Waveform: The MKBHD Podcast - World's Fastest Charging & World's Fastest Car!

Episode Date: June 4, 2021

This week, we take a quick look at Xioami's insanely fast 200W charging and Rimac's new fastest car in the world: the Nevera. Then, we discuss the interesting situation where Tesla appears to be removing "features" from their cars while simultaneously raising prices. Finally, we wrap everything up with rumors about potential Tesla-branded restaurants and possibly one of the weirdest phone designs we've ever seen. Links: Subscribe to the pod & share with friends: http://bit.ly/WaveformMKBHD Subscribe to the pod on YouTube for full videos: https://bit.ly/WVFRMPodcastYouTube 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 Rimac Nevera: https://bit.ly/3pfqezX 200W Charging: https://bit.ly/3wTZlnM Tesla Restaurant: https://bit.ly/3uMALDU Huawei Camera Bump: https://bit.ly/3g3uuhO Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Uber Reserve. See Uber app for details. All right, welcome back to another episode of the Waveform Podcast. We're your hosts. I'm Marques. And I'm Andrew. And today we've got a bunch of interesting quirky things to talk about that have happened in the past week. One of them would be the fastest charging we've ever seen. One of them would be the fastest car we've ever seen. And then a bunch more stuff in between. Also, you might have noticed we've got a little bit of a new intro vibe. The new music's feeling pretty good. Shout out to Vayne Sill, who's obviously extremely talented. He's made music in MKBHD videos before.

Just leveling up. Covering the podcast, too. The guy is incredible. Yeah, and a big shout out to Cameron Barlow, who made the original music. I think we've told the story, but he was one of the first people to ever send us music when we started Waveform, and everything we got sent after that was nowhere close to as good. Yeah, he crushed it. OG Waveform, and everything we got sent after that was nowhere close to as good. Yeah, they crushed it. OG Waveform Music were taking a new chapter, but big shout-out to him because that was huge.

Two years almost, I think, that was going. Awesome. So now, so you've got, all you wrote here is Andrew rant about Pixel 4 XL. I have no idea what you're ranting about, but the stage is yours. I'm just gonna like all right we all first of all let's the elephant out of the room i'm still using a pixel 4xl

just because you work here doesn't mean you've got like literally that i mean marquez does but like we're all not reviewing the phones as much as marquez i'm using it i like it i like the phone it's been good i didn't love the pixel 5 but but is, out of all the phones I've had in my entire life, it has caused me the most issues ever, like hands down, out of everything I've ever had. Okay. And right now I'm at the point where I can't use it unless it's plugged in. And this kind of stems, I think, all from possibly the same issue.

But I'll go back like a couple months ago to what i was not first had my like big issue with right not just software bugs you mean like no problematic i don't believe it's okay software at all so the first thing that started happened was probably four or five months ago i noticed the back glass was like a little off on the top. And I noticed it because I had a skin on the phone. And I was like, oh, the skin just looks way too thick. And I realized it was actually because the glass was starting to peel off. And at first, it didn't seem that bad.

It just looked like a little lip. I didn't think anything of it. But fast forward maybe a month from there, and that lip now has a gap in it. So just the whole back glass on the phone is like completely peeling off and that was because of the battery swine i don't know what that was because of i have no reason i don't know exactly what it was but it was enough of a gap that i could see lint had gotten inside of the phone and inside of the camera lenses i can't think of any other reason for the back glass of the phone to literally rip out of the glue and come off the back of the phone i had seen some things um online of people

having similar issues and some of their thoughts one was battery swelling um another thought was just potentially heat or something just making the adhesive like not good enough to where the adhesive is now just coming off and not keeping the glass on the phone anymore. Um, because of that, my solution to it was to put a drop of super glue on the top and then start using a case. I haven't used the case in a while, but I've been a case person mostly because of that, because even with like the super glue, if it, if it fixed it, I've pretty much lost confidently waterproofing the phone yeah right like there's no reason if that seal is broken don't get that anywhere near water yeah exactly so i i mean that in itself i've been much more

careful with the phone so then maybe three months ago my next problem started where i was using my phone one day and it was at 50% and the battery, my phone just turned off as I was using it. And I thought that was really strange. Um, clearly it was at 50%. I don't know what happened. And I plug it in and I get this battery icon with a question mark on it. And that never ever feels like a good sign. A battery icon with a question mark. Yeah. So like the black screen, normally when you plug it in in you would get like a red battery icon for your phone being dead which it shouldn't have been because it said 50 but i got just a question mark battery safety shut off is gonna be my guess i still not 100 sure of what it was but so my solution that night when it happened was okay i'm just going to plug

it in and i'm gonna leave it overnight and it's going to charge. It was close to bedtime and I didn't feel like finagling with it for that long. Wake up the next morning and it still says, I turn it on and it says 50%. I was like, there is absolutely no way this could be physically plugged in the entire night and still be at 50% battery. And I don't know what I eventually did to fix it, but it started working. I eventually got it to the point where when I turned it off and plugged it in, it had the red battery icon with a percentage. So I knew it was at least charging, which to me, that was a step up because it hadn't been doing that before.

Fast forward to the next time it happens a couple of weeks later, and I started researching a bit more what's going on. People are saying that there's something wrong with the battery connection itself and that the battery is fine, but the connection and the reporting to the phone is what's messing up. So in that process, one of the fixes, which I can't believe I even tried because just reading it online seems so dumb. It was turn your phone on, which it has to be plugged in to turn on turn your phone on turn bluetooth off i don't know what this part accomplishes but turn off bluetooth unplug your phone turn it off and then you an inch from the bottom and an inch to the right you press your thumb as hard as possible

on the back of the phone and then you plug it in and it starts charging and it worked and i didn't really question it. I kind of was hoping it was a one-time thing. But then it's about two weeks after that, it happened again. Did the trick. It worked. I did the trick probably four or five times until last night finally. Same thing.

Phone. It's really weird when it does it too because, like, the phone starts stuttering a bunch. And, like, feels like you're just, like, out of storage almost. Or, like, it feels like a really old phone and it just dies i feel like i understand your problem i feel like i get it if i had to guess uh this is it just started with your battery like having some sort of problem swelling up a little bit so the battery swells up right off the bat there should probably theoretically be some safety protocols in place when a phone detects that its battery is having problems because nobody wants that bad pr of like yeah it just swolled

up and exploded in my pocket so i'm guessing once that happened and separated your back the phone realized at some point battery's not okay and started limiting what it allows the battery to do if you realize the battery is having a problem, don't allow that to charge to 100%. Don't allow that to get to zero. Don't let that battery discharge too fast. So when your phone starts stuttering, it's probably limiting the battery so much the voltage of the parts is also going down.

I bet if you replaced just the battery of that phone, everything is back to normal. I agree with your solution, but I don't think that's exactly what's happening and the reason i don't think it's limiting it to like charge 100 or like you're saying you think it's dying at 50 because it doesn't want it to go to zero right i'm saying it's limiting what the battery is physically able to do for safety reasons i think the battery itself at least in the sense of it's still getting to 100 because i charge it to 100 plenty of times is physically able to do for safety reasons. I think the battery itself, at least in the sense of it's still getting to 100,

because I charged it to 100% plenty of times when it wasn't doing that. And every time, the couple times when it like at 50% died and I got to fix, like within a couple minutes, did the trick and got it to turn on again, the battery is completely dead. So I think it's losing some sort of connection and its default is just set it at 50% as a battery.

Is the battery dead or did it just auto shut off for safety? It's dead because when I would plug it in and get it to work, it was at red battery, 1% battery. So I think there's a problem with the connection and the way it's reading the battery level and then probably being safe and shutting off.

Or I don't even know, it's definitely dying. It's 100% dying because I'm getting 1% battery. There's no way it's like, yeah. That's what the solution seems to be. Google will apparently RMA it, but when you're in a pinch, I wanted it to work and i just kept doing the trick which is probably the bad thing to do and now it keeps doing that so now i have to figure something out i would have bailed the second it started swelling the battery i still don't know if the

battery's on but i am 100 today after recording this going to open the phone up and see what's going on in there i'll post pictures on twitter or something like that. But I'm kind of excited to see what's in there. Well, speaking of dangerous batteries, segue, we've got a story, and it's really just a tweet, but Xiaomi tweeted, or actually Ice Universe tweeted this, but it's a Xiaomi video.

Xiaomi released, and when we say released, that's in air quotes, they've demonstrated this technical ability to do 200 watt wireless charging. No, wired. Sorry, 200 watt wired charging and 120 watt wireless charging, which again, those are some crazy numbers,

but to put them in context, Samsung's fast charging right now is 25 watts. Okay. Wait, really? Yes, 25 watts. I didn't know that. Some of the fastest charging in any phones right now would be your 65 wattwatt fast charging.

Did Oppo do 120 watts? At the very bleeding edge, highest end, there may be a phone or two that supports 100 or 120-watt fast charging, which is crazy fast. Wasn't the Lenovo one that, but you had to put two wires in to do it? Plug in both at once, which is insane and beautiful for a video thumbnail yeah um this one 200 watt wired charging is uh i think they demonstrated on a 4600 milliamp hour battery or something like that literally they plug it in and i'm i'm not even exaggerating within 45 seconds you've gotten 10. You can watch the battery percentage go up in 45 seconds to 10%. The whole thing's done in 100% in eight minutes.

Zero to 108 minutes. Now, obviously, cool. All right, great. You've demonstrated this crazy ability to pump huge voltage through that wire and through that port and into that battery. What's the catch? Which is like, Xiaomi's not gonna tell you. The catch is it might catch on fire.

I think, I honestly think they've probably mitigated the catching on fire part. It's easy to make jokes about it's gonna explode and like it's never gonna work. I just think the discharge rate is gonna be just as fast. Like how long does that battery last? Yeah, like overall lifetime. Overall lifetime and like how many charge cycles you can have,

but also in like daily use. You think so? You think it affects? I think it might affect the overall discharge time of the battery in day-to-day use. If you can upcharge that fast, then you can output that same speed. I don't know this for a fact. I just know that there has to be a catch. There's got to be a catch.

There's got to be a catch. There's got to be a catch. My initial thought would be the catch is battery life. Not like, not day to day, but just overall in general. Yeah, health. Great way. But I also think what's crazy about this is 120 watt wireless charging is now the fastest we've seen wired charging in wireless form instead. I almost feel like when you reach down to pick it up you're

gonna like feel the energy like a little like force field of just like power around it like what happens this phone already gets i'm holding a one plus nine pro for audio listeners uh but you should you should check out the youtube version uh this phone when it wireless charges it gets warm yeah and i put it on this wireless charger and the one plus. This phone, when it wireless charges, it gets warm. Yeah. And I put it on this wireless charger, and the OnePlus wireless charger has fans in it, so it's blowing those fans while it's charging quickly to keep the temperatures down because it knows that wireless charging just gives off a lot of heat. It's not super efficient. So when you pump that much wattage—

What's the wattage on the OnePlus charger? That's a good question. Wasn't it like 75? A little less than that, I think. And you have to buy OnePluses, by the way, to get the maximum speed. 50 watt wireless charger. But it gets warm and like to the touch. This is more than double that?

Yeah. I take the phone off the charger and I'm like, wow, this is kind of toasty. And I wonder when you take that phone off of the 120 watt wireless charger, if you can just like immediately crack an egg and fry it on the back of that phone. of the 120-watt wireless charger if you can just immediately crack an egg and fry it on the back of that phone because that's something else. Wasn't it the HTC U Ultra, that mirror-finished one where the press kit came with a white glove

because of how many fingerprints? I feel like this charger is going to come with a glove. Or what are those fireplace tongs that you put the log in with? Yeah, this will be interesting. Xiaomi does this a lot, Or what are those fireplace tongs that you put the, like, the log in with? Yeah. This will be interesting. Xiaomi does this a lot, and we don't necessarily get to see it happen in a phone. Like, we might not have 200-watt wired charging in a phone this year, but it's cool that they're pushing that limit. My question is, are we going to get to a point where it doesn't matter how fast it charges anymore?

If every phone charges at 150 watts, are we good? Do we stop never we keep going 300 watts 400 watts when is it gonna wait what point do you just like tap it on something and you just have full battery again it's it's that weird i think the better version of this future of battery tech is long range wireless charging so that you're almost always at 80% everywhere you go. I think that's- Like in-room wireless charging would be really cool. Yeah, because then you don't have to worry about,

my phone battery is low, let me go to a charger. I think this plugging in in a wire will eventually be an old version of what we think of what charging used to be. And now, or not now, in the future, we won't really think about charging ever because we'll always be somewhere near this wireless charging happening. Now, again, the what's the catch question always comes up with that. Like, is that safe? If it's always radiating to our bodies, is it going to be a problem? Will my phone get warm in my pocket as it's charging i don't i don't know all the answers here but i imagine with all the downsides of both of these versions i

would rather have my phone always at 80 rather than going from zero to 102 seconds that just seems crazy i mean i would also just like a better built battery where i can fit 10 000 milliamp hours in the size of a phone that is right now. I feel like at some point, we're gonna stop improving the charging tech and the batteries just have to improve as well. But do you have a lowest speed you'll go or a highest speed? Like, I don't really have goals for batteries anymore.

Like, I feel like they're good. We work in a situation where battery charge is like almost never an issue. Like, I rarely find situations where battery charge is like almost never an issue like i i rarely find situations where batteries that big of a deal i guess like if i were going camping or something or hiking or a long day out or ultimate tournament which i don't do anymore but that's when i would ever really push it but at this point i don't know yeah i'd never really get towards the end unless it says 50 and it's not really and then just does so yeah i just i'm imagining xiaomi going oh we did it again now we have 300 watt

wireless wired charging and it goes zero to a hundred percent in six minutes flat great it sounds like it sounds like it's more of a headline for a while until uh then it won't be kind of like uh why can't I remember? DxOMark. Oh. DxOMark, great headline. DxOMark's got to start doing it. So people realize it doesn't really matter anymore.

Battery? They've got to start doing battery charging ratings until you get over 100%. That actually sounds way more interesting than what they're actually doing. Why? I would just like to see if they could scientifically just test how it's affecting battery health and how fast it's actually charging and then how it's charging at different percentages and stuff like that and give it a an overall score it's a much less subjective rating system also because like the biggest complaint with dxomark is that it's like pretty subjective to what they think is a good photo

and it's scientifically driven based on their subjective viewpoint so battery can't really be yeah it either lasts or it doesn't yeah i think this video literally i mean you can you can plot out on a chart the zero to 100 battery which is like it goes real fast at the beginning i guess at 10 in 45 seconds and then evens out and you're done in eight minutes and i just i can't imagine much faster than that being particularly useful but great i'm glad xiaomi's getting there maybe put it in a phone uh speaking of zero to 100 real quick i'm on a roll um rimac concept 2 which has now been renamed to the rimac nevera nevera so the concept two uh started making a little bit of press runs they've been they've been working on this car for a long time for those

unfamiliar the rimac concept two or the rimac nevera we we did a video on the concept one which is a million and a half dollar tiny supercar you know mega hypercar that's fully electric. Very tiny, very electric, very fast. They only made like eight of them. They're making a larger run of these, but they're going to be 1900 horsepower, massive power, four motors, one at each wheel. And these are going to be hypercars. And they've been calling it the Concept 2.

And they're starting to like get to finishing development on it. And they've been saying like, oh, we're they're starting to get to finishing development on it. And they've been saying, like, oh, we're at 85% power. We're at 90% power. We're almost done. I saw a CarWow video where they now have done a drag race with the Navara and the Ferrari SF90. And, again, I just want to give context because the SF90, it's not a million dollar hypercar, but that's just about as fast as a car gets today. We are looking at the fastest ever production quarter mile times of like any street car ever made. I think it's like top three

of all time. It gets zero to 60 in like 2.3 seconds. It gets to the quarter mile in well under 10 seconds. It beats the McLaren 765LT off the line. It's like a half million dollar car. It's incredible. This car makes it look like a toy. It literally blows past it. And the crazy part is like the SF90 is a hybrid. It's got this great launch.

And then it combines the electric motors with the gas power. This Nava did not have a problem with it so if you watch that video it does 0 to 60 in 1.85 seconds oh my god i mean we're getting to the point where production cars now have to be we have to look at the hundredth of a second to like kind of really differentiate now because roadster is claiming 1.9 right so 1.85 it clearly wants the headline over roadster which also how long until roadster gets a software update and they're trying to beat that the thing about that time is you are basically approaching the limits of traction with rubber tires so when

you say 1.9 versus 1.85 it's like on a perfect prepped surface with the exact right battery and the perfect launch that's as fast as you can go with motors wait quick question with electric is there such thing as like a non-perfect launch like people go to a prepped drag strip with sticky tires you're saying pure grip launch environment and they can maximize traction almost artificially because the streets aren't like that and they will get 1.9 seconds. But on the street, it's never going to be that fast. You're always hunting for traction on street surfaces. The point is it's not going to get much faster than this

with just tires. So I think Roadster is using some tricks. Well, what's funny about that is, and what I think is funny about one of the things I read about this is because of how fast that is and because of how powerful that is there, they have this like driving AI and like a built in driving coach that inside the car teaches you how to properly handle the car because it assumes people just straight up cannot handle that. And it's a, it's coming at $2.4 million and only 150 made.

So, so it's like when So don't mess it up. You need to teach someone how to drive this. You know when Judner did that fighter pilot ride-along? They had a two-seater. I vaguely remember it, yeah. They had a two-seater jet that you get to ride along and you have to learn to contract your leg muscles to keep the blood above your heart

and breathe a certain way to stay not blacking out. Like if you need to give lessons to people, you probably shouldn't be selling it. I mean, there's only 150 of these, but like we kind of had this conversation, like let's assume we get to the technology where tires can handle it and these can go faster. At what point does the human driving it become the limiter of how fast i know i know there's got to be an actual answer to this right there's got to be some physicist out there that can it would just be how many g's you can handle right like how before you just pass out they were saying uh the 0 to 60 in 1.1 with the spacex roadster with the with the like cool rocket thrusters on the back is like two and a half g's and it's fine because it's two and a half lateral g's so if you just get kicked in the back and you

just just get shoved forward at two and a half g's you'll you won't black out but you'll really feel it but humans don't really go too far past two and a half g's like on a regular basis ever at what point does the zero to 60 still count if it self drives the passed out human in the driver's seat past 60 gets the time and then someone has to like give cpr to if you win the race you win the race man i bet that would still hit a headline okay i think we i think we covered everything we wanted to i mean i'll just i'll toss in their uh top speed 258 miles an hour 20 kilowatt hour battery pack is that right that's what i pulled from the article that doesn't seem right 120 kilowatt hour battery pack okay oh i missed the one that'll that'll do it 120 i mean

the the current top of the range stuff is 100 that that number still means not much to me because i haven't experienced living with an electric car so that that's just total size of battery pack i just don't know what is a yeah i mean so the the older teslas that were 75d were 75 kilowatt hour battery pack then they had the 80d the 85 plus that was always the number of the kilowatt hours so then they had p100d we were like do you understand that i just always okay yeah 100 is like the standard right now but the future stuff will be over that i have i can't get a concept of how big this car is it does look bigger than the other one but the other one was like under your waist tiny and then lengthwise

this looks like much longer and much more similar to i mean maybe what we assume roadster is going to be like it looks really good too yeah from the one time i saw roadster in person it's not a small car i mean it's a low car but it is like a ventador big like it's still got some length to it uh this to me looks somewhere in between or what about like original roadster original roadster is tinier it's much smaller okay yeah so it's it's gonna be a it's gonna be a like hurrican plus this one for context yeah i think so but either way i'll probably never drive it i mean if if if remak wants to get one out here to the studio didn't he like tweet at you he did want us to get our hands on one and i

would happily do a whole autofocus video with it, living with it. There's only 150 customers that can even care about something like this, but I would happily do a video. I would assume at best, at best he'd give it to you on like a track or something. I would do that in a heartbeat.

But yeah, that sounds awesome. That sounds fun. Sick. All right, well, let's take a quick ad break. We'll come back. We've got to talk about Tesla removing features and some other stuff that's been in the news. Be right back.

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So that thing you love, keep doing it. Drive your ambition. Mitsubishi Motors. All right. Speaking of electric things moving fast, Tesla is constantly changing their cars, constantly changing their cars. This is something we've talked about in Tesla videos in the past. I made a video about how you can look at it multiple ways, but Tesla doesn't have model year numbers. It's so traditional to just have a 2020, 2021, 2022, and every single car you get from that model year is based on the same thing plus options. Tesla doesn't do that.

They will refresh the tech when it's ready, and they are constantly rolling out micro adjustments to software and hardware, tweaking things, adding ventilated seats changing the headrests lumbar support random things will just change in the car and you just kind of get the car based on when you bought it um and it seems like the way people generally find out about a lot of these small ones is through forms like reddit or twitter or something like that where they're like there's like no there's like okay there's three ways i would say

that people find out about the change to the cars one is an and none of them are through tesla yeah like sharing it themselves uh one will be elon will respond to a customer about something on twitter like hey my car has this harness did you what is this new and he'll go yeah all the cars produced after november 2020 have this new thing uh two, two will just be, yeah, like a subreddit post or somebody spying a car somewhere that has a new feature on it. Or there's a lot of people who take delivery, realize something's different. And then it's people confirming that with their new deliveries. And then they use the VIN number to, to confirm when it was when it, if, yeah, if your car will have it based on that number.

So, you know, once in a while the configurator changes and you see a substantial difference, but a lot of times this stuff is just kind of quietly happening. So the latest one is like it was just the right combination of changes to make a nice headline where Tesla's prices went up a little bit and then they removed like one or two features. Which is also price fluctuation, something we're used to as well with them.

Yeah, all the time. Hitting two of those, like you said, perfect storm, price goesuation, something we're used to as well with them. Yeah, all the time. So hitting two of those, like you said, perfect storm, price goes up, something gets removed. Headline. Big ol' headline. Easy. Yeah. This one was a little more interesting, that they're getting rid of radar in their cars. And I thought this was more than just like a micro adjustment.

This is actually sort of future looking as far as their autopilot. Reading the headline, as someone who doesn't know specifically what Radar does or own a Tesla, it feels like a huge, huge headline. It's really interesting. Like getting rid of Radar. I didn't know much about it, so I quickly just like Googled it, and the Tesla subreddit's pretty awesome.

Just like a bunch of people, owners going back and forth about it. I usually like to read that before I read some articles. And top comment was, it's because their current radar is beyond useless for anything other than ACC, which I also don't know what that means. Active Cruise Control. Okay. It says radars from 2010 has major issues distinguishing stopped objects, has a very only forward and low field of view, low resolution and range and can't classify objects. And then it also in the like rain and snow has a hard time.

Yeah. Okay. I have some thoughts on this. Okay. And they're a little bit mixed because I understand the vision. That's a pun. the vision that's a pun um tesla is moving mostly entirely in the future towards 100 vision-based autopilot yeah which means they will only use the cameras on the car for sensing what's around the car and steering and driving reading signs seeing cars recognizing objects on the road all that will

happen through the cars cameras on the front cameras on the side cameras on the road. All of that will happen through the cars, cameras on the front, cameras on the side, cameras on the back. And this is something that's been like a sticking point in like different companies' strategies for autopilots. So Waymo, for example, will use high-resolution maps and sensors on the car. We did that ride in Las Vegas where we rode around in a taxi that was entirely, you know, driverless, Yanex, and that was using high-resolution maps. And it was a cool demo, but if you ask Elon about it, he would say that's useful in that one high-resolution mapped area,

but it's not broadly applicable for the entire globe. You can't high-resolution map the whole world if you just want to go down a trail somewhere and just have your car drive you to the grocery store. It has to work everywhere. So their Tesla strategy has always been we're going to use all the sensors on the car and just look at what's around and map our way through whatever situation we're in. And the car will be smart enough to understand it. Now, going vision only and removing radar seems smart because it should be able to use visual cues to identify everything.

And like they mentioned, radar can't identify stop signs. Radar can't really tell what's a car and what's a truck. That's all happening from the cameras. But I found radar to be a useful extra sensor for a couple small things. One is that low field of view has notoriously bounced underneath the car in front of me to see the car in front of the car in front of me and show that car on the map. So if that car breaks, my car already knows

before the car in front of me breaks, it's going to start to get ready to break just in case. Like it's got a better vision in inclement weather. This is something, I guess it's a little controversial, but like cameras can get frosted ice over them. Cameras can have a hard time in the rain and the snow. And radar doesn't have nearly as much of a problem with rain and snow. It's still very rudimentary and low resolution.

It's seeing the car in front of you and the car next to you, but at least it's seeing something where a camera might miss it. So I always felt like radar-assisted vision was pretty much the right move. It's a good combo. But now Tesla is shipping Model 3s and Model Ys with no radar sensors at all, just the cameras. And because they're making this switch, all of these new cars people are getting have slightly reduced autopilot functionality just for safety. They're only going up to a certain speed and they're obviously not working as well as the cars with radar and they're planning on with software over time catching back up to the cars with radar it's just a tech thing that tesla does sometimes

where they make a change and some of the cars are different from the ones on the road but i find it interesting i'm curious if it's going to catch up to radar assisted vision because i always felt like radar assisted vision was great i read the whole reddit thread of like owners talking about this and there's a couple things people were thinking one is kind of like what you're saying they you know despite maybe it being an outdated specific radar that they're using they did appreciate the redundancy and something that yeah you know it's ultimately driving your car and could be your life if if it comes to that so like we like redundancy in that for sure there are also a lot of people who think and i forget exactly why but there's some people who think that they're going to eventually upgrade the type of radar system that they're using

and in the future could potentially be another radar system just getting rid of the one they currently have now but did elon make like an announcement that they're switching to only that or is that just an assumption because of the lack of this radar no they they've made it clear that they they want to go vision only okay yeah then that seems so it's interesting yeah i don't know i i'm curious if it's actually going to work basically uh i've learned not to bet against the eventual inevitable future of what they're working on but uh i i didn't see any good reason why that redundancy isn't a good thing it's like to you can bet against or not bet against the eventual future but that doesn't mean there won't be hiccups and some bumps along the

way in that process i think that's like the best way of describing tesla like they've made it to where they want to there are certainly a couple hiccups along the way though yeah i could see that with this the road to the future was never smoothly paved yeah and now you don't even have radar to tell if it's smoothly paved or not one other thing you kind of mentioned it briefly but another kind of headline which i thought was kind ridiculous, was it looks like people are finding out their new model Ys do not have lumbar support in the passenger side. And for anyone who is upset with this headline, my first question I want to ask you is, have you ever gotten into somebody's car in the passenger seat and adjusted the lumbar support because i

have never ever done that it's a good point i don't think i've ever adjusted the lumbar support as a passenger in a car but also is it losing adjustable lumbar support or is it just losing losing adjustable lumbar support i guess i don't know if i honestly don't think most people can tell if a seat has lumbar support or not maybe Maybe I'm being naive there, but I've never changed it in my driver's seat. I think we're being ageist. Ageist? I think we're being too young here. I've got a pretty awful back.

As a person who has started to have occasional back things, I feel like I care about the lumbar support, but I'm the driver, so I don't really mess with it too much when I'm not the driver. about the lumbar support, but I'm the driver, so I don't really mess with it too much when I'm not the driver. But I guess, does every seat, like every seat has some sort of lumbar support, right? Like I guess Tesla's not exactly known

for the like high quality of their seats. There was that whole like Chevy, these are Chevy Spark seats, blah, blah, blah. I'm assuming it's not that anymore, but I guess losing it, I don't know. I've had four knee surgeries my back is terrible like for being 30 my back is way worse than have you ridden on the passenger side of my car yeah it's fine i have no issues with it i mean maybe on a long trip i would be less comfortable than

maybe some other seats but like nothing about it we drove to boston that one day and oh yeah i was totally fine i was passenger seat the whole ride. I certainly didn't adjust it. I can tell you that. From what I hear, Model 3 and Model Y's seats are much better than Model S, much better than my seats. So if it's even better, I'm not complaining too much. I get that it's a removed feature and it makes a nice headline, but. I understand that people don't like seeing this is more expensive and has less things, but I don't feel like Lombard supports the hill to die on for that. All right, here's a question. Do you think, so we know Tesla doesn't do yearly updates with their cars.

Do you think this new crop of electric cars and new companies coming out will follow in the same footsteps and also not do model years? Is that the future of cars, no more model years? Or will they all eventually fall into a 2021, 22 thing? So my thought on that kind of, if I can talk about F-150 for like, I know we've talked about it a lot, but I think it kind of has to do with the market they're targeting right now. Ford's when we talked to the guy from Ford who brought the F-150, who is absolutely fascinating, by the way, just hearing all the stuff they've went through being a legacy car manufacturer

who's now diving into the EV world, their huge goal and a big reason they did that 1,000 pound EPA mileage was they don't want anyone coming to EV and being disappointed with it. So I think if you are Ford in the F-150, you have to do yearly updates because that's what people are used to. And people who are buying cars in that market, pickups specifically, are used to that. If you're Rivian, who clearly doesn't have a market already, I think you can go the Tesla route and do that. Ultimately, maybe this is just because we're used to it. I would like to see some sort of a yearly update just because it's easier to keep track of things and keep track of features and additions and subtractions. Yeah.

I don't think it needs it. I think it's fine. Everyone with Tesla has made do. It almost turns into a game with this whole like my VIN number doesn't have lumbar support. Like I think it's kind of funny. Maybe not as the owner of the car, but as an outsider, it's kind of funny. As someone who has bitten in the past, I'm like please make it more predictable i think it's that's an interesting i was gonna say it's interesting point i was thinking it's just gonna be about the company

making it if it's an old company they're gonna be stuck in tradition and they're just gonna keep doing model years like ford but if it's a new company then they don't care at all about that but i do think if you are a, even a Rivian for that matter, or Porsche, you want to make things simple and easy to understand. You do want to make some sort of yearly or like well understood updates so people can know exactly what they're buying at any given time. So like them getting, there are a lot of traditions in car manufacturing and car selling that I despise. Yearly updates is not one of them. I think it's just easier marketing.

It's easier for people to understand. I mean, even just the used car market can get kind of confusing when you like, maybe you see the new RAV4 and you're like, oh, I want to go get a used one. This is listed as a 2012 and you see it as a totally different model. Like it's much easier to keep track with that yeah um there are what i love that tesla does differently is like dealerships i wish we would get rid of those but yearly updates i think is you're not losing much by uh continuing to do them yeah i guess cars are such a large complex thing like even in tech like you have yearly updates for everything like you have the 2021 ipad and you have the galaxy s21 and the s22 will be next year and

you just you have like these yearly updates so when you want to go back and and analyze the old ones or maybe buy a used one you can go let me see the model year from yes this is the year they did that with the screen like you always know by the model year. So I hear people talk about older cars like, oh, if you're getting an F-150, like avoid the 2007 to the 2013. They did this weird thing with the engine. Like they just know that that's what happened. But if you're trying to do that with Tesla

or if you ever look at trying to buy a used Tesla, it is kind of a mystery other than the basic specs what you're gonna get. Will you get ventilated seats? I don't know. We're still pretty new into the used Tesla market, right? I mean, I know they've been around for like 10 years at this point, but still, it's pretty common to buy a 10-year-old car and use

because especially if it's a lease or like a rental that's then getting sold used, they're usually perfectly fine if they have 50,000 miles on it. So Tesla, it's really cool because in theory, batteries last longer than typical gas engines. So then you should be able to sell Teslas on the used marketplace for longer and longer, and they should hold more and more value. But it's so much harder to market that used car because- Because it's a piece of tech. Yeah. Yeah. It's a piece of tech. And because it doesn't have yearly updates,

Yeah, it's a piece of tech, and because it doesn't have yearly updates, you could say a 2015 Tesla Model S, but if they made a change somewhere in 2015, that could be too completely different. Which they did. They made a huge change in 2016. I didn't mean to hit a strike at Merriman that long. Will you have autopilot or not? I think so. Maybe. I don't know. Yeah.

No, it'll be interesting to follow. I, I kind of feel like, yeah, Tesla gets away with being the exception to the rule for so many things, but I also do like that they break and, and really don't adhere to so many of those traditions of the older car industry. I don't mind not having dealerships. Totally fine with me. Please, please, please, please. Don't they have to though, to sell cars in Texas, people have to go like outside of Texas to buy the cars because of

like some dealership law. I don't want to get too deep into it, but that's another ancient piece of legislation that has been applied to dealerships and happens to be awful for Tesla. But hey, that's just that's just the way it is in 2021. We'll take a quick break. Let's come back and talk about maybe a quick break. Let's come back and talk about maybe Tesla burgers. 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.

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But everyone calls it The Sphere, so we will too. The Sphere opened just over a year ago. They said it would be the future of entertainment, and some people go and really do feel that way. But others, including those of us that today Explained, are wondering if this whole operation is sustainable. So, on the show, we're taking a look back at one year of the sphere, from Bono to Fish to Ded & Co to the Eagles to that documentary that Darren Aronofsky made to the upcoming EDM New Year's Eve rave that they're throwing. And we're going to ask whether this really could be the future of fun

or whether it's maybe just another Las Vegas bust. Today Explained. Wherever you listen, come find us. All right, speaking of not knowing what you're going to get from Tesla, we've got a headline from Electric. You like that segue, right? Yeah, you've been pretty on today. I've been on the money.

After you destroyed mine last week. This is good. I'll let you have these. This is good. It's really just a trademark filing is all we have, but the concept is really interesting. Apparently, back in 2018, Elon Musk said that Tesla plans to open, quote, old school drive-in roller skates and rock restaurants at one of the new Tesla superchargers near LA. This is kind of like a, really, is he joking? Or is that like actually like a plan that he has to do? And then Tesla

actually did file for the trademark for, I guess, a sort of burger joint type thing where they could eventually, oh, Tesla trademark registration is intended to cover the categories of restaurant services, pop-up restaurant services, self-service restaurant services, and takeout restaurant services. So now the natural idea is, well, every time you're supercharging, you probably want to grab some food. That's like probably the number one activity people do when charging for a while. I would say that's the best way to sell supercharging to somebody who's so like when we travel, when we travel pretty far in your car, the one main thing

is you have to stop to charge at some point. And most people don't like the biggest argument between gases. Gas takes two minutes to fill up. Charging can take like 20 minutes to not fill up, but, you know, get you far enough to where you go. Every time we would stop, we would plan it specifically to eat in that time. And by the time we would eat, it would be plenty of time to do that. So it doesn't even really feel like you're charging

or making that stop. So if you add a restaurant or food to all of this, it makes perfect sense because then as long as you keep your road trip planned out accordingly and there's good food there, it almost won't feel like you're refueling. to all of this it makes perfect sense because then as long as you keep your road trip planned out accordingly and there's good food there it almost won't feel like you're refueling yeah it feels like it also feels like a smart business decision if you're tesla right now you're you're investing all this money in building superchargers right so naturally you're trying to be smart about

where you put the superchargers people are going to want to stop at rest stops, malls, like obviously restaurants and things like that where it's easy to take a break and have a bite to eat. So business 101 is why not make money from that too? Like if you can open it, if you can build your own rest stop and have Tesla superchargers and a Tesla merch shop and burgers and like a whole bunch of the most common activities for 20 minutes while charging, that's a good investment because you make your money back from it. So I could see that being like a casual thing they start to do an experiment with. I think they just follow the trademark just to be safe. Like that's just a thing companies do. But I don't know if they have plans for like people rollerblading out of you know a door with a burger on a platter or

whatever but it's kind of just kind of a fun idea i think it makes sense so like business-wise that just makes sense you weirdly hit a weird gripe i have with not anything tesla related but about road tripping it makes me furious when i'm on like going for a long trip and we're trying to find somewhere to eat. And in Google maps, we type in restaurants or type in a place we want to stop at, click it. And it brings me to a mall. It makes me so angry. I like, I've been driving four hours. All I want to do is grab something to eat. And now you took me 10 minutes out of my way to be at a mall where I either have to park the car walk all the way inside the mall sit down and get something to eat or i guess get it to go but like just differentiate that yeah that makes perfect sense for this now though because if a

tesla supercharger is at a mall and now out in that back parking lot where the charger is has something you can grab to eat makes way more sense although with 20 minutes you probably could run into the mall but google maps please i just want that one feature so bad just this is this is not bringing me to a mall this is a thing in um in tesla superchargers too so i was driving up to practice which is above new york near connecticut and i was a little bit early so i was like oh let me just you know stop at one of the nearby superchargers and charge up for a little bit just because I have time. And so I just picked the one on the map that was closest to it and drove to it. And it was like in the bottom of a parking garage that was like underneath the – it was like just tucked away like hard to find and annoying. And I wish there was some sort of indicator on the map of like this one is in a parking lot.

This one is in a paid parking garage that you need a ticket to get into in a mall. Like those are, that should be different on the map. Cause I really don't feel like doing that. Although some of them, uh, some of the parking garages, if you are only there for 20 minutes,

they don't charge you luckily, which is good. But yeah, that was, uh, that was kind of fun to see. But yeah, no,

I, I think that, uh, that like restaurant and just take just the overall like vertical integration of like okay tesla owns the property tesla owns the chargers tesla will probably have solar panels because they want to do renewable energy at all the chargers tesla will make that energy tesla will sell you food while you're there and probably merch and probably other stuff too and they just own the entire pipeline that's what a good multi-billion dollar company probably

looks like in the future as far as like autonomy and and charging on the go and one of those things specifically stood out where it says self-service restaurant so like it even doesn't need to be a full-blown diner restaurant kind of burger joint or even something like that if it's just like a pretty easy like similar to like those new amazon shops out west where it's like you walk in and there's not even someone working there you just like or there's people restocking but you grab it and it it tells what you took and then as you walk out it charges you for it you're just not even a cashier so like good yet i mean no but we're we're talking about the future here like this is just a trademark we've got a while to go

true because i don't see that being out of the question. I was like, what is a self-serve restaurant? I can't think of what that is. But I guess the Whole Foods of the future where you just walk in, grab the thing, and walk out and it charges you is the idea? Yeah. I mean, I would probably prefer it to be people there cooking and it's like fresher food. But it could also just be something simpler. sandwiches pre-made stuff you stock it up in the morning because like you also have to think about this makes great sense but you have to be have a high enough

profit margin for the people who are not working there all the time and what are the hours going to be is it going to be 24 24 7 there's a lot questions, and we're still just at the trademark, but I think it could be really cool. Yeah. Wild speculation on a trademark is my favorite. Oh, yeah. It's what this podcast is all about. Yeah.

Speaking of wild speculation, oh, man, I'm crushing. I'm crushing segues. Is this a speculation? Yeah, because this is a rumor. Okay, okay. Speaking of wild speculation, a rumor okay okay speaking of speaking of wild speculation uh we've got a huawei p50 rumor slash image slash leak from ice universe i just like i just opened it and the top comment is you just saying lol in all caps it is a it is an image i'm just going to paint a visual picture for you

so imagine the back of the phone right on the back of the phone, right? On the back of the phone, somewhere in the top left, you have your camera bump. Now I want you to look at the back of your phone and divide it into quadrants. I have a really good way to describe this, I feel like. I'm just going to say, if you could picture the back of your phone into quadrants, top left, top right, bottom left, bottom right,

picture the entire top left top right bottom left bottom right picture the entire top left binoculars two huge circles looking at you this looks almost looks like to me um do you know john rettinger does those thumbnails where he's focusing on cameras on smartphones where it's the smartphone back and he he dislocates basically the camera bump and zooms it up this looks like uh maybe like the iphone 10s which had the vertical two camera and then john ranger's zooming it out and just slapping it back on the back of the phone but it's weird because it's it's got three cameras inside the top circle yeah and then another camera and a flash inside the bottom circle i assume the

bottom one is like a large like periscope lens or some sort of large module like that sharp phone that's probably that's rumored yeah you know that one with just like one giant camera yeah so the fact that it's in a larger circle is purely aesthetic and they're just leaning into this circular aesthetic and so it just looks like binoculars on the back of your phone. I think the best way to describe it is imagine a vertical two-camera system that's gigantic and then there's cameras. That's just the bump. The cameras are inside what you thought were the cameras.

Because when I first saw this from the corner of my eye on your screen, I thought it just had two gigantic cameras on the back. That would be interesting. And I don't know if that would be better or worse. I don't think a phone is thick enough for cameras to be that actually huge i think this is just an aesthetic yeah yeah it's just a look it's a look it's a look man huawei if this is actually the way the p50 looks be prepared for the memes because you know some companies do things for the memes be prepared it looks like wally that's another good

one uh if you just scroll down the comments yeah the comments are there's more stovetop ones like i highly recommend you scroll down and look at the memes we'll link this in the show notes yeah this is great the same energy so turntables oh my god this is great sonic microwaves it's good i don't know it's dead mouse ears interesting i haven't said mouse ears would be, I feel like you could skin some cool things on this and use that as inspiration on top of it. But like, it's just a weird look. I don't know. It also has a flash in between them.

It's great. It's so, I don't really get it. I mean, the focus of, the thing is the focus of so many of these new smartphones coming out is just the cameras and the differentiation of the cameras. And we already know Xiaomi, Huawei, they're not afraid of a big camera bump. Like they're not afraid of going absolutely nuts with how crazy the cameras look on the back of the phone. Whether or not their cameras are actually the best in the business, debatable, but they're not afraid to have a crazy camera bump. I still think if you're going crazy camera bump, you go horizontal and you go as high up as possible.

So when it leans on the phone, it's almost like a wedge. Like I kind of imagine the Pixel 6 rumors, which, you know, has that big like Daft Punk looking horizontal. If that continued up to the top or was closer to the top edge, I think that would be like perfect. But this is just going to have a crazy wobble. Yeah, it's going to wobble a lot. Yeah. Speaking out i'm fresh out of segways but i'm fresh out of topics we've talked about a lot of stuff so far but honestly uh i think it was worth it you actually wound up segwaying the end of the

yeah fresh out of segways like fresh out of topics I think that was the best one of the episode. Let's go. I crushed today's segways. Crushed the episode. A plus. Feel free to let me know how I did in the comments, but I'm pretty sure I crushed it. Anyway, that's about it for this week. We'll be back shortly.

Of course, we've got a lot more to talk about. And WWDC is next week. Speaking of WWDC, we're going to have a Discord stage event next week. That's the plan. That's the plan for right now. WWDC is going to happen. And then we're going to talk about WWDC probably live with you guys on Discord and in video form. So stay tuned for all that and more.

Of course, there will probably be a lot of announcements on stage. I'm excited for that. I'm sure next week is going to be a lot to talk about. It's going to be hype. Either way, see you guys then. Thanks for watching. Catch you guys later. Waveform was produced by Adam Alino.

We are partnered with Studio 71 and our intro outro music was created by Vayne Sill. Bye.