In this episode, Will Sabel Courtney and Tyler Duffy discuss Tesla: what forces propelled Tesla to its current status, what it’ll take for the company to remain a powerhouse in the future.
Tesla vs. other EVs, the Supercharger network, and a rant about April Fool's Jokes.
Mentioned in this episode:
Everything You Need to Know About the New Tesla Model S
Tesla’s Pickup Truck Is Here, and It’s More Insane Than We Ever Imagined
Tesla Has Strange Ideas about How to Shift, and Other News
Thinking About Buying an Electric Car? Here's What You Should Ask Yourself First
These Were the 10 Most Popular Used Cars in America in 2020
Gear Patrol's EV coverage, all in one place
Tesla Model 3 Vs. Amtrak's Acela Express: The Electric Future Acid Test
Would Tesla Be Better Off Without Elon Musk? Some Electric Vehicle Shoppers Think So
Headlines
VW Won’t Rebrand U.S. Unit as Voltswagen, Company Says
Lego bricks are terrible for the environment. These wooden alternatives biodegrade
Ship Is Freed After a Costly Lesson in the Vulnerabilities of Sea Trade
Kind Of Obsessed
Speaker 1:
This is The Gear Patrol Podcast. In this episode, Will Sabel Courtney and Tyler Duffy to discuss Tesla. What forces propelled Tesla to its current status, and what will it take for Tesla to remain a powerhouse well into the future? Thanks for joining us. I'm glad you're here. Let's get started.
Will Sabel Courtney:
I was about to do the Car Talk music, but somehow I did the Seinfeld music. I don't know how that tracks, but that's what it was, yeah. Wait, there's the Car Talk music.
Nick Caruso:
That was terrific. And are those, your sirens too? Is someone coming to arrest you for doing that?
Will Sabel Courtney:
Yes. Yes. Five one five oh, somebody called the Po-Po.
Nick Caruso:
I'm Nick Caruso and you're listening to The Gear Patrol Podcast, which you probably already knew. Every week I'll be here having conversations with a rotating roster of guests to talk about products and product culture. And joining me today is our two person motoring team, pardon me, Will Sabel Courtney, our motoring editor.
Will Sabel Courtney:
Nice to be here, Nick.
Nick Caruso:
Oh, it's good to have you. Are you in Brooklyn? Is that where you live now or did you move?
Will Sabel Courtney:
No, I'm in Manhattan.
Nick Caruso:
That's right. You moved to Manhattan. East village?
Will Sabel Courtney:
Murray Hill.
Nick Caruso:
Murray Hill, close. I've been to Manhattan. And also we have staff writer, Tyler Duffy calling in from Michigan. Hi Tyler.
Tyler Duffy:
Hi Nick. Hi everybody.
Nick Caruso:
Tyler, how's my home state doing today?
Tyler Duffy:
It's not raining or having an apocalyptic snow storm, so take what you can get in March.
Nick Caruso:
That's the place I love and remember. What are you guys driving right now? Are you testing anything? Will?
Will Sabel Courtney:
Right now I actually am going tomorrow to pick up the Mercedes AMG, G63 S station wagon, which has been face lifted for 2021.
Nick Caruso:
Tyler, are you driving something right now?
Tyler Duffy:
I just drove the Genesis GV80 for a week. It's all new, it's our first SUV. And then have the Hyundai Sonata online next week.
Nick Caruso:
We're here to talk Tesla. Have you guys spent time in Tesla's? Will, I assume you have, Tyler, I don't know about you.
Will Sabel Courtney:
I have not very much. I did a trip with the model 3 at my last job and I drove a 2013 model S back in 2013. But yeah, I mean, for the most part, as people may or may not know, Tesla has sort of a different relationship with the press than most other car companies do. They don't give their cars out to journalists quite as frequently for review, especially now since in the last year or so, they've completely gotten rid of their entire PR department. So I don't know how we would even get one if we want to. I guess we just have to tweet at Elon like everyone else.
Nick Caruso:
I was going to say, yeah, Elon has to DM you a car, I think is how it works. Tyler, what about you?
Tyler Duffy:
I have never driven one because they do not like us driving their cars as we've noted. I've been in the vicinity of them, never driven one.
Nick Caruso:
Yeah, I haven't either. I sat in a model X in the classic car club showroom. Let's kick this off. I want to sort of bisect our conversation today, if you will, into two halves, which is what that means. The two main umbrella questions I want to explore are what forces propelled Tesla to its current status, and what will it take for the company to sort of maintain that status or continue its upward momentum? Talk about disruption first. You guys heard of disruptors?
Will Sabel Courtney:
Yes, I believe they're on Romulan Star ships.
Nick Caruso:
Okay. Tesla became a giant before our very eyes in the last 15 years.
Will Sabel Courtney:
Not even, it's been, really, it's been less than 10, because their first big thing obviously was the model S. They had the Roadster before that, which was just basically, they took a Lotus and yanked out the gas engine and put in a bunch of batteries. The model S I think started around 2012, but the first versions were very small battery. Obviously beautiful and impressive and indicative of where the company was going, but it took them, I'd say at least a year or so to really get going. So I would say it's really only been since 2013 or even arguably since the model three came out, that they've truly become sort of the disruptive force that they are. Because before the model 3, the model S, the model X, these were top end luxury products, selling them for six figures a lot of times.
Nick Caruso:
The model 3 is the EV for the people, but disruptor is the term we want to focus on. People call Tesla a disruptor all the time and I want to kind of explore whether that's appropriate or whether it's kind of a misnomer. Companies like Amazon and Netflix and Uber, these are disruptors. They found a gap in the marketplace, something that didn't exist or needed to exist, which is kind of the same thing, and then filled it. Their products or services sort of took the old ways and made them obsolete. Blockbuster stores don't exist anymore because Netflix sent DVDs to people and now stream stuff. That's a disruptor. So, Will, I want to go to you first, or do you have more thoughts on Tesla sort of disruption factor?
Will Sabel Courtney:
I mean, to use my own sort of spin on the term, I think that Tesla was a disruptor culturally, if not technologically. I can't say that necessarily their ideas and their company will grow to swallow the entire marketplace the way Amazon necessarily did to everything, but I do think that it's culturally disrupted the way that we think of cars. Basically, before Tesla came around, before the model S, the model X, the model 3, electric cars, people thought of things like the GM EV1, or the Ford Focus Electric, these little teeny crummy electric compliance cars, basically, they were made for like Ed Begley Jr. types where they were for people who wanted to spend too much money to sort of wave their green flag credentials around.
Nick Caruso:
Sure.
Will Sabel Courtney:
Tesla made electric cars sexy. They made them cool. They made them futuristic. They sort of showed everyone how these things can actually be a product that people will want to have and can be considered sort of a lifestyle [foreign language 00:06:27] on a way that before maybe Porsche's or BMWs or other things like that had specifically been.
Nick Caruso:
Right. I agree with that. I think that Tesla is objectively not a capital D disruptor in the same sense that those others are, because EVs existed before, but they just drastically innovated the space. Tyler, what do you think about that? Disruptor? Not disruptor?
Tyler Duffy:
I lay towards not disruptor. I mean, I think the whole disruptor narrative is something that comes from the tech world, and I think if you look at the broad automotive space, it hasn't been disrupted. Top selling cars, Ford F-150, Chevy Silverado, Ram 1500, next hottest segment is probably three-year-old family SUV's, those are the most profitable cars in the industry. That's the engine that a lot of companies that's going to be funding and move to electric cars, that's where the industry is.
Nick Caruso:
Has Tesla raised all Suez canal ships in the EV world and elsewhere? Have they made internal combustion, traditional car companies sort of follow suit? What's the word there?
Will Sabel Courtney:
And they've sped it along. I think we'd all be here regardless. I think that Tesla certainly showed all of these much more conservative companies. I think that's perhaps the biggest thing that differentiates Tesla from other car companies. They're just a very aggressive non-conservative culture in an industry that is traditionally been very much dominated by conservative business practices. Tesla has just moved it along and shown people, "Yes, we can do this." There is room to make electric cars sexy and find new ways to sell them. There is room for an electric Hummer. There are ways that we can be making self-driving electric cars that can at least drive themselves on the highway. GM super Cruise technology is coming out on the Chevy Bolt. It's the revised Bolt. That's the first Chevy that's getting this semi-autonomous, mostly drives for itself on the highway, technology. I would say it's probably not a coincidence that the first Chevy getting it is an electric car, considering the Tesla, again, has been largely identified with things like autopilot and stuff like that.
Nick Caruso:
Tyler, what do you think?
Tyler Duffy:
There's sort of a, I think it's a chicken or the egg, is it Tesla's innovation that has moved the entire market to try to compete with them? And I think you could probably make a case if you're Mercedes or Porsche or one of those companies that's selling a luxury sort of performance car. Yeah, that did, but it's also, the last 10 years we've become a lot more aware of what's going on with global warming. Countries like Britain and States like California and stuff are moving toward passing legislation or debating legislation to move forward, eliminating combustion cars, so it's sort of a question of would we be here anyway without Tesla? As Will said, probably, but maybe not as far along.
Nick Caruso:
What accelerated or supercharged, if we're going to use some Tesla terminology, that sort of path for Tesla?
Will Sabel Courtney:
I think part of it is that they have an exceptional ability to control the media narrative that no other car company does. It's partly by the virtue of the fact that they are a Silicon Valley, quasi tech company at a time in society where being a Silicon Valley tech company means you have an inordinate amount of attention placed on you in power. Part of it is just being innovative in the field and making cool products that people want to buy, and part of it is also just having Elon Musk in charge, who obviously is an extraordinarily outsized personality who is not afraid to make a stink, and clearly seems to come from the realm of "all publicity is good publicity" kind of. I think all those factors play together into sort of putting Tesla where it is right now.
Nick Caruso:
Tyler, what do you think? Is it Elon? Is it the media narrative? What is propelling Tesla?
Tyler Duffy:
I think on a very basic level, it's just being cool. If you look at sort of other electric vehicle companies, something like the Nissan Leaf, where if you're into reducing your carbon footprint, it's great, but these cars are objectively seen as something aspirational and something cool and sexy and fun, and then that sort of led to just branding that's extremely powerful.
Nick Caruso:
Right, they're not dorky, but they are nerdy in a way. It's like the early adopter nerdy tech thing.
Tyler Duffy:
But nerds are cool now.
Nick Caruso:
Yeah, but nerds are cool now. That's exactly it. How are companies doing in terms of catching up? You've both mentioned a bunch of electric cars and brands who are pursuing electric cars, but how are they actually doing?
Will Sabel Courtney:
I'd say they're doing fairly well. Again, the basic technology that Tesla has, there's no miracle product they have, or something like that, that no one else can touch it. They're using the Li-ion on batteries, they're using electric motors, they're using the same basic pieces as everyone else. I think ultimately the biggest issue is not necessarily matching their levels of development, it's more all of the other infrastructure and sort of investments that goes into it. To make a car factory is ridiculously expensive. To develop a new car is ridiculously expensive. We're talking on the scale of billions of dollars here. It's not something that they're going to do lightly. Obviously they're working on it now, I'd say we're probably three to five years away from where people would be, realistically, considering Tesla as just sort of one of the many options.
Will Sabel Courtney:
The cars are there. We have cars like the Porsche Taycan, we have the VW ID.4, we have the Mustang Mach-e, we have these cars that are now comparable in many ways to the products that Tesla is putting out and arguably in a lot of cases, better built with different styling, things like that. The biggest thing I would say holding it back now is honestly just the infrastructure in terms of charging. I think there's a lot of people who are still just not confident in the idea that they can't just sort of drive wherever they want to, you basically have to file a flight plan anytime you want to drive more than a hundred miles away from your house.
Nick Caruso:
So that's a big hurdle. Tyler, what do you think?
Tyler Duffy:
I agree with all that. I think manufacturers are doing a pretty decent job of catching up. I think, again, about the infrastructure, GM already has it and Porsche and all these companies have a very set way of building cars, whereas Tesla can come in and start from the ground up, orient themselves as an electric car company, GM, Ford, all these companies have very set ways of building the cars. I think the established companies have been a little bit hamstrung by that. You've had companies like BMW trying to make a modular system where it fits the combustion car, it fits a hybrid engine, it fits an electric engine, and you're sort of limited by what you can do that will accommodate all three of those things.
Tyler Duffy:
And I think the next few years we're going to see Honda and Kia starting to release their own, and Volkswagen are starting to release vehicles on their own electric platforms, and I think that's when we're going to see companies sort of really kind of take it to Tesla on multiple levels, whether it's building better cars or building cheaper cars, or sort of doing what these companies do well. Now with combustion cars, I think we're going to see sort of a flowering of that, their sort of strengths moving into the electric market.
Nick Caruso:
So in a way, Tesla has not been hampered by its own preexisting infrastructure because there wasn't any.
Will Sabel Courtney:
And that's something I think it's been... It's true in a lot of levels. I had that thought actually a couple of years ago, the first time I drove the model 3. It was for a story I was doing, which was, basically, I was racing the Amtrak Acela from New York to Boston, because in theory it should take around the same amount of time. In an ideal world, it seems like the bullet train should be faster, but in reality, the Tesla got there, I got there 25 minutes earlier, in part because people in Massachusetts drive very quickly, but also in part just because basically Amtrak is another one of those things where it's like, it's a legacy system that's burdened down by existing infrastructure. The Amtrak Acela can do 160 miles an hour and it does for a 15 mile stretch, but it is running on common tracks that were laid down on a route 150 years ago in some places. When the Acela goes from Washington to Baltimore, it goes through a tunnel that was made during the civil war.
Nick Caruso:
Really? I didn't know that.
Will Sabel Courtney:
Yeah. All that legacy weight slows down development of the future, obviously. But at the same time, it also teaches you to sort of be responsible and conservative in ways that obviously in a sort of a Silicon Valley move fast and break things culture doesn't.
Nick Caruso:
Along those lines, I don't mean to derail your train conversation, but Elon bears some attention in this conversation. How much of Tesla is Elon Musk and how much of Tesla is just pure fanaticism?
Will Sabel Courtney:
I think there's a fair amount of it there, but I think it's also a case of, as with a lot of brands and things nowadays, of sort of a vocal minority being amplified by the internet. I think that obviously there are a lot of people who really love Tesla and things like that, but I think a lot of them also just love it for a lot of reasons. There was actually a study, I was just pulling up right now, they interviewed a bunch of Tesla owners, owners of other EVs, and people who are just driving cars that aren't electric cars to ask them questions about Tesla and stuff like that, and everybody, Tesla owners, not Tesla owners, everyone, the reasons they liked the cars were sort of the usual reasons. It was things like they liked the way they looked.
Will Sabel Courtney:
They liked the performance. They liked the fact that they're new. They liked the fact that they have good battery range. Most of them did not necessarily have strong feelings about Elon, or if they did, a lot of them were just like, "you know what? We don't like the guy." I'm pulling it out right now. It said, "26% of Tesla owners say that Musk detracts from the brand, and a majority of non-owners viewed him as a negative."
Nick Caruso:
Basically these are car lovers.
Will Sabel Courtney:
Yeah, if you're a Tesla owner, you love cars. Maybe you just love a more specific type of car than a lot of people, but it's, at the end of the day, not so dissimilar from being a Porsche fan or a BMW guy or girl or gal.
Nick Caruso:
What about other factors that have sort of weighed on Tesla? I think they've kind of survived a lot of controversy and a lot of sorts of issues, growing pains we could call them, generously. Tyler, do you want to start with this? There've been quality issues, there have been, Will actually mentioned earlier today, kind of lying to consumers. What are your thoughts?
Tyler Duffy:
I mean, yeah, definitely. I mean, I think part of the, as we talked about before, GM has a very deliberate way of building cars, but when you buy a GM car, the bumper doesn't fall off when it starts raining. Tesla, really with it, I think it was really with the push to the model 3 where you heard just a myriad of complaints about product quality, paint jobs not being correct. There was a thing where they were having a lot of break-ins because the security system didn't cover one window on the rear. Mid production, they decided to reduce the number of welds on the, I think it was the model 3 where they did that. I mean, just all these things where traditional car company behavior would have been a good thing to sort of step in there and sort of regularize a lot of this stuff, and Tesla had more of a tech company take on it.
Nick Caruso:
Will, what about you? You brought up some great points about timeliness of products, promises that were broken, shareholders, et cetera, et cetera. What do you want to weigh in with?
Will Sabel Courtney:
It's something that I find problematic just as, I suppose, to a certain degree as a human being. When you have a company that sort of massages the truth on such an almost political level, in terms of things with product announcements and stuff like that. Tyler and I have talked about this many times before, but the full self-driving thing that Elon Musk has been promising this is around the corner, literally saying it's coming next year, every year since 2017. Which an empty promise would be an empty promise, it's not that big of a deal, but the fact is also that since at least a couple of years ago, Tesla has been charging people for the availability to buy it in advance. And they say, "we'll flip it on whenever it's ready, but pay now. Spend the $7,000 on it now, and you won't have to spend $10,000 to do an after the fact upgrade when it finally comes out. We swear it'll be out next year. You're going to want to do this."
Will Sabel Courtney:
At what point does it stop just being misleading and start to smell like a scam? I'm not saying, for the record, all of Tesla is a scam, far from it obviously. A lot of their cars, their cars are excellent, especially once they get past their production hump, Elon Musk himself said, he's like, part of the problem with the model 3 and that whole rollout that Tyler was talking about, it was like they were going through production hell as he called it. And he's like, "I would not buy a Tesla made during a production increase."
Nick Caruso:
One thing that Tesla did, not to circle back to far, to Hyperloop all the way back to the beginning, but in terms of disruption, Tesla did disrupt some parts of the automotive space in terms of dealer networks not really existing anymore. You have to buy a Tesla online. These are some things they did wrong, but what are the things that they're completely getting right?
Tyler Duffy:
Yeah, I mean, I think the sort of online, it's a little hard for me to say here in Michigan, because I believe Tesla is still not allowed to... There's something where they can't get delivered or repaired in Michigan because there're laws about protecting the dealers. The supercharger network has just been a huge, I think that was a huge win just because charging, besides cost, is the main point of uncertainty with the EV ownership, so the fact that there's a Tesla network and you know if you take a major highway, there's going to be one there and there's probably going to be one somewhere near you, I think that's a huge advantage over the other manufacturers that do not have anything close to that.
Nick Caruso:
Will, what are your thoughts? What are they getting right?
Will Sabel Courtney:
The supercharger network, I think, is their ace in the hole. And a lot of other things I think they've done really well is they pioneered a of just sort of making it seamless, which, a lot of that just sort of like, it just works sort of thing, like what Apple always had. It's things like I've had to deal with electric cars at the other charging networks, and it's a [inaudible 00:20:59]. You get there, you have to scan your QR code or hold your NFC reading phone up to it and hope that it reads it, and you got to plug it in, and then when you're trying to unplug it, you have to go in and unlock it in your phone because it's just janky. Whereas with a Tesla supercharger, you just pull up to it, grab the little handle off the charger, walk over to the car and plug it in. The car knows it's coming and opens the fuel socket door. It's things like that.
Nick Caruso:
It's super cool.
Will Sabel Courtney:
Yeah. It's the little things where they're just like, "we understand, we want this to be seamless." Also, things like in terms of the over the updates, they really pioneered that with cars, which I think, obviously sometimes it's worked better than others, but the fact that you can be constantly improving your car in practical ways. Some of these software updates unlock more battery capacity. They can make the cars faster. They add things like sensory mode or dog mode or fart sounds. These are things that people will notice and appreciate, not just firmware update X3829 to keep people from hacking into your car.
Nick Caruso:
What are the weird things that Tesla gets wrong?
Will Sabel Courtney:
The Yoke steering wheel is definitely one of those instances where it feels like Tesla just decided to do something because it seemed cool, and rather than just do it as, "this is a concept car, maybe we'll do it. We're having fun," they just pretend or act or presume it will be a real thing. I think my bigger concerns would be things like, for example, with the new model S where they're getting rid of the shifter, where they're replacing it with, they're claiming it's either going to be you can use the toggle wheel on the steering wheel to change gears or you can use sort of the touch pad, but supposedly it's just supposed to know which way you want to go and put the car into forward or reverse or neutral, which just seems, anyone who's driven for more than five minutes seems like they'd be able to out with this thing.
Will Sabel Courtney:
The other example I would say is something like the design of the cyber truck, right? They brought up the cyber truck, everyone was like, "Holy cow, this thing's the coolest freaking truck we've ever seen, blah, blah, blah," and they're like, "It's coming, it's going to look like this, it's guaranteed." And then people are like, "by the way, this thing would not meet federal pedestrian crash standards." This car would never pass muster with the government, so how can you promise to roll this thing out when it would literally be illegal?
Nick Caruso:
That's controlling the narrative, I think, in a lot of ways. Tyler, what about you? Anything come to mind that we haven't covered yet?
Tyler Duffy:
Rivian, they launched with an adventure branding, which is the hottest thing in the automotive industry right now. Their first two cars are going to be a full-size pickup and a three-year-old family SUV, which are the most profitable vehicles. And their platform, they're also using it to make delivery vans, which the government's going to need a lot of, in addition to Amazon, that's going to be one of the hugest growth markets for EVs, and then you look at Tesla is doing things like the cyber truck. Elon Musk saying that the Roadster, that's still probably a few years away, is going to have rockets to make it levitate, I mean.
Will Sabel Courtney:
To sort of jump off of what Tyler's saying, absolutely, and I think the fact that Tesla winds up having to cater so much to Elon Musk's whims is not something that is long-term sustainable for the brand. I think a lot of people like to compare Elon Musk to Steve Jobs, for example. Powerful visionary who's sort of determining so much of the product and stuff like that, but Steve jobs wouldn't go out and change the price of the iPod on a whim six times a year just because he thought it'd be funny to make it be a drug reference.
Will Sabel Courtney:
There's certainly room, and a lot of innovation involves having a powerful dynamic personality, especially at a company like this, I think that's why you have people like Steve Jobs who are so successful, but they also have to know enough to realize there are times you just shouldn't be going and doing this. Steve Jobs, once the product was out, he would wait for the next year to bring out the better one. It wouldn't just be like, we're going to casually throw out new ones all the time and make the old ones obsolete. We aren't going to suddenly add in features or subtract features or say things that are utterly untrue.
Nick Caruso:
Yeah. It's a wacky car company who knows what they'll do next versus something that's a little more linear. Basically what we're saying, the forces that propelled Tesla to where it is now, to what it is now, are that it is semi disruptive, at least culturally disruptive, and super innovative. It's novel, sexy, it made nerdery cool or rode the cool nerd train. Despite many downsides, most of which we've maybe covered, they've survived because they make a cool product. They make a good product.
Will Sabel Courtney:
Yeah. And at the end of the day, that can carry you a very long way.
Nick Caruso:
What does Tesla have to do to maintain its current velocity or at least stick around as a leader in this segment?
Tyler Duffy:
How you grow as an automaker, it's having a good read on the market where I'm not sure that Tesla, if you're projecting things 10 years forward, really has that. All these other manufacturers are exploring using LIDAR for autonomous driving or they're looking at solid state batteries, they're doing even faster fast charging. I've struggled to see what Tesla's plan is moving forward, when you could have looked pretty clearly and seeing that fleet vehicles and government purchases were going to be a huge market and Tesla really doesn't seem to have a plan for that at all.
Nick Caruso:
What about you, Will? What do you think about Tesla's future?
Will Sabel Courtney:
First of all, I think you have to sort of separate the idea of whatever the heck is going on with the Tesla stock price, because that's just so overinflated and hard to understand. I think that Tesla, its stock is priced as though it's going to become the monopoly on new cars in the world, which obviously it's not going to be. It's not going to subsume every other car maker and become the only choice in automobiles. I think that for Tesla to succeed in the near future and going forward, I think they sort of have to become a little bit more like a traditional car maker. If you're going to keep growing, they obviously, there's a reason why most big car companies have a lot of different vehicle lines, it's because people want different things out of cars. I think, going back to the sort of Elon Musk and Steve Jobs, I think there has to be a certain point where it has to go to whatever the Tesla equivalent of the Tim Cook era is.
Will Sabel Courtney:
You're going to have to get to a point where it's not so much about-
Nick Caruso:
Sustained.
Will Sabel Courtney:
Yes, we've now reached the point where we have created these products that are immensely successful and we have our target lines, and we'll work on other things around the edges and sort of try and slowly integrate new things, but just understand that not everything has to be a big innovation. You have your core products and just deliver on your core competencies, make them better, give people a little bit more what they want and lock them into that sort of ecosystem and build it off of that.
Nick Caruso:
Good wrap up for our Tesla deck. There's obviously a lot more to discuss along those lines and maybe we will have to revisit this with a part two in the future, but we want to move on and cover a few headlines in the product world. The first is something we alluded to earlier, and it is Voltswagen. The brief history here is that Volkswagen released a press release and changed their entire website to reflect this alleged rebranding to Voltswagen, with a T, to reflect their move into the electric vehicle space. And then it came out yesterday that this was just an April fool's joke. Today, when this episode comes out, is April fool's day and I want your thoughts on Voltswagen specifically, and if you have any sort of further opinions on corporate April fools jokes in general.
Will Sabel Courtney:
Well, I think, Tyler, you actually had a good note the other day, you mentioned something just like the basic ground rules there should be for corporate April fools releases.
Nick Caruso:
Yeah.
Tyler Duffy:
Yeah. I mean, I think the big thing is April fool's day is one day. It started becoming like July 4th fireworks where it's a free for all the entire month of July, so you have Volkswagen sending out an official press release that says this crazy name change, but then you have wire services asking Volkswagen specifically, and then them confirming that the name change is happening. It's just, it's maddening. I think Voltswagen, you could see a cool marketing campaign being built about it, they have commercials like Volkswagen and the other showing off the ID.4, that's totally fine.
Nick Caruso:
Yeah. Will, any additional thoughts?
Will Sabel Courtney:
Yeah, I think there's always... Look, I'm somebody who really appreciates a good corporate April fool's joke. I think that when it's done right, if it can get me, I'm very appreciative of it. And I think that this, had they actually released it on April 1st would have been a very good one because it was just believable enough. You're like, "I could see them doing that," stranger things have happened. But I think the fact that the whole rollout was just botched, it makes it much harder to sort of play this off as just a, "ha ha, it was just a joke." I think it was a good idea that was just poorly handled.
Nick Caruso:
Yeah, I agree with you both. The one day container seems like a really good idea. It's almost like who has the best float at the parade rather than mayhem. Second headline is Lego bricks are terrible for the environment, these wooden alternatives biodegrade. Mokulock blocks are made out of sustainably sourced wood instead of plastic, which is terrible for the environment. The company says it sources the material from trees that are typically cut for forest thinning and thus they're too small to use in architectural furniture design, so leftover wood. The blocks are free of harsh treatments like finishers, paint or glue. So what are your individual relationships with Lego and what are your thoughts on converting to eco-conscious alternatives? Will, let's start with you this time.
Will Sabel Courtney:
I played with Legos a lot as a kid, I wasn't quite at the level of a Lego maniac. As an adult now, I got a cool little Lego New York City skyline set for Christmas and it's like, "this is super cool," but I'm also like, this is 500 pieces and I'm worried my cat's going to eat one of them. I think it's a cool idea, obviously I need to see it and play with it in order to see how well it works, but I feel like my first thought was sort of a, it was a riff on one of those old jokes from Archer. My first thought was like, "is that how you get termites, Berry? Yes, it is other Berry. Yes, it is."
Nick Caruso:
Tyler, what about you? You have kids, so.
Tyler Duffy:
Yeah, I have a three-year-old son who has been the only grandchild for both sets of grandparents, so the amount of toys in my house is just, my house is just covered. They're all plastic, and not recyclable plastic. Just an astounding amount of plastic. So I'm generally supportive of anything that biodegrades or, I mean, they're probably going to get thrown out and sit in the landfill for eons. Totally supportive of anything sustainable in relationship to toys because it's just a complete nuisance.
Nick Caruso:
Third and last headline verbatim is, "Ship is freed after a costly lesson in the vulnerabilities of sea trade," Suez gate. The quote from the article is, "for nearly a week, billions of dollars worth of international commerce set paralyzed at either end of the Suez canal, a single giant container ship called the Ever Given, ran aground on both sides of the canal." Talk about a disrupter, am I right? So what does this tell us, A about fragility of supply chains, and B about the dangers of bad drivers?
Will Sabel Courtney:
I'm honestly just kind of amazed that this hasn't happened before, considering the amount of traffic to the area. I was reading something about it and they were talking about, it's not like it's not windy along that stretch of the Suez all the time. I think globalization and global trade has obviously enabled so many amazing things in terms of the products that we now have such easy access to, but it is one of those things where every now and again, you need something to sort of make you realize just how actually fragile this is. Like any ecosystem, it may seem very indestructible while you're in it and everything's running fine, but one little thing gets plugged up, be it a Suez canal or a blob of fat in your arteries, and all of a sudden everything seems... You're much more appreciative of the way that everything is when it works well.
Nick Caruso:
Right. The invisible machine. Tyler?
Tyler Duffy:
Yeah, I mean, I think it's sort of an important reminder. People wonder, why is America and all of these places around the world, why are we allied with Egypt's military? Well, the Suez is the most important waterway in the world. The entire trade between Europe and Asia and the Middle East has a lot of oil, all of that goes through that one little canal, and that's why we're there. That's just a reminder sort of how connected we are, how fragile things are. Supply chains were already really stressed before this. Nick, one of our mutual friends, Mike, ordered a laptop last July, and it's still not here yet.
Nick Caruso:
Throw a clogged artery into the mix and all bets are off. The last segment we want to talk about here is called Kind of Obsessed. Our guests share a product they're currently obsessing over, whether it's new to them or on their wishlist or they're testing something for work. So I hope I didn't blow up your spot earlier when I asked what you're driving right now, but Will, why don't we start with you. What are you kind of obsessed with?
Will Sabel Courtney:
Well, I am actually right now kind of obsessed with a car that I have not driven yet, no one has. It's the Cadillac CT5-V Blackwing which is a very awkward name, but it is, in effect, the fourth generation of the much loved the CTSV, so it is Cadillac's highest performance sedan ever. A mid-sized sedan that will have a 668 horsepower, a supercharged V8, and an available six speed manual transmission. It's basically the last call for gas powered Cadillacs, as GM has said, they're going all in on EVs starting four years or so. It is also just going to be the most stupendously delicious car, I think, of the year perhaps. It's going to be on the top 10 list for sure.
Nick Caruso:
Price and when it comes out?
Will Sabel Courtney:
Yeah, it starts at about $90,000 and it should be out this summer.
Nick Caruso:
Tyler, how about you? What are you obsessed with?
Tyler Duffy:
Well, you did kind of get me with the first question, but I was going to say the Genesis GV80 I had. It's not a car that I would normally like, I don't like crossovers very much compared to normal cars. It's flashy, it's got a big, giant grill, which is something I normally don't really like either, but I think this car, the GV80 is just profoundly well executed. It's smooth, it's comfortable, it's insanely luxurious inside. It follows along with the Kia Telluride and a lot of, sort of the Honda, Kia Genesis product range where they're sort of the 65% of the performance band that you actually use in normal driving, this car just absolutely excels at that. Just a profoundly nice, comfortable car and it's going to be a little less expensive than the alternatives from Mercedes or BMW, and I just really adore it.
Nick Caruso:
And how much, and that's out now, is that correct?
Tyler Duffy:
It is out now. Tiger Woods just crashed in one.
Nick Caruso:
That's right.
Tyler Duffy:
But it starts about 50 grand for the 2.5 liter, which is what I just drove.
Nick Caruso:
Super. Yeah. Be careful behind the wheel of one, but enjoy yourself. That is it for this episode of The Gear Patrol Podcast. Listeners, everything we talked about today will be linked in the show notes and on gearpatrol.com, which you should be visiting regularly, so make sure you're subscribed on your podcast service of choice so that you don't miss a weekly episode. And while you're at it, we would of course really appreciate you rating the podcast, five star reviews, especially help more people find us and get more people into the conversation. So leave us a review, tell us what you think and what you want to hear more of, and if you are kind of obsessed with a product and want to tell us about it, email me at podcast@gearpatrol.com and you'll have a chance to be mentioned on the show. Will and Tyler, thank you again.
Will Sabel Courtney:
Thank you very much, Nick.
Tyler Duffy:
Thanks, Nick.
Nick Caruso:
Yep. I like to use that moment so that guests kiss the ring. And to our listeners, thanks for joining us. I hope you're well, and until next time, take care.
Nick Caruso:
Will, do you want to do the outro music like you-