The David Knight Show - INTERVIEW Your Car as Government Surveillance

Episode Date: January 1, 2024

Eric Peters, EricPetersAutos.com, joins Gard.New Dodge Dart test — a weak battery requires dealer "reboot". Spy satellites to spot emissions and ever more surveillance devices and nanny tech being added to carsFind out more about the show and where you can watch it at TheDavidKnightShow.comIf you would like to support the show and our family please consider subscribing monthly here: SubscribeStar https://www.subscribestar.com/the-david-knight-showOr you can send a donation throughMail: David Knight POB 994 Kodak, TN 37764Zelle: @[e-mail] App at: $davidknightshowBTC to: bc1qkuec29hkuye4xse9unh7nptvu3y9qmv24vanh7Money is only what YOU hold: Go to DavidKnight.gold for great deals on physical gold/silverFor 10% off Gerald Celente's prescient Trends Journal, go to TrendsJournal.com and enter the code KNIGHTBecome a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-david-knight-show--2653468/support.

now let's bring in our guest he is none other than eric peters of eric peters autos and he is a very decent man for coming in the way he has eric welcome and happy new year i'm so glad that i get to see you and i apologize for messing up on the link earlier it's okay at least we were able to fix it between ourselves unlike that dodge dart that i had to deal with last week tell people what you experienced this is beautiful oh it's incredible okay so you know the test car the car that i was test driving for purposes of reviewing last week was a brand new 2024 dodge dart first couple of days went fine. The third day, I went out to drive it, and it wouldn't start.

You push the start button, and the headlights flashed. And so my immediate instinctual response was, okay, it probably has a dead and or weak battery. So I go to my toolbox, I get out the old multimeter, and I check the battery, and sure enough, it's down to nine volts for whatever reason. Now, it's a brand-new car. You'd think it has a brand- battery why is the battery low but in any event the battery's low and typically with with modern computer controlled cars if the computer doesn't sense 12 volts at the battery sometimes it won't even try to start because the fuel injection won't work without

full voltage so at any rate i i did what you know a few years ago would have been the reasonable thing to do which is to charge up the battery. So I hooked up to my trickle charger. And in the process, I disconnected. And this is going to become important. I disconnected the negative cable. OK. Then when I charged up the battery, it was showing 12 volts.

I put the negative cable back on the battery and the car went berserk. Lights flashing, alarms clanging, all the lights on the interior dashboard flashing on and off. Apparently, it has some kind of cataleptic response to any interruption of its voltage. Now, initially, I thought, okay, I just need to know the secret process. Sometimes you have like on the key fob, you can push the lock, unlock the panic button in a certain sequence to get the alarm to shut off. Yeah. I tried that to no avail.

It would not work. Could not find any procedure in the owner's manual or anywhere else. So I called up the press fleet company, which then in turn called up Dodge Engineering, you know, to try to figure out what was wrong with the thing. This is directly in communication with the manufacturer. And long story short, that once the vehicle has this interruption of current, you lose, you can't fix it. You have to have it dragged to the dealer to get them to, I guess, reboot the computer. And you have to have specialized equipment in order to do that. So word to the wise, you know, do not disconnect the battery of a modern computer controlled car unless you're ready for some pretty serious repercussions.

And then I found out something even more interesting. And I did not know this. You know, you have to keep up with things. And even I sometimes don't keep up with things. So why did the battery have less than 12 volts current to begin with? New car, new battery. Well, it turns out that the culprit was probably the second battery. This is not an electric car, but nonetheless, it had two batteries. The main 12-volt starter battery that we're all familiar with that starts the engine when you push the button or turn the key. But in addition to that, these new cars that have automated stop-start technology, as they market it, the acronym being ASS, A- being ass ass yeah they have a secondary battery

that is designed to operate with that system because of those you know those repeated stop start cycles you know that that's hard on a battery right yeah understanding of the thing is that you know if that is going to create a power draw so if that draws enough power from the battery and the battery hasn't had enough time to recharge from driving, you might see this reduction in the battery, the main starter battery's voltage, and then kaput, the car doesn't work. And then when that happens, if you do something like take the cables off the battery, then you have to have the car dragged to a dealer to get it fixed. That's progress for you, huh? Oh, man. get it fixed. That's progress for you, huh? Oh man, I have to, I want to show people the website because I love this. We're speaking with Eric Peters of Eric Peters Autos. Folks,

it's ericpetersautos.com. I'm Gardner Goldsmith filling in for David Knight and Eric Peters is with us. And you had, it had to be dragged. When my computer crashes, I call those techies. And you talk, this is an update, a final report about the issue I experienced with a new car, 2024 Dodge Hornet. I was test driving. Just a dead battery. Just ridiculous. Unbelievable. And as you say, the car had to be flat bedded to the dealer to deal with it.

And that's one of the things when I read your articles, you have this sly sense of humor about all the absurdities that you see in these designs, Eric. You and I have talked before about the seen and the unseen in economics. Well, here's a really good example of that. Now, what is the benefit to you and I or anybody who buys one of these cars? Does the car start any better with all of this technology? I mean, I can get into my 22 year old truck, you know, and I turn the key and the engine starts. You know, it doesn't start any in any way that's inferior to the way the new car starts. And in many ways, it's superior because if it doesn't start, I can disconnect the battery.

I can put a new battery in and the car will start. I don't have to call a tow truck or roadside assistance to have the thing dragged to a dealership. doesn't start, I can disconnect the battery. I can put a new battery in and the car will start. I don't have to call a tow truck or roadside assistance to have the thing dragged to a dealership to have something that's profoundly simple, like changing a battery, handle a dealership at $100 an hour. Yeah, I agree with you. And it's interesting, Eric, you talk about complex integration versus simple integration. And in many cases, when you get complex integration, sometimes you get better efficiency, that sort of thing. But to repair something, you want simple integration. You want to be able to take the pieces out, replace the pieces, get pieces worked on without having to wait a month to get a piece in and not have it be done through algorithms, every part of which has its own piece, because there's no way you could do enough research to really even understand how to make it work. And that's where they're going all the time. the question bag, which is, well, why? What is the reason for all of this? And the only reason for it, again, is the unseen hand of government, of the regulatory apparatus. The only reason

that almost all new cars have that ASS system I mentioned earlier, the automated stop-start. I don't know whether you've driven a late model car, but what happens, you come to a traffic light, let's say the light's red, the engine shuts off automatically, you know, and, and then when you put your foot, take your foot off of the brake and put your foot on the gas pedal, then the engine restarts. So in the course of your morning commute, the engine might stop, start a dozen times or more. Okay. And, and nobody wants that. Who wants to have that chug, chug, chug feeling, you know, when the slight delay, you know, in between light turns green and instead of just going, you have to wait that little moment for the engine to start before the car can go. Nobody wants this. Nobody in the market asked for this, so why do we have it? Why is it not only in cars, but it's standard in cars? It's not like it's an option.

Oh, I think that's a great idea. I think I'll check that box because I want my car to do that. The only reason it's in new cars is because of the pressure that is being brought to bear on the manufacturers of vehicles to reduce carbon dioxide emissions as they market that. Because, you know, because when the engine is not running, you know, you shut the car off at a traffic light. It's not about saving gas. Gas savings is trivial. But the idea is that if the engine shuts off at a traffic light, then, you know, it's at that moment a zero emissions in terms of carbon dioxide vehicle. So that's one of the effects of the regulatory apparatus that you about something that Al Gore is involved with. And he is, he's part of, and in fact, he's connected with Google on this thing called trace that he put seed money into this. Google put seed money into this. It is an online system to collect data that now is, there's a corporation and a number of corporations, but there's one, I wrote about this from our CTV. There's one that has been using basically spy planes and they want to get up with the EPA's help up into satellites

to use camera technology and infrared to be able to detect emissions coming from virtually anything and then report it to the EPA. And then the EPA, without any trial, without any jurisprudence in any way whatsoever or due process, will just fine people for their emissions. And they keep using this canard of the so the so-called climate the carbon so-called emissions and as you said they don't just talk about carbon dioxide they try to make it sound like soot like oh it's carbon that's going out there like this is going to destroy the la basin which they cleaned up a long time ago you know um it's just ridiculous to see this and they keep

putting these electronic devices in the cars that will measure our output, that will report back. And this is the way that they're going. And I drew this up on the screen. People could see me drawing this up. If you could tell us, could you tell us a little bit about a preview of things to come? This article over here, and I want to show this on the website, a preview of things to come at ericpetersautos.com. Yeah, that's not so much with regard to emissions, as they put it. This has to do with behavior. It has to do with the pending come 2026 federal requirement that cars have technology embedded in them to deal with impaired driving. And again, it's this sleight of hand, it's this verbiage. In fact, if you dig into it, it's not that they're going after so-called drunk drivers. And nevermind whether you've actually been convicted of drunk driving, they're just

going to say that everybody's presumed to be a drunk driver. In fact, it's about measuring what they call driver performance. That's the actual terminology that's used. So what does that mean? Well, it means that any performance that falls outside of the parameters that they consider to be acceptable. So driving faster than the speed limit. So, you know, whether you're looking at the thing that they want you to look at, I was test driving another car that has elements of this technology. That's something people ought to know is that the cars that are already in production and that have been in production for the past several years already have some of the bits and pieces of this technology embedded in them.

For example, this thing called a drowsy driver monitor. Essentially, the car is looking at your eyes. And if it thinks that you're not looking straight ahead at all times, this box pops up in the gauge cluster that says, you know, driver inattention detected or pay more attention or stop for a coffee break or something like that. Now, I ride motorcycles. And one of the reasons that I'm still alive and talking to you right now is that I maintain awareness of what's going on around me, not just tunnel vision of what's in front of me. So I'll glance to the left and I'll glance to the right and I'll look in my rear view mirror. I'm just trying to keep aware of what's around me. That's kept me from wrecking the car too.

But yet when I drive these cars, I get this constant serial pop-up about how I'm drowsy and distracted because my eyes are not looking tunnel vision straight ahead. Now, as annoying as that is, what's going to happen come 2026 and going forward is that in addition to annoying you, it's going to punish you. And that punishment will probably come in one of two forms. Either the car itself will somehow deactivate or maybe it will go into gimp mode and you'll be limping along the side of the road at five miles an hour or more probably because the car is connected and it's connected to the government the insurance mafia you will get hit with a fine or a done every time you do something that falls outside of the parameters of what they say is safe driving and we've seen previous of this with the insurance companies that will say that oh we'll give you a discount if you plug this into your OBD port in the car.

You know, and what they're doing is every single time that you change lanes too abruptly, you accelerate too aggressively, things of that nature, you find that your insurance premium has gone up. That's the model. That's what they're going to do. It doesn't matter that you don't wreck, that you never have an accident, that you have a perfect driving record. I've got a 30-year record of not having wrecked a car. It doesn't matter. You know, they'll say, oh, your habits show that you're unsafe, and so we have to raise your rates accordingly. You know, it reminds me of, in a way, it reminds me of the Taken to Assert Extremes Brazil, you know, by Terry Gilliam. What a brilliant, brilliant film. Just, you know by terry gilliam what a brilliant brilliant film

uh just you know how they they controlled the heating systems and and it shows the ninja uh black market heating uh av uh repairman coming in the middle of the night to repair the guy's heating system because it won't stop and it's all run by some interior organization. And I worked at the New Hampshire community college system for a while. And in the springtime, you know, you're coming from the colder days, but you can get some warmer days. And so you want to be able to definitely regulate that temperature because it's going to get too hot for the students. They're going to get tired. And it was just incredibly hot. And I asked someone else, I said, where's the thermostat? Why can't we do something?

And they said, oh, no, the temperature for this building. I said, yeah. They said, that's controlled from the central building in the capital of the state in Concord, New Hampshire, 35 miles away. And I was like, what? They said, yeah, we can't control the temperature in this building i was like that is terry gilliamville that's insane and and and to bring it back home when you have a person-to-person sort of thing my dad and i were driving along my dad was driving once

eric you remind me of a little little anecdote from from my childhood and my dad you know we're on these really bad roads and he would dodge potholes to save the undercarriage of the toyota you know for a while we had a renault with the torsion bar suspension that was very interesting and um so you know he would dodge the potholes make it sort of a game he gets pulled over and then he says uh sir i noticed you were driving erratically and he says um he goes have you been drinking and And I'm with, I'm with the guy. I was like, my dad says, no, you know, I was just dodging the potholes. And then the police officer to his credit said, oh, I'm so sorry. I'm so sorry about that. Yeah. The roads

are terrible. I'm really sorry about that. And then he went on his way. You've got a system now that is building up all these errors within programming and systems permanently attached to the cars you can't get rid of these things yes it's so stupid you know yes the story that you just told very similar in my area the roads are often terrible i live in a rural area so it's common for people to straddle the center line because that way you know you don't hit these bumps all the time and destroy the undercarriage of your car and your suspension, your tires. But the technology is one size fits all, you know, and it's the size that the government says that you'll fit into, period. You know, and it's part of this effort to manage and control and micro control absolutely everything

that we do. I was listening to a news story the other day that bears on this. It had something to do with North Korea and the North Korean government has issued its plan, you know, for the next year, apparently. And that's what we're talking about. There's always a central plan controlled by central planners. You and I apparently are unfit to plan our own affairs. Everybody, you know, a mass has to be has to be sort of compressed together and then sluiced and directed in a path that is decided by the central planners. And nobody seems to ever question, well, who are these people? I mean, how is it that these people somehow have acquired the power and in some sense, you know, the moral acquiescence of people that, okay, yeah, sure. You know, I'm here just to do

what you tell me to do. And I'm waiting, tell me what to do. Tell me how to behave. It's amazing. I'm so glad you brought up the Seinfeld thing. That was one of the, one of the things I picked up from Gilbert Gottfried, because he used to do a terrific Seinfeld impression. And he was the first person I ever, I ever heard do the Seinfeld, who are these people? You know, it's the classic Seinfeld, uh, Seinfeld line. And Eric, I want to mention, uh, kudos to you also, by the way, for putting the picture of the Kawasaki over there, you mentioned you ride bikes. And, uh, when I was a kid, it was Hondas

and Kawasaki motorbikes, you know, out there in the dirt and chasing each other around and stuff. And, uh, my friends had those things. I was always on the back, dragging my sneakers, putting up dust, dust and stuff. So the guys behind us couldn't see, I was like, Oh, we're getting chased by the cops.

Come on. You know, we would have races and stuff. And it was a lot of fun. And also on this subject, you know, you talk about the, uh,

the drowsy driver thing and stuff. You, you mentioned here, Eric over at Eric Peters autos, everybody, and follow him at libertarian car Gbertarian Car G on Twitter slash X. Tell whether you have used a turn signal before making a lane change that will proceed to correct your attempt to change lanes. If you haven't signal first by electronically trying to steer the car back into the lane, you're trying to leave for the one adjacent. And I think you and David have touched on this.

It is just scary to think about. And then with these speed controller things that they're going to put on various trucks that they want to have, that's going to be even more dangerous because trucks are going to be side by side with each other and they're going to have a really hard time passing each other. There's two aspects to this that I think are interesting. The first one is just the mindlessness of it. Instead of being mindful, some people think, well, you should signal every time you turn, but that is mindless. I think it's far more, I think it's more beneficial and sound to be aware of your driving environment. If there is a car, you know, you're driving forward, there's a car up ahead or adjacent to you, of course it makes sense to signal your intentions, but it makes no sense at all to signal your intentions if you're clearly the only car on

the road and you're out in the middle of nowhere just because you're supposed to pavlovian style like a dog be trained to do this the signaling and that somehow you know alleviates you the responsibility of being aware of your driving environment there's that that aspect of it and there's another aspect of it and it's it goes to these unanticipated consequences that these central planners always neglect to plan for. It's all well and good to turn your signal when you have a planned lane change. You want to plan to move into the next lane. What if a kid runs out in front of your car?

An unplanned event. You know, and you move the steering wheel to get out of it, to not hit the kid. But now the car is trying to fight you to get back in the lane that you're trying to steer out of. And I'm amazed that there hasn't been more mayhem caused by this. You know, I'm a man and I've got decent hand strength, but I could just see an older person, let's say, or a woman with small hands, you know, holding that steering wheel and all of a sudden the steering wheel jerks. And if you've experienced it, that's what it feels like. The steering wheel will jerk in the opposite direction

and it can be really unnerving and unsettling and it's exactly the sort of thing they used to teach kids not to do uh in driver's ed they would tell you you know if a wheel drops off like if you're driving down the road and uh the right side wheel drops off the road and you know the car will feel like it's going to go off the road the last thing you want to do is jerk the wheel hard you want to try to maintain the car's directional stability and ease back into the road well this this countermans of that, and it's being done by electronics and programming. It's unbelievable. You know, Eric, you bring up so many good points, and I don't know how, you know, I asked you once before, you write so much, and they're always fascinating, fascinating topics.

And how how often do you shoot video, do you think, each week? Because now you're providing video and people can find you on Rumble as well. Tell people how they can find you on Rumble. And you often embed these videos inside your articles, right? You know, I'm embarrassed to admit I don't really know what my handle is. I think it might be on Rumble. But if you go to most of my articles, there'll be a video in it, and you can find it that way. But I try to do a video of every new car that I test drive, and I often do monologues while I'm driving a car about things that seem to me to be important to talk about. Well, how about we hit on this one, Eric? This is another good one.

Automotive dissonance. And you have the picture of the woman with the Pinto. Keep off my rear. I'm explosive. Great Michigan license plate. Car probably built in Michigan. The Pinto. The Pinto became, of course,

synonymous with rear engine explosion or rear gas tank explosion. And can you give people some information about that and why uh it comes to mind when you're thinking about evs nowadays sure well there was a big hullabaloo back in the 70s ford made the pinto which was uh an economy car and they made millions of these things um well the initial run of them had a poorly designed gas tank filler neck. The filler on the car was mounted on the side of the car, and then it went to the gas tank, which was inside behind the backseat area underneath the car. Anyway, if the car was hit very hard in the rear, the impact

could shear the filler neck away from the tank, and that could cause gas to spill out. And if there was a spark resulting from, say, metal to metal contact, that could trigger a fire. And there was a recall when there was a big hullabaloo about that, even though, relatively speaking, millions of Pintos, a handful of fires, and it wasn't an inherent defect. It was just a not particularly good design, which was corrected. And once it was corrected, it was no longer a problem. So we've got that on the one hand, and then we juxtapose that with these evs that can catch fire just sitting still not being hit uh parked outside parked in your garage on a container ship and that's because there is an inherent built-in problem with lithium ion batteries that can't

be fixed they have an inherent built-in tendency to automatically, spontaneously combust. The difference with the Pinto was you had to have a spark in addition to the gas leaking in order for there to be a fire. And you had to have an outside physical force, such as an impact, in order to trigger that cascading chain of events. So it was rather improbable that you were going to be burned to death in a pinto very very slight chance of that if i am i mistaken eric and and because i was small when they did these things i think uh they had some of this on nbc news didn't they have to put flares into the back of was it the pinto or was it a different car to actually make the combustion happen on camera

they tried to do there was something called gm pickups i believe with what was called the side saddle fuel tank that was mounted in a particular part of the frame that where it was vulnerable to impact the problem was you know they were trying to create this gore story and they would keep hitting the thing and it wouldn't blow up so they actually had to put a flare there to cause the fire. And that's the point. Gasoline is combustible, but it's actually unlikely to burn. If you can spill it and pour it on the ground, every one of us has done that. When you go to a gas station, you fill your car up. And sometimes when you pull the filler out, there's some gas that drips. It almost never catches fire because you have to have a spark. So you almost have to be deliberately stupid in order for there to be a gas fire.

With these EVs, on the other hand, you can be the most responsible person in the world. You drive your EV home and you park it in your driveway or in your garage, and it just spontaneously catches fire. And you linked to a story from ericpetersautos.com, everybody. You linked to a story from Automotive News from April 28th. Kurt Nagel writes, main headline, vehicle that caught fire at Chrysler Tech Center was EV prototype. And then the subhead, EV-related fires have erupted at two of the Detroit three automakers in recent weeks. GM's Factory Zero reported a fire last week. And this is one of the things that,

in addition to the weight factor inside public garages now, or even private garages, if they don't handle these things properly, I'm very worried about parking even in any enclosed area or nearby outside any EV, because they could just start up and just burst into flames. Yeah. These aren't just prototypes either. A couple of, I guess it was a month, maybe two, three months, I lose track of time. Some Ford Lightnings that had been held at a storage lot

after they left the assembly line. In other words, these were finished vehicles. These were ready to be shipped out to dealers. There was a fire there. You know, this is not an uncommon occurrence and it will become a more common occurrence because of compounding factors. You know, an electric vehicle doesn't just catch fire potentially when it's sitting still. If it's struck, you know, if the battery case is damaged and damages the battery, that can cause a fire. If and I went to this in my article, if it gets wet, particularly with salt water, you know, as in the aftermath of a flood, as in Florida, the salt water gets into the, there's a vent on top of the battery. If the water gets into that vent, that salt water then causes the thermal runaway, the short circuit, and the thing goes up in smoke,

you know, and we haven't even gotten into the effect of time and mileage and use. Over time, this is a car. It's not something that sits on your desk at home, like a laptop or a computer. This is a car that is subjected to extremes of heat and cold. It hits potholes and it wears out over time. So we can expect to see even more of these fires. And to the point of the article, it's interesting because it points out the motives of the government in its famed concern for our safety. You know, this is a demonstrable inherent risk that cannot be corrected, at least not without changing fundamentally the type of battery chemistry that's used in electric vehicles. It cannot be dealt with. It is going to

adhere in the vehicle, and it's a risk that the government is imposing on you by force. Whereas in the case of this Pinto, where there was a very slight risk, potentially, if a series of events happened, that the car might catch fire if you got hit from behind by somebody driving very fast. There was a huge hue and cry, and we must recall all these Pintos. There was a massive class action lawsuit. But in this case, apparently, don't worry about it. It's fine. Everything's good. I love your line here. But no Pinto ever caught fire while parked. Right. And yeah, you nail it, Eric. And, you know, the thing that that really gets me is that so many journalists are willing to cover up this stuff. Like we saw that report from Automotive News,

and they tried to stress that they were prototypes. Well, this is not necessarily the case, as you say. This is happening all over the place. And that point that you bring up is the wear and tear. As you say, we're just talking about potholes. Eventually, there are going to be cracks that appear, and condensation is going to get inside to be cracks that appear and condensation is going to get inside those systems and once that condensation gets in there those batteries are gone

and the fire is the fire um potential just skyrockets as you said you know with the salt water that came into florida during some of the hurricanes into georgia as well uh just terrible terrible stuff that people saw they can't put these fires out. It's just, it's insane. It's absolutely crazy. They burn underwater. I think I've got some videos in that article where you can see, I mean, literally the car, like somebody was trying to back up their boat, I guess, at a boat ramp. And lost control and the car goes in the water.

I think it was a Tesla Model Y, the one with the gull wings. Anyway, it is completely submerged and it's still on fire. Unbelievable. Let's do this here and we'll see there might be an ad that pops up. This is one of many videos that is embedded in this piece at ericpetersautos.com. And Eric, thanks again. I really appreciate it. You're a trooper and seeing that email that doesn't have the link in it and saying, how am I going to get on the show? Well, maybe it's like magic. We'll have the pixie dust just like the – we'll use carbon, and that will do it.

Right. But let's – yeah, let's show this one. There might be an ad, but we'll see. Take a look at this right here. This is why state and local officials are warning you not to drive electric vehicles impacted by storm surge and to park it away from your home. And this is what's left of an electric car that ignited us is being towed in Pinellas Park today. Fire crews said it was parked in a lot that was flooded during Hurricane Italia. 10 Tampa Bay anchor Josh Adores verifies what makes EVs and saltwater such a dangerous

combination. These electric vehicles, when they get saltwater such a dangerous combination? These electric vehicles, when they get saltwater intrusion, can catch on fire, and those are very difficult fires to put out. That was Governor DeSantis' warning just days ago ahead of Hurricane Adalia, and several local agencies have issued similar warnings here like this one. So let's verify what makes electric vehicles so vulnerable to not just flood water, but salt water. Here are our sources, including FEMA, the U.S. Fire Administration, and the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration.

According to NHTSA, residual salt within an EV's lithium-ion battery or battery components can form conductive bridges that can lead to short circuit and self-heating of the battery, causing a fire. But when a damaged lithium-ion battery can ignite that varies widely after hurricane ian last year there were at least a dozen reports of evs that had been submerged or partially submerged in salt water igniting weeks after the fact and considering florida now has the second most registered EVs in the country, it is becoming a growing concern for first responders because these fires also burn a lot hotter. Traditional car fires burn around 1500 degrees, where an electric vehicle battery fire can burn close to 5000 degrees. With your Verify, I'm Josh Sidorov. All right, Josh, that's really good information there.

If you see something you'd like us to verify, you can email your questions to us, verify. Yeah, how about they verify the fact that most everybody should know that ions are involved with the conduction of electricity? It's like, oh, salt, duh.

Jeez. They need somebody to, you know, I should say that, you know, maybe some people or young people just learning about the conductivity of salt you know, I should, I should say that, you know, maybe some people are young people just learning about the conductivity of salt water, but I mean, please salt ions. There you go. There's another aspect of this too. And it's another one of these EV catch 22s. I harp on this a lot because I think it's important to harp on it in order to

make an EV practical at all. You have to use these so-called fast chargers. Otherwise, you're literally going to spend all day waiting for the thing to recover any kind of a charge. Well, the fast charger increases the fire risk because you're talking about conduiting an enormous amount of voltage into this battery. And that creates heat in the process. And that's why these things often catch fire while they are hooked up to these fast chargers. And then there's another issue. In order to limit or mitigate the potential fire damage, you can only charge one of these things up to 80% of its capacity at a fast charger.

And they never tell you that. They never explain that. They always talk about the fast charger. Oh, you can be on your way in 30 minutes. Well, yeah, maybe, but you'll be 20% shy of a full tank. So, I mean, you know, it's like, so you already start out with not much range in one of these things. Now you get 20% less range. And so now you're going to have the battery by subjecting it to constant heavy discharging and then fast charging cycles. And that's not my opinion. You can actually read that. In fact, in my latest article from a Tesla, it's right there on the screen.

The car tells you, you know, avoid depleting the battery excessively and avoid subjecting it to repeated fast charging sessions. Man, this is just incredible. And you've got this. I love this. January 1st. What a way to start the year. Check it out. Would you buy this car? And you have the clip there 32% of range lost in 7 years You see a man buys a Tesla and says We never get what was promised We get way less He refers to the range advertised by the manufacturer of his battery powered device A 2017 Model X

Tesla's advertising has proved seriously false He did not get what he paid for In other words, yet the man is not angry X, Tesla's advertising has proved seriously false. He did not get what he paid for, in other words. Yet the man is not angry that he has arguably been, what's the appropriate phrase? Ripped off by Tesla. How would you describe it if the vehicle you bought was advertised as being capable of taking you 40 miles on a gallon of gas, and it only went 32 miles, or about 20% less than advertised. How dare you deal with math? This is the typical disparity in advertising versus actual range when it comes to battery powered vehicles.

So let's talk about this Hyundai class action suit, Eric. Yeah, that goes back a few years ago. And Hyundai had some advertising where it touted that its vehicles, I think it was its entire lineup, got better than 40 miles per gallon. And there was some quibbling in there. It wasn't maybe perhaps as accurate because they were referring to the highway rather than the city number. And I guess the implication was that they averaged 40 miles an hour when, in fact, they really didn't. They averaged, I don't know 32 something like that anyway it was a it was a difference that was far less significant than the disparity uh in the EV between the the touted range and the actual range that you get and and there were there

was a recall and a massive lawsuit directed against Hyundai because people were angry understandably you know you buy the vehicle and it says it can do this and the government affirms that it can do this and then you buy it and you find out, well, no, it can't. And maybe part of the reason you bought it was because you expected it to do what they said it was going to do. And it didn't, but somehow EVs get it passed. And, you know, everybody concedes this point now, you know, that the EV, even under the ideal circumstances, typically will get 10 to 20% less range than what is indicated. And if the conditions are anything less than optimum, if it's very cold out, if it's very hot out, you know, you're using accessories and the thermal management system is having to try to keep the battery warm

or try to prevent it from getting too hot. And if you drive any faster than a crawl, basically, you know, gimp it along, you know, like you have an eggshell and an egg on the accelerator pedal, your range will be much less than that. And somehow there isn't a class action lawsuit. Somehow it's apologized for and rationalized. This whole article, it took me a few hours to even be able to prepare to write for it because I was just so brain numbed by this guy. This guy did a video in which he talked about the fact that his vehicle that he bought, his 2017 Tesla that he bought, after 2017 Tesla that he bought, after seven years, it now gets 32% less range than it did when it was new.

And he estimates that its value, he paid $100,000 for this thing, and now he estimates it's worth about $25,000. And you'd think he would be like, I really feel stupid about having bought this vehicle. I would never buy another vehicle like this. Instead, he goes on and on about how wonderful it is and how he's ready to buy another one. And it reminds me of these people who continue to catch COVID, but they keep getting their boosters. Yes, exactly. Exactly. My brain hurts thinking about this mindset. You just got punched in the face. Why are you continuing to put your face in front of the fist punch back for god's sake it's just insane the whole thing at least rhetorically address the problems address reality it's a new year let's start off with a new year's resolution don't be a dupe. How about that?

I've been trying to plumb this. And I think like in the case of this individual, clearly, he's very affluent. If you look at some of his other videos, he talks about selling one of his houses. And if you look at the house, the house looks like it's got to be at least a couple million dollars. And he seems like he's not a bad guy from what I can tell. He seems like he's a nice enough guy. But I think this let them eat cake aspect of people who are very, very affluent. You know, if you're somebody who lives in a million dollar house, you can afford a toy like a hundred thousand dollar electric car. Right. You know, he probably has multiple cars. He probably has other cars that aren't electric. And maybe for them, it just doesn't register. You know, like they live in this entirely different economic realm and world than we do.

And for them, you know, maybe this is, oh, it's just fun. It's great. You know, just like having my this guy's got some kind of like Olympic style swimming pool in his backyard, too. Doesn't everybody have one of those? Oh, man, it's just unbelievable it's absolutely crazy oh boy eric look as we as we start off uh the new year i want to welcome people to go to ericpetersautos.com and um i want to just ask you a little bit more on the abstract sort of thing. You know, as I was closing off that segment about Israel-Gaza, you know, very, very brutal information. And of course, we're all implicated in this. I brought up some philosophy, you know, like I was in the lecture hall and I was, you know, hanging out with the students. Okay, let one of the students get up there, you know, do their

comments. We'll take some comments from the Rockman chat, that sort of thing. And I talked about how John Locke used to, you know, he he made up his so-called natural rights argument, which really was just a beard to hide what he really was doing, which was I'm going to force the state and the majority rule or whatever, the constitutional representative democracy sort of thing, whatever it is, the state is going to impose its will on you. It's not real self-governance, which is you governing yourself and coming up with your own arrangements. You will be excluded. If you're a jerk, you'll be sued in private adjudication systems, that sort of thing. If you're a jerk and no one will want to deal with you, just like the old British common law system was, it was operated. But this idea that Locke had when he said, man in the state of nature, uh, is just can't trust each other and men will be in perpetual states of war. And when a man initiates a state of war against you, uh, you have the right to defend yourself, that sort of thing That sort of thing And so he said

States are instituted among men As Jefferson paraphrased As if all the men agree So now the state is legitimate For the guy who didn't like Hey I don't want to be part of your club No sorry We have welcomed you into our club

Now pay your dues I don't want this We're protecting you No you're forcing me to pay for something I don't want What if I don't want this. Oh, we're protecting you. No, you're forcing me to pay for something I don't want. What if I don't want it in this much? You know, this sort of thing. Notice the passive language. They use that term instituted as if it's just sort of a happenstance. Yes. It's imposed. It is. Yes. Yes. Again, the flowery use of language rather than using the, they use the passive voice rather than the active

voice, which is governments are imposed on people. That is the only way a government exists is by imposing on someone. And so what I think is interesting is, as I mentioned earlier, philosophically, logically, in any sort of way that someone can look at it. The government itself, which is purported to stop this state of war of man against man, which might not exist if we're actually able to leave each other alone. And if someone does do that, then we can create our own private systems of protection to say, okay, I'm going to work with this group of people voluntarily to protect ourselves. The state says, no, you can't do that yourself all the way you want to do it because we're going to extract a certain portion of your money to give you protection. So really the state

is the state of war and it is perpetual war against you. And if you don't like it, just try not paying for it sometime and you'll find out what the war is. And this goes towards the roads. This goes towards all the ways they keep metastasizing this cancer of the state, making decisions for us about the products we're going of appliance regulations that the Department of Energy, Jennifer Granholm's gang, which of course she made a bunch of money off that company Proterra when they gave her stock options. They brought her back. They brought her onto the board after she was governor of Michigan. She got about $6 million to go to Proterra that was given to GM from the feds during the Obama administration. That went to Proterra that was given to GM from the feds during the Obama administration. That went to Proterra. Then Proterra brought her on their board after she

left the governorship. And then when she left the board, they gave her stock options that she traded in just a few months before they announced bankruptcy. So she made almost $2 million and she's still the head of this unconstitutional department of energy. It's mind blowing. It's absolutely flabbergasting, but they do all these things. They take away our opportunities. And yet people use this soft language and they don't say what's going on. You're being ripped off and it's a state of war against you. And it always, as an anarchist, a voluntarist, libertarian Christian, I have to say the state is always at war with people. And they have to recognize this.

I hope they will. Well, not only is it at war, but it's institutionalized and legalized. And that's an important point to make in that you don't have a right in this paradigm to defend yourself against the depredations of the state. That is defined as criminal somehow, if you simply wish to be left alone. There's also another aspect that I think is interesting, and it's this utopian premise that the statists will bring out. They'll point to the supposed brutish state of nature. If we didn't have government, well, people would be at each other's throats. There would be chaos. Everybody would be trying to take everybody else's things and kill everybody

and so on. But at least you can defend yourself, first of all. And secondly, I think you wouldn't have this institutionalized, systematized violence that we're stuck with now. Yeah, there might be some violence, but it wouldn't be a structure that you have to kowtow to. And if you don't kowtow to it, then somehow by some weird ledger to remain, you're the criminal. You know, I can keep my stuff, you know, I can prevent somebody else from taking what I've earned that's mine. And that makes me a criminal somehow. And, and, you know, Eric, it also goes towards the platonic idiocy of who watches the watchers. You you are incapable of making legitimate decisions about yourself and only the state has legitimate power for the policing and things like that, then how can the state derive legitimacy from supposedly deriving its power from people who inherently individually are illegitimate in making their own decisions. Sure. So it makes no sense. You know, what's that?

Now you're thinking and that's dangerous. And the other thing is, you've people are, you know, who presume to assume the power to to manage us on the premise that we are too ignorant and selfish and short sighted and so on to competently handle our own affairs as if they are. Look at the mess that they have made of the world, of everything, you know, the catastrophic mess that they've made of everything. I don't think we could possibly do any worse. In fact, that's literally true. You and I as individuals, even if we were of the worst sort imaginable, there's only so much damage that you and I can do as an individual. A state, on the other hand, can damage tens of millions, if not hundreds of millions of lives. Absolutely. The adoption of this legal authority is just, it's ridiculous. And I do want to bring up again, some people and many libertarians will do this. They'll say, well, there's no constitutional authority for that. And I just have to remind people, I never signed the constitution.

It has no authority over me. And it's an absolutely important point. It's a philosophical, moral point to stress. Eric, on that point, this is something I was going to bring up later in the program, but it actually has something to do with On the Road Again. Since we're here on the first of the year, 2024 with Eric Peters,

everybody on the David Knight Show, before we turn to the Rockfin and Rumble questions, and we are streaming on Rumble, which is great. I did a double check while we were doing a few things here. I want to bring this up if I can, Eric. This is a piece that I have over at my Sunday News Assembly on Substack. Oh, you're the prisoner.

Yeah, we got the prisoner declared unmutual, of course, because he just wanted to be left alone. He wouldn't kowtow to what the government on the island demanded of him. But in this Sunday News Assembly, I have a piece that at first blush might strike some people as being very obvious. Well, you know, it's clearly some ne'er-do-wells who got involved with sabotage. They messed around with, as you can see, there's probably some light streaming on my face here

as I get it up on the screen. They messed around with a road sign. That How dare you mess around with a road sign? Those are things out there for public information about driving and things that need to be used, that sort of thing. Drivers need to get this information. It's very important. But what I pointed out here was it actually opens up a thought process to something that's much bigger. And I think this is down towards the end of my sub stack. It's number 22. In fact, I thought we only had 21 stories. I publicized this 21 stories, 21 jump street uh but here it is uh it says after hate group's message appeared on roadside sign city says it won't tolerate bigotry and hatred so evidently

they're called the patriot front and they were you know putting up finest patriot front.us i i was unaware of the patriot front maybe. Maybe I'd heard about them somewhere. Maybe a news story or two might've mentioned the Patriot Front. I don't know. I just don't know about them. The message was just, I guess, just the Patriot Front. It wasn't something that was necessarily offensive to people. But again, offense is in the eye of the beholder, just like beauty is, like the Twilight Zone episode, which they shot with such incredible alacrity. But as I brought brought this up, I'd like to read this to you. This sort of paraphrases things in a nice, quick bundle.

I said, finally, we have this story that beneath the surface asks many questions about how it's at all possible to operate state-run systems. If, as the Anti-Defamation League claims, and of course they often claim things that aren't true, if, as the ADL claims, this is offensive to some, this organization, yet people have a supposed right to freedom of speech in an abstract sense, we'll get to the constitutional level in a moment someday, then how can the state-run system take money from all these people of various feelings and opinions, cut out the free speech of some in this public tax-funded system, and still claim that it allows for free speech?

This sign is funded with tax cash. So why can't everyone who wants to use the tax-funded sign say that he or she has a claim on what the sign will say? Perhaps no one can be excluded from such a system if, of course, they're paying taxes. Of course, the government will try to restrict, and it runs into arguments from people as to how the government property will actually be run. This sign, regardless of its original intent for highway use, is a perfect example of the ethical problem the state creates. And it's unmanageable. It's intractable. What do you think about that? Well, it's well said. And it also goes in the

opposite direction in that we're forced to provide funds for the propagation, I'm paraphrasing Jefferson here, of ideas that we find repellent. And I can think of few things that are more tyrannical than that. We're taxed to provide, for example, the government school books that present a point of view that we may not like. And it's even more egregious now that they've come out with this, this like the LBGTQ plus stuff, the propaganda, propagandization of children about sexual topics in schools. If you're, for example, troubled by abortion, you know, you're compelled to help finance these things through the taxes that you pay. Right, right, right. And that's worse in a way, in my opinion, than being denied an opportunity to express your point of view and being made to pay for it.

Absolutely. You know, Eric, the thing that struck me when I was maybe 11 years old, I was starting to get aware of this stuff. And I would say, why is it that people are getting upset about the minutia of the overall thing that should be upsetting them? The fact that they're getting their money taken from them to be pulled into this system. Why isn't that the first prima facie blush of offense? And you don't need to go any further than that. You know? I mean, it's simple.

I think probably because the system has been designed in such a way as to prevent that question from even arising. You know, you have a system that snatches kids up by and large at kindergarten age. And, you know, as the Jesuits say, you know, give me, you know, give me a kid for the first 10 years, I think it is, and he'll be mine for life. You know, if you can stymie the development of the critical faculty, you know, back in the olden days, the Romans talked about the trivium, you know, which was teaching a child to think, to have that critical ability, that capacity to reason. And then you teach them particular things, but first you teach them how to think, not what to think. The government system is exactly the opposite. It imparts what to think, not how to think. And a lot of people, I think,

just they develop this habit of rote, you know, because that's what the system encourages. You are expected to assimilate certain information that's provided to you and then you regurgitate this information. And that's how you get good grades. Right. So you proceed along the path and you go even to the point where you get to college. And even in highly specialized academic disciplines, it's not that these are dumb people. They're just trained almost like a seal to be very good at assimilating information and regurgitating information, not necessarily to think. A really good example of this during the event that was called the pandemic, you had medical doctors, and these are obviously not dumb people. You can't be a dummy and get through medical school, but still, their critical faculty seemed to have been short circuit. off and of course being fooled into the

climate canard i think yeah and um you know eric it's it's it's really cool um when i was in touch with travis and david and so on and uh david gave me a ring last night and wasn't able to connect and texted me and you know was thanking me doing the show and everything i i'm just so grateful over the past year and i actually hadn't planned to bring this up, but I was just realizing like, wow, it's been a year. It's been absolutely awesome to chat with you. And the work you do at Eric Peters Autos is just, it's fun and it's also really, really informative

and absolutely breaking, breakneck pace, breaking news. And of course, I hope people will check out what they can buy at Eric Peters autos to lend you a hand. And they can always, you know, submit a donation, that sort of thing. You do great,

great stuff. And they can find you at libertarian car G on X. And let's go back to the website and show that off again real quick. And then I'll give you a little something for the new year again from Willie to say farewell. There's our friend having a great time in his car and if they go down a little further on the website

they'll see some of the great items that they can get at the store right there at the BACAP. Great stuff. I love it and I've got a black one but I want to get the gray one. Got to get them. Got to get them, Eric. Awesome stuff. So, Eric, as we go, any final thoughts for the new year and, you know, the David Knight team and audience and stuff like that? And I'll

turn to Rockfin. Get any questions you want in for Eric or compliments to Eric, anything like that, let me know. Harps is watching from Australia, of course, where the roads are straight and flat in most areas, unless you're out maybe in Toowoomba or something like that. But Harps, nice to have you there. Little John is there as well. And yeah, feel free to put your comments in there. Jason Barker says, when you are not wearing a Trivium t-shirt. Yes, is there a band named Trivium t-shirt. Yes.

Is there a band named Trivium? I wonder if there is one. Yeah, we'll, we'll find out, but yeah, the Trivium, I'm glad you mentioned that because I was going to teach with a private school

this, this winter, but ended up not doing that, taking a little time to take, take away from teaching. And one of the key things for them is teaching of the trivium. It's absolutely essential. And there's no possible way that even a public school system can approach teaching the trivium because they have seized the opportunity of the parents to pull away from what is important for the students. So the public school system is

always deciding for people and that immediately removes the ability to be able to teach people how to think. It's it's pretty scary stuff. And Harp says, nice SKS, Eric. Oh, yeah. He recognized it. Mine's a check model, actually. You might see the grenade launcher attachment on it. Yeah. Let's put you in the full screen there. Hold on a second. I'm going to put you in the full screen. Okay. And... Can you see it okay? Let's see if I can hold.

Let's see. How's that? Oh, now I'm going to get swatted for sure. Probably. This is the grenade attachment that came with these. I do not have a grenade to go with it, though. And it's cheaply for display purposes only. Hey, guard, we still there? Uh-oh.

Jason would like to know, Eric, what your daily driver is. Okay. Well, I have several. I've got a 2002 Nissan Frontier pickup, which I esteem and love very much because it does not have any advanced driver assistance technology. And when I need to replace the battery, I don't need to have it flat bedded to a dealer to get it done either. Yeah. I've also got a bunch of motorcycles. And when the weather's nice, I have my own muscle car that I take out every once in a while, the Great Pumpkin, my 76 Pontiac Trans Am. That's awesome. That is awesome. You know, I think about some of those cars, the muscle cars and stuff, and that gets me thinking about, you know, cars that I might've seen in Cannonball Run or that sort of thing. And then you always,

you always hear about the General Lee. I wonder how many copies of the general lee they had you know because they were always pulling stunts and if some of them i mean they just they bash those things up so much it was absolutely crazy uh you know mopar people uh know about this they trashed an astounding number of 69 uh dodge chargers because you know every time you watch the car jump you know you can see they cut the scene when the car lands because that's been frame bent. And it's tragic the way they destroyed those cars. But, you know, back in the day, you know, when they, the Dukes of Hazzard was what, I think it came out in like 1979, I guess.

Yeah, I think so. At that time, the Charger was just an old car, right? I mean, it wasn't this highly desirable relic of the before time that it is now. Unfortunately, those cars are gone. And the same with Smoking the Bandit. They trashed a bunch of Trans Ams in filming that.

The famous jump over the pond, that was the end of that Trans Am. It's crazy. It's absolutely crazy. All I can think of is watching stunts when i was a kid wanting to be a stunt driver glad that i'm not a stunt driver and uh just loving watching you know bash up derby things and as you mentioned that charger you know the charger by that time most of the charges that were around were you you know, seven, ten years old. They were beater cars and they weren't considered, as you say, the highly collectible before times vehicles.

And I love watching those things now. And I never even watched that show when I was a kid because we couldn't get CBS in on the antennas very well. It was always, you know, the ant parade. So we couldn't see anything. You know, and one of the aspects of it, and we all know about this, it's really just despicable, is the way the left has tried to frame the show, the Dukes of Hazzard, as somehow being a racist show because the car had the Confederate battle flag on the roof. And of course, it was the farthest thing from that. But they try to make that association. It's very important for them to do that because if the topic gets discussed at any depth, you find out that what the states of the Southern Confederacy were trying to do was essentially the same thing that the American

colonies did do successfully, which was to secede from a union that they didn't want to be part of. Oh, now, come on. What are you talking about? It's government by the people, for the people, and of the people. It's not in any way imposed. he describes it, and I'm paraphrasing here, as one of the most stupendous pieces of poetry and dissembling that has ever been produced, ever. You know, in which he talks about the people, of the people, by the people, and for the people, shall not perish from this earth. I mean, the whole point, this slaughter that occurred was to do exactly the opposite, to prevent the states of the Southern Confederacy from establishing a government of their people by their people. Perfectly stated. That is so true, Eric. And as a guy who had to play Abraham Lincoln in fourth grade and recite the Gettysburg Address on the bicentennial, I don't know how many times

for different audiences all around the town. And in fact, and in fact, it's funny that I have, I had a hat similar to this, similar to this hat. I had my stove pipe hat. And I think this is the, this is the way that it goes. And I had a fake beard that looped around my ears with elastic bands. And it went down like this and i had to do that stupid address over and over and over again because i was the tall kid you know it's some interesting stuff about lincoln uh hitler admired him greatly yes if you read there's a section in

non-comp where hitler talks about uh lincoln uh and uh you know how he consolidated the central government of the united states and turned what had been largely independent states in the old school sense, as in independent countries, into essentially administrative districts controlled by a centralized authority, which is exactly what he did. Yes, exactly. Exactly. And David is the one who brought it up to my attention about how Italy, which had been, you know, city states for so, so long around that same time, saw consolidation into the nation state. All around the world, there was this tendency to see things consolidating into the nation states and the growth of these larger hegemonic areas. And we can see this now. And, you know, my brother went to Washington and Lee University for law school. And it was until he was there, he had not been aware of the sense of the people in the South and how they really understand that their push for independence

was utterly crushed by a demonic, evil person named Abraham Lincoln. And that really opens a lot of eyes when you find out. And again, I'll recommend Tom DiLorenzo's book, named Abraham Lincoln. And that really opens a lot of eyes when you find out. And again, I'll recommend Tom DiLorenzo's book, The Real Lincoln. Anybody who's interested in this topic should read. He's written several books on the topic and he's a fantastic scholar. And in addition to that, he's a great storyteller too. Oh yeah. His prose is really top shelf and it's a good read as well as being an educational read. Absolutely. Well, Eric, thank you so much. Happy New Year, and thanks again. Coming in a little bit after time, that was promised. I'm glad we were able to bring you in. It's

so great to have you here. I'm delighted to present something born from my love for music and the Christmas season. Christmas night is a perfect accompaniment for anything from family gatherings to moments of peaceful reflection. A help is to provide a fresh take to the soundtrack of Christmas. This collection of twenty instrumental songs brings new life to timeless Christmas classics. With original orchestrations alongside lesser-known, yet equally enchanting carols.

For the listeners of The David Knight Show, this is more than music. It's part of our shared journey. Christmas Night is available at thedavidknightshow.com. May it bring a little extra joy and peace to your Christmas season. Thank you for your unwavering support and for joining me in this new musical adventure. Merry Christmas to all, and to all a good Christmas night.