Waveform: The MKBHD Podcast - Tesla Model S Plaid Reaction!

Episode Date: June 18, 2021

In this week's episode Marques and Andrew take a quick look at the top internet browsers in the world, Facebook's potential new smart watch, then some Windows 11 leaks. After that they dive into the Tesla Plaid event, what they think about the new Model S and also why they think Plaid Plus was cancelled. After that they try and figure out who on earth would buy a BMW i3! Links: https://twitter.com/wvfrm https://twitter.com/mkbhd https://twitter.com/andymanganelli https://twitter.com/AdamLukas17 https://www.instagram.com/wvfrmpodcast/ shop.mkbhd.com Music by 20syl: https://bit.ly/2S53xlC Browser Website: https://bit.ly/3wE7nS2 Electrek Elon Statement: https://bit.ly/3wE7bSO Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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you can book your Uber ride in advance. 90 days in advance. Perfect for all you forward thinkers and planning gurus. Reserve your Uber ride up to 90 days in advance uber reserve see uber app for details all right what's going on everybody welcome back to another episode of the waveform podcast we're your hosts i'm marquez and i'm andrew and today let's see we're going to talk about the tesla plaid event i feel like I've got a lot of thoughts on that and what Elon tweeted before and all the announcements in the car itself. But also we've got Windows 11 leaks and everyone's favorite social media platform, making a watch, maybe a Facebook watch. Might have some rants about that. Yeah, maybe. First though, Adam found this really cool website and it's ranks the most used internet

browsers and at first i was like cool i i'm gonna know everything this says but i was actually like really surprised by some of the results yeah you mentioned this to me and i'm trying to figure out what you mean by that so first i want to just say it you can check it out in a couple different ways you can like do based on desktop or mobile or everything like that but if we're just assuming all platforms here what if you had to guess what do you think is the most popular internet browser okay is this worldwide worldwide worldwide all platforms most use internet browser so just the way i think about that is when you said most use internet browser i'm like what's everyone's default on their phone yep that's what i think and most people on the iphone are using safari and but there's way more android phones and i guess most of those are using chrome and then desktop desktop might be a little bit an odd

one to predict because there's a lot of people using older browsers who just don't care um so okay most we're going popular worldwide all platforms worldwide number one i would guess is chrome okay thanks to android number two i would guess is safari because of the iphone okay do you want to guess number three real quick that's tough one third is actually really close between a couple but i i only know so many browsers i know about firefox and i know about opera and i know about some older ones like maxthon and there's even some privacy focused like brave browser and things like that you're missing one really obvious i mean internet explorer and edge exist because people just use the default on windows yeah or does that make it number i mean i

guess it still gets a use case, so it still gets used. And like you said, it's a default. Maybe it is number three. I'm going to go Internet Explorer. Okay. Number three. We're going to call it Edge

because Internet Explorer is not really a thing anymore. Right. Yeah, you're right. But do you want to go ahead and open up that link? Okay, yeah, I finally get to. Open it up because I think you may be surprised at the percentages of it. This is 64% Chrome, 18% Safari,

and then Edge is all the way down at 3.37, followed by Firefox 3.36, and then Samsung Internet and Opera around three and two. Wow. Now, is that because of the dominance of Android worldwide? I was trying to figure this out and it is cool well in a second we're going to go down and we're going to click through a couple of these different um there's like you can sort it by just desktop oh i want to do that and and one was

the tablet one is really interesting so i was trying to think of this my first thought was like you said there are way more androids in the world and i just as a pixel user i'm just assuming it's chrome as the default but then I see over here samsung internet so it's samsung samsung internet is the default internet browser for samsung phones right true so you kind of can't count it as while I'm sure a lot of people especially listening to this podcast probably install chrome on their samsung phone I know I used to I bet a lot I bet the majority of them are using samsung internet right and is that does that not fall under chrome then even if it's like chromium based it would be like samsung internet i mean i don't know enough about it but i'm assuming if it's listed here

it's probably okay its own thing um i was just surprised at how because of how many iphones and because of how many macs there are and because of how many iPads there are, I thought Safari would be at least like 30% in second place. I mean, I thought it'd be way closer. Yeah. 18% of worldwide is pretty good, but I would expect a little higher from all those iPhones. And I also definitely expected edge to be higher because it's just the default on all window systems. So that means, I mean, if that doesn't tell you how bad Edge is or how little confidence people have

in Internet Explorer, which is now Edge, I don't know what to tell you anymore because there's obviously more than 3% of the market share of Windows computers out there. The Tableau one is interesting. The Tableau one's the coolest. The Tableau one has a chart. They all have a chart, and I found this interesting

because currently we have chrome at 46 safari at 40 um for tablets but the chart has a history where safari was at 50 oh i didn't actually look and has crossed under and lost and conceded first place very recently march like two months ago so that that's pretty interesting. But again, is that because iPads have stopped growing and you've just gotten more and more random Android tablets out there in the world running Chrome? Or are they just switching to Chrome on the iPad? I don't know. My guess would be that iPad has just dominated for so long.

That's why it was ahead. And now, like you said, I don't know if iPad sales are growing as fast as Android sales are because lots of people haven't found an Android tablet that they love. And more and more are coming out and more and more have potential to be a good Android tablet, whereas we've had a great Apple tablet for so long. It does. I am a little surprised when you go to mobile.

Mobile still is like I thought Safariari would be higher but i guess this is worldwide if we switch you can switch this to us yeah in the us i bet it's way higher let's see so i go to mobile and then i go to united states of america goes ahead 54 there you go so that would that would that would literally just be a count of like most people on the iphone using safari as their default lots of people use people on the iPhone using Safari as their default. Lots of people use Chrome on the iPhone, by the way, but just the overall default you can expect to dominate. And then Chrome being 38%.

That's going to be a lot of people on Android phones. Shout out to Samsung Internet pulling in third place at 4.5%. There it is. It's in its own category, followed by Firefox and Opera pulls up a half a percent. So I guess if you switch to desktop browser, Edge does go up to 11%. So I guess that makes more sense before we were including mobile platforms. I still think that feels low, which is pretty surprising. Oh, wait, that's 11% in just US.

Man, there's so many options you can do. I kind of wish I could pick every single thing that wasn't the US and base it on that. Remove the US. Oh, Edge, globally on desktop, Edge is only 8%, not even 10%. I'm happy about that. Yeah, that's right.

Safari isn't even 10%. When you initially asked me what's the most popular browser, I immediately went, oh my God, it's probably Internet Explorer. It's probably Edge. It's probably number one, because people just don't have, you know, there's tons of people out there who don't change, but there are way more mobile users of internet browsers out there, period. There's lots of people who have phones that don't have a desktop or a laptop. I think this really just shows that. And

I always know it, but it always surprises me how big that percentage is. And I think one last thing I want to say on here is as a Firefox user, it kills me to see Edge above Firefox and makes me feel like a little hipster. It's an enthusiast browser. Which I don't get why I use it because I wouldn't consider myself the enthusiast that would take advantage of it.

But my boss, when I did IT, just used it. So I just started using it and I've loved it since then. And yeah, kind of sad to see it so low. Have you tried Chrome on desktop? You just don't want it? Yeah, no, I used to use Chrome all the time. I just, I think it came to a point where my boss was using it and I was just watching my RAM just get eaten by Chrome. I don't know if that's a fixed or just still like a meme. I know I see the meme all the time. It's still half true. Okay. Yeah. But yeah, Firefox has just worked really well for me, so I've just gotten used to it and kept using Word.

Well, speaking of... Yeah, this is too hard of a segue. Speaking of huge companies making products that not everybody wants. Speaking of the Facebook Watch, have you heard about the Facebook Watch? Yeah. Yeah. Okay Facebook watch, have you heard about the Facebook watch? Yeah. Yeah.

Okay. Well, there is a rumor. I'll just, just to, just to give some background to people. There's, this is literally just a rumor. I don't think there's any official information. There's not really any much credible leaks, but there's a rumor that Facebook may be working on a smartwatch with some cameras in it. Oh, I didn't know.

I mean, why wouldn't it? Why wouldn't it have a camera in it? Two cameras and a Facebook smartwatch. So you remember Facebook Portal, right? Yes. Okay. I mean, Facebook's reputation as a social network is one thing,

but Facebook's reputation as a company is not the best, especially when it comes to privacy and information and data and all that stuff. It's arguably the worst when it comes to privacy. Yeah, it's not great. It's not great. So when you hear Facebook making a smartwatch,

they did actually try to make a smartphone a couple years ago, by the way, the ChaCha. It was with HTC. Why do I not remember it? It was awful. There's no reason to remember it. I'm not shocked that you don't remember it. I mean, it's called the ChaCha.

It was one of the fastest discontinued products of all time. I think I might have made a video about the fastest discontinued products before the ChaCha, and this took the throne. Really? Yeah, it was like three months or something crazy like that. But yeah, I wasn't shocked when that failed. But when you hear Facebook, okay, they might make a smartwatch, you think, okay, it's kind of along the same lines

of like an unnecessary piece of hardware. It's an accessory to an Android phone. Why would I want the Facebook version? And then the one fact that just keeps getting attached to this smartwatch rumor is that it might have cameras on it. I'm reading a little bit right now. It says camera on the front exists primarily for video calling while a 1080p autofocus camera on the back.

What is the back of a watch? First of all, it can be used for capturing footage when detached from the stainless steel frame on the wrist. So literally the back. So you would shoot video like this? I can't. What? I cannot wait to see people walking around in like doris place

that's holding their holding their watch straps trying to take photos of things i imagined okay i imagined for the for the audio only listeners i imagined it's on your wrist and the top of the watch that faces away from you would be like your camera to face away from you and you take videos of people almost like you uh like the sony mirrorless cameras where you can flip the screen up vertically so you're looking down on it while it's facing forward so it's a 90 degree angle from the view you're looking at yeah that would make sense it would make sense functionally it's just stupid anyway because no one would use it yeah you can by the way use the apple watch as a viewfinder for your iphone so you can open the camera app on the watch and it literally just opens the camera on the iPhone and you can use it as a viewfinder.

And can you tap shutter on that? Yeah, you can shutter on the watch. That's actually pretty awesome. It'll take a photo on the phone. But cameras living on the watch feels like, number one, it's going to look weird, maybe a little clunky. You're already trying to minimize bezels on a smartwatch. That's typically the form factor you want to go for on a higher end smartwatch. And if this is a dual camera smartwatch design, that just doesn't seem like it's going to

look any good. I'll give them like FaceTime calling like, OK, sure, that might actually be something like maybe you're just like quickly at the store and you want to like I still don't get why people FaceTime like at the store or at the gym always really confuses me, but I'll give it that. Facebook is attempting to connect people through video with portal like we saw.

So this would be another one. The camera on the back just, it makes no sense, but I cannot wait to see people in the wild. I'm trying to picture. Filming with it. Yeah, I don't, I see, I do see lots of FaceTimes

just like out in the world like the gym locker room before i've seen it in the gym i've seen it i've seen people driving while facetiming yeah that's a if anyone does that on this podcast i'm very upset with you i'm disappointed i've i've seen that through people's windows i've seen people facetiming just walking around in the streets which is it could it can happen. I guess that's fine. But there is almost no reason I can think of why someone would want the camera to be on their wrist and by Facebook of all companies. Exactly. I think that's the next thing we're kind of getting at here is like, if there's, I have not seen anyone really use the portal. And I think we all know why, because why would you just voluntarily put a camera and microphone

connected to Facebook in your home? Now, why would you take it one step closer and just put it on your wrist? And now it's potentially tracking all your health stuff as well. Like, am I going to start getting blood pressure medication on my Facebook ads if I start wearing this?

Or like, that feels like a invasion of privacy. But if we all know Facebook's motto, it's pretty much we're invading your privacy. Yeah. Like if you, if you go all the way to the extreme, like if Facebook could have it their way, they, they announce a watch, it's got sensors on it, cameras on it, connects to your Facebook account. You know how like the Oculus quest, you need a Facebook, you needed a Facebook account. This would be the same way. You need a Facebook account to have this watch. And then it would just give all your information back to Facebook to help target ads better and make a better Facebook product. If they could have it their way, I'm sure that's what happened.

You would start getting ads based on things the watch notices about you, things you've said around the watch. like things the watch notices about you things you've said around the watch i'm just imagining like every weird uh like medicine commercial we're used to seeing in the u.s and just like now that coming up and being like does does my watch know something i don't why am i getting ads for like high blood pressure or something like that i was just thinking about this also this is one of the one of the most impressive things about the Apple Watch is how much it knows about you and doesn't relay back to Apple. Like there's a bunch of locally collected information

and a bunch of like Apple values privacy at least in that way where they'll keep a bunch of stuff on device. But this watch knows a lot about me with all the sensors and all the heart rate information and the exact times that I go to sleep and wake up every day. And like all of this, you know, you know, blood glucose measuring is one of the rumors.

They're going to have all these other sensors in the watch. And it just knows so much about me that if Apple decided to flip a switch on privacy and just was like, you know what, we're just going to sell this information. They would have a lot of information. Yeah. I don't know how much they could do with all that. I'm sure they could do plenty with it so yeah i don't know i

don't know how to feel about that but this kind of leads me to a little fun question i have also quick point yeah the the hippa stuff you're not allowed to share uh public or you're not allowed to share uh health information about people that you collect if it is a certain type of health information because that's the way health information works unless you sign that stuff away willingly. Which I feel like could very easily be tossed in a terms of service that you accept. Maybe.

Who know? Yeah. We're clearly speculating here so don't take anything as a take it with a grain of salt. This is not medical advice. This is definitely not medical or legal advice. If you are trying to collect people's data. Or financial advice. But we had a quick little question or like a couple of us were saying like,

what would you have, like how good would the Facebook watch have to be for you to be okay with wearing something made by Facebook on your wrist all the time? Cause like we always talk about Apple watches just so far far ahead there aren't a lot of android watches i mean yes there are android watches that people like but i think we can all agree there's not one over the top clear winner android watch there's no match to the apple watch exactly so what would this have to do for you to be like, all right, Mark. Okay, are we assuming it has to have the cameras on it? You want to take the cameras off? I'm just thinking like.

Yeah, let's assume it has to have the cameras on it. Because like we're saying how good does this have to be for basically you to have a total invasion of privacy? Yeah, basically. If I just go right to the top and it's literally an Apple Watch made by Facebook with two cameras on it, I still wouldn't want it.

And like pairs equally as well with all of your non-Apple products. Yeah, because the Apple Watch exists and I would just pick that over this every time. So this has to be something better than the Apple Watch. It has to be better than the Apple Watch in some way. It would have to have like, I don't know, like some insane, highly technical, like maybe the battery life is a month

and it does all the stuff the Apple Watch does and the super responsive. I just don't, I don't think there's anything they can do to make me want this smartwatch. It's hard. I think this is turning more into like make your dream smartwatch and then still not want it because it's connected to Facebook.

But I mean, I think the first thing I would want, I would want it to look like a real watch. I'd like the style aspect of it to be better. Look like a real watch. I would want it to be super thin, but like you said, crazy battery life. I still am a little upset at how thick a lot of smartwatches are.

And I mean, watches are pretty thick in general as well. Batteries are thick. Yeah, batteries are thick. It's hard. But again, I really don't want facebook on my wrist either so yeah let's make it hard yeah i think it's it's probably not gonna be yeah facebook if you're listening take a lot of notes on what happened to the cha-cha just remember that remember i'm sure they will never forget that but yeah i think the the biggest thing here is i cannot wait to see people filming with their watch that sounds hilarious there needs to be an instagram page dedicated to like people of walmart but people filming with a facebook watch i'd follow that in a heartbeat i

hate it uh we were gonna talk about windows 8 a little bit that is windows 11 sheesh talk about internet explorer um yeah no windows 11's gotten leaked a little bit we're gonna we're expecting That is Windows 11. Sheesh. Talk about Internet Explorer. Yeah, no, Windows 11's gotten leaked a little bit. We're expecting to see, officially, Windows 11 stuff pretty soon. June 24th, I think, is their event. Okay, so it's coming right up. But do you have any thoughts on what we've seen so far with Windows 11 leaks?

I'll describe it quickly because, like, I mean, people have almost the full version. There's a couple things not quite working, but I think the main difference we see, and with most browsers, is, like, I mean, people have almost the full version. There's a couple of things not quite working, but I think the main difference we see and with most browsers is like, how does it look on your desktop? Like what has changed there? And the main thing they've done here

is cleaning up the toolbar on the bottom and centering it. And then when you hit that start menu, the start menu is now also centered and it's pinned apps. It's all app based kind of on the top. And then at the bottom has a couple recent files, recent folders, stuff like that. So it's much different and it very much is kind of going along

the same design pattern as like Mac OS or Chrome OS, which is just center-based big app buttons. It feels like it's going more towards like almost a mobile platform. I don't know why centering it bothers me so much. It does. Luckily, you can go back to left align. For me, Windows, I'm just so used to left align

and maybe that's the old person in me. I'm sure most people who like Windows like it because they're used to it. Every version has always been left aligned. Always, always, always been like that as far as i can remember um and yeah it looks weird in the middle to me but maybe that's just me not being ready for change um i've always i've always kind of liked that windows felt a little more like

file based and a little less user friendly but if we're being honest that's because we're nerds and most people would probably enjoy this better. It's much easier. It's much cleaner. Apps are like super big and easy to see. And they're all just right in the middle. So I get it. Yeah, to me, honestly, desktop OSs have always been and probably always should be pretty boring.

Like I do my file management and I move things around and I use the programs, but the OS itself doesn't really need to do that much for me. It just needs to look good and clean and simple and work the way I intuitively expect it to. Like Mac OS versus Windows to me is not that exciting of a debate because I could use either. It's just like, do you move the window controls to the left or the right? Like, do you move the menu bar to the top or keep it on the window? Like, small details are sort of minimal,

but at the end of the day, it's about the programs I'm running on the OS that I care way more about. So Windows 11 is cool and it's exciting, I'm sure, for some people. I heard there's a new startup sound, which is neat. Yeah, there is one. I'm sure Adam can add that in.

It's in this article we have, which I'll also post in the show notes because that's a lot of pictures i do have there's a photo in here with it left aligned i do think it being back on the left side i think it looks better than windows 10 it's a little more compact i like that the search bar is a button that you press and i'm assuming expands into the search bar rather than windows 10 just had the search bar there already all the time. But I do enjoy that. There's a couple little other things. There's like some new on the maximize button, some new ways to structure windows into pre-planned places. And that's what an OS is. Yep. Simple. Yeah. Not too much. I think there's some new Xbox console stuff on here. But yeah, June 24th should be the announcement for all of it.

My favorite thing about this was Tom Warren's video where he opened up the notifications panel on the side and he took his mouse and he just slid over and just dismissed the notifications by sliding. Mac OS, Craig, take some notes, baby. Ooh, there are. It's good stuff. Two more quick things

rounded corners just design change and then widgets which i did want to talk about i actually thought widgets weren't really a thing anymore but i looked it up and apparently you can do them on windows 10 but i really think vista just left such a sour taste in everyone's mouth that i don't know a single person that uses Windows widgets anymore. Do you remember those? I do. I remember actually really looking forward to Windows Vista because wasn't that right after XP? I think everyone did because it was like, yeah, it was a pretty dramatic change.

Super dramatic change. Like very visual. Very 3D. Yeah. Because we had XP for a while and it was flat and it was opaque and we had all these like very clear, well-defined aesthetic looks and then vista was like this translucent like glassy thing and it was going to be so new and fresh and modern and so i was really looking forward to vista i remember wanting a new gpu just specifically so

i could have this great vista experience uh and it was it was all right it was all right yeah it was like very bubbly you felt like you were, do you know that, what's that board game in the middle? I think it's called Trouble where it has like that big bubble with the dice inside it and you press it. Like that's what the buttons, like the start button felt like on Vista. And then the widgets were just so bad.

There was all these like 3D circular look terrible. They've always been weird. Even on Mac OS for the longest time you had a dashboard thing where you could just swipe in a bunch of widgets and they're just you just have a calculator and a weather widget and just a bunch of random widgets that you could be just great if they put that on ipad but uh yeah but you know desktop os keep it simple yeah all right well we'll look forward to seeing windows 11 i I think we'll take a little break, and we'll come back, and we'll talk Tesla Model S Plaid. Get groceries delivered across the GTA from Real Canadian Superstore with PC Express.

Shop online for super prices and super savings. Try it today and get up to $75 in PC Optimum Points. Visit superstore.ca to get started. This holiday season, the Center for Addiction and Mental Health is counting on your support. CAMH is on a mission to make better mental health care for all a reality, and they've made incredible strides forward, breaking down stigma, improving access to care, and pioneering research breakthroughs. But now is the time to aim even higher. You can help create a world where no one is left behind. Donate at camh.ca slash donate now from December 23rd to the 31st, and your gift will be tripled for three times the impact.

You know what's great about ambition? You can't see it. Some things look ambitious, but looks can be deceiving. For example, a runner could be training for a marathon, or they could be late for the bus. You never know. Ambition is on the inside. So that thing you love, keep doing it. Drive your ambition. Mitsubishi Motors. All right. So let's talk about Tesla's latest event, their latest product and their latest situation with Plaid Model S and X. So that's the latest is Tesla's Model S and X. Their higher end vehicles now have a Plaid version're they're both essentially getting refreshed entirely so there's a new long-range model s i'll focus on model s and a plaid model s long-range

model s is dual motor we'll get about 400 miles of range and we'll do 0 to 60 in 3.1 seconds i think and then plaid model S is triple motor, and they have this immense focus on that powertrain and that performance, and it'll do 390 miles, which is pretty dang impressive, and 0 to 60 in 1.99 seconds, asterisk. We'll get to that. So generally, the biggest thing actually here to me

is the interior refresh yeah that's like really what happened with this car is there's a new interior have you seen it you've seen the yeah i think i mean clearly the yoke is the biggest thing it's something we all thought we didn't really think was gonna happen there's definitely been past episodes where we said we didn't think that was gonna yeah actually ship with that but it is um oh man what do i think of it uh and isn't the other big difference kind of it's the horizontal screen now rather than the vertical screen i like that a lot i mean there's a bunch of new stuff i think i'll just go down the list honestly because there's a lot okay um i think

we'll start with the yoke right so i've seen so they they announced the plaid car originally then we got this first deliveries event where they delivered the first 25 of them so now they're officially out in the wild it's happening there's real people driving them they have the yoke wheel and they will continue uh deliveries from here so there's a lot of inter interior changes that match model 3 and model y they've got the new ventless invisible air conditioner system okay they've got uh the new door handles from model 3 and model y they've got the wireless chargers up front that are now actually built in right under the screen and they've switched to a horizontal screen with a new software version but the one thing that is definitely different and new

and catching eyes is the yoke steering wheel yeah and uh for those who don't know what the yoke steering wheel is it's imagine a steering wheel where you sort of square it up a little bit instead of being a totally round wheel and then just go ahead and chop the top half of it off just take the top half of that square steering wheel and just pop it off and that yoke that you have left that's what's going on not only that but there are no stocks on the steering wheel column yeah bigger deal than you think because that's where your drive selector usually is slipping switching into reverse or park that's where your blinkers usually are that's where your windshield wipers usually are that's where your autopilot select

usually is that's where your headlights usually are all of that gone now buttons on the steering wheel or controls on the touch screen so how do we feel about that i mean there's a lot of how do we feel about these 50 different things okay there's a lot of, how do we feel about these 50 different things? Okay. I'll start with, if I'm just going to go the general yoke steering wheel, I think it clearly catches eyes. It is clearly a great press photo. It's clearly a great, what car is that? What is that steering wheel when you're walking through a parking lot or something? Awesome. Like looks looks really really cool functionality wise i mean i don't want to make the biggest judgment without using it but i cannot see myself enjoying

it i think it's going to be very hard to get used to i i mean there's a reason a wheel has been on a car for so long because there's so many points of contacts when you're making these big u-turns or k-turns or turning around in a parking lot or something like that i mean for example there's so many points of contacts when you're making these big u-turns or k-turns or turning around in a parking lot or something like that i mean for example there's a video posted of a guy turning it literally he pulls into a parking lot and then tries to make a u-turn to come out and as he's going like really awkwardly hand over hand to try and and make the full 360 turn he's like hitting the horn button and like all sorts of different things are going on and it just looks really awkward. So I believe they use yoke steering wheels

for like F1 races, but that makes sense because the amount of turning they're doing, while they're doing a lot of turning, they're not doing like really, really aggressive big turns and like full 180s, 360s, stuff like that. Yeah, the turns you do on a racetrack are maybe 45 degrees tops where the turns you do on a racetrack are maybe 45 degrees tops where the

turns you do in real life are much more exaggerated um yeah very often too like you do that all the time i was thinking about that as i drove here today because my natural resting place on the steering wheel is actually typically sort of acceptable for a yoke but the second i wanted to do my turns i realized i i moved the wheel between my hands while my hand i would i would have been grabbing air basically and so i'm seeing these videos now of the you know the first ones are out in the wild and there's people driving them and i'm like this is classic tesla of completely ignoring standards because the only reason they're standards is because we've been doing them for

so long. The first thing that I, that comes to mind with this is how model three doesn't have a screen behind the steering wheel. Every car anyone's ever owned has had a screen behind the steering wheel or some way of seeing your speed behind the steering wheel, right? Most of them. My first car ever was a Saturn ion and the speedometer was above the radio in the middle very similar to where it would be for like a model that's hilarious because now so the model 3 puts it over on the right side of of your vision but the only reason that we're all used to the steering with the speedometer being like right behind the steering wheel is because that's where we've trained our glance to be if you're looking at the road you just train your glance to be right below. You have to leave the road to look at your

speed and look back. And I found that the more I drove Model 3 and Model Y for that matter, the more I just trained my glance to be 45 degrees to the right instead of like straight down. So it actually didn't seem that bad. It was just this small learning curve where fine, Tesla can get away with doing something different because it's actually fundamentally not that different. And so I'm thinking about this yoke, like, is this going to be the same thing where I'm just going to get used to the buttons on the wheel? I'm going to get used to my horn and my blinkers and my, my headlights being buttons on the wheel just because there were stocks before. It doesn't mean they had to be stocks they're right at your fingertips of course it should be easier it's faster and i i feel like i'm just gonna have to try it to understand i don't think there's any way for

me to watch enough videos to go oh here's what the learning curve would be i think i just have to drive it it's it's way more to get used to uh like glancing over to the right is a much smaller easier thing to get used to i also weirdly found it when i used to drive like glancing over to the right is a much smaller easier thing to get used to i also weirdly found it when i used to drive my old car like being someone who's tall and if you sit in a position where your steering wheel is at a certain place if i were to have my speedometer right in front of me i would block the speedometer with the steering wheel all the time because i'm like looking so hard down um now like yolk yeah now it's well but like the yolk is so much to change like especially people who have been driving for years like you just get so used to i mean how many how

often do you do the thing where you like you'd spin the wheel and then you like have your hand on the wheel and you just kind of loosen it and it spins through your hand actually like at any point you can grab it and now you're ready to go like that is literally impossible on the yoke right i know a lot of people who do that and i i don't personally do it but i've seen it a lot this is i feel like a lame driving instructor because it's the coolest thing to do oh they they hate when you do that though when you when you do that yeah they're like don't let the wheel open yeah yeah no they're like definitely hold the wheel you had a strict driving exactly i had them do the textbook way but i feel like the like definitely hold the wheel you had a strict driving exactly i had them do the textbook way but i feel like the squareness of the wheel would also hurt you

sliding it through your hands because it's gonna yeah yeah i a lot of times i drive with like one hand when i'm like on a big highway that's straight i have like one hand kind of at the bottom and i think the fact that the wheel is circular at the bottom, if I'm doing it in the middle, it's very easy to just turn on the point of the axis where it's square on there. I'm sure you can do it, but I feel like it might take a little more force because it's a little less natural to move a square on a circular axis than it is to move a circle on a circular axis. Right. Yeah.

And you can change the steering weight and all that to be sport heavier or comfort if it's a little lighter. I would like to try it. I think the buttons are going to be harder to get used to though. That's the part

that's interesting to me. I think that's going to be the easiest part to get used to. I think that I've gotten so used to driving with stocks that I just know

how to go to drive in reverse and I know how to get my blinkers and my wipers and I think I'm going to starters and my wipers and i think i'm going to start driving a plaid model s and get really used to the buttons and then going back to a regular car will feel weird because i have to reach further to do all these things where i

was doing them on the screen and on the steering wheel before i think that's just me speculating also wipers screen don't like that that doesn't seem great yeah um there's too often you have that like in between wipe that's just like i don't want this on all the time but i just need like a quick a single i think that's what the button is the button's a single wipe yes oh is it automatic wiper other than that i think so okay maybe that's not as bad i don't know i like i like being able to control things like that automatic stuff usually usually isn't great it's a little finicky yeah um i don't know about the buttons as someone who's like i have all my media controls on my on the steering wheel on my car and generally if i want

to do anything other than like volume up volume down i still look at it really quickly and i've had my car for almost 10 years at this point yeah so like, I don't know, you're not using it as much as a blinker. It still feels kind of strange. I also would kind of expect the, well, obviously this doesn't happen on the stock, but a blinker, left blinker on the left side, right blinker on the right side, like make it a little easier.

Like the most common thing should be the closest to your thumbs on the steering wheel. I mean, that's not the way the stocks were. It's not, but that's just like one finger up down. Yeah. I mean, same with the button. That goes with, yeah, I guess. Technically, I guess.

Yeah. It's interesting. It's just going to be weird. But yeah, there's just so many instances of Tesla changing little things where like, I guess we've gotten used to it a certain way over time and this is different and it will require a learning curve. But maybe if this is the first car you ever drive, it probably won't be a flat model.

Yeah, I'm sure that's what they're going for is like something along the lines of like, people will get used to this and it'll become intuitive. I feel like both of them together is gonna be a really steep learning curve for a lot of people. And there's gonna be a lot of model-ish drivers using their blinkers really poorly or making really bad K turns on roads yeah that's the one thing okay so the

automatic drive selecting oh man oh this is this to me is actually probably a little too far i would have liked to have seen a stock for this so here's what's supposed to happen. And Elon basically explained it on stage, but says that the Model S and X refresh will guess what you're going to do when you get to stopped and which direction you want to go forward or reverse. So if you're, there are a bunch of instances where it seems very straightforward. I back into a parking spot and I park. When I get into that car, I'm going to go forward. Let's say I go forward into a parking spot. There's a barrier in front of me. I get into that car, hit the brakes. It's just going to go in reverse for me because it knows. I feel like even with this example, you've already hit a snag backing into the spot.

It's going to guess. Okay. Yeah. So there are, there are instances where it's pretty obvious what you're going to want to do. If I pull up to a, like a, if I go to, I was going to say parallel park, but that's another one I don't know what it's going to do. But if I just go pull up to something where there's a wall in front of me

and I'm going to make a three-point turn, I'll pull up to the thing in front of me. It will automatically switch to reverse. I'll pull up to the thing in front of me. It will automatically switch to reverse. I'll back up, and then it'll automatically switch to forward when I stop backing up, and I'll exit that turn without having to touch anything, and it will have just done its job for me. That's something we're assuming with, like, curbs on it, right?

Yeah, yeah. So it can see when you pull to a stop. It's like, now you've arrived at something in front of you. We're going to switch you to reverse, and it just does it for you. Okay. So there's a couple where it looks like it makes sense but then there's a question of like i want to parallel park oh yeah i pull up to a car next to me i pull up to a stop is it going to know i want to parallel park will it automatically reverse for me because it still

sees a street in front of you yeah it sees like i just pulled up next to a car like at a stoplight why would i want to reverse? I'll keep going forward. So I'm going to have to manually switch that, I'm pretty sure. And then it's using the autopilot system to know where the obstacles are. So obviously if there's something in front of you, you want to go backwards. And if there's something in back of you, you want to go front, most likely. And then it will adapt to your, uh, to, to your needs. So if it sees that you're always doing this, you know, you're changing to reverse or forward in particular

situations, it'll try to remember that, um, and geocoded to that location. So then you, it'll, you won't have to do it in the future. Um, there is auto park on these cars, but there's like a whole bunch of other weird, finicky, human guessing situations where I feel like you're just going to have to do it manually. So I've already assumed I'm going to be manually overriding this all the time. Oh, yeah. So my question was, how easy is the manual override? And it's this like one inch wide slot on the left side of the touchscreen. You swipe forward to go to drive.

You swipe backward or down to go to reverse and you hit the corner to of the touchscreen. You swipe forward to go to drive, you swipe backward or down to go to reverse, and you hit the corner to go to park. Seems okay, not as good as a stalk. No. Seems okay. A stalk is literally just right there, like just popping into drive, popping into reverse. Everyone knows how to do that. It's super easy. And I saw someone in a video sort of demo it like, oh yeah, it just kind of feels like a stock. Like you just flip it up to go forward and flip it down, and then he missed, and then he swiped it halfway,

and it went back and didn't work, and like he missed the side of the screen, like a whole bunch of questionable misses on the touchscreen there, so. I cannot imagine, like parallel parking on a busy like main street is already, like if it's busy enough and you have to pull up and then the car behind you can't get past so it has to sit there and watch you parallel park i cannot imagine

the stress that would be induced by like having to hope this thing guesses also did he use the term guess in the presentation i think he did yeah the last thing I want to hear, I would like no. Yeah. It will know. Like even if yes, it's guessing, don't say guess. It will decide for you what you want to do. Like I can't wait till I'm on the road in this two ton car guessing what I want to do next. Something that did get overlooked a lot though was right below the wireless chargers,

there are four physical buttons, haptic buttons okay where you can switch between drive modes right next to the hazard button is that confirmed i yes okay so that seems like it may be a more reliable or at least i don't know if you're it's not going to move any more than the thing on the touch screen but maybe if you want like a button more often, you'll go to that. That's the other thing I'm kind of wondering about. Have we like these buttons on the steering wheel? Is there like touchscreen-ish buttons or is there like a physical enough to where I'm like kind of having some divider that I can feel between these?

So I was worried about this. I was asking about this in my impressions video. They are haptic buttons. They don't click at all. Yeah, but is there a differentiator before I click the button to know that I am on new button or something like that? Like, are they raised a little bit? Do you know sometimes, though, when it's touched, they'll put like a little raised piece in the middle so you can tell like, oh, I'm on the left blinker or the right blinker when I slide my finger over it? Yeah, okay, good point.

So they have a little divider between the left blinker and the right blinker. When I have that, yeah. Okay. Good point. So they have a little divider between the left blinker and the right blinker. So, you know, when you're on which blinker, but on the other side, like the difference between your horn and your headlights is just, you just have to press the right space. You just have to hit the right touch target. You just don't know. There's going to be a lot of Model S is honking and you're not going to know if you just messed something up or if someone's just pressing the wrong button on the wheel or people are going to think Tesla drivers are angry. Flashing my headlights was just like hitting the stock and now it's like hitting the button on and off real quick. Oh yeah. You have to go. You got to hit the on off just to, just to flash. Not stopping. Not what I wanted. Not what I wanted. So yeah,

we'll see. I would have loved to have seen like an option for a regular steering wheel, but this is classic tesla they're just going to go forward with this and it is what it is kind of the other thing though it's like we're talking about getting used to this not only are you giving people more power and more like a more intense driving potential like now you're giving them a steering wheel they're much less used to like i hope people are safe when they do this and get used to the steering wheel i mean for a straight line yoke's perfectly fine i'm sure people will launch their cars because it's clearly a new zero to 60 but uh yeah yeah that's gonna be fun out of all of this maybe the most exciting piece to me is the new performance so there's

there's a long range version with this new interior and there's the plaid motor plaid model s with the triple motor performance version with this new interior um that has a 1.99 seconds 0 to 60 with one foot rollout so it's probably closer to 2.1 or 2.2 does that does that mean as a not car nerd? Good question. So a lot of cars measure their 0 to 60 from zero, and a lot of cars measure their 0 to 60 with a one-foot rollout. Basically, a one-foot rollout means literally exactly how it sounds. The tire starts rolling, and once it's rolled out a foot, that's when they start counting the 0 to 60.

For whatever traction reasons or whatever, there's a bunch of performance cars that, that measure there's zero 60 after rollout. And so, yeah, with this little bit of rollout, you figure the car is already going like four or five miles an hour. By the time it gets one foot of rollout over this tire, uh, it is still extremely fast, but bragging rights lets them put 1.99 seconds with a foot of rollout, and that's what they chose to do for this car.

Well, obviously, if you can go under two, you're going to pick it. But yeah, clearly, if it needs the one foot rollout, it's probably not actually an under two from... Do you know the average of what cars... How many cars use zero to 60 versus rollout to 60 typically it's it's funny it's kind of like whatever they just want like a lot of performance cars use it with rollout like if you're asking about the fastest couple of zero to 60s ever measured they're all with rollout and that's

fine and we kind of just accept that um but this is still faster than all of them so i guess we'll just we'll just go with it we'll just go with it. We'll just go with 1.99. If I were a snarky Twitter account for a corporate performance car company, I would make fun of all the other ones that did one foot rollout. Enjoy your handicap. Still got to beat it. But that's the other thing is so Plaid Model S

has a 200 mile an hour top speed with the right tires anyway, and it's rated at 1,020 peak horsepower, which this is the this is the interesting part is like it's doing track laps now without overheating they've figured out the heat pumps they've done a much better job conditioning the battery to keep it doing launches and doing high performance runs over a longer period of time without overheating that was an issue with previous model s uh owners and model 3 was already a step forward with that,

so that's cool. Then they showed this chart on stage where they showed P100D, then Model S Raven, and then the horsepower, or I think the torque output of Plaid Model S, which just kept going up. It seemed essentially flat at 1,000 horsepower up to 200 miles an hour, which is kind of scary. But the main question is are they gonna continue to improve on this for roadster like they have these carbon sleeved rotors and they have all this crazy tech to make it work

i don't know it's just like a next level performance gain for a four four-door sedan with like eight feet of storage in the back like it's crazy so i think that's one thing people always forget is like it's so quick to like take model s numbers and compare them to all these other like performance cars but then remembering i mean this is what we made project love day about um if for people who don't know we did an old tesla video contest where we made a video about like a commercial for Tesla. We actually won it partially because we have a lot of fans. But the whole video is based on like a very fast car being able to do everyday activities.

Yeah. Fun video to make. But yeah, I feel like people always forget about like how much trunk space and how much like of an everyday car a Model S is with these numbers. Yeah. So 390 miles of range is nice. Yeah. But it's not. Wait, can I say my one more, my favorite part about Plaid?

Yeah, go ahead. The logo, the emblem on the back. I love it. Oh, I figured. The Plaid emblem. Okay. I absolutely love it. Apparently that Plaid was just for the first 25 deliveries at the event.

Those people are very lucky because that's awesome. Somebody's probably going to, I bet someone sells those. But like I just love the Spaceballs reference and to put it physically on the car like that is hilarious. I wonder if mine, we'll figure that out later. But yeah, it says the just plaid text on all the others. It just says plaid? P-L-A-I-D, yeah.

Is it in plaid? Nope, just like the other text, it was just Chrome letters. It'll just say plaid. I all the others it just is plaid plaid yeah is it in plaid nope just uh just like the other text it was just chrome letters it'll just i don't want one anymore yeah this is a major detail yeah um no yeah this is uh this is it so so the the range that people were talking about this is the the question that sort of hovered over this whole event was are they going to address plaid plus yeah because what happened before this event was maybe just as interesting as the event itself, which is Tesla had also announced and promised another car called Tesla Model S Plaid Plus that would have assumedly new battery technology, 520 miles of range a slightly faster

sub 1.99 seconds 0-60 and about 1100 horsepower and everyone went well this car is bonkers why would I get Plaid if Plaid Plus is coming out next year I'll get Plaid Plus then literally hours before the event maybe a day

or two before the delivery event it was on Sunday and the event was on Thursday. Okay, so a couple days before the event, Elon tweets, this is like official Tesla news classic, but Elon tweets

that Plaid Plus is canceled. Canceled? That's the first time I don't think I've ever seen a Tesla model get announced and then canceled. It was like such a weird way he did it though

because it wasn't just like a tweet that says Plaid Plus is canceled. It was this thread of tweets where he says, originally, Model S goes Plaid speed this week, which is like, get everyone amped. One minute later, reply thread, Plaid Plus is canceled. No need as Plaid is just so good. So it was like a, it's canceled. And then let me throw your scent off with something else. And then a quick like zero to 60 under two seconds, quickest production car made of any kind has to be felt to be believed so it's a very quick like can't wait for model s

plaid pop-ups is canceled and the plaid is going to be so good so just like i actually thought this was brilliant i mean it's a brilliant way to announce it when you kind of don't want but of course test i feel like the tesla community was, oh, my God, this is awesome. Did he just say it was canceled? And then like that was the news for like two or three days. Yeah. And so the question is, all right, Plaid Plus is canceled. Number one, what do you mean by Plaid is just as good?

Yeah. And number two, why is Plaid Plus canceled? It was going to have 500 miles of range. And I think there was a follow upup tweet essentially saying... What Elon said? Yeah. So it was actually a response to Electric, I believe. And we'll post that in the show notes as well. And he said, what we're seeing is that once you have a range above 400 miles,

more range doesn't really matter. There are essentially zero trips above 400 miles where the driver doesn't need to stop for restroom, food, coffee, etc. Anyway, I think that's a nice distraction. I totally agree with you. If you if you really read into that saying seems like people don't really need more than 400 miles. I would argue people don't need faster than 2.5 seconds or to 60. That's a good way to that's a really

good way to put it i didn't think of it like that so the point is um we we're using our inferencing and our context clues to imagine probably the reason plaid plus is canceled is because the batteries that would have been needed to create that car aren't quite available yet they're 4680 cells. They're higher density. They're much more impressive technically. And we think they're going to be in Cybertruck and Roadster to get those respective 500 and 600 mile rated ranges. But if we started with Plaid Plus, we're probably going to be taking resources and cells away

from those more important vehicles. So we'll just cancel plaid plus shift all those orders to plaid distract them about why we're switching no plaid is good enough it's great trust me it's going to be just as good basically the same um and just sort of sweep the 200 extra miles under the rug because that was a big difference 390 miles 390 miles is nice i currently have like 300 miles and 390 as a max range sounds great but 520 is way way more confidence inspiring that's like literally i could drive to north carolina from new jersey i could drive probably to like cleveland from here on 500 miles of range so i would have been really excited about a car with that sort of range

rather than a 0.2 second faster 0 to 60 so that to me is a little bit interesting and concerning but also brings up questions about uh well when are we going to see cars with that type of range are we ever going to if elon keeps saying if he sticks with this, 400 miles of range isn't really necessary, then why promise 600 miles for Roadster and 500 miles for Cybertruck? Yeah. It's still happening. I think there's a lot of weird things to unpack from that because if you're saying you think it's...

So I think the approach you're taking for it is the optimistic... I've seen two ways people are seeing this. Yours is the optimistic one, like, let's save these for Roadster roadster cyber truck coming out we don't want those to be delayed anymore we don't have enough for them the other approach is these aren't ready these cells aren't ready yet and people don't think they're completely ready we don't know when they're going to be ready is this going to mean cyber truck road circuit delayed further and like I think both and saying they're not ready right now means they're definitely getting delayed so he's trying to not put any of the attention onto that potentially so yeah I wouldn't doubt if it's like a kind of little of a little of b like

maybe the batteries are pretty close to being ready and it would just delay Plaid Plus and then if you put Plaid out before Plaid Plus and I don't know, there's a lot of speculation going on in that way. But I do think like I think that's really interesting. What you just said, though, is like if you're using the excuse for 400 miles right now, does that mean you're basically saying you don't think Roadster or Cybertruck should go 500 miles? Because like you could easily make the argument that a sports a coupe doesn't need to go 500 miles because like you could easily make the argument that a sports a coupe doesn't need to go 500 miles like who's going on a road trip efficiency has never been concerned sports cars so that doesn't make sense for me now cyber truck on the other hand like i do think there are a lot of people looking at trucks to go long distances so that makes way

less sense but now are you going to bottleneck your truck because you used this excuse previously yeah or do you actually believe that which then i think is a whole nother thing where it's elon looking at numbers way too much numbers of what he has right now and then potentially limiting stuff in the future because of that so if i just stay with my my just straight logical brain number one plaid plus was not canceled because Plaid was good enough. It was canceled and the distraction was Plaid Plus is good enough, trust me. It's great.

But then two, the reason that Plaid Plus is canceled is probably going to turn into a reason that Cybertruck and Roadstar are delayed. Yeah, I totally agree with that. But as long as we're not talking about those yet, we don't have to talk about those yet. So all the focus is on Plaid that night, and obviously it's still a very impressive car.

390 miles is only slightly less than 412 for the long range, so I'm perfectly fine with that. And yeah, it's an impressive car, but yeah, it's just got me thinking about how much longer we have to wait for Roadster. This was announced in 2017. Was it that long at this point? 2017 is when the Roadster

was announced. I mean, I knew it would take a while. I think it's that they keep talking about it or releasing it and stuff or showing it at the semi-truck event that gets people more and more hyped for it and then you see it pop up every once in a while. But it might take a little longer.

What are your thoughts, though, on wanting more? Because it's one thing to think about 520 miles as I would like to go on a 520 mile trip. Where in that singular case, I think Elon's probably right. Chances are in that 520 mile trip, you're not doing it straight. You're taking breaks, you're taking restroom breaks. If there's a charger available at all those, then yeah, it makes no sense. I think there's tons of other scenarios though where that doesn't help in that extra range. I think the one I found the most interesting is the people who are charging their

Teslas in the most efficient ways possible, which is from the most effective way to charge is lowest battery, correct? To around what, 60% is like the really, really efficient. So now your zero to 60% is much bigger and a way bigger range. So that means you can now drive further and still charge as efficiently as possible. Or there are the people who maybe live in an apartment or in a condo or something that don't have a garage and a charging place at home. Now they're not charging every other day. They're charging every three or four days. Like that's so nice to not have to. I know someone with a Model Y who they live near a college and every once in a like every couple of days when they come home,

they go drive onto the campus and sit in their car, charge all the way to full. Yeah. So they're sitting there for like 45 minutes. That kind of sucks. I'll add two more versions of this. I have basically two types of road trips that I do. One would be like visiting family and two would be for an ultimate trip. One for visiting family. It'll be here an ultimate trip one for visiting family it'll be here's the destination it's this many miles away you're going to drive there you're going to park there for a couple days and then you're going to drive home it would be nice to not have to stop at all meaning drive there park it for a couple days and then drive all the way home and so no if even if it is only a 250 mile road trip if if I had 500 miles of range,

I would not have to charge and I would just come all the way home. If it's obviously a much less range, I'm gonna have to charge at some point. The other version is going to ultimate. So literally you're going to go drive somewhere, park for a couple hours and then drive home. This is for a game, not a tournament,

but the point is I just really don't want to have to stop yeah at all uh even if it's 400 300 200 miles i want to go there not stop not just go about my day go about my weekend and then drive home and the more battery obviously you have the more likely you are to be able to do that there's something also to be said that like yes there are a lot of superchargers but as he says stopping for food food, coffee and stuff like that, like that's a valid excuse for stopping, getting to top off. But you don't always get to choose the food that's at these places. So like we've done a couple of stops.

One time we stopped and there was a great burger place and we all sat down, had a burger, it charged a ton because we were really enjoying the food. Then there's like, like I'm really hungry and you stop and it charged a ton because we were really enjoying the food. Then there's like, I'm really hungry. And you stop and it's a gas station with a subway and really disgusting restrooms. Or some random, yeah. Not something you want to eat or you never know. If you want to take it one step further, if you have dietary restrictions and one of these fast food places doesn't cater to that very well, cool.

Now you're just sitting in the car. So that's that's when it starts getting to the point where gas is better i like your theory of if you can do 500 miles you're probably going further than quite a few gas cars now you're getting the advantages over gas cars that's what i was gonna say so i'll end it with this before we take a quick break i think if elon's uh main goal with cars like this is to give the full smackdown to gas-powered cars. You want to give them every single reason across the board is better than a gas car. Better 0-60, better technology, better traction, better safety, better comfort, better torque, better everything. If you

can also give them better range, that's not a small detail. People will definitely notice being able to go twice as long as far as days between filling up whether it was gas or electric that's going to matter so i'd argue it's the biggest hurdle from gas to ev easy i don't think anyone's doubting that ev has better specs and just like potential and just pure drivetrain but like uh what's it called range anxiety is like easily the biggest thing stopping people from switch. So why are you limiting yourself already? Yeah.

It seems kind of confusing to me. So as long as there's less superchargers and gas stations, keep making that range longer. All right. Let's take a quick break. We'll come back and we got to talk. I want to talk a little bit about I3.

Yeah. Support for the show today comes from NetSuite. Anxious about where the economy is headed? You're not alone. If you ask nine experts, you're likely to get 10 different answers. So unless you're a fortune teller and it's perfectly okay that you're not, nobody can say for certain. So that makes it tricky to future-proof your business in times like these.

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you're anticipating its next move. You can close the books in days, not weeks, and keep your focus forward on what's coming next. Plus, NetSuite has compiled insights about how AI and machine learning may affect your business and how to best seize this new opportunity. So you can download the CFO's Guide to AI and Machine Learning at netsuite.com slash waveform. The guide is free to you at netsuite.com slash waveform. netsuite.com slash waveform. This isuite.com slash waveform. All right, we got to talk about this BMW i3. Yeah.

So first of all, why are we talking about the i3? Well, I'm currently testing the i3 with Range Extender for a column I'm doing for Top Gear. with range extender for a column i'm doing for top gear if you haven't already seen i've been reviewing a bunch of evs and high-tech cars for a top gear column i think it's called hard drive it's a fun one i mean if you don't watch or read the top gear magazine check it out um so the latest uh after the f-150 lightning will be this and so they get the car here in our in our hands for a couple days and inevitably there's like a first impression. We check out the car. A lot of them are really cool. The i3 with range extender has been very puzzling to me in a lot of ways, because honestly, I'm trying to think, all right, what's the target demographic? Like, where does this fit into the

EV landscape? We know what the competition is. We know what the price is. I'm just going to give you a couple quick headliners about this car. Yeah. And then a question. Let's paint a picture. Okay. This car cost $50,000 with $10,000 of options. So it's 60 grand. So right off the bat, you can picture other cars that are also right around 60 grand. then it is a compact form factor so it's it's a much smaller than most of the other cars it's uh it's got an electric motor and a battery that can give you about 175 miles when full and then it has a three-cylinder engine and a two-gallon gas tank as your range extender. So you drive around on pure electric until you run out.

And if you ever do run out, you can drive around as a gas car. It gets around 35 miles a gallon for a total of 70 miles on gas. And that's the i3. It's a smaller. So because it is so small, the back seat is very small, the trunk is very small, the front trunk, not even exaggerating, I don't think I could fit all three of these cameras in the front trunk.

No, especially because it has a couple things inside it already. Because it has an engine. It has an engine and a gas tank and a battery and the electric drive fan. So it's got all this stuff in this very small place. And so it's turned into like, all right, I have 60 grand to spend on a car.

Why would I pick this one? And I don't think I know the answer. Do you want to like take a quick roll through like our impressions when we first got into it? It's just like, let's try and let people imagine this car a little better i mean if you haven't seen an i3 um you know it's a bmw so it's got it's got the the the grill it's got the little the nostrils on the front yeah it's a black and white two-tone

pretty modern looking car a lot of glass a little split sunroof going on i don't mind the design for the size i think the size is weird but i don't mind the design for the size. I think the size is weird, but I don't mind the design. It's like weirdly tall. So it's kind of looking like a little minivan, but very mini. It has a very like, you know, those hot wheel cars that just like never really had correct proportions. So like it's got big wheels, but the front is just like so squished, but it looks like it should be bigger, but it's on this small car.

There's like kind of this weird window line where the back window is like lower than the front driver's side window or the front door windows. And it's just like very flat back hatchback. It didn't have a bad amount of room in the back for what it was. It's not great.

Then you get inside it and it's like, I mean, it's BMW, so it's gonna be nice quality inside. The majority of the inside minus this one paneling on the back doors, which was kind of weird, is like pretty high quality. It has some weird design choices. The stock is this like gigantic, how do you describe that?

It's like a growth out of the steering column yeah like it would be like holding like a camera lens with like a nub on it to change like you have to put your entire hand around it in order to change gears on it yeah um it has some nice like blue accents and everything i like again i don't think the design is off it just feels but and then the steering wheel feels despite how short the front of the car is you feel like you're sitting like in the middle of the car rather than the front of the car and like really controlling it you feel really far back that was my that was my number one driving takeaway is like oh there's like really nice visibility and these windows are really big but there's a lot of car in front of me and not a lot of car behind me.

I think I'm in the middle of the car, which is like an unusual feeling for a four-door car, technically. Well, not, I don't even, would you? It's a four-door, yeah. They call it when it does, so it has the type of door where you, the back door is like almost a half door

where like you have to open the front door and then the handle is on the inside and you open it similar to trucks that aren't like full cab trucks um i don't know if you call that something a little different you can't get in without opening the first door so i can i consider it a four door because you can't get in the back seat but yeah it is a small door i think the um there's like the hyundai velostar yeah I think they call that a three-door technically. Well, that only had a third door. It has, it's, oh, no.

It didn't have one on both sides. Oh, yeah, that had that one. Yeah. That's very confusing. So I give it four-door status. It's just very compact, obviously. Okay, yeah. So you have a 60 grand.

Yeah. You have it to spend on some sort of new car. Why would you pick this one? Okay, 60 grand for context. New Model Y. Performance Model Y. Performance Model Y. That's going to give you much more range. That's going to give you about 300-ish miles of range.

That's going to give you much better performance. This thing isn't a slouch, but it's no performance car, right? It's a smaller wheels. It's got a sport mode. I would guess it's going to give me about a five and a half seconds, zero to 60. It was like a zippy car when you're rolling. So like merging would be great in it. But there was literally a time where we went, tried to go from zero to 60 and you like, like it was comical how bad it took to like go like we all heard you slam your foot down kind of at a second to look at each other and then it started going yeah it was like a it's like if you were in like a crv like when you slam on the the gas you're not expecting to get rocketed

forward like it's gonna it'll go oh you want to go faster now give me a second and then it'll start moving forward so like yeah it's nimble and it's zippy it's got a tight turning radius but like it's not a performance car so so model y is going to give you and i'm just using model y as an example but much longer range on electric no gas tank much much more storage oh yeah much bigger performance much more features just as far as software and autopilot and speaker system and all this stuff and so you have to want to get this i3. You've got to want either something really compact, or you've got to want a BMW specifically, or you've got to really, really want for some reason

a plug-in hybrid that has a gas tank, even though it's worse mileage. I still don't know what to call it. It doesn't really feel like a plug-in hybrid that has a gas tank, even though it's worse mileage. I still don't know what to call it. It doesn't really feel like a plug-in hybrid, but it also doesn't really feel like an EV. I'm trying to paint the picture of the person getting this. And I'm imagining someone who lives in New York City and has an awful parking spot. Sure. So they want a compact car. Yeah.

They only trust legacy car makers, so they don't trust new things. So they can actually. BMW. Only trust legacy car makers so they don't trust new things so they can go with BMW. I think you can stop at just wants a good compact EV. Yeah, but I want to get really narrow with this person. Well, because there is no other. I want to paint the picture of the person who loves this, is obsessed with this car. Yeah, there is no other good compact EV.

So I'll give it credit for that specific achievement but it's still not great yeah i mean it would have to be someone with money to spend because 60 grand is not cheap for a car by any means um you would need like i still think the interior is pretty solid but nothing like to blow 60 grand on so there's that i mean maybe if you live in the city having the compact car range doesn't matter that much but it still helps to have that little kick if you live in the city having the compact car range doesn't matter that much but it still helps to have that little kick if you're like uh on one of the the expressways around new york city and you need to like zip over a lane or something like that and then like somebody who has is just getting into the ev world but still has range anxiety so you have this little

reservoir of gas in there also you don't carry anything or or any of your friends are over 511 yeah yeah like range it's funny if you live in the city and you can get away with a bigger car like a model 3 which is not that big but it's you almost never have range anxiety because you have 250 plus miles of range and superchargers i feel like you'd have more range anxiety with a tiny electric battery and a two gallon gas tank. Wait, but are there a lot of superchargers in New York city? Enough that you could go around the city a thousand times with them. Yeah. There's plenty in the city that cover the actual radius of the city. And if you have 250 miles of range, you can always get to a supercharger in New York city. You only have to drive four miles to get to one, pretty much anywhere in the city. Here's a question that's kind of off the BMW topic, but I saw a video today and I know

is an exaggerated version of it, but there was a supercharger outside of a Disneyland, I believe, and somebody was going to get in line for it and the line was literally 30 cars deep. Does that happen fairly? I could see that happening in new york city i've never experienced that on the east coast okay i've seen it on the west coast because there are way more teslas specifically on the west coast yeah yeah that being said uh i have only waited in line once for a supercharger and that was on like a weekend in the morning where i guess a lot of people are driving. And it was a New Jersey like going south. There's like six chargers and there's Dunkin' Donuts right there and everyone was just chilling.

It's probably down to the shore or something. But I do see some pretty serious backups on the West Coast where there will be like 12 chargers and like 12 cars waiting while everyone else is charging. That sounds like a nightmare. That is not great. That can give you that anxiety where you're like, am I going to get to this charger and it's going to be full or, you know, a long wait.

Cause if you don't have enough range to make it to another charger, you're now potentially waiting like hours to get filled. That's brutal. Yeah. Yeah. So I know I haven't experienced that yet on the East Coast. But, yeah, New York City, plenty of chargers, plenty of space, plenty of range. I'm trying to think, like, okay, what if you want a compact car, you live in the city, you want something small, but you don't care about it being an EV, you could get any number of compact cars.

If you don't care about it being an EV, then this is pointless. Yeah, so you have to, for some reason, want a compact EV. Sort of, but it has gas. But it has gas. But you can get the one that's not a range extender. Okay, okay. Anyway, yeah, look forward to the column

on Top Gear Magazine. It's just like a quirky car. I've really considered- You can tell it's gonna be a glowing review. Yeah, it's obviously, this will be very positive. I was just trying to think like, should I make a video about this car at all? It's not really that interesting

other than just the conundrum of like, who would buy this? And we were asking at the studio like, all right, what price would it have to be to actually want to buy an i3 with 170 miles of range and a two gallon gas tank? And we landed at like 25. 20, I don't think I would even pay 20.

I didn't even pay 25 for my car right now. And I would take it over this. Oh, really? Yeah. Yeah. I don't think I'd want this car. No. It's neat, but I wouldn't choose it.

If somebody wanted something like this so much, so bad, it would make more sense for like smart car to come out with something like this and not have a million features like BMW would and just be totally on board with this is a compact car with not a lot of range and a ZV and it'll do the things you need for a compact car. I will say while I do feel way safer in my car I do feel safer in this than a smart car. Yeah. There's a little more of a bubble around me. This thing does feel kind of like a tank for how small it is. It is it's very uh center of gravity is very low because of, I guess,

you know, there's batteries in there and obviously there's a lot of low weight, but it does feel safer than a smart car. So I'll give it credit for that. Yeah, I would never say I felt unsafe in this despite how small it is. So I guess that's kind of one perk.

There you go. We said something nice about it. Good looks. Good looks, i3. I think that's a good place to end it, being positive. Yeah, I think so.

Anyway, all right, well, that's it. Thanks for listening to this episode of Waveform. Check out the Top Gear column when it comes out. If you get the magazine, check out the – if we do get the plaid somewhere around here soon, we hope to make an impressions video and check it out in person.

And by the way, if you haven't already subscribed to the Waveform YouTube channel, definitely do that here. There's also a clips channel where we're uploading of course the smaller more interesting sections of the podcast for you to check out those clips so let's see youtube channels for you to subscribe to both linked below and from the main income bhd channel other than that this has been a fun one stay tuned maybe roadster will come out someday thanks for listening catch you guys later waveform is produced by adam melina we are partner with studio 71 and our intro outro music was created by vane sill