Sandy Munro on Telo, Redwood, and Ford's Bold Play Against China's EV Giants!

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1:33Hello and welcome to another Everything Electric podcast. Coming to you, as you might have noticed, from my new studio. Slightly different. It's all changing a bit with all the changing names. It's not quite finished yet. It needs a bit of refinement and polishing. but nonetheless I've had the this is the first podcast I've recorded in my new studio and I have to say it was enormous fun now there are elements of this podcast where two quite old men have a bit of a whinge but I think it's a legitimate whinge you know they're having a bit of a moan we both are so we are gentlemen of a similar age my guest today is Sandy Munro from the United States and he is just an extraordinary figure in the world of uh of engineering primarily but in specifically automotive engineering and now specifically battery electric vehicles he knows a thing or two about battery electric vehicles uh he's a really extraordinary guy um but i just before we dive into that i just want to remind you that because they are extraordinary events so there's three extraordinary events i'll do the that we've that we're involved in there's four four extraordinary events uh the first one is going to be uh everything electric vancouver which is going to be amazing absolutely incredible i won't be there first time i've missed a show uh through planning and logistics i'm i'm not going to be in in vancouver which you know i really regret now saying all right i won't go to vancouver because it's just the most beautiful city and it is the most extraordinary event as well really really good event so that's happening um that is on the fifth from the fifth of the seventh of september so that's quite about a month's time then after that we've got everything electric south which is at farnborough uh in the uk and adding on to that so that's two events and adding on to that event is the zap heap challenge tests which we're going to record in front of a big audience at that event we've got we're building a huge test arena oh my god it's going to be incredible and um colin furs will be there along with the teams and along with jack scarlet and imogen bogle presenters and we'll all be there and they will be amazing and the the two team the four teams have built four incredible machines but you will sort of at each day you will see one test with two teams uh and all the all the machines are electric and they're powered by batteries and they have wires and they have a bit of software and we hope they work they will they will work how long they'll last because some of them are quite extreme uh and then we have which i am very much looking forward to uh everything electric melbourne in australia in november the 14th and 15th of i haven't done the dates of farmbra the 11th and 12th of october in farmbra and then the 14th and 15th and 16th of november in melbourne which i'm really excited about and apparently that is going very well because it's the first time we've done one so it's a bit of an experiment but we're really thrilled to be doing it um uh so that's i'm looking forward to that i know will be at both farmbra and melbourne uh but that's that's enough about all the live events and zap heap challenge oh my god it's so exciting because we've now made the oh it's it could be incredible you might not like it who knows i wouldn't want to judge um that's it i want to dive into sandy because sandy is amazing uh he's an extraordinary man we've known him a long time and he's been at our live events he's talked he's been on stages he's such a great communicator about the importance of engineering and how we don't have enough engineers is it's kind of that become that's a kind of thread of this this particular episode i'll shut up please welcome to the everything electric podcast sandy monroe our three free youtube channels on evs and clean tech are funded by our fun packed test drive-tastic events in farnborough london the southwest the north melbourne and sydney and next up we're in canada for everything electric vancouver and new for uk viewers you can now buy a battery ev and much more at everything electric dot store sandy this is such a thrill for me and thank you so much for finding time to to do this getting well have you got up early today to do this well i didn't get up early i got up at the normal time but um there was a little confusion about what time i was supposed to be on there always is no i'm sure whatever is wrong it's going to be my fault there's no question of that.

6:24Well, as long as we got someone to blame, everything's good. That's the way business works. Yeah, yeah. But it's great to talk to you because I mean, there's a lot of topics that I really want to catch up on that are happening in the United States. I mean, very, well, let's start with the very first one, because the most recent figures I've just seen, literally last week from Kelly's Blue Book, show a fairly marked increase in sales of electric vehicles in America, which I think as someone outside the country would go, well, I'm surprised because it feels like there's been such a huge pushback against wind, against solar, against all those things.

7:02But clearly, it hasn't affected the electric car market yet. Well, it hasn't affected the electric car market because, quite frankly, the more people I believe, anyway, I'm not 100 % sure here, but I believe the more that a government or any kind of ruling party or whatever wants to cram something up here or sorry you know whatever but but at the end of the day um the more they push the more people get skeptical and the more people that get into an electric like okay so um i uh i had to give back um the um tesla cyber truck that i was driving right and um and but i need a truck okay so guess what um yesterday yesterday i went down to the ford dealership and i uh i didn't buy it i leased it because we're going to be talking about some cars that i'm going to want to buy in the future so um I went down and leased a F-150 Lightning Platinum.

8:11Oh, my God. Okay, does it have self-driving? No, but I drive mostly myself anyways. I like to drive. I mean, but everything else. Oh, my God, the thing is so luxurious, and it's smooth, and it's cool, and it's quiet. Right. How could you walk away from something like this? And it's given me 300 miles of range. I got my little adapter plug and I can get into any Tesla charger. I mean, once you drop in. So yesterday was a big day. I got the truck, but I also went to get my back adjusted. Too many airplane rides. And so the guy that adjusts my back and whatnot, he says, oh, wow, cool truck. That's a Ford, right?

8:55Did you get an F-150? I said, I got a Lightning. It's an EV. You know, I've never driven one. Threw him the keys. Right. He went around in the parking lot. OK, I saw him go around a parking lot. Then he disappeared. He disappeared. Hey, I'm paying for this. What's going on here? So anyway, he sent a message. And the next thing I know, I got brand X squeezing my back. So, OK, fine. So he comes back, parks it and says. I really like that. Right. I mean, that's what happens. If you can get if you get people into an electric car, it's very difficult to get them to go back to. Hey, let's put a little more gas on it.

9:39The kids are all the kids are all puking. Well, that's OK. You got to tough it out. I mean, electricity is the way to go. And as far as the other stuff, it's all quiet. You can't believe how many people are putting him. I've got a friend of mine in Canada. He's trying to buy up as many as much battery storage as he can get. Right. I mean, and in Canada, it's cheap, but he doesn't sell to Canada. He sold back to the States. Right. So there's tons and tons of stuff going on right now with wind and but it's all done on a QT. Yeah. But talking of Ford, because I saw the amazing talk that Jim Farley, CEO of Ford, did recently at some conference in Phoenix, I think it was.

10:22And he was just so articulate and erudite and clear and very kind of calm. His arguments were based on things like scientific fact, logic, experience, engineering know-how. But they've got a big announcement coming up then, Ford have. I mean, do you know anything about that? Well, yes, I do. It's going to be on Monday. I highly recommend you watch. But I like Jim Farley. I think he's one of the two or three guys on the planet that I'll listen to. um but um um they nailed my my lips shut i'm gonna be there actually for this announcement um but i can't uh i can't go into any depth but it's gonna come out tomorrow oh sorry monday and um and i i i recommend you you stay tuned yeah i think it should be on many quite a few of the channels yeah and it's completely contrary to everything that everybody else is saying right that's about it i can't in fact i shouldn't even have said that last thing but but at the end of the day um watch it i really i i mean it you're you're going to really get uh you're going to get a kick out of it i really think it's going to be and i was super blown away right and there's video of me in there looking at this vehicle right while it was being developed and you can see what kind of clothes i've got on and uh i'm this is like uh march or something like that right okay and i wanted to do a video but they they held it back so yeah this is uh this is a really this is really big big stuff for uh or for ford but i can't talk about it so let's move on to something yeah yeah no that's fine before i get myself in a world of hurt here yeah the good the only good thing from your point of view is this will go out after the announcement on monday so it's fine oh oh cool yeah so yeah i think so or it'll go out on monday anyway whatever it happens but the your mind is earlier than mine we we that's true we have an early monday you're right yeah but the um the the because i'm sort of fascinated by the vehicles we can't see or we're not going to get over here the aptera being one of them because i was there when they launched another the latest version we don't talk about that yet but the tello truck i've seen so much stuff about the tello truck that it just looks like a it looks like a generational step in automotive thinking you know so you've seen it you've been to see it have you i i'm telling you what okay so the ford vehicle that i saw watch for that on monday i'm pretty impressed with that and that's one of the main reasons why i didn't buy the f-150 lightning is because of what i've seen so that's one thing uh but tillow oh my god blew me completely away right now we should save tillow actually for the end okay but but nobody nobody cares about that because dessert is what you eat first right you could you could die maybe there's a fish bone or something and you could die you might never get tillow yeah two inches shorter than a mini clubman wow two inches shorter okay So I'll put that in.

13:41That would be like whatever, 60 millimeters or something like that. Yeah. Okay. So at the end of the day, it's two inches shorter, but I can put four by eight plywood in it laying flat. Wow. And close the door, the gate. Wow. Cab forward design. And it's engineered. They did absolutely nothing that comes from the old spec. Everything is engineered and it's brilliant. I'm telling you what, I was so blown away. I couldn't believe it. I couldn't believe it. This is a step change from everything else. And is it a diesel? No, it's electric. Oh, well, you can't get it. and they showed me some i can't talk about that either i got so many things i mean one of these days so many some russian guy's gonna assassinate me or something because you know too much their their their battery system which i can't talk about right um just blew me away i couldn't i couldn't fathom i've been seeing stuff for about 20 years why don't we do this why don't we do this why don't we do this and these guys said okay sandy uh we're going to show you something you can't talk about it why is that well you talked about it for a long time we actually did it and here it is i would see old term my my dad used to use it all the time gobsmacked for uh you know for an american or a canadian you never hear that term that that's because my dad was scottish so So at the end of the day, that's what I was.

15:32But that vehicle coming in at the price that they want to sell it for, all day long. And that's only one. The other one's Slate. Is that on the agenda? Yes. What a perfect vehicle for a kid for starting out. Right. I can buy it as a, excuse me, I can buy it as a, as a, as a pickup truck, you know, plain Jane pickup truck. Yeah. And then I can add seats and I can turn it into an SUV. And then if I need to, I can turn it back into a pickup truck again. As my family grows, I can add more stuff to it. Things for the kiddies. This is the perfect. This is like the Mini. When we worked on the Mini with BMW, the idea was we want to have as many options as possible that they can buy and put them on themselves.

16:31Because the Mini buyer, in those days anyways, was somebody who was kind of like a mechanic that wanted to get things done. And that's exactly what Slate has done. Only, like I say, on steroids. It's just amazing. Amazing. I watched them turn it from the plain Jane pickup truck into the ultra SUV that you can get with it. And I saw it done in an hour and a half. Wow. Three guys, an hour and a half, all done. Right. If I would have had that as a kid, that would have been my first and probably only car ever. Yes. I mean, why would I need anything else? Yeah, yeah. So for me, that's a really big one.

17:15tillow and and and slate just blew me away right i mean it really really and truly and they're both american companies that i mean i think this is relevant to the current climate but they're both american companies that are making those vehicles in america they're not shipping the manufacturing overseas is that their plan i mean they're going to put them in the usa they're going to try and manufacture as much as they can in the usa but there is a gigantic problem uh that most people don't even know there are no tradesmen left in the states yeah yeah and uh and it's it's almost as bad in europe when german guys saying that you know we have uh we have a shortage of tool makers holy mackerel we can't find a plumber around here that's because the school system is so buggered up yeah i mean oh you have to go to college and get yourself a degree and no you don't you do now so i am i can do anything i was a tool maker before i was an engineer and the only thing i can't fix is a crack of dawn and i went down my wife is complaining because there's a pipe leaking in the basement from the sump pump and i don't care i don't want to do it i'm old and it's plastic pipe and i hate that so anyway we call up a kid um and he comes down this guy's 20 22 23 years old right he is a certified plumber right and the reason for that because when he was in grade school he was a big dummy and then when he went to high school he was a big dummy because why because they were teaching him shit he didn't want it he didn't care about yeah so his uncle said he was 16 his uncle said why don't you come with me and he started the trade a plumbing trade illegal it's illegal to do that you can't train anybody for the trades until they're 18 why why is that i was 16 when i when i started out why why why can't you do that why no idea no reason it's so they can suck them into going to university and getting a degree that'll make you suitable for a walmart greeter at the end of the day this kid come in sized everything up gave us a bill that I, you know, and then he finished it off.

19:37Then he started telling us about his life. Yeah. He's now making something like$160 ,000 a year. That's in dollars, of course. And he's only 20s, yeah. Yeah, and he's 22, 23, something like that. He has his own truck. Right. He has two motorcycles. One of them is a classic. an old Triumph Bonneville I think yeah um he has um and he has two cars and he has a house wow 23 years old and he's making about 150 grand a year what are his friends make and he graduated from high school at the bottom of the class and the only reason he got out was because his girlfriend uh helped him cheat uh so he could get out of high school right why is this why why are we looking at anybody that goes into the trades as a dummy yeah really bad it's so bad don't get a professor to try and fix his uh his uh pipes his pipes anyway at the end of the day um this is the biggest problem we got in the states right now no tool makers means hey no tools you can't make anything yeah yeah can't make anything no dives no walls what are you gonna do that is very true here too it's very true all over europe i mean somehow it's somehow more shocking in germany just because they've been at the forefront of manufacturing and making things you know since the end of world war ii they've been incredible you know they're well known for making things really well you know german stuff is well put together and if they are short of engineers and tool makers and you know mechanics now every tradesman every trade it doesn't matter whether you're swinging a hammer or designing the next rocket ship everybody's short and the reason for that is because the school system is bent towards sending kids into into universities and colleges with um sugar plums in their head i i mean sue's got this great big long diatribe on some some girl that wanted to become an Egyptologist.

21:46Well, I bet you they need 50 of those on the whole planet. Exactly, yes, yeah. And, oh no, you have to have a PhD. And then you can't get any money. Nobody will hire you. You have to work for free. It's ridiculous. It's absolutely ridiculous. The school system. And I gave a lecture at a big schooling whatever. And what did they call? um the process is called milking the morons wow milking the morons that's horrible that's so what you do is you you get these kids that um that that oh i want to help the poor okay good you're going to get a master's degree in social sciences or whatever how many do they need maybe more than 50 yeah but not but not not millions that's for damn sure yeah 60 of the people who graduate now say they were lied to in high school sorry 70 and 60 of them have a job that pays peanuts yeah but they got degrees i mean it's ridiculous so we have in in a state we have it on the planet except for china a huge problem with with tradesmen huge yeah yeah huge um Well, that's, yeah, no, you're absolutely right.

23:05And when, I mean, I've been in China this year and you just see such a different attitude there. It is, you know, for all it's, there's plenty of things. We can be very critical of China very legitimately, but my goodness, they're really good at making things. That's become very, very obvious. And we taught them. They got taught by the Germans and the Americans and the Japanese. Yes, absolutely. Man, you talk about, anybody ever read i mean uh you know what happened to the roman empire they outsourced so obvious isn't it it's so obvious but i want to move on just because the one company i'm really fascinated by is redwood so have you been to redwood oh yeah yeah yeah because that's a you know because that argument i think is critically important you know when i hear and i still hear it a lot oh i'd love an electric car but i'd have to buy a new battery or i'll have to throw away my battery oh what a shame you have to throw away the batteries after three all this ridiculous stuff that people have been told for the last 15 years and you go well you don't you want one you won't throw it away two the battery will last longer than the car and three even when it has worn out we're still not going to throw it away because it's too valuable but you but they are such a good proof of that right well there's there's two proofs that are out there so um so um I was out there.

24:27I looked around. I made a really quite a long video. I think it's out right now, but a big video. I was blown away by what they were doing and how they're recycling. The recycling process is absolutely 100 % contrary to what I thought. I thought dip them into liquid nitrogen, crash them up, crush them up or whatever in an inert atmosphere and went, nope, they don't do that at all. They take them in, roll them around. And, uh, initially they have to heat them up. But, uh, but, um, as they're rolling around, they create heat. It, uh, it burns away all the gases. Um, and, um, and because of this tumbling action, everything turns, I mean, it grinds itself down to nothing.

25:18And then they, they just basically use a skimming process. So everything has its own density and, and then they skim off what they need. And I was walking in a plant where they've, they're pulling, they're pulling lithium out tons, big giant bags of this stuff. Right. I mean, this is the way to go. And then the batteries, a lot of batteries that were in car crashes and whatnot, they examine them. And if they're not damaged, if they're if they have no you know physical damage they're not going to recycle them they have a field it's got to be i don't know it's in it's in square miles right i can't remember 10 15 square miles who knows a lot and they got one over here and one over there and one over here and then they got solar panels and they're just laying on the ground yeah and and they they they pay nothing they uh they pay nothing for all the energy that they use yeah everything and they're using the batteries to store the solar overnight and all that sort of thing yeah exactly right exactly right it's it's totally mind-blowing so i i don't usually want to plug things but um there is a um um there is a thing with jb stroubel and um and um and redwood if they're interested in how it actually works we'll put the link in the show notes no it'd be really good thing to do no because anyways that thing will really blow your mind and quite frankly that is what my friend in Canada Randy uh Randy uh Furland he is um that's what he's trying to do right now right so uh I put him in touch with a bunch of different people and there's others that are doing it but everybody's doing it on a QT because it's not socially acceptable now you know right So there's a lot of things going on in recycling, a little bit, because everybody's starting to find out now that why recycle when I can reuse?

27:21That's a whole lot cheaper, better all the way around. Yeah. I mean, that's the thing that I saw many years ago. I believe we've got to get the city right. You know, it's Rotterdam. The huge football stadium in Rotterdam in the Netherlands has enormous amounts of solar on the big roof that goes all around the stadium. And they're using old Nissan Leaf batteries. But they've been using them for years. I think what's interesting about that was it was a big story when it first came out, I don't know, 10 years ago. But they're still working. It's the same batteries. So they're like 15-year-old Nissan Leaf batteries.

27:55They're fine. And all their spotlights and their heating and everything in that stadium is run off solar and batteries from old cars. you know that's yeah it's not even a thing i mean um when people ask like there's um there's a couple of names um of people that i have that that are on my little list of folks to contact and so people are saying well i'd like to get solar panels and batteries but it's too expensive yeah hmm how much is an old leaf worth what well if you buy an old leaf for maybe uh five six thousand dollars it's got a battery and oh yeah but the leaf blah blah blah forget it just buy that and um and um and and and build a little shed around it that's it and then as far as solar panels there's a ton of solar panels that you can buy that are not the highest grade imaginable slap that on your roof and the next thing you know but get a real electrical engineer are real okay so and the next thing you know you've got a battery in a vehicle that right now okay you're not going to drive it but that thing is bigger than I have batteries here I got a Tesla wall yeah there's more batteries in the leaf than I got in my basement and I did put up solar panels and so my uh my electric bill or my wife and i's electric bill is 11 a month right that's it yeah and we charge our cars here too yeah and we're not allowed to make money off the grid right but uh last year we got a true up payment of 11 cents right so we got we 11 11 bucks a month which is the which is a line that comes from uh we have to have a line here which comes from the grid okay and that that rental fee for that one line is 11 bucks a month right okay and that's where the 11 is otherwise we pay nothing zero and we run on solar pretty much all the time yeah so uh it's there it's available i don't think big business is real interested in hearing uh hearing that you can do these things on the cheap but but at the end of the day uh but also i mean it might if you are a big business and you've got a big where you know this is finally happening in this country where there's like a big distribution center a big warehouse and they're going oh if we put oh i see if we put solar on the roof our electricity goes down you know it's like yes that's been the case for a long time i think it's because we passed that point where this was the building industry in the UK, an event I went to where someone explained that for the cost per square meter of putting tiles on a roof of a new house is higher than putting solar panels.

30:54Solar panels are the cheapest way of covering a roof. So, you know, that has shifted thinking finally, but it's still not that much, but finally you now see new houses going up and they do have solar panels built in from the get-go, which is, you And then it becomes very cost effective. Okay, so here's what happened at my house. Sue and I had arguments. I wanted to put panels up and batteries in the basement. Finally, she said, hey, if you want to do it, you take it out. We have our money and we have her money and my money. So our money, we don't touch. My money went into buying this stuff. I paid, I think, something like 45 or 50 grand.

31:37Solar panels, battery packs, everything else done, right? So anyhow, Sue said, you're never going to get a return on your investment. Okay, fine. Then something strange happened. So we bought this house for$550 ,000. Now, it was loaded with bushes and trees and vines and whatnot. We had to strip all that crap off. Right. And I had to put in a new driveway. The value of the house now because of the solar and batteries,$1.5 million. Wow. Wow. I got my return on investment, not through electricity, but because now we've got something that people find desirable and are willing to pay for. Wow. And believe me, when I had a real estate, I just jerked the person around.

32:31I all apologize to her one of these days if I ever meet her. And she said, well, I would really like to sell your house. Oh, well, my wife and I are thinking, no, we're not. But what would you like? Well, I drove by and I noticed that you have solar panels and blah, blah. What are your utility bills? 11 bucks a month. well i mean what about in the wintertime 11 well what happens when snow's on the uh on the panels i have a large broom i just i sit i get on the ladder and i just pull the snow off yeah whoa really i mean yes really anyhow that she's the one who gave me the million and a half thing right um yeah and she said this is the kind of house that anybody would want to have and yeah i don't know much about uh buying and selling houses no me neither but it really worked out real well for us yeah i mean i think that's that's one of the things that i loved when i was last in australia the the i had a discussion with someone who works who has worked in the national grid in australia and their whole grid thing but he said that what they noticed what he noticed was that solar panels initially so we're talking maybe 20 years plus ago were seen as a sort of liberal progressive you know green tree hugging all that stuff and then eventually the person who lived next door to the tree hugging green progressive uh was a kind of republican and then went but saw their utility bills and that's it's crossed the political spectrum because you basically particularly in australia their peak demand is mid middle of the day with air conditioning you know and solar so it's become the most solar intensive you know if you if you drive around australia you'll see a house without solar panels you go look there's one because they all you know it's really really common there and that's a i think that's a fascinating i mean it kind of gave me a bit of hope for electric vehicles it's in a similar way because i've always argued nuclear power isn't political solar power isn't political wind turbines aren't political they're just technology exactly either works well or it doesn't you know you can decide on that but it's not it's there's you know the politics that's been sort of thrown at them is yeah secondary well at the end of the day this is like uh what is that term um if it bleeds it leads oh absolutely yeah and uh and that's i mean people pick up their newspaper or watch TV and think, oh, this is fact.

35:08No, it's not. They've got to sell cornflakes. That's what they're there for. They're not there to tell you the news. They're there to get you to buy the latest pair of sandals or a purse or something. Who knows? But that's it. That's their job. They're just an advertising station that happens to throw stuff out. And how do you catch people's attention? Easy. you just tell them that you know the world's coming to an end and and they'll be quite on rice yeah sales of evs that i'm just not aware of in this country yeah of doing really well i mean because i do remember seeing a lot of um general motors what's what's their little their sort of compact kind of hatchback i call it really got the bolt the bolt yeah the bolt the bolt is out of business they that's that's general motors has uh drank the kool-aid and they're moving in they're moving everything to you know big v8s or something all right so um but i am going to be seeing one of their vehicles they've asked me to come down and look now general motors um as a rule does not want me to do anything because right i am not a uh i'm not a paid commercial i nobody nobody's going to buy my favor period i i i'm too old i got too much money i don't need anybody to tell me what to do or where to go so they are they are paying um mineral live right to uh to have me come on and assess one of their vehicles right and i said you got to be kidding me they're they're out of their minds if i see something wrong i'm gonna tell them yeah and uh apparently according to what eric the guy that runs mineral life he said they uh they totally expect that and i said well what happens if we do this thing and they don't like it are they gonna they're gonna take it down and he said i don't know but they're paying us so it it'd be up to them to uh to say nope you can't do it yeah so anyway um but is that an electric vehicle sandy it's an electric car yeah right okay it's an electric something they've been very secretive about it and and whatnot but the bolt the first bolt was a piece of crap yeah that was brought out the second one oh my god the improvements i couldn't stand that either then they brought out the third one sue and i went on and extolled the virtues of this car right we were blown away everything that we thought was goofy or terrible they fix right and then two or three months later they announced the closing of the plant and got rid of it because they came out with crap initially yeah they finally figured it out and then they shut it down why why i mean there's been tons of kia remember remember that They used to be the worst piece of crap on the planet.

38:18And now, I don't know if you're aware of it, but GM and Kia, Hyundai and Kia, GM, Hyundai, Kia are bound together now trying to take over the South American market. So the best minivan that I know of is the Kia Carnival. Beats everybody. And GM makes great pickup trucks. Now, if they hit South America with two vehicles that are really needed and wanted and can put up with the... South America's got some incredibly bad roads. And if they can survive those roads, I mean, they'll dominate South America. And South America is poised because they've got the lithium triangle is in Peru, Bolivia, and Chile.

39:10Okay? That triangle, that's got more lithium than everybody else, period. And it's easy. You get two kilos per ton out of the salt water that they've got. I mean, so they've got lithium. They've got cobalt. They've got bauxite, which can be turned into aluminum. They've got everything needed that China and the United States and Canada don't have. Yeah. Okay? And if they get their crap together and they can, you know, keep one ruling party in for a junta or whatever they call those things. Yeah, they could they could be dominating the planet. They could take over for China. And they've been training.

39:57They've been training toolmakers and people like that all over the place. So I see I know everybody is saying, oh, well, we're going back to diesel. No, we're not. We're not going to do that. And there are people that are working on small engines and stuff like that. But guess what? Kids don't like gasoline. I don't care what anybody says. You can go after the 45 to 60-year-old market if you want to, but the teenage kids are coming up and they are going to want that crap. And we talked about, well, Ford's going to have something that I think is going to be really impressive. Right. And then you've got Tello and you've got Slate and you've got a dozen other.

40:45You were talking about Aptera. I love that car. I have one on order. Oh, great. Yeah. So I like the idea of not paying anybody for my convenience. Okay. Yes. I don't want to pay anybody for anything. Yes. But they are, Aptera is being chased down by some, I don't know, there's a whole bunch of people that want them all gone. And then you've got these smaller companies who've done marvelous things on a show stream. Yeah. I mean it. So I believe that the imagination, the engineering, the lack of restrictions, the biggest restrictions for all of the bigger companies from Audi to XYZ, I don't care who, everybody there.

41:37It's all these legacy rules that were perfectly good in 1957. Yes. But they're no good now. Why is it that you have to go through all these hoops to jump in and try and find materials that you can use? These guys have already tested it. Well, they're lying. No, they're not. Why are you wasting your time? 10 years of development to figure out that you can use something that's been in the market for 20 years? I don't see the logic there at all. And that's what these other guys are doing. They're doing, Telo especially, Telo and Soprano. slate well actually the fourth everybody that is going to be um alive in the in the next 20 years is making decisions right now that say standards forget it um and we're not gonna we're not gonna waste our time with um with uh you know what happened in in 1957 or 67 or any of those days I mean, they're old.

42:45You don't look backwards to see the future as a rule. I mean, you really, you can learn from history, but you shouldn't repeat history. Yes. And that's what really it boils right down to. The people who want to repeat history are always going to lose. Just ask anybody who had had bow and arrows versus guns. Yeah. But, I mean, I think it is interesting that, And I've really got my fingers crossed, but companies like Rivian and Lucid in particular in the United States. So new companies, you know, when you think of how many new car companies were started up between, say, 1945 and 2000, there was very few, basically.

43:30And what we've seen is a huge number of them. Most of them have gone under. So all the European startup companies we saw when they first had a prototype and they launched it and it was a lot of hoo-ha-ha. They've all gone under. you know they've not survived but and i i expected the same like um uh what there was a faraday future you know but i remember when faraday future launched and lucid and i went these guys are not going to make it but lucid i think i mean i don't know are they doing okay are they selling cars enough well they're selling cars but not very many the deal here is though that lucid is funded by the the Saudis under the PIF, right?

44:10The personal or sorry, private investment fund or something. I can't remember. Anyhow, that they're not going to have a problem. And then Lucid is owned by PIF, but PIF also owns Siri. I think it's called Siri, which is a small car that's electric car that's being built in Saudi Arabia. And that car, that product line will probably also be manufacturing lucid vehicles for the European or, you know, the Arab world. And I think that that's how they'll survive. As far as Rivian, Rivian was doing fine, but the tariffs are going to kick the daylights out of them. Oh, really? I think they could live without the$7 ,000 that certain people would get if they bought one of those vehicles.

45:14Yeah. But the tariffs. And that's because they're - They just announced something like$3 billion it's going to cost them. That's the same as Ford. Ford is$3 billion because of the tariffs. Yeah.

45:31I don't know how they're going to do it. I don't know how they're going to bring back all the technology that they need in order to escape the tariffs that are going to come from China and Europe and wherever else. Yeah. So I didn't realize that. So Rivian are using parts and components that are manufactured in China, I guess. Is that, is that? They're manufactured. It's like, it's like everything else. The consultants 30 years ago, when I was at Ford or 40 years ago, the consultants were coming in and they were saying, oh, you should outsource everything. Right. So the first thing that happened at Ford was they outsourced instrument panels and seats and some of the electronics.

46:22And I said, you know what? But if you don't manufacture, you go out of business because manufacturing is where you find out the rules and regulations for whatever the next generation of design should be and can work. If you don't have that, you lose profound knowledge. And as Dr. Deming used to say, profound knowledge is the only thing, only thing that you need in order to succeed, you know, to be profitable in the future. and um so i had my little statements and i said what i said but it's impossible to argue with the big consulting houses the big house consulting houses said this sandy says that if sandy was so smart how come he's still here why is he a consultant yeah and that's when i left ford and i became a consultant guess what right after that sandy we want you to redesign the 351w engine and on and on and on that was so it kicked off my career i was smarter when i left yes that's and uh but as long as you've got people that are saying hey you know what send it to china because you'll make it cheaper and you'll make more money which means you'll get a bigger bonus yeah boom you got their attention yeah um hey send that to china these guys here are ripping you off um and you can control the chinese yeah got it again there's a whole bunch of these snap phrases that that that the big uh the big consulting companies use and hook line and sinker board members ceos presidents everybody jumped on that bandwagon yeah so now we don't have any tradesmen yeah now we don't have any tool shops now we don't have any we we depend heavily I mean, where's the engineering done?

48:18India and China. Yeah. It ain't done here. I mean, you can find places like the company we just talked about. Yeah. They have a lot of internal, but they still... They still require... Yeah, we live in a global economy at the end of the day. I mean, whether for good or bad, that is the way things operate at the moment. You can fight against that. And I mean, and it was, I feel, I've always felt that it was a mistake. We did exactly the same thing in this country. We outsort, we offshored all the manufacturing. You know, they used to go. It's so easy to forget because the actual physical remnants of it have gone.

48:54So where there was a huge car factory is now a shopping center or a housing estate. It's gone. So it's gone from history. You don't even remember it, you know. But we used to make, I mean, when I was a kid, and you would be the same, all the cars that my dad had were made within 100 miles of where we lived because that's what happened. I mean, tens of thousands of people worked in those industries, and they've completely gone now. Well, I talk every once in a while. Somebody will ask me for big moments that I've lived through. When I was a kid, everything, everything we had in a house, everything we ate, everything came from either Canada, where I was living, or the United States.

49:41We made everything. And one of the things that was really a big deal was General Electric, who made everything from light bulbs to nuclear power plants. Everything was made by GE. And then we got the savior of the universe. What was his name? Jack Welsh. And what did he do with GE? he got rid of everything wow he turned it into nothing ge now makes jet engines and i don't know if they make anything else that's it and a then and they're probably going to lose that too he sold everything down to nothing wow down to nothing and that is the apex when you uh if you go to new york there must be shrines all over to this guy oh what a smart guy look at right How he destroyed GE, but the shareholders got some money.

50:43Got money, yeah. That's the kind of mentality that we've got in the US. And actually, one of my all-time favorite comments is, who invented the ball bearings? Who invented that? Great Britain. Yeah. And quite frankly, if they would have kept that to themselves, yeah uh there would have been no battleship that could have withstood anything that uh that that came out from uh from a british battleship yeah um there would have been uh i mean think about it ball bearings are everywhere yeah who invented the um who invented the uh um uh modern magnet the uh yeah that was done here in the united states right but they they shipped it out why Was it the inventors that shipped it out?