of incidents that are reported is somehow a, a. Impediment to you being able to show the safety of your vehicles is incorrect. You know, if you weren’t selling these systems as more capable as they are, you weren’t promising things people, things like full self-driving hardware in vehicles, that doesn’t exist.

And then when these vehicles crash, you’re, you’re now telling us. That this shouldn’t be reported to the public is, is the ultimate gaslight, you know, you know, these are crashes that are happening on public roads, killing people and injuring [00:39:00] people, and we deserve explanations for those things. And you know, frankly, I do think.

Tesla’s bar for safety is lower. I think that their company is built on a model that moves far too fast in, in areas that involve public safety, and, and you need your wings clipped a little and having to report data on crashes is only the first step in that.

Anthony: Wow. Okay. I’m gonna say, Michael, you win this week’s gaslight. that was great. And we have a, a few articles related to this one from Scripps News where I’m gonna have a quote in here. Not me, but I’m gonna read a quote. I was driving, I dropped my phone and looked down and I ran a stop sign and hit the guy’s car. That’s a typical Tesla driver. They think, Hey, the car’s driving itself, I don’t have to pay attention. And that’s half user, half company PR marketing saying this stuff is safe. And that happens regularly. And further article from this one of the lawyers in this case says, these accidents [00:40:00] happen over and over and over again.

People aren’t using this technology correctly. They’re not trained, and they don’t understand it. I don’t know why they don’t understand it. Oh, that Elon guy probably. That’s why.

Fred Perkins: to mention that

Was killed in

Anthony: yeah,

Michael: Well, I mean.

Anthony: well we, we’ve had a lot of downbeat stuff on this, so if we wanna read the whole thing, I’m trying to, yes.

Michael: Well, I mean, the thing in that article that sends it to me, it’s talking about NHTSA’s current investigations into Tesla and you know, they, they interviewed transportation secretary Sean Duffy and I. And, and he was asked, you know, how independent are these investigations of Tesla going to be? And his response was 100%.

Our investigations are not going to have any impact from any outside forces coming into play. Elon Musk is not the secretary. President Trump gave me the nomination. I’m running the department, which are encouraging words, right?

Anthony: [00:41:00] my gaslight. Then Sean Duffy, he wins.

Michael: But you know, that’s, that’s, and and that’s not the first time he has made that statement. He, you know, he, he, he said in his nomination hearing that he was going to make decisions independent of Elon. And he, you know, it, it, it sounds like, you know, we don’t know what’s happening on, you know, on, on the lower level.

I mean, I think that the folks who remain in MIT’s Office of Defects investigation are doing. Their due diligence to the utmost extent that they can. I’m not sure how much they are going to be hindered by some of the political appointees that are coming in in the Trump administration. I’m not sure. You know, the fact that the standing general order is still.

Operating suggests that Elon doesn’t have quite as much power within the Department of Transportation as he’d like to have, because I don’t think there’s any question that if he was given the choice today, that that’s crash reporting would be eliminated. So maybe there’s something to this. [00:42:00] But you know, the proof is in the pudding.

If, you know Tesla vehicles continue operating, hitting emergency responders and motorcyclists and whatever else, they can’t. See with their substandard camera autonomy, then, you know, maybe Musk does have some more influence than we think. We just really don’t know what’s going on behind the curtain over there at the political level enough to be able to say one way or another, whether Duffy is, is playing straight with us here.

Anthony: I have a suggestion he’s not, but I just, you know, more cynicism than a suggestion. Keep going with Tesla.

Tesla’s Odometer Manipulation Allegations

Anthony: ’cause here’s an interesting one from the street.com. Tesla’s been accused of basically breaking the odometers in their cars. yeah. And this is fascinating. So there’s a lawsuit that was filed on February 7th.

Quoting from the article highlights that Tesla’s warranties on vehicles are capped by mileage and are supposed to cover repairs and [00:43:00] replacements necessary to correct defects in, in parts that it manufactures supplies. However, Tesla allegedly knowingly overstates the distance traveled in Tesla vehicles by manipulating odometers, allowing the company to dodge responsibilities. Tied to warranties. And so basically this guy bought a used model y and then he is like, I gotta take it to the repair shop all the time. And he’s saying his routine for driving is 20 miles per day, but the vehicle’s saying it’s 72.35 miles per day. And so going on there? I mean, are they, is, is it possible that Tesla’s that insane, that they’re gonna manipulate the odometer?

Michael: God insane is the right word because the federal odometer laws really don’t play around. I mean, they were passed way back in 1972. And basically they, they have both civil and criminal. Conditions then, so you can be charged, you can be [00:44:00] charged criminally for altering odometers, and that’s essentially what the allegation in this lawsuit is against Tesla, is that they are actively altering people’s odometers and, and even the word, I mean, something struck me as very odd in there, they said that, you know, they’re using some type of predictive technology to determine how far your car drives.

Like you don’t need it, you just need a.

Anthony: Right.

Michael: right? Anytime. I mean, so the federal odometer law basically says, you know, you cannot advertise for sale, sale, sell, use, install, or have installed a device that makes an odometer of a motor vehicle register mileage different from the mileage the vehicle is driven.

It sounds like that’s what Tesla’s doing on a widespread basis to some extent. They’re certainly violating any number of federal and state laws if in fact they are, you know, allowing the odometers in their vehicles to represent anything other than the [00:45:00] base truth of how far that vehicle’s traveled on the road.

Any, you, you, there’s no such thing as a predictive odometer. An odometer is a measurement device, right? So that’s a really, really odd and really concerning report.

Anthony: Yeah, it’s interesting ’cause this lawsuit comes after additional Tesla owners recently took to Reddit. So it must be true to flag inaccurate readings on their odometers. So it seems, yeah, like someone said their 16 mile drive to work was clocked as 21 miles. another one said they’ve owned a car for five months and I think it’s already done 6,000 miles already. This, so you’re saying this is federal end

Michael: I mean it.

Anthony: feds might be like, eh,

Michael: Yeah, some. I don’t know if every.

Anthony: but.

Michael: I don’t know if every single state has one. I know that they’re, they’re very a lot of states do, and there’s a federal requirement as well. It’s, it’s also super weird and it seems really stupid for an auto company to do this because, you know, some of the auto companies that have made their.

The greatest name for quality and long-term [00:46:00] reliability are folks like Toyota and Honda. And why on earth would you want to inflate the number of miles on? I mean, why would you buy a car where a manufacturer’s inflating the number of miles on the vehicle? Because it’s only going to drive down the resale price of those vehicles and make people less likely to buy your car.

You, you know what I mean? It, it just. Doesn’t make a lot of sense from my perspective. I mean, apparently Tesla’s using it as a way to avoid having to pay out on warranties, right? So if you’ve got a five year, I don’t know what Tesla’s warranties are. I would say it’s a five year, 50,000 mile warranty or whatever they’re apparently trying to add.

The allegation is they’re trying to add miles to the vehicle so that they no longer qualify for the free repairs under warranty. But ultimately, I mean, that would simply drive down. The, the price of vehicles that are then sold on to a second owner and, you know, in, in a way drive down the perception of your brand in the [00:47:00] public.

So it doesn’t make a lot of sense. Of course, it’s Tesla, so God only knows what they’re thinking.

Anthony: my gaslight again. It’s gonna be you. I’m, you’re the gaslight of the

Michael: Oh.

Anthony: as we’ve learned, Teslas are an appreciating asset. And with about doing the T of Fred, I assume. Good.

You’ve now entered the of.

Oh, Fred has muted himself.

Fred Perkins: An awful thing to say

Anthony: I don’t know how

Fred Perkins: had interest, interest in optics

Anthony: I.

Convex Mirrors and Safety Standards

Fred Perkins: concerning the legend that’s on the right hand mirror in the car that says objects in the mirror closer than they appear. So there’s a convex mirror on the right hand side of the car.

Michael. Is, is convex mirror required or is that merely in option?[00:48:00]

Michael: I don’t even know the answer to that.

Anthony: Safety

Michael: I can get back.

Anthony: don’t know the answer to? No.

Fred Perkins: Oh no.

Anthony: Oh, oh, Michael just left the, the podcast.

Fred Perkins: we’ll just go

Anthony: How did that happen?

Fred Perkins: a convex mirror is one that has a bulge in it. mirror is the one that you might use on your in your bathroom for getting a closer look at the zits on your nose or something. it in that case it converges the light rays that are coming into it and focuses them. The convex mirror has a bulge in it, so it does the opposite. It spreads out the light rays coming into them so that it has a wider field of view than a flat piece of glass. And that’s the objective of the design, to make sure that you have a good breadth of coverage in the right hand mirror so you can see people. You know, near your car and you can see people [00:49:00] far away from your car, and you can also see people on the sidewalk. So it I think it’s probably apparent to people who have used them that yes it does objects are closer than they appear, but that’s the design objective because they want to give you a wide range of view while still having an acceptable resolution of the objects so that when you’re making turns, for example you’ve got as good as possible awareness of objects that might be around you or, things that might be encroaching on your blind side as you make a turn. Is that.

Anthony: I never thought of it. It, it is just, it’s ’cause it’s convex. Huh? I just that so you get a wider field of view.

Fred Perkins: a

Anthony: knew?

Fred Perkins: convex mirror also embedded in the left hand side mirror. So you not only get the accurate view from the flat part, but you get a wider view to give you [00:50:00] better situational awareness, more objects in the more objects, in the field of view so that you can just have a better appreciation for what’s around you you turn left or as you turn right with your convex right hand mirror. Michael, we lost you. Did you have something you wanted to add here?

Anthony: Okay.

Michael: Yeah, I had, you know, you know, it’s one of the new, one of the, one of the problems with using new podcast software is that when you click over to take a quick look at Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standard one 11, and you do it inside of the browser window where the. Podcast is being recorded. It, it makes you leave the

Anthony: Mm.

Michael: So there is a federal standard that addresses convex mirrors. They’re not allowed on the driver’s side. They are allowed on the passenger side. but, and there, and there are certain requirements that, that are around that. But they’re, they’re, they’re not mandated by any

Anthony: All [00:51:00] right. Well, that’s good to know.

Michael: That’s, that’s Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standard one 11 for, for all the nerds out there who want to dig deep on that one.

Anthony: All right, and well nerd stuff. And let’s do some recalls.

Recall Roundup: Audi, Porsche, and Volkswagen

Anthony: First one we’re gonna start with this week. That’s the recall roundup intro. See listeners, this is a little too much. The sausage is made. Normally all this stuff is added in post-production, and I assume these guys listen to this show, but apparently they don’t.

So anyway.

Michael: That was just in, that was, that was in,

Anthony: Oh my, look, I don’t need your critics anyway. Volkswagen first one, 44,387 vehicles. The Audi A six the Audi SQ eight, the Audi, a bunch of other dumb names. This is the 2021 cars. The Audi we’re too lazy to come up with great names for cars, and it’s just pages and pages of [00:52:00] s’s and Rs and whatnot, but it’s all the same year, 2021.

And the vehicle’s virtual cockpit instrument cluster may shut down because of detection of an internal fault. Oh. When this occurs, the engine speed, vehicle gear and mode indicators will not be displayed. Oh. In addition to this other information such as time, date, and mileage are also not displayed.

That’s horrible. And that happened to an F1 driver this past weekend in the, the Grand Prix. They got him on the radio and said George, you may lose all display on your, on your steering wheel. And he’s like okay. What do I do? Like, ’cause that controls everything on those cars that are moving 200 miles per hour.

Michael, what’s going on here?

Michael: It looks like there’s some type of, you know, related damage that involves one of the cables. And, you know, I’m not sure exactly, there’s so many new names for things these days. I’m not sure what a virtual cockpit instrument cluster is. Shouldn’t it be an cockpit instrument cluster? [00:53:00] I want mine to be actual when I’m relying on it to dry safely.

But anyway. This is a damaged cable essentially, that causes the software to glitch. And it looks like the only fix here is not cable. You know, they’re not, are they, are they replacing the cable? look like it. They’re putting new software into your com, in, into your car. It looks like owners aren’t gonna be hearing about this till May 30th, so it’s gonna be another month and a half before you’re able to look for

Anthony: All right. Next Porsche would, isn’t Porsche also owned by Volkswagen, or is it’s Volkswagen,

Michael: Yeah, there’s a lot of

Anthony: huh?

Michael: Porsche, Audi,

Anthony: Hey, let’s not get ahead. Okay.

Michael: Audi, Volkswagen

Anthony: 2024 to 2025 Porsche Mic, icon Electric or Macan Electric blurry or missing camera images due to a software issue that has since been corrected. The rear view image may not display when the reverse Gear R is engaged.

This is more rear camera nonsense. Come on, people with your rear cameras. So you put your car in [00:54:00] reverse and it’s like, da, you can’t see anything. And apparently if you own a Porsche, you lack the strength to turn your head and look behind you. No, anybody.

Michael: There’s just a lot of problems with this one. You know, there’s, there’s, there’s bad bonding on the camera, housing, moisture, intrusion. They’re having to give you new software to resolve the wake up and system communication issues, and they’re replacing your reverse cameras and inspecting them, whether inspecting them and replacing ’em as necessary. To clear up any deficiencies there. So this just looks like a complete of of on on Porsche’s part to install working rear view cameras as required by Federal Motor Vehicle Safety

Anthony: Which number? I knew it ’cause we just did one 11 for the convex mayors. I’m on board. All right. Next Porsche. Porsche. Twice in one week. Oh my god. 9,735 vehicles. The 2022 to 2023 Porsche [00:55:00] Titan, which Fred drives the airbag. Activation deactivation in the front passenger seat can trigger a fail safe mode due to a manufacturing error, which deactivates the airbag in the front passenger seat.

This is handy if you’re driving with somebody you don’t like.

Michael: Yeah. And you know, this is further evidence of the Porsche, Audi, Volkswagen connection because the

Anthony: Oh,

Michael: which is an Audi recall, is the exact

Anthony: now it’s Volkswagen. Oh yeah, it’s Audi. Yeah.

Michael: Yeah, it it, there’s a crimp issue and basically that triggers a fail safe mode that turns off your passenger seat airbag and. You simply don’t have an airbag if you get into a crash if this is occurring. So there should be a warning lamp. Come on before this, if you see that you, you know that you probably shouldn’t be carrying passengers until you get this fixed and it doesn’t look like. are gonna be hearing about this one until June, so, you know, [00:56:00] almost two months from now. It looks like they’ve got parts ready to go though, so you shouldn’t have to wait too much longer, past June to

Anthony: But thank the tariffs. This will cost you $9,000. Ah,

Michael: Hey,

Fred Perkins: Hey.

Michael: are

Fred Perkins: Hey. I just, I just

Michael: don’t care what

Fred Perkins: wanna dip back

Anthony: alright. Last one is Michael. Yeah, yeah. Yeah.

Fred Perkins: is that when the cable is put together, there’s a metal end on it which holds the plug, if you will, that goes into the connector. when they crimp it, it just means they squeeze the metal so that it can hold onto the cable and become a, you know, a structural unit. So when they say they have crimp issues, basically they it too much probably and cause the insulation inside the, the connector degrade in some way or break. The other I item was the virtual cockpit instrument cluster. [00:57:00] And basically all that means is that you’ve got a a. Video screen in front of you, and they project certain instruments onto it, like the, you know, tachometer or speedometer or what have you. So they’re just talking about the way that the basic operational information for your car is projected onto the video screen that sits in front of the steering wheel. that’s all that that’s about. But the first one is particularly interesting because it illustrates one of the problems with which is that it’s uniquely associated with the manufacturing process for the electronics.

And if an AV has a similar problem, it will cease to operate. And this is one of the many safety issues associated with AVS that don’t really affect a conventional car because a conventional car has an actual live human being who can compensate. For this kind of failure, timing failures are one of the issues that [00:58:00] affect all computers, and this ultimately is a timing failure associated with bad manufacturing. So I, I just wanted to cycle that back into our concerns about the unique safety issues of and the analysis for AV safety has gotta go deeper than just saying, well, you know, it looks a lot like a human car, except better.

Anthony: Hmm. And Michael, you had a crimp issue back in the early nineties when you had a perm, right?

Michael: Yeah, and I had to get that straightened. It

Anthony: It did not. All right, so the last recall again is Volkswagen 2022. 2023 Audis Trons. It’s the same crimp issue. 3,700. Hear about that in June. And until then

Michael: Bye

Concluding Thoughts and Outro

Anthony: this is that part of the show. You guys can actually hear the outro music. And yeah, if you’d like to, and then you should, you should go to auto safety.org.[00:59:00]

Click on donate. You should click subscribe. Give five stars. Tell your friends, families, neighbors, people you don’t even like, people you really like, people. You kind of like,

Fred Perkins: issues persist, don’t they? They’re wonderful. What could possibly go wrong?

Anthony: bye. Okay. Hopefully this recorded.

Michael: Yeah. Hope so, because I’ve got a lot to do before three o’clock.