From Gridlock In California to Car Free In Madrid - Ben Sullins' Big Move!

33:55It's really frustrating. Now, the biggest deal with that stuff, I believe, is in fact, because Trump made a deal with the UK, I believe, about importing cars. and it was an incredibly low tariff. I forget, like 10, 15 % or something like that. Meanwhile, the US automakers, which import steel and aluminum from all these other places, do not get any reprieve. And so they're looking at it going, guys, you're tariffing the US companies more than you are the UK ones. And now there's the Japan deal. I haven't looked at it. It just happened, but it's same deal. So I completely get this beef that the US auto industry has with the administration going, what the hell?

34:37Like, I thought the idea was to help us. And look at what you're doing. You're killing no more taxes or tariffs on them, but we still have to deal with it because we, you know, there's one company in Mexico that attaches the seats. And by the way, this supply chain going from US, Canada, Mexico has been alive for 70 years. It's not new. So that to me seems like... You might be able to buy an Aston Martin cheaper than an F-150. yes I will I will take that deal I will take that deal yeah I think it will do very well I would yeah I want the Rolls Royce Spectre or whatever right but I mean I've got to tell you I've just got because I've seen a video done recently about the RoboTax and I'd like to talk about that but I've just got to tell you I went into the showroom there's one of the showrooms in London when the RoboTaxi was first launched and they had one in the showroom and I had a look at it and they had invited me to go along and it was all fine and I looked at it and it kind of You know, I'm trying to remain completely neutral on the concept of self-driving cars, the whole notion of it.

35:43But when I saw that car, I just went, if that had a steering wheel and it was the Tesla Model 2. The$25 ,000. The$25 ,000, you know, maybe three-seater or maybe, you know, compact. Whatever. It's a compact car. It would be amazing. And everybody would be going bananas about it. And the order books would be exploding. You know, they would be so popular. and you've already got the charging network and it's a it's a car it only needs to do a couple hundred miles it doesn't need long range because you can charge it so quickly and so easily all that stuff but let's put that to one side because you i mean you've got an interesting take on it so just for the people who don't know the robo taxi is on the road available for hire in austin is that correct is that is that the only place it is uh i'm currently yeah yeah there's a small area and Austin and Elon says a lot of things on earnings calls.

36:32But for now, that's the reality. It does exist with a safety driver in the front seat. So does it have a steering wheel now? Yeah, yeah. So the robo-taxi, the actual robo-taxi is just a Model Y. It's not actually a different car. It's not a different car, right. So the car I saw was just a... It's not the cyber cab or whatever thing that they're promising in the future, which I do think that would be really cool. Again, yeah, add a steering wheel. It doesn't have a charging port. the the new i'm like just give me a damn charging port like that seems silly well how do you charge it if it doesn't have a charging oh it's uh wireless charging so because it's completely automated right so it'll like have a thing place to park and it will just charge yeah uh okay but what actually exists is a model wise that are designated as robo taxis and you can hail them with a tesla app and then get in one but there is a tesla safety driver.

37:25There's a physical human being in the car. There's a human being not in the driver's seat, though, in the passenger seat. They can push a button if things are going wrong and things are going wrong. It's very early days of that. The video that I did on it, my take, because I'm a numbers guy, was more asking the question or trying to explore the idea of, do the economics of a robotaxi like this work? I think I could have done a better job diving deeper, but Uber and these companies don't actually release a ton of data about the cost of the driver and commercial insurance costs and the cost of the vehicles.

38:07Over here, I've noticed that a lot of the Ubers are owned by Uber themselves and the people driving them are renting them for the week or something like that. Quite different than you owning your own car and driving it out. So the net of it is, though, that just because you remove the driver from the equation doesn't mean that you can have a drop in the actual price a consumer pays by 80 % or anything. The most you could theoretically get is maybe a 50 % reduction in price, which is significant. It is. A fly though or a one five, a five zero. Five zero. That's a difference. Yeah. But, but that is, that is assuming that like the card costs$0 to Tesla, meaning a customer provides a car because there's capital costs associated with making the thing right now, Tesla owns all of them.

38:57So if they're going to continue on that, there is, even though they obviously pay less for it than the consumer, there is a cost associated with the vehicle making it. Then you have to deal with maintenance. It will need tires. It will need, you know, cleaning, uh, repairs, if it gets into an accident or let's say someone pukes in the back of it because they're drunk, you know, whatever these things happen there. There's real life meets theoretical, you know? So, so the point is, is that right now, all of those things, when you take out the driver, it's not just the person moving the wheel and pushing the pedals.

39:28There's a lot more that goes into, you know, what that cost absorbs. And so you're not going to actually recoup all of the cost of having a driver. You're going to have to add back in all these other things that the driver currently does. And so then that hurts the equation even more. And so if we look at the economics of it, I mean, it's sort of best guess, but I think you could probably knock off realistically 30 % of what you currently pay. And then, so that's good. That's still a lot cheaper. But then you have to ask the question about, do people trust it? And will they, is that a significant enough drop in price for them to go, oh, well, I'm definitely doing that one.

40:12You know, if you're going to take a taxi and it's, you know,$20 and you're going to take an Uber and it's$21, but you know, the Uber is going to be a much better experience. Would you pay for that? Yeah, probably. It's close enough. Right. So this is where I think you get into the behavioral economic side of it, which to me is one of the most fascinating, like areas to study is how we, as people make decisions based on, on money and prices and things. And so that was basically the question is right now, it doesn't seem like to me anyways, my opinion as a wannabe economist would be that we don't have enough room there to make a significant price reduction that people would just overwhelmingly adopt it.

40:50Right. Right. That people do not trust self-driving cars from all the survey data I've seen. It'll be a long time until they do. But if the price reduction was like 90%, I think you could get there a lot quicker. Yeah. So that's what I'm very interested in to see how this goes. Not like whether or not a car can do this. I mean, I saw a video of you, I don't know, 15 years ago at Heathrow, taking one from the car park over to the thing with the little laser gun. I mean, so these have existed in some fashion. Will people trust it? And will it be cheap enough for them to choose it? I think those are the biggest questions in my mind.

41:25Yeah. I mean, more recently than that, I mean, that was another episode we did, and I was blown away by it, was a Nissan Leaf, fully autonomous, on busy London streets, buses, kids crossing the road, bicycles, pets, you know, everything you could throw at it. And then, you know, British roundabouts, fairly challenging even for British people. And then like a highway. And it did all that in about, you know, 15, 20 mile drive and then came back to the base and they immediately plugged it in. And I went, well, we haven't been that far. Even for an old Nissan Leaf, we haven't been that far. But what was in the back, and this is what will have changed, I know, was what looked to me like five or six old school desktop computers, the big box that sat under your desk and hummed.

42:17The range on the Nissan Leaf was reduced by about 45 miles, which didn't have that much range. So it used an enormous amount of energy for all this, the computing. Now, that has obviously shrunk down phenomenally since then. Yes. That will be your phone size. Yes, exactly. But I have to say, it was extraordinarily aware of its surroundings, including, you know, it was for press people. So they had a screen, and that was highlighting all the potential hazards. Right. Well, one of them was going like that. It was flickering. And I went, I can't see anything. You know, if I was driving, there's nothing there.

42:55And then I went, oh, there's a kid running along. And his mom is waving. And I went, that is. And it was a long way away. So I could say a child of about five. Sort of untethered child, basically. And it was fine. It was on the sidewalk. It wasn't going to do anything. I've just used the word sidewalk without thinking. Pavement. Oh, oh. That's what we call it. Okay, there we go. I've spent too much time in America. Anyway, all that aside, I still found it fairly terrifying. And there was a driver with me. I mean, he didn't touch the steering wheel. it was it was really impressive but that now i mean what about have you been in a waymo in san francisco i mean i've met a few people who have and they they seem to be very confident about those and they were very yeah yeah i've i have a lot of friends that have i mean people just i'm from arizona so that's where they sort of first launched uh in chandler oh that's right and yeah yeah yeah i mean it's it seems to be very good and to me that's where it's interesting because you look at the data and you go oh okay so it seems like to me based on my assessment that that the technology is approaching like a confidence level that I think we can agree it's safe.

44:01You know, granted, there's a lot that comes along with launching a new city. It's not like you just flip it on. I feel like there was this idea years ago that, you know, a Tesla Model S from 2016, in 2019, you'd get a software update and bang, it would just work anywhere. You could drop it in Berlin or you could drop it in Beijing and it would just be fine. It would figure it all out. No, that's never, no, no, no, no. I think everything is very regional and it's going to be very specific, right? Because how the, how the rules of the road work in different countries, like you said, roundabouts are a good example.

44:31You know, we don't have a lot of them in the U S and, and as I'm learning here in Spain, uh, how you navigate them varies. Like we have roundabouts here with stoplights in them. Okay. That's fast. You know, there's roads here that if you want to turn left first, you have to like exit the road you're on to the right. And you have to go in this little half circle and then stop. And then eventually you'll be able to go left. To go to the left. Yeah. Yeah. So like if your cars learned all how to drive in California, that would be completely foreign as to what the hell is what. None of that makes sense, right?

45:04So I think that it's going to be a long road. I think along the way, though, there's a huge opportunity for advancements in safety and even just cost. I mean, like the best example probably is that thing in Heathrow that takes you from the car park over to the terminal. Yeah. Because you don't necessarily need the most advanced technology in the world to say have like a little bus that drives around university or something. Yeah. Right. I mean, that can be pre-programmed. It can have all the sensors in the world. I mean, and it can run 24 hours a day, whatever. So I think that there's a lot of a lot of fruit that we'll be able to bear along the way.

45:40but getting to that full-blown thing, I think, is far off. But the bigger question to me isn't a technical one. It's a human one. Will it be cheap enough, and will people trust it? That's the bottom line. Because if we don't, then it doesn't matter how good the piece of technology is. You know what I mean? But it's also quite interesting because I've just remembered that one of the really passionate TED Talks I saw probably 10 years ago, I think it was a German guy, but he had a very good friend of his who was killed by a drunk driver. or what, you know, like it was definitely a serious motor accident caused by human error, not technical failure.

46:15And he was so upset about it that he was one of the initial people to wanted to devise autonomous driving because it was safer. So that was the drive. It's safer that human beings fail and we make mistakes and we screw up and we have crashes. But then it sort of transmogrified, if you like, over the years into, we don't need to have any people that we have to pay yeah yeah that seemed to be the motivation let's get rid of the people which seems to be quite a popular concept in silicon valley and has become even more toxic in the last few years but you know that yeah and in a sense i'd quite i mean i i quite like getting in a taxi with a someone i have a chat with yeah sometimes they tell me to shut up but you know often you'll have a little conversation with them past the time i practice my spanish with all yeah that's good yeah yeah yeah that's it but yeah so i don't i mean i'm not sure where that sits now like the you know what's the motivation the motivation because if it's safety and i believe you know a million completely autonomous cars would probably be safer over a thousand miles than a million human beings one of them is going to sure drive off a cliff or drive into a kid or something you know yep yeah but i think you know that goes back to the first thing we talked about you know, if there's one thing in the U S that we all believe in, it's making money.

47:34And so I think like anything that, that like all progress must be in the, in the pursuit of greater wealth in the U S like if you, if you're doing something, not to say this is right. I'm not saying I believe that I'm just saying, but that is how it is. It's also not altogether wrong because you can have tremendous technological advances and success because the motivation is pulling you forward because you can make lots of money. I mean, yeah, I think I mean, if you look at renewables and a big a big to me, whenever I talk to somebody about climate change or anything like that, it's always to me.

48:06I try to frame it in that light. Yeah. Like, yeah, not sure. It'll save the planet, carbon emissions, blah, blah, blah. Yes, we all know that. But I'm not going to beat that dead horse. We're already we already. Yeah, we've talked we've talked through that. The bigger thing is you're going to save money and you're going to have less blackouts. Yeah. You know, because that is something that's more I think like when you when you have these big, difficult concepts like a climate change or one of these things, if you can bring it home to people in a way that's relatable. Yeah. All of a sudden, the conversation just shifts and everyone wants to, you know, breathe cleaner air and have better water and things like that.

48:41You know, so to me, I think that there is some good in that, you know, the thought of just making money to be greedy isn't really the full story. right it's like you make more money but along the way you can do it in ways that are that have many other benefits as well yeah yeah i mean it is yeah no it is fair i mean i think you're right that the that i initially started wanting to explore this and talk about this topic of like for instance electric ground transport from the point of view of the technology yeah quite quite rapidly changed oh this is the problems now with electric vehicles are i would say entirely psychological They're not technological.

49:21The technology works. It's not even that interesting. You drive along, and when you need to put some more electricity in your battery, you stop and you charge it. What is there to worry about? We've just driven – we drove down to Italy a few weeks ago. The charging, I can't tell you how low it came in the list of worries, anxieties, and priorities. Where's the nearest restroom to use an American restroom? That's number one. That's the alarm. yes yeah i'm an old man i need to i need to get out the second was where can i get a coffee a baguette what about you're going to buy some cheese for the people we're going to see you know and then let's fight let's stop for lunch we're tired you know oh charging you know it's like yeah whatever it's like i'm still wondering one thing that that's so the the electric grid here is different than the u.s in a lot of ways but one key way is the voltage right here you have 220 volts right as the standard like it all around the room in me um and i was trying to sort out why that is why in the u.s do we only have 110 yeah or 120 and my guess and you know correct me if i'm wrong or feel free to slap me in the comments or something but it seems like edison i believe was the one that created the whole like electricity in your house type system yes like the light bulb and all that stuff so we're talking and i don't think europe had it at the time no no you america certainly had that power right had the beginnings of a power grid way before anyone else way yeah so i'm guessing that my my thought uh is that because the u.s sort of created this first they did it in a in a uh more an immature way immature in the sense of like they just didn't think that they would need a higher voltage yeah and then you come over here so when I think about it over here I'm like well I could just plug like if I could just plug my my my electric car into my garage yeah and get 220 I don't know how many amps you get here but 13 usually 30 in the UK it's 13 amps but but that right there would almost be enough for almost everybody well especially in Europe when you don't drive you know 500 miles a week and I mean that because I don't know all I know is the way I explain it to people is yeah if you plug it in next to your toaster or your kettle, it's adding about five miles an hour in range.

51:43So that's why I'm saying eight kilometers, something like that. Yeah. And then if you use a seven kilowatt charger like we've got here, then that's about 30 miles. And if you use 22 kilowatts, about 50 miles an hour, that's how to step up. But what I don't know is what 110 gives you. So if you plug into a three pin socket, yeah, it's got to be really slow. Barely anything. Yeah. uh it's probably yeah it's probably one or two miles an hour range isn't it that's correct yeah i mean it depends on the vehicle right yeah so i i did a video on this geez i don't know eight years ago uh or so where i took my model three at the time and it was still new and i was trying to answer that question could you live without getting any high power thing just a regular three pin socket and during the week the answer was yes you could because you get you get about maybe two miles of range per hour right so if you get home and you're home for i don't know 12 to 16 hours a day or something like that it's probably fine like that's probably enough for your commute in the u.s it's certainly enough for your commute over you know in europe or somewhere else uh but yeah but but five miles of range you know and then if you plug a ribbion in it gets you know it laughs at you it's just yeah yeah what are you doing this is this is cute stop wasting my time yeah exactly exactly so but if you're getting five miles of range per hour and you get home at an I don't know what a 9 to 5 type job is like over here, but if you get home and you're home for 12 hours, 60 miles of range, 60 miles of range is a lot.

53:15I mean, what's that saying? That in Europe, 100 miles. So to an American, 100 years seems like a long time, but to a European, 100 miles seems like a long distance. Yeah. Yeah. The reverse, right? Yeah. Yeah. So yeah, I think it's fine. I think it would work without anything special. Yes. Yeah. Now that is interesting because I've actually never thought of that because I knew, I knew the voltage is 110 in America. I never, I never made that connection as to how slow, how slow it would charge a car. It's very, it's not doable. I mean, it depends on your situation. I'd say, you know, America is a very big country, right?

53:52So, you know, for some people it'll work, but absolutely you want something more than that. And in fact, most of our high, you know, our, our appliances will run off of like a 220 or 240 or something right yeah so yeah so that's where you're like yeah you just get one of those and it's fine but um uh that is something that's big difference yeah the what that i mean we can we could talk for hours i know but i'm just trying to get there's a couple of what i a thing i've recently written i recently wrote a thing about all the the amazing you know ingenious daring brave car startups we've i've seen since i've done done this show mainly in europe uh you know but swedish and german and dutch and french brilliant ideas and they look so exciting and i went to the launch and they had the car there and everything all the journalists were there talking about it's really exciting and it's going to be amazing and they've all all without exception have failed and just bitten the dust and they've sometimes kind of morphed into a different system like they they've developed really effective solar paneling that they put on big trucks that will run refrigeration.

55:01I mean, some really clever stuff, but they've given up on cars. The two exceptions to that, from what I can tell, are Rivian and Lucid. And I don't know, I mean, obviously, you're not there anymore, but I'm sure you're very aware. But how long did you have your Rivian? For a long time. Yeah, three years. Yeah. I mean, I was one of the early ones. Yeah, but they seem to have got over that critical early stage where they need so much investment to be able to start actually producing the cars. That's what crippled all the ones we saw in Europe. I mean, do you think they will survive? Are they in it for a long time?

55:36Oh, no doubt. No doubt. So Rivian and Lucid, very different brands, right? Lucid has Saudi money, so they cannot go bankrupt unless they decide to not keep funding. yeah uh so there's that i am surprised lucid's not in europe are they not i mean i've seen one at goodwood i met because yes i met peter rawlinson driving in his in his lucid yeah so no they're not there's not i've not seen one in the wild at all it seems i feel like they would do well yeah i don't know i mean yeah yeah rivian i know has other challenges because trucks are you know at least where i'm at in europe are not a thing yeah um and the suvs they're extremely large by European centers.

56:16So I don't know, maybe the R2 will be a good one. But yeah, Rivian's at that point where I do think they've cemented themselves as they're here to stay. They're sort of, I'm not too big to fail, but if anything, if for whatever reason, everything worked against them and they didn't have any more successes, you know that Amazon or Apple or somebody would step in and buy them and keep them going. There's no doubt. But they got, what, a$5 billion investment from Volkswagen? Right. And now they're licensing their software into a lot of Volkswagen, which is where, I mean, Volkswagen knows how to make cars.

56:53There's no doubt about that. But software is not their strong suit. They've shown us that. Yeah. It's a cheap device in a diesel engine, and then it's brilliant. Yeah. Sorry, didn't mean to mention that. Put those people on the actual software use. So I think Rivian has enough strong partnerships and they have enough momentum that there's no doubt in my mind. I mean, I think they're doing relatively well financially and relatively well with their production numbers. And they're still pre their version of the Model Y, if you think about it. Yes. Like the cheapest Rivian is still very expensive and as amazing as they are, I think they're totally worth all the dollars that they have.

57:36but you know not everyone's going to be buying a 70 to a hundred thousand dollar vehicle it's just not practical right so your market size is already limited and then by the time Rivian actually came up with something uh there's not a lot in in the in the truck space right there's only a few options in the U.S. but in the SUV space you do have a lot of competition from you know like Mercedes people that have been making really high-end luxury vehicles since before Rivian was much longer than anyone else on the planet yeah exactly so so the competition there i think is pretty pretty stiff you know and then now i think the actually i just think i just saw the range rover electric one was delayed um but but anyway so you know when you have when you have legit competition in the space and people are spending a hundred thousand dollars yeah i i would guess that they're likely going to go with the brand that they know and you know feel like they can trust so they have some some serious headwinds in that space but when the r2 comes out i think that they've built up enough brand value yeah like rivian as a brand i think is worth a lot like rj scurringe the ceo is like the nicest guy on the planet who you know has a has a phd in in automotive manufacturing like the guy there's you couldn't you couldn't you know cartoon draw a better person to be that guy you know maybe the the one thing if you say he has any faults is that he's not controversial enough yeah you know so he's kind of not in the news you know like he needs to yeah come out swinging more but anyways so so i think rivian's in a really good place you know and the whole delivery van thing that was always overlooked because that's the thing i i'm sort of i forget that that yeah i mean they got an order and and i think but i think uh amazon's reduced the size of it but they still ordered a hundred thousand of these delivery vans you know and they're not cheap to make and if you go back to san diego or california they're all over the place.

59:25They're everywhere. So it's not like they, you know, it's some, you know, theory. No, no, these are out there. They make a lot of them. So in fact, I think they sell more of their electric vans than Ford sells of its electric vans, which is, I mean, that's Ford you're talking about, right? So yeah, I think Rivian is going to do really well. Obviously the legislative environment, the political environment right now is not in their favor, especially with the tax credits ending. But I think once the R2 really starts to hit the roads early next year or whenever it happens next year that will be their model y and i guarantee that will you know their sales volumes will will you know 5x what they are now so yeah i'm really excited about i love rivian i think that you know they have a lot of teething issues still uh but they're solid you know and lucid lucid i find really really good as well like peter rollinson one of my favorite people in the industry i've ever yeah and i know he's not he's not there anymore but like uh it's you know i think lucid it's the same thing when the gravity suv i think it's finally out or coming out um and then whenever they come out with a bit cheaper of a model if they do that yeah you know i always i've had many you know glasses of wine with peter talking about this going look it works now because mercedes and bmw do not make electric cars at the time but as soon as the true luxury brands start making electric cars i'm sorry buddy like it's gonna i think it's gonna be too strong of a headwind for you like you're gonna have to really differentiate and it'll be a very niche kind of product but if you could make something that is like like the gravity suv like 500 plus miles of range yes and because the people buying it don't care about the cost right at that point if you're at that stage yes the cost doesn't matter does it yeah yeah so so it was funny you know because i mean and he agreed he said you know their competition wasn't tesla their competition was mercedes and bmw and i said yeah enjoy the lead while you have it because as soon as they start coming out with I think it's going to be a really tough challenge.

1:01:21Because Jack has just been, I mean, you may, I don't know if you went, but Jack just went to see the new A Class A BMW, had to sign an NDA, couldn't take his phone in. They shot the footage. They've still got the footage. We're not allowed to have it until it's released. So I genuinely don't know anything about it. But I said to him, well, you're impressed. And he said, it's just the next step. He said, you will see this thing and you'll go, oh my God. you know yeah the distance between my little nissan leaf that's still here yes and that is he said it's like it's like model t with a with a porsche 911 you know it's that much of a gap which is so i mean who knows you know no i mean that's that's really the phenomenal thing about about this whole transition but you're right i mean most you know on my channel you can sort of see i got kind of bored reviewing evs sure a few years ago because in the early days every new ev was It was exciting and different.

1:02:13It was like, oh my God, what is that? You know, I can't believe they did that. Oh, what about this? And now it's just, oh, next year's version of the Kia. Yeah, yes. And not to bash Kia. I love Kia. I think they make great, phenomenal. But it's like, I don't need to review the 2026 version of the same car or whatever. It's all sort of just kind of, now it just seems normal. Yes. I mean, I think, but I sense that is the best. So there's a very, very good old friend of mine. his partner has been a, I think it's fair to say, you know, a fairly wealthy Londoner who has always driven a Range Rover.

1:02:50So from when she was 19, I think her father bought her one and she's always had a Range Rover. And that's just who she is. And there is a specific type of woman in this country. Yes. And they like Range Rovers. And that's fair enough. I'm not, but you know, a Range Rover in the middle of London is more, you know questionable anyway she has just bought the uh i cannot believe she's done she came to visit us this weekend uh she's got an uh uh kia ev9 the big the big suv she absolutely she's just obsessed with it and it's first so her first she's gone from she's gone from a no electric car to this enormous tank what she says is hysterical is that she was always like ashamed she's got a garage and her Range Rover just about fit in it this thing is too big it doesn't fit yeah she's I can't believe I've gone to an electric car it's even bigger yeah it's a seven it's a seven seater I sat in the no one had said it's brand new I sat in the very back row and she would sort of shout it what's it like back there but I mean it's an amazing car and they're what she's she's had it kind of I think six weeks and she's just looked back at her bank statements and seen how much she paid for petrol in a six-week period and it's just gone she said that we are paying for the electricity at night time off peak at their house you know they're lucky they can charge it off the you know off the street in london but um you know it is and it's i just think it's interesting that it isn't like the first which you all have seen this as well the first sort of few people that bought teslas or bought nissan leafs or renault zoe's were kind of in you know early adopters enthusiasts they would put up with the pain and the hassle and right she's not prepared to do and now it's gone to normal people just will buy byd because it's cheaper right and then and that's why they've got it you know and and then basically i don't want to blow her wealth up too much but she's definitely not poor people have you know people like her who would normally buy a very high-end Vima or a Mercedes or a Range Rover, she's now done, made that change and, and is obsessed.

1:05:00I mean, and how is she? Yeah. She's also going to tell all her mates, you know, so her social circle are going to go, Oh, well, I don't buy petrol anymore, darling. Yes. I'm electric now. That British, I can, I can see it already. I love it. I love it. Yeah. No, that, that's absolutely right. I mean, it's amazing how quickly people become enthusiasts once they experience it for themselves. I love the Kia EV9. I think it's phenomenal. It's an extraordinary vehicle. Yeah, amazing. Whenever we find ourselves back in the U.S. looking for a car, that may be one of the ones that we buy. I mean, in fact, if you're looking at the Rivian R1S versus that, I think it's compelling.

1:05:37Kia obviously has been making cars a lot longer. It knows how to do it. I mean, lately, all of the ones I've seen out of them have been phenomenal. It's just the way that, you know, that sort of, that stuff that is, has taken many decades to finesse. But it's like, you open the back and you press the buttons and the seats go flub, flub, flub. And they go flat. There's no sort of, I can remember when we had an estate car and you'd put the seats down and all they were still up. And that's just, the way that's designed now is just amazing. The storage, you could move your house with the back of that.

1:06:08Yes. Well, I've been talking to my wife about this because now we're here without a car. and all the cars that are around us are relatively small. I mean, they're not tiny. But I'm thinking about it. I'm like, do we need a truck back home? I'm starting to question this whole thing. I'm like, I could just put a rack on top for the surfboards and the bikes. And I mean, you could definitely get it done without it. And we only have two kids. So it's not like we have four kids where we have to have that third row seating. So look at it. This might be starting. My perspective's changing. That's part of the whole idea.

1:06:37Oh, my God, you're getting sucked into the crazy socialist world of European. That's right. That's right. I'll tell you what, though, free health care. I'm excited about this. Oh, my God. I mean, free. I have to pay 80 euros a month or something for Social Security, but whatever. It's basically free. Yeah. No, that is the most – I mean, it was one of the most terrifying things when I used to work regularly in America. It wasn't terrifying. It was only that I would see my medical insurance that the company had for me. and I just go oh my god I've never I've never seen that many figures in one right you know it's just insane what they had to do and thank goodness that was we never called on it but yeah yes I know it's not um it's no it's it's nice I'm enjoying some of those services here yeah I mean Ben we've talked for over an hour always try and do under an hour it's so much I just you know we've we've covered all the main points yes yes we've solved climate change yet Solve climate change, absolutely, without any trouble at all.

1:07:38We'll take our Nobel Prize now. Thanks. It's been really good to catch up with you. And I mean, I do hope, you know, if you are road tripping up into the damp island off the coast of mainland Europe, you'd be very welcome. No, I'm hoping to come join you guys. When is Farnborough? Oh, that's in October. Oh, brilliant. Oh, yeah. Yes. Oh, my God. It's going to be so exciting. Because also, you know, we've done this reenactment of Junkyard Wars. Yeah, Zappie. Zappi, we just finished last week the two machines. You will love them. They are extraordinary. No, that's amazing. You'll just look at them going, why the hell have they put those electric motors there?

1:08:17How the hell does this work? So I'm about 90 % that I'll be joining you there because I have to get one last. It's my identification card, my basically saying, but because UK is not in Europe anymore, I need that. Otherwise, if I try to return to Europe, well, I have to have, there's all this paperwork. And yeah, yeah. So I need that card, but I think it'll be here before then. So about 90%, sure. Oh, that's really good. So that'd be great. Excellent. We will see you there. Okay. Thanks so much, Ben. Really hope you enjoyed that. It was great fun talking to Ben. What an absolutely amazing dude.

1:08:55Really looking forward to seeing him later this year. please do tell your friends about the Everything Electric show Everything Electric Cars or Everything Electric Tech both on YouTube do subscribe to them if you haven't already really worth doing so you don't miss the amazing plethora of episodes we've got coming up and that's it as always if you have been thank you for watching this summer turn your gifting game up during the summer plant and garden sale at 1800flowers.com Right now, you can score up to 30 % off succulents, bonsais, fresh-cut blooms, and more. Whether you're celebrating a birthday, sending a thank you, or a just-because surprise, 1-800-Flowers lets you save big on a stunning selection of gifts.

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