The Impact of Rushing Products to Market 266

Swell AI Transcript: Everywhichwaybut.mp3

SPEAKER_01 I've got some good news for everybody this week. You don't have to listen to me drone on for a half hour all alone. Our elusive co-host has re-emerged.

SPEAKER_00 So, you wanna talk about cars, Ferrari? CRX, and even down to your great-granddad Spearless. Welcome to No Driving Laws, the Car Talk Authority, where experience, knowledge, and controversy share the same seat. Enjoy the ride. Now your hosts, John and

SPEAKER_01 Welcome to the show, Mr. Derek Moore.

SPEAKER_02 Hey, I lifted the rock I've been living under and decided to come back to the real world.

you live the world driving a: 1920

SPEAKER_02 Yeah, yeah, exactly. Those trips to Michigan and Georgia take a lot longer going 35 mile an hour than those modern fancy cars we have that can go really fast.

SPEAKER_01 So you drive by those superchargers and you see that Tesla there and then it goes blowing by you and then you go see the next supercharger and that Tesla is there and it goes blowing by you.

SPEAKER_02 Yeah, yeah. And then we get where we're going at the same time. It's great.

SPEAKER_01 Oh, it's not quite like a good old David's trip a few years ago when he raced his Model T against that Tesla, but it's… Yeah, yeah. I still find that trip he took so ironic that he would have won it, except he had a generator failure. So the reason he lost it was because of electricity.

SPEAKER_02 Yeah. But the, but the, and I think we've talked about on the show, you know what, we need to just get Dave on the show one of these days just to talk about that. I wonder when the anniversary of that trip is. We should do an anniversary show and have him on.

SPEAKER_01 I can look that up. But my problem with Dave is my podcast consultant that I use, he always talks about his dream interview. And he's he's huge on audio quality. He won't interview unless you have a proper studio microphone. Everything has to be perfect. He doesn't worry about video, but your audio needs to be perfect. He won't do a phone interview with you. He won't do anything. But he said, if I ever could get an interview with Dolly Parton and she showed up with two tin cans and a string, I'd interview her. And ironically, he's going to interview Dolly Parton this coming week, and it doesn't sound like he's going to have to use two tin cans and a string. However, I think if we interviewed David, we might have to use two tin cans and a string.

SPEAKER_02 Yeah, that's the only way he works. I actually have a read.

SPEAKER_01 He might do a telegraph.

SPEAKER_02 Yes. Yeah. Well, I actually have a red tin can on my desk and it's a direct line to Dave. So, um, but no, I think it would be interesting just to hear, you know, maybe on an anniversary about that story and especially where we are with EVs in the world now that, you know, I think we, when we've talked about it in the past on the show, Theoretically, technically, whatever you want to call it, the Model T actually won the race if you go by time distance traveled versus just who showed up first. The Model T actually did the distance it had to go in a quicker time than the Tesla actually did. We could get into all that and have, we could probably have everybody that was involved on the show and have a great debate and discussion.

st,: 2014

SPEAKER_02 Shoot. That was my birthday.

Dave raised his, his: 1914

SPEAKER_02 Well, no, it didn't go through Illinois, so I try to avoid that state at all costs.

SPEAKER_01 Illinois is not bad. The state of Chicago is horrible.

SPEAKER_02 No, Old Car Festival was a good show yet again. Had a great time. Have to apologize to our listeners because, of course, the show we released coming right on the heels of Old Car Festival, I talked about hopefully getting some video posted and possibly doing some live interviews or at least live streams from there. That weekend, I made it to the show, but the weekend fell apart with some COVID ripping through our family and splitting the family into two divisions of part of the family staying home, part of the family going to old car, and just not being able to balance the life-family-work-fun balance to be able to get those videos out. So I do apologize to all our listeners that we're hoping to see that. We'll try again next year, but.

doing this show since June of: 2017

SPEAKER_02 I always think I'm going to get to do it. I'm going to get to do it. And then I get there and I am just so busy that entire weekend. It's ridiculous. I'm pulled five different ways. I'm on the narrating stand, um, for about half a day on Saturday and it's just insanity. So.

SPEAKER_01 And, and I brought you hundreds, if not thousands of dollars in equipment to, to help you with that venture.

SPEAKER_02 Let's not talk about it, John. Oh, wait, that's what we do on podcasts. But no, it was a good time. It was a lot of travel, a lot of running around, was able to actually roll in part of my day job into it as well. Like I say, it was just a lot of running around and then got back and obviously had a lot of work to do from being gone for a few days and then rolled into having to take a trip down to Georgia this past week and talk at the Savoy Automobile Museum. About the history of tatra a checkless walk in bill automobile one of their very important employees i guess you'd say executives, hans ladbinka who if our listeners don't know who hans ladbinka is many in the automotive history world do you but if you don't highly encourage looking at hans ladbinka the automotive world would be. Much further behind in development had Hans Ladvinka not been part of Tatra. So it's been a whirlwind, John.

SPEAKER_01 Hey, what did you think of the Savoy? I'm curious. I want to stop by. I drive by it every time we go to the cabin. Just haven't stopped. Did you think highly of it?

SPEAKER_02 I've been to the Savoy a few times now, giving talks and all that. I know the team there very well. It's a fantastic place. It's top-notch. What the team there is doing and what their the benefactor of not only the Savoy, but also the Booth Western Art Museum and Telescience Museum and the History Museum. What what they're trying to do there in cartersville georgia is amazing with the the museums there establishing and and yeah really the the. Cultural history that they're trying to present is absolutely fantastic and the savoy is as i say it's it's top notch they do. I'm i'm amazed as a curator that puts exhibits together yo tries to do you know in depth stories and narratives that really really shine a light on the artifacts how often they rotate their exhibits out and bring new exhibits in a new stories it's absolutely amazing their team there is is top notch and just as a great job actually right now they have an exhibit called forged by fuller. And it's a number of brian fuller's creations on exhibit and it talks a little bit about brian and his history and why he does what he does there's always a little bit of something for everybody cuz. From the the forge by fuller exhibit that's there you walk out and the next kind of central gallery the big main gallery that runs down the middle of the building is it right now it's all about trucks. And so there's really great historic trucks in there, everything from an international high wheeler, 19, I think it was nine or 10, you know, all the way up to modern truck. They have an exhibit on what they call factory drag cars. So mostly obviously from the muscle car era. And then, of course, the best exhibit that's there right now. is Tatra Evolution, and it's five of the most beautiful Tatras you will ever see on loan from the Lane Motor Museum.

SPEAKER_01 Like I say, I drive by it. The building itself is stunning, and it's kind of in the pasture or opening. I mean, there are not a lot of development around it, so it just It just grabs you as you're pulling up to it. I was gonna say, I knew Fuller had his exhibit there right now. We interviewed Brian Fuller back on episode 134, Doubling Down with Brian Fuller. That episode's actually on YouTube also. Thought about reaching back out to Brian to talk to him about that exhibit. The other cool, I guess, tie-in to Fuller that I just saw the press release about. Back on episode 228, we had Courtney Hanson on talking about the ride of your life, the Royal Garage. Our former co-host, Will Posey, hoping to get on the show in the next couple of weeks, talk about some of his side work. He was the designer and that on season two of Royal Garage. And Fuller is now the designer and builder for season three of Royal Garage. But no, Fuller's a great guy. That place is always changing that core exhibit. And they've had some pretty radical ones. And they're very tied to the local community, too, as you were, I guess, alluding to. Because prior to Fuller, I believe that exhibit was all local collectible vehicles.

SPEAKER_02 Yes. Yeah, they did one that was on. Yep.

SPEAKER_01 And one of these times when I'm driving or we're driving out to the mountains of North Carolina to spend the weekend or so at the cabin, we'll swing by the Savoy and check that out. We have kind of been pulled in a few different directions here, Derek. And it's kind of what our topic was going to be about, is discussing a little bit of the auto manufacturers. And there's been some interesting news happenings with recalls and problems. And we're not going to dive deep into the problems in these recalls. We're not going to touch on them. But our automobile manufacturers, being pulled in too many different directions. Jim Farley of Ford has basically said he runs three different companies. He runs a car company with internal combustion engines. He runs a development company for electric vehicles. introducing a totally new market. And he runs a software company with all of the software subscription tools that Ford has available to pro customers that might eventually trickle down to even everyday consumers just because of the way the vehicles can be managed and stuff through subscriptions. And when I say subscriptions, we're not talking heated seats. We're not talking about pay for your keyless entry to work. He actually understands automobile subscriptions. Now, I've went on record and I'll still stay on record. I don't mind the idea of paying for my heated seats and things. I kind of like the concept. But Jim Farley's thoughts on subscriptions are perfect and nobody will disagree with him because of what he's offering. And everything you buy on your vehicle, you won't. You don't have to pay to use it. Derek you were alluding to some issues maybe or how would you would you like to open that conversation a little bit since I already opened it with the Ford.

SPEAKER_02 Having some conversations on these travels I've been doing over the last couple of weeks, and there seemed to be a consistent theme within some of those conversations about when we were talking about new cars, modern cars, and what's going on in the industry. Of course, the push over to EV is a big topic right now in news, and the people that want to complain about it, and then there's the people that want to be excited about it and where you fall in that. But one of the other conversations that came up in all of this and had a central theme, as I say, was a number of the issues that we're starting to see in the new cars that are coming to market, whether it's ICE cars, internal combustion vehicles, or EVs, or hybrids, any of these that are coming to market. There's a number of people that I talk to that feel like, well, Why are we having so many issues? Why are we having you know the the new corvettes the the zero six starting to see that there are some valve train issues in that vehicle and there's you know they're trying to figure out some of that and what they can do you know there's there's some big recalls over the last few years and the discussion kind of came to number one what john said you know the the industry being pulled in so many directions but It kind of came down to the wonder of our car companies just pushing to get new vehicles to market too quickly and not being able to fully develop them with how much is going on. And is that the customer base that wants that? Is it the customer base that they're afraid is going to say, well, gee, you're not bringing out new vehicles and we're disappointed or is it just the companies wanting to get a leg up on somebody else and get a new product out. But is all of this that's going on actually harming the industry? And in some ways putting a black eye on some of these companies, because especially with like the Corvette Z06, you know, the new C8 platform, the Stingray when it came out, And then the zero six and the e-ray and then everything that's coming next. You know, you, you, you, you hear all the great things like, oh, this is, this is such a great car. This is this, but then all of a sudden you get one that comes out. And you know, the zero six, uh, a new engine, you know, kind of revamped engine platform. And all of a sudden we start having some issues. Well, now it's like, well, what's GM doing? Why, why can't they figure this out? So I guess it just came down to. Do the companies, car companies just need to not bend to the pressure that we're seeing from whether it be the consumer or I dare say the federal government and just need to take a little more time in their product development. And I throw that federal government comment in there because I think to discuss this and really think about it, it doesn't hurt to look back over time. and see where the federal government has stepped into the auto industry and juxtapose previous issues in the auto industry with product and whether or not federal intervention came in at the same time.

st coming open. And that's on: 1500

The early: 1900

Definitely the early: 1900

out of the OPEC crisis in the: 1970

SPEAKER_01 Well, some of it made sense. But that's how I talk to you. Some of what I say makes sense. They're being pulled in so many directions. And there's only so many qualified people in this country to do this work. And there's only so many dollars with each of these manufacturers to be able to pay to have this work done. And if you go back to our episode a few ago where we kind of talk about the government fund for alternative transportation methods, The manufacturers are being put under a gun to say, you have to have this technology working and it has to operate within this time period. There's no gentle, you know, well, we didn't quite get it right. We didn't quite get it right. Or we need this tweet before we should send it to public. No, it's it has to be done. But you have to continue still selling things to pay for this new technology that you're being mandated into, you know, basically saying everybody's being forced to develop an electric car, whether they want to or not, they're being forced to. But you got to pay for it somehow. And then you have this new R&D department available to the manufacturers that was pioneered by Tesla. And that's called the consumer. I guess I might not say it was pioneered by Tesla. I've always said Lotus used to use this. consumer research and development method. They'd come up with a car, release it to the public, things would break and Lotus would figure out how to fix it and repair it. But Tesla's done it in this major fashion. Autopilot's the big one that screams out at you. It's being used by people. It's not fully developed. It's potentially killing people. But people are dying while using autopilot. Is it the car's issue? Is it the driver's issue? Is it the driver's irresponsibility? Is it Tesla's irresponsibility? It really doesn't matter. The consumer is being asked to test this thing. We all know that the consumer is not the most intelligent person in the world, is not going to read the instructions on how to properly do this, and is going to try to make the thing work the way the consumer wants it to work. All that has to happen during research and development. We have to go, oh, we've got this thing that'll drive the car itself. And we want them to hold on to the steering wheel. Well, customers aren't going to want to hold on to the steering wheel. So OK, they're going to develop this. Well, how do we get around this? Do we need a camera to watch them to make sure that their extremities are coming from their body? And then are they going to make a fake arm to attack? You have to research and develop all this stuff out because there's so many ways around it. But, you know, Tesla at least only gets to focus on Tesla and an EV, where Ford and General Motors and Mercedes and Audi and VW and everybody else gets to focus on, well, we got to sell an internal combustion engine car so that we have a budget to develop this EV car. And we have such a, I think there are distractions. And I think the teams are distracted. It was great to see Farley go out and take a Ford Lightning and drive it a few thousand miles over a week or two to figure out what the inherent problems are with electric vehicles right now. And I think he identified the big one. Nobody has range anxiety anymore. We have charging anxiety. We're all familiar on how to go to a gas pump and how that works. But with charging, not everybody's been to a charger before. It's that first, first time thing and none of us like change. And then you get, is the charger going to work? Is this going to be broken? Is there going to be a line? You know, all these other factors that come with charging. It's not even necessarily the time because an experienced EV driver will know that the car is going to say, you know, in order to get to your destination, you need to stop here and charge to 62%. You don't have to charge to 100% every time. And then, you know, you get so far down and then you now you only need to charge to 51 percent and that'll complete your journey. And it gives you the spacing for rest stops or snacks or whatever might come into play. It's just like Derek said, humans aren't meant to multitask. And corporations are not designed to multitask. So they're there to focus on one problem and one issue. And unfortunately, for publicly held companies, that problem or issue is, how do we generate the most profit? And then Again, that affects your payroll, where you're going to distribute resources. Are you going to do the stock buybacks to increase that bottom line for the shareholders? Are you going to keep some of that money? Are you going to reinvest it into the company to further your EV development or to help improve the charging network or just to hire more qualified engineers? And then are you creating a climate that people are afraid to say what the real world is and fear for being fired. And unfortunately, I think that's a lot of the issues with a lot of companies in that people see the employees in the trenches know what's going wrong on and know what's going wrong. But they can't complain about it because they'll get told and then they'll get fired because their boss should be right. Well, to be honest, bosses aren't right a lot of times. And that, you know, that gets discussed and don't want to. We're not a business podcast to discuss that. Where are we in this journey? Are we asking our automobile manufacturers to do too much at a risk to the general public out there with the autopilot or even the fancy tailgates or because we need to get six horsepower more than another vehicle? Are we pushing the limits of an engine? I've said before I had a He's passed since, but I had a friend who had a really good relationship with General Motors, and he would get very early releases. He got one of the earliest CTS-Vs. And then later on in the year, he bought another one. And he did the same thing with his Corvette Z06, and this might have been back at the c6 era i'm sure it was a c6 era or the zr1 of that era and he got an early car and it had these all had great horsepower numbers that matched the magazines but every time he either got the next model year or he got a late you know later model year car or even he took one of his vehicles in for its regular service and he put them back on his chassis dynos, they would be down on horsepower because we go for the press numbers and then I think they actually detune the car some from the first 500 that go out because the press always gets those. And just to help preserve, you know, what they built, because what they built is our push to the limit to make the magazines happy and the car reviewers happy. Then they have to worry about the consumer. And like I said, is if you can bring the car into a software update, detune it. You haven't engineered the car properly if you've got to detune the consumer cars just to get a fancy number for the automobile reviewers I heard and it had to be on a podcast and they had to be theorizing that ford is kind of relieved that when dodge discontinued the the ram trx Ford was relieved that Ram didn't bump the horsepower because the TRX was like 702 horsepower and the Raptor R is 705 horsepower so they have the horsepower claim and they were afraid that if the TRX came out with a horsepower bump to 725 or something like that then all of a sudden we're gonna have to make the Raptor R a little bit more give it a little bit more and all we're doing is creating a more fragile vehicle subject to recall or failure, like potentially the Z06 has. And I believe even in the C7 Corvette, there was some issues with the motors on the Z06 when it first came out with oil starvation, or maybe that was the early C8s. I can't remember. And then, you know, like I said, they're going to put out that Raptor 735 horsepower. And in my theory, first time you bring it in for, for an oil change, they're going to detune the thing back down to 705 or 695, just to make sure it doesn't blow up on you. And you're never going to know unless you have a dyno at your home. And last time I checked, most of us know, I do know a couple of people that own their own dyno or have open access to them.

cars ever built. Back in the: 1950

vehicle sales in the UK from: 2030

SPEAKER_02 I think you summed it up well, John. It's exactly exactly what kind of the conversations I've been involved in lately have been is we're being forced to do things it's creating inferior products as you say john products that have issues products that are putting. The general public's health and safety at risk it's it's one of my beliefs as you have someone who has been. I hate the term boss within within any company or within any. organization that i've been involved with but you know i've had teams of people underneath me that i lead and. To me if you wanna successful organization if you want a successful development of a product of of of successful development of anything. It's about teamwork it's about understanding how your team can develop that product or that you whatever you're working on and how they can do it successfully how much time do they need how much you know what do they need to make it happen money more help time products you what what does it take to get to our end goal and it has to be a conversation with the whole team It can't be one entity coming in and saying, you have until this day to make this happen and it has to be done. Can you get it done? You can't. Is it going to be the best thing that's going to come out of the team? Not at all. Let the team do what they need to do to organically make it what it needs to be and it will be the best that it is ever going to be. Yes, I agree with you, John. We're rushing. We're being forced to do things in the industry. And it's causing inferior work to be done, inferior products. If we let this develop organically, we can find the best solution, and we will have fantastic products.

SPEAKER_01 Simply put, think of you at your job that you want to do the best job you possibly can, but then your supervisor starts putting deadlines and restrictions on you. And you know, then you have to do some shortcuts. Exactly the same thing that's happening in the automotive industry. With that, I'm going to say get off your ass and go burn some gas. Talk to you later.

SPEAKER_00 This show was a part of the No Driving Gloves Network, produced and edited by John Viviani of Magic City Podcast, with voice work by Gary Conker. So until the next exit.

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