Tesla finally shows us the Model 3 (AutoComplete, Ep. 12)

[MUSIC] Welcome to Autocomplete, Roadshow's weekly podcast about the intersection of cars and technology. I'm Brian Cooley, Editor at Large. This week, I've got Antoine with me, our reviews editor at Roadshow, and we're gonna dig right in. We've got some interesting early tastes here from Tim, Antoine, of the Tesla Model 3. He's down at the Tesla launch event that was a big deal this week. People lined up... People are lining up like two or three days early. This is an Apple thing. Yeah. It's the Apple of the automotive industry so it makes sense that people would behave like the new iPhone's about to come out. Yeah, like fools. I didn't say that. Let's see what Tim's got from LA. Hi everybody. We are here live, well live on tape anyway, at the Tesla Model Three event and I just got out of my first ride It's a car. It's a pretty impressive little machine. The most impressive thing is the roof actually. It's one continuous sheet of glass running through the front all the way back to the rear, which gives the car a really wide, open area feel. A much bigger feeling than it actually is. It's also made to get push to. The rear seats back to get a little bit more leg room. I'm a little worried about what it's gonna be like on a hot, sunny day, though. Performance built, very good. This definitely was a car that was quicker than the six second 0 to 60 time they quoted. And it's interestingly got that single touch screen display, 15 inch Landscape, touchscreen display not working like on the Model S where every gauge is integrated. In there, there's no actual dashboard behind the steering wheel. Very different approach than we can see in a current Tesla, I'm curious to see how it is actually on the road, we only got a really brief ride. Felt pretty nice, I gotta say. I think [UNKNOWN] Gotta be pretty excited. But right now with over 130,000 pre-orders, we're looking well into 2018 before these cars start to ship. But a pretty exciting night in Los Angeles, [UNKNOWN]. [MUSIC] Okay, thanks Tim, and also info, we've got the most interesting approach ever, by a car company, to try and get to a new way of selling cars. Tesla, which is trying to do direct sales, factory direct, and getting lots of static from a lot of states, says they found a piece of case law right after Katrina that allowed casket makers, one abbey, apparently, of monks. Was able to sell direct and they say because of that they've got the president to sell cars direct. Yeah it's weird how precedent sort of works in those cases that you can kind of dig an obscure case out and you say well you let these people sell across state lines, you should let us be able to do it too so it would be interesting I wonder who's the guy who dug that one out. They've got attorneys working on this 24/7, right? Yeah. And somebody sent out a text [UNKNOWN] to on [UNKNOWN], says, "You're going to love this." Probably an intern. Yeah, right. Exactly. Probably the lowest paid guy on the totem pole. Found this piece of gold, right? And it's got nothing to do with cars. So how do you go find that? I don't know. Pretty amazing. Of course, now you've got to align your cars with caskets. Not always a great thing you want to do in the auto biz. It'll stay in the courtroom. And let's kick it right off Antoine with what appears to be the first resolved case in the GM ignition scandal to come out of a court. But it didn't resolve much. This was a case where a Saturn Sky, not a Pontiac Solstice, the sister ship. Same car, different badge, right. Was on an icy bridge in New Orleans and the people who drove had a wreck. Said it's because the key popped into Off. Mm-hm. And in this case the jury said, no, it's cuz you're on an icy bridge. Yeah, apparently there were a bunch of like a couple, almost a dozen other accidents.>> Yeah. The same day in the same area. And so the jury just sort of said We can't really attribute it to GM. Yes. So this was supposed to be the first case that really put a dollar value on what someone's gonna get for having a car that was in an accident because of a GM key that flips to off, which was their defective part. Unfortunately, it doesn't really get anywhere in terms of that. For those who are watching saying What's this going to be like for GM to pay these out. And by the way this is the second case to go to trail. The first one actually ended on a technicality because there was some purgatory, apparently, by the plaintiff. So, this is the first one to come to conclusion, but it's kind of not a conclusion. So, if you're watching for ...How this is gonna end up, we don't know as much. Now, in the other sort of big department that we're following every week, Dieselgate, we've got an update now. Where if you feel pissed off that VW lied to you by selling you a supposedly clean diesel, well, the US government is with you as well. The FTC has now sued VW. For BS advertise. It's like everyone sort of jumping in on it. It starts to seems like there's no end to BMW's votes after this. No. I mean it turns out you can't say that your diesel is clean and we find out. That is literally the opposite of that. Yes. 40 times the opposite of that. 40 times the opposite of that. So are they saying that, it's gonna be billions of dollars more billions of dollars in fines. Yes, so FTC is saying look, this was misleading, false advertising. It's just a classic false advertising case. Especially since they we know now new their cars weren't doing what their advertising very evilly we're doing, so what's happening here is the FTC says that these vehicles, we're going to make some calculation as you mentioned will be billions of dollars were finds. Compensation because these are cars that sold for an average of $28,000 times 560,000 I think VW's alone, not counting Audi's and not counting the rest of the world, just US.VW's. Somewhere in there is the calculus that can be 46 billion. Yeah, it's 46 billion from the Department of Justice, and then the initial estimates are saying about 15 more billion to the FTC [UNKNOWN], so. That's right. FTC could be 15 billion. DOJ's going after them for 46 for environmental damage. And then, as if we thought we had everyone injured here, which is owners who have their cars devalued, dealers who are having a hard time staying afloat in some cases, shareholders, of course, of the company have seen their stock get dramatically lowered. Now even if you are looking for a dividend from your VW stock, it looks like they may suspend that this year, according to one German news agency DPA. They say They hear there'll be no dividend on VW stock from the 2015 operations, which is actually a lot of money cause we look back at the 2014 dividend it was almost five euro's per share. That's real money. And if this is true from this report on this German paper that it goes from that to 0, that's a big drop in what you got from holding VW. So basically, if you're alive and breathing on this Earth and living in a developed country, you're getting hurt by the VW thing one way. Or another. Now on a brighter side of the same company, now you and I are ver divided on the Panamera. We are. You dig it. I dig it for a roundabout reason, and it's cuz I know that the Panamera and the [UNKNOWN] are subsidizing the [UNKNOWN] that I'll eventually buy, so. [LAUGH] Okay, so that's good. So you don't actually love the car. I mean, it's a fine vehicle. I just would never buy it. Okay, that's political language. [LAUGH] [LAUGH] From our reviews editor, yes. It's a great driver. It is a great driving car. Right. It looks like a Beluga whale. It looks like a Beluga whale. Thank you very much. It's okay, we're on the exact same page. Never mind what I said earlier, that we are polarly opposed. They now are looking at redoing a new generation of it that we expect Expect the reports are will be much more sporty looking, much lighter, much less looking hunchback and this the part really makes me droll there could be a shooting break or a sporty wagon version for the EU market, so of course we won't get, we never did. We never get the cool wagons unless it's Volvo. That's right. They're the only one who can bring us the cool wagons. And by the way, the Panamera, which was a red hot seller for them for a while, has had a rough go recently. Sales were off a third Third world wide last year down 15% US last year. Those are two difficult markets. China remains the bright spot though. That's where this is car is basically being designed for. And if you're wondering the top three sellers at Porsche, my thesis continues. Porsche is an SUV make that happens to make some sport cars. Perhaps at a loss. I'm not sure how that breaks out. But it's Cayenne and [UNKNOWN] are 60% of sales, US. And then 911 is third, and everything else is a rounding error. Well that's the entire industry. Yeah. > Everyone is selling more SUVs, or at least trending towards selling more large and small SUVs now. It's That's what happens when you have cheap fuel. And people can give that sort of image of getting all the utility and the Porsche bag, so all the sportiness. It's easier to justify that to the family than a Boxter. [LAUGH] Or. Yeah, Boxter, where everyone else has to stay home while you go wherever we're going. Or you never wanna make Anyone sit in the back seat of a 911. Right. Back there but- Right, so you better give them 911 handling, get them a con or a Cayenne, or it's a close enough argument. And the Panamera as we mentioned is the least selling car unless you lump Boxter and Cayman out separately. Then they sell it at an even lower level, but they're kinda the same car so So Panora basically is bringing up the rear in the US. But hopefully it gets a refresh soon. Now we've got some interesting luxury SUV wars coming now. You had a chance recently to drive an XC90 that is different. Yes. It's super high end. The XC90 Excellence. It was originally designed for the Chinese market. It's a Ultra luxury version of the already luxurious XC90. So what Volvo did was they ditched the third row seats, they ditched the second row bench, and put the same buckets they have in the front in the back seat. So these are massage reclining buckets. ANd then they put a refrigerator in the middle because That's what you do with a luxury vehicle. You have to. And then they basically bumped up the level theres their sweetest crystal champagne flutes, there's space for three champagne bottles. They even put a divider behind the second row So that you don't get that sort of SUV boominess. And I find that really interesting. Yeah, they've basically made it into sort of. I mean, if you've ever ridden in a helicopter, it's kind of what it feels like with that- That wall right behind you. Interesting, so that's the X1's XV90. Now we have word that BMW's got a super high end X7. The X7's not even here yet. But we already hear word of an X7 that will go along the lines of that idea, a four door giving fewer people more luxury as opposed to doing the three. So not a four door, a four seat, as opposed to giving you seven seats in three rows Four seats and two rests. Right, because I mean at that point a seven seater's a family vehicle. Yeah. Four seater is something you get driven around in, it's a [UNKNOWN] vehicle. What's interesting is that both of these vehicles are looking to crest the 100,000. The SC90X1's have been priced at At just under 105,000. And the BMW X7, there both for luxury versions should be over 100 grand as well. And by the time you option it a little bit, they're deep into 100. Right. Yeah, so this is an interesting battle. As you mentioned, SUVs and crossovers Remain where it's at, and globally. Not just in the US, where we have fuel price fluctuations that often drive the market. And we also hear that the next generation Lexus RX, which started the category of crossovers. Still is the number one selling, crossover SUV, anywhere, is going to be coming out in its next generation, with a three row, which to me, says they've gotta be elongated. It's gotta get, It's gotta be like Highlander sized if you're gonna put a third row back there cuz the RX it's a big crossover but it definitely has a small foot print. I don't see how they can just shove a seat back there. Not that you would ever want to use. No. Unless it's just a kid seat like you have the little kiddie seats in the back of the model X but that's I don't know. Or the little jump seats that flip up in the model S [CROSSTALK] That's right you have the Model S. Yeah, those are really small. Or like the little jumpseats I have in my 88 Country Squire. But even those are bigger than the Model S, so no. Somewhat larger car. Lets check up on some of the coolest content going on at Roadshow that we want to make sure you're aware of. We are This is our first long term test?>>First long term test ever. Yeah.>>And with the best possible vehicle.>> [LAUGH] The 2016 Mazda Miata.>>Can you hold up your laptop please so we can->>I got all my Miata badges. Boom, boom, boom, boom.>>Miata. [LAUGH] This is a Miata shrine over here on the lid. Okay, long term Miata, are you doing the long term? I am not. That's a crime against nature. Our [CROSSTALK] team has the first crack at the Miata. [UNKNOWN] if you had it, they know how it's gonna come out. Yeah. Which is interesting because, for the first couple of months it's been icy and snowy out there. So, they're the first update to the long-term Miata. I actually talked about what it's like to drive it in the snow. How it handles with winter tires, the importance of those things. It was definitely worth the read. This is a rear wheel drive only car, of course, of modest power. Not a vehicle you'd ever think of. To drive in four seasons. Right. Three season car for most people. And do you think we've learned something, that it's actually a four season car? Well, I mean, the most important part of any sort of, well, I guess the winter tires make all the difference, long story short. I've always maintained the tires are the most important part Of any car and we've got proof right here. And you can not obviously compare it to an all wheel drive car but comparing it to what it is and what a great car it is and a great value, if it can eke out enough winter behavior to make it four seasons we might love it that much more. Right. So check that out. That's over at the roadshow.com. Speaking of the Miata, there's the Miata RF, we talked about a show or two ago, that came out of New York Auto Show, which is a target top. You and Chris Parker. Right. Take this one on pro con. Where do you come down? I drew the con side of that argument and it's I mean I don't uncoil the article, Yeah. [CROSSTALK] to read it, but at the same time Let me ask you this, did you draw a short straw or do you actually, personally have a con out. Personally have a con. Okay. When the car was unsealed in New York, I was initially excited because it looks gorgeous, yeah. But then I started to think about it, I went to sleep and then the next morning when I woke up I didn't really feel very positive about it. [LAUGH] And it's mostly because I feel like it's a half step. Really I think most people who are interested in the RF really want a Miata Coop. So I feel like it's sort of it's simultaneously a half step towards giving us a power hard top and it's a step too far for the people who want a coop. It's in a weird Yeah cause the power hard top went away in this generation it has not re emerged that we know of it's not even going to re emerge. Don't know if it will. Okay so power hard top went away which I loved that last generation Miata. And of course the rag top is brilliant. It's light it's simple it goes down whack like that. So where do you need a Targa in that mix is a little bit odd. So check it out you've got a little taste of where Antoine comes down Chris Parker took the other side. Their rational is really interesting. It's over at the roadshow.com And the last thing I want to tell you about is we have a new rival [UNKNOWN] where we pit two cars that we think have complimentary DNA but, in this case, these are very different cars. Tesla Model S versus Audi S7. Right. When is if fair to pit a model S against anything? Well, the interesting thing about that is we had the Model S 90D, not the P90D. A little lower performance. Right, against the Audi S7 Quattro with its four liter twin turbo. That kinda works, you didn't go to the Audi RS7. Right. So these are both one notch from the top in performance. Mm-hm. Price-wise, they're very similar, within a couple thousands bucks. 0 to 60, they're within 0.2 of a second of each other. They are remarkably well matched up. And Wayne Cunningham and I had a good time at the racetrack and on the road sort of pitting those cars against one another. So I'm definitely, I haven't seen the video yet and I know how it ends. [LAUGH] Seen it. Yeah. I'm definitely interested in sort of checking that one out. Okay, that's brand new fresh at the Road Show. A surprising match, you think of Tesla Model S, a pure battery electric, always in its own category. But that's not the real world going forward, people are cross shopping cars like these against each other, of course. So we've got that for you. When we come back We're gonna take a look at what self driving is gonna do for your car insurance bill and when, and we'll tell you about some new ads for cars you're gonna see that Google is doing. That I want you to be aware before you see them. That's coming up when Auto Complete return. [MUSIC] [BLANK_AUDIO] [MUSIC] Welcome back to AutoComplete, Brian Cooley with Antion Goodman, lets continue on here. A lot of folks are saying what's gonna happen To my car insurance, when self-driving technology propagate, I mean what are we insuring for? When cars are doing at least part of the driving pressuring lesson in you. One day not at all. We can be a seismic change to the concept of car insurance. Moody's Investment Services came out with the forecast looking at the financial future. Of the insurance industry. And they say that in the next five to ten years, it's great for insurers because cars are gonna get safer, they're gonna have fewer accidents. We have automatic emergency braking coming. Basically showroom wide by 2022 at the latest. And eventually will alongside that have leveled to self driving coming in to take back Part of your drive in slices. All of this leads to fewer accidents because cars don't get drunk, distracted or do stupid stuff, at least not if the software is written right. But you're not gonna see your car insurance go down for a while, just because of inertia. Right. I mean, car insurers are not gonna be in a rush to lower that rate. Yeah, it's not gonna be a Instantaneous change. It's gonna have to slowly sort of eke itself out. I mean, like you said, that's exactly what insurance companies want. They want people to pay for things they're not gonna use. Yeah, a long runway. It's like the gym system. [LAUGH] They want you to pay that membership every month, and then they want you to Stay home with that. Yeah they're cutting into the gym business. It's like, "Yes we want you to pay but we don't want to make our gym any bigger." We want to recruit you but we don't want to add machines. Right, but eventually people will get to a point where they do start asking those questions of do we even need this. I think it will eventually reach the point Maybe like homeowners insurance where it's something that people get because they want to protect something that they purchase. But it's not really something that's necessary. Yeah, well. It'll actually be interesting 50 years down the line. Car insurance is something you don't even need. Even before that. Because we're gonna start to, and this is kind of an industry consensus, start to spread around. The payer role. So we may pay part of our insurance, but the car maker may also take on some of the risk. Right. Some car companies are already saying, yeah, we're gonna be offering insurance at least when our car's in autonomous mode. Mm-hm. And some of the companies that make the actual self-driving tech, which are not known to consumers, the tier one suppliers. Mm-hm. They may actually get in there in a contributory fashion as well. So we're gonna see the insurance industry change dramatically, but not for at least ten, and probably more like twenty years. So it's a long term forecast, but believe me the insurance industry is aware of this, as is Wall street. A lot of the auto makers are even talking about getting out of the ownership paradigm. Their sort of looking down the road if you really own your car. Yeah, in the future, it's a service you subscribe to at which point insurance isn't your problem. It's all on the [INAUDIBLE]. In the Uber I get in, it's somebody else's problem. Yeah so whether it's ride share, car share, or like what Audi does where you buy one car and you have access to several Audis. You have the pilot program they do. You can have, sort of, you've bought into the brand But not into a fan, and so how do you ensure that if I have access to several I'm going to go down to the insurance company and register a bunch of [UNKNOWN] I don't even know. Well, again that would be the [UNKNOWN] problem, it's like a zip car. When I pick up a zip car, zip car has insured it. Yeah. And all I do is pay my membership fee and for the time that I'm in the vehicle. And that's really interesting because Insurance companies are used to rating insurance based on personal factors, all the way down to red lining, controversial practice. You pay based on your zip code. Where do you store your car? A lot of folks register their car at one place, even though it's not their home because the lower zip code place to keep your car. Maybe it's your office or something, where you get your registration. So a lot of the old games we play on both sides, Are gonna get blown up and then come down in who knows what order. It's one of the most interesting parts, I think, of self-driving. Because we pay and pay and pay for insurance, and if we're lucky, don't use it much. Right. If we're unlucky or live in San Francisco where a car gets broken into every millisecond, you do use it quite a bit. Headlights, lot of headlight tech out there, steerable headlights, LED headlights. We have laser headlights- Laser headlights. Maybe one day. Coming to the US, maybe. All these great headlight technologies. New research that came out for IHS, the insurance institute for highway safety says they all kind of suck. The only car that had great headlights of about 30 or 25 that they test was about 30 some odd cars they tested, and it was a grand total of 84 tests. Cuz they did high beams, low beams, steerable, all that other stuff. Also glare to the oncoming driver. Glare to oncoming vehicles, which is, as a Miata driver, something I'm very aware of. You're sitting low. [LAUGH] And the only car that did well was. The Prius V. The Prius V. Not even the awesome Prius, the van of Prius. The Prius V not the 3 series not a Acura TLX. It got a marginal. Let's go to the poor list. Let's see Mercedes CLA. The new C-Class, or a recent C-Class. Optima, Sonata, Malibu, ATS, all good cars. Right, really good cars. Crummy headlights. Yeah, exactly. Cars like the Audi A4. Audi's a company that really been making some really big pushes. One of the first companies to offer LED headlights. Huge, yeah. Full LED headlights. I mean, here's Audi on the marginal list. Yeah. So it's interesting to sort of see how all of these optional high-intensity discharge, you know, laser headlights-- Steerable Yeah, they don't really do anything other than look cool. [CROSSTALK] So these guys say, they also pointed out that one of the cars that did pretty good on the acceptable list, one level down from the top. Was a Accord, with halogen headlights. Mm-hm. Ooh, that's like, that's like vinyl. Right. [LAUGH] And so like they, when they did these tests they didn't, I guess a lot of headlights you can sort of adjust vertically. Well any headlight you can, you can adjust, but they didn't do any of these adjustments. They just took the cars factory fresh. Yeah. So I mean, in theory, I mean you can probably. Tweak your headlights, get them lined up right. But who wants to? No one does. Every driver's never gonna do that. No one does that. I mean and so, yeah, I wonder if this will be a wake up call to automakers or Or if there'll be some sorta rebuttal to this or I bet there's gonna be some rebuttal and I bet there's gonna be also a good awareness for consumers, don't get too caught up in paying for a package that has some fancy light tech. It may be What can we say? At least more high tech and maybe brighter looking but not necessarily better. Right. And also in terms of the oncoming car, cuz if you want safety from headlights one of the things you don't want it to do is to blind someone who could potentially drift across the line or not see you coming at a corner or what have you. Cuz they can't really tell where you are cuz all they see is blast. Right. This blast of light. And some of these vehicles won points back for things like adaptive high beams because most drivers don't ever use their high beams. Which they should. Yeah. Right. With the technology like adaptive high beams, when you're on a dark Road and you can use those high beams to compensate for the weaknesses of your low beams. Interesting. Some of these cars won points for- Some of them won back four of the tech. High beam bias when the driver wouldn't. Remember the logic that's coming out these days from a lot of studies, this one seems to support it. Is that you should flip you idea of using light. High beams, except when you should, as opposed to low beams, except when you can. Except for in my neighborhood everyone rides around with their high beams on, it's weird. [LAUGH] .>> I see it all the time, people's low beam headlights get blown, and so instead of getting a fix it ticket, they just turn their high beams on. [LAUGH] I hope they're being hyper safe, no, they're being hyper cheap. Whole different thing. [LAUGH] Yeah. Google's got some new car ads coming out you're gonna see, especially if you search for cars on Mobile. They're gonna start to, honestly, get kind of in the automotive content business by, when you search for let's say, 2016 Prius V cuz you want good headlights. They're gonna deliver a slideshow of that car, without you having to go anywhere else. So a Google Assembled slide show. Slide shows are gold on the internet. We're all drunk on it. And, they will also has some basic specs that they're gonna pull up. And if dealers wanna pay of course, the dealers can be listed under a short list of local dealers all from one Little page unit and we're showing it to you right there. It's an interesting way for Google to get into the robotic automotive content business. It just shows the incredible amount of googling of cars that people are doing Doing on their phones. Right, you don't shop for a car now unless you're roaming around with your phone, right now. Well I think people use of the Internet in general has shifted towards more handheld. Yeah. So it makes sense to sort of make it easier, for people to get that content. They're getting into the kind of robotic content biz but it says here Google says that, Googling for pictures Of a given car were up to 37% in 15 from 2014 and 80% of those searchers virtually all of that grow was on mobile, so people are googling from pictures of cars and. They are basically doing it on mobile, to kind of mega trends and Google is inserting themselves in the middle of that. So the next time that you go searching for a car or you're doing it this weekend, looking for a car, you may see this new ad format that we've just shown you right here. Now, the last thing I wanna finish up with here is an alcohol interlock technology from Honda and Hitachi What they call a key fob, I think that's a bit of a stretch. Considering it's bigger than a phablet, I mean. But they say it's the first key fob, tied to a car specifically, that is an alcohol interlock. So it can detect alcohol on your breath, and it can keep you from driving the car that you aren't even in yet. I restrain myself from looking at the picture until just now. That thing is massive. [LAUGH] Right. That's the deterrent right there, is you're just gonna wanna leave it at home. [LAUGH] Yes, I don't wanna go drive a car, if it requires me to have that. Give me a cab. You're right, that's actually the logic. Yeah. Very insightful. I mean it's interesting that the technology to have that sort of blow into the tube, in the car is already there. But once you've Once you've already gotten in the car, then the temptation to sort of have- Someone else do it. I'm already here. And if someone else [CROSSTALK] let me drive. I'm okay. [NOISE] But if you can make the decision before you even get to the car, I think that you may be less tempted, or more likely to do something like call a cab. Maybe, or where my mind went is you're just gonna stay at the bar and have another couple. So I'm not quite sure where this ever ends. Well you can keep checking. Right. You can have a beer and then check and the have a beer and then check. You're their all night. Yeah. Maybe, they're gonna get into the hotel business, I don't know. A Hitachi Honda co branded series of them. They can have those pod hotels in the back of the bar, you just open a little locker and slide in. Bring those from Tokyo. Yeah. There's a whole sideline. There's something going on here, we haven't quite figured out the business model but. It's a bizarre one as you can see, but they say yeah, it's the first alcohol interlock in a key fob tied to a car that can keep that car from starting, without you having to go out to the car and have the car tell you, you need to get back out, call a cab, or go back to the bar. Which it would be [INAUDIBLE] .>> They're gonna need to make that a lot smaller. Yeah, a lot smaller. Smaller than a hub cap at least. No one does hub caps anymore, do they? Yeah, they do. Are there some cars with hub caps. Mitsubishi, [UNKNOWN] Be the greatest slide show ever. Cars that still have hub caps. [LAUGH] I claim it for a top five, you get it for a slide show. All right. We got. All right folks, thanks for watching Auto Complete. Anton's here. I'm Brian Cooley. We'll see you next week. [MUSIC]