Apple’s headset, Humane’s weird demo, and the pretty Prius

24:03One USB-C for data input and output, and one is the charger that goes to that battery pack. Oddly, iPad apps seem to be where Apple is mostly focused. It's going to run a lot of iPad apps by default, including a lot of Apple's own apps. But also developers would be encouraged to work with their iPad apps to make apps, which is weird. No one's ever heard this pitch from Apple before. Yeah, right. Do you think it's because iPads are also the place where they have the most different types of screens? That's my guess. Currently? Yeah. It's already the most sort of vectorized thing that they have. And so the ability to take like an iPad app and make it much bigger in your view seems like it would be much simpler than anything else.

24:44Oh, I have a much more cynical read on that situation. Which is vastly more cynical read on that. The iPad is the closest thing to a powerful computer that is also to a totally closed ecosystem. So they can't pick Mac apps because they would inherit all of the openness of the Mac, which they are forced to just contend with. Oh, yeah, definitely not Mac apps. The iPad, they're like, I don't know, like, we control, it's closed. Like, we just won a big antitrust lawsuit about it. And they just go with it instead of iOS because. Right, they can run an app store on this device the same way as whatever, and they can pull, I'm saying it's cynical.

25:21Now that I'm saying, I'm like, oh, this just makes sense. It's just straightforwardly correct. Yeah, there's no way Apple is going to be like, oh, download unsigned apps to your Reality Pro headset. If you scheme with this thing, it'll be fine. What you want is malware and augmented reality. Yeah. Yeah. Okay, let me just keep going. I have a few more things. Sorry. So the, like, looking at things seems to be the big idea here. There's going to be potentially a meditation app. There's going to be a fitness plus app in VR, which makes a lot of sense. There's going to be a portal for watching sports and virtual reality.

25:58It was one of the things that German said. There's going to be ways to read books, which I think is the all-time worst idea. There's going to be ways to watch movies. There's going to be, they're working with directors like Jon Favreau to make content. It's a lot of - You'll only play at night. It's a lot of what sounds like it's going to be, you put on a headset and all the screens seem to be very big. That seems to be the kind of thrust of a lot of this stuff. And obviously there's a lot of other AR stuff that Apple's been doing that you can see on the iPhone, the iPad. But as far as like new things to do, it sounds very much like the first idea Apple has is basically you put on this thing and it's a giant screen in front of your face on which you can do iPad things.

26:39It's just an iPad floating in midair in front of you. And that's because they don't actually know what people would want to do in AR on this thing, right? One of the things that Mark Gurman wrote is that Apple is doing, is basically just going to put it out and say, you know, developers have always made these things more than what they are, go forth. And he compared it to the Apple Watch, which I think is like a hilarious rewriting of history because Apple had very clear ideas about what the Apple Watch was for and was just dead wrong about all of them. Yes. So I think the thing that Apple learned...

27:09By the way, I feel so vindicated about our early coverage of the Apple Watch by this retelling of history where they're like, here's what we did. We threw a bunch of spaghetti at the wall and figured out what the users wanted. Then we made it great. It's like, no, you told us that we were going to send heartbeats to each other. like super a lot. I forgot about the heartbeats. You definitely, that was a, like Bono was like, what I'm going to do is send my heartbeat to a marathon runner in Kenya using the digital crown. Like it was bonkers. The whole thing was bonkers. I will just, I will bring you back again to Tim Cook saying the digital crown was an input device on par with the mouse and the click wheel and multi-touch.

27:50Are you excited to add the reality dial? Apple got it wrong. The reality dial is the next one. The reality dial, I think that's it. It really is. I mean, you have to give Apple a lot of credit for being like, whatever, we're calling it reality. But so what they've learned from this experience is that they can more confidently just admit that they're throwing spaghetti at the wall. Great. Especially because, you know, the first watch was a consumer product. It was meant to be a hit. And it took three generations before they completely redid watchOS. And they just figured it out. Right. And I think the watch four had the bigger screen and watchOS had been redone.

28:25And that's when it became like a really great product. And like, I love whatever. This thing is starting at thousands upon thousands of dollars. It's a developer kit with an external battery pack. You got to like keep in your pocket. I think they have a lot more room to say spaghetti at the wall, like early adopters, go nuts. Tell us what the consumer version of this product should be. And like a lot of Apple fans will go on that ride. But if you just look at that list and it was a long list, that's the meta quest. It can do, it can, it is much clunkier, much worse than doing all of those things.

28:56But like, it's kind of like an accessory for your laptop and it's a big screen and there's little workout stuff. Like, oh yeah, that's what Meta has been doing for a while. But no dial. No dial. That's the game changer. That's like the crown. No, you're kind of, well, to some extent you are kind of right because I think one of the things that Apple has been saying all along is that Apple does not believe in the idea that you're going to put on a headset like this and sort of disappear into another world all day. And so that's sort of something like the reality dial actually becomes really important, right?

29:25Where it's like, it is a thing you can use while also interacting with actual things around you. Like the fact that I can't, you know, sit here and use my Quest 2 and also type on my computer keyboard because I literally can't see it is a problem. And Apple is like pushing towards starting to solve that. So I think you're right that like the reality dial is actually one of the things that makes it meaningfully different. But the other thing is, Apple seems to be much less invested in this idea that there should be entirely new user behaviors than meta. Like, meta is really into the whole metaverse thing, right?

30:00There's like, it's a new space with new rules. You're going to have avatars. You're going to run around. And Apple is just kind of like, here's a really gigantic computer monitor for your face. It's something. That's what Microsoft did, right? Like when Microsoft first went into the kind of mixed reality space, they released all those headsets with like Acer and all those other companies. And they're like, yeah, you can just use it as a really big, weird monitor for your computer. And it sucked because the displays were all really bad. And I mean, it was cool that you could have like a dinosaur in your virtual office.

30:33But that was it. Otherwise, it was trash. And this at least... Which couldn't do anything, right? The upside that Apple has with the iPad ecosystem is it will just by default be able to do more stuff. Do you think they're going to? Well, well. Am I going to want to do that stuff is a different question. Are they going to put you in theater mode? Will it? Like, how many? Can you imagine wearing this headset and being like, all right, let's do a slide over. I just. Let me just activate stage manager. It's like a nerd inferno. Well, I wonder, do they figure out the whole giant display thing? Because they're really, like, right now, anytime somebody's like, you're going to do a giant display.

31:14If it's Netflix, they put a bunch of dinky little, like, virtual chairs, like a couch. So it's like, oh, you're in your— And you're in a movie theater. It's like, I don't want to. And it's like, no, I just want to watch the movie real big. Like, I really hope they don't try to make fake environments for me to know aren't real. Oh, Alex, I have such a— Maybe they'll be nicer. No, they won't. They're going to be real bad. Yeah, it's going to be the corny, because that's what sells. Like, it's like every now and again, the entire history of technology can be explained by what you can demo on a Today Show.

31:52Yeah. It's like, what can you put on the local news? And it's putting the local news anchor in the headset. And they're like, it's like I'm in a movie theater. And then, you know, the years pass and everyone's like, I don't want to be in your dumb fake movie theater. I just want a big screen. And all of that drops away. Like all of the baggage of the old metaphor drops away. But that's what I'm saying. We've already done the big dumb movie theater thing. No, no, but every time there's a new thing, you've got to, you've got to, you re-inherit all the baggage. You have to put, you just, you have to put Al Roker in the movie theater.

32:23There's no choice. He's going to do the weather in it. If you are making a bet this big and you're going to go market this product, Al Roker is going to be in the movie theater. And that's like, that's just how you have to sell it to all these people. You got to like give them a metaphor they understand. And then for poor Apple, they have to answer a million questions about the metaverse that they have no interest in engaging with. And so like, how are they going to, how are they going to differentiate the product? It's like, you know, like Meta had earnings yesterday and they like did better and analysts are happy, blah, blah, blah.

32:54And Mark Zuckerberg is on the call being like, I'm still burning the money on the metaverse. You've gotten the wrong impression about how committed to the metaverse I am. Like it's more money than you think. And it's going to keep going up. And everyone's like, yeah, but you like added way more ads to Instagram Reels. So we're fine with you for now. Okay. But like Apple does not want the metaverse. They want you to run iPad apps and wear headset. Which is why they shouldn't have the theater. The iPad app ecosystem is not like a raging success. It's real bad. And all the same questions that you have about iPads.

33:24Like what if I just want to send somebody a file? Like, is this thing going to fight me until I die and, like, take it off and use my Mac? Can you think of how intrusive those notifications, like an airdrop notification in VR would be? That is the first thing I'm doing. If I ever see anybody wearing one of these headsets on a plane, I'm saying I'm airdropping them a sloth, like, immediately. Yeah, just immediately. Just, like, zero qualms. Just watching people rip them off their head. Ah, beautiful. Yeah, just a sloth holding. Do you know about this? We used to have a thing called air slothing where the Verge team had a picture of a sloth as an astronaut that we just sent.

33:59It was very good. I did actually know about this. It was very good. We'll see. It's coming up real soon. We're all expecting it at WWDC, right? Yeah, the rumors continue to be that that is when it's going to be. And I think at this point, it's gone back and forth a bunch of different times, but now seems to be pretty securely coming to the point where I think it would be a pretty big surprise if it doesn't happen. Like last year, it was kind of like, this thing has been rumored since like 2021. it was supposed to launch was the, I mean, quote unquote, supposed to launch. But last year it was like, okay, there's an outside chance that we're going to start to see it.

34:34But this year I will be genuinely actively surprised if we don't see this headset in some way. The only reason I don't want it to launch this year is I want to make Neelai take all of the different comparative headsets with them and just be sitting there in the audience with them. And then when they say, yeah, and they're like, no, we're not doing this. You're like, take all your little headsets off. That's the only reason. So I will say I've been using the PSVR 2 quite a bit. I'm still playing a bunch of Grand Trees. It's very relaxing. You go fast. And when you wear a headset a lot, they are physical products.

35:07I don't know how the lenses get smudgy. I have to clean them every time I use this headset. I'm not sure why, but you're just handling the thing. There's an element of Apple liking things to be nice that goes away when you're like, now it's on my face. If they figure out how to keep things you put on your face, not keep them from getting dirty, that just changes the whole eyeglasses game. The one thing I will say that's much more positive of PS4 too, I've been a Quest 2 person for quite a while, a pretty low-res screen. I think people have a bunch of appropriate skepticism about, well, if I'm looking at an iPad app and the VR headset, well, I wouldn't look at an iPad as a better screen, blah, blah.

35:49PS4 too, pretty high-res screen. It's like, you know, you're like playing games. You're like reading text. You're like, this is fine. You don't feel like that. It's not great. Because the problem with the Quest 2 is you can see the pixels. And it's like really, really noticeable. And it's kind of. And with the Quest Pro too, I think Addy in her review pointed out, like this is whatever. Like I don't ever think. PSVR 2 is the first one I've ever used. I'm like, oh, like it's fine. And like a little HDR-y. It's not like perfect, but it's there. And then you're like, oh, it's because everything, every ounce of cost in this thing is the display.

36:21And there's a long cable to a gigantic GPU with a monster power supply on the ground. Just roaring behind you. That's why this is good. Yeah. So we'll see. I mean, this thing's gonna be really expensive. There's a pretty big gap between, like, I don't mind reading the menus in order to get to my game. And I'm going to like sit here and do, you know, computer-y work things on it all day. No, not to interrupt you. but the thing is like when you get to the game, the game's pretty kinetic. So it's like a driving game. So if things are like a little out of focus or headsets, like it doesn't matter.

36:53Like you can't focus on anything long enough to know. But like when you're in the menus, if the thing is a little off axis or it's not set up right, like the edges of the display are instantly blurry, which is not tenable for doing computer. Like it hurts after a while. Eight hours. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, to some extent, I think the, I thought I was going to think the whole battery in your pocket thing was like a ridiculous, horrible idea and will never work. I'm actually increasingly fine with it. It actually sort of makes sense structurally that that's how that would work. Well, it takes all the weight off.

37:23That was the big complaint about the Quest Pro, right? Was that there was so much weight. Right, if it can be very light and tethered to the thing, like that actually, that sort of tracks for me. I can see that. But the two hour battery life, I think is going to be another thing that people ask a lot of questions about. But I wonder if there is even a use case for which you would want to spend more than two consecutive hours in a device like this. and I'm not sure we've discovered what it is yet. Look, you just want to do back-to-back-to-back-to-back fitness plus workouts. It's Thanksgiving. You don't want to talk to a family.

37:54You're like, I got to go work out for three hours. Just turn the reality dial all the way down. Just go get yoked. That's amazing. All right, we should take a break. We're going to be back with Andy Hawkins. We'll be right back.

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40:09We're back. Andy Hawkins here. Hello. Talk about the wild world of cars and software. Two things that I think we're going to look back on as a mistake combining cars and software. We're going to be 80 years old. Not individual things that we got wrong, but together. Yeah, the worst sandwich. You can't rant about CarPlay today. Peanut butter and ham. That's cars and software. Oh, God. No. I need that. That's not kosher. If you heat the peanut butter up like a little coating. All right, LaserBong, calm down. That's not kosher at all. Liam, do we have LaserBong on a soundboard this week? That's a no.

40:49No, Liam, the answer is no. The answer is no. Do it, Liam. Play it. I tried to upload LaserBong to TikTok so many times. And at the end of it, our poor social media team was like, if you do it again, we're going to get banned from TikTok. And I was like, it might be worth it. Anyhow, we're here. We're here. Andy's here. There's a lot of car news this week. When I say cars and computers, a lot of like, what if the inside of the car was a shopping mall and you pushed a button to pay us more money while you're driving? And just very odd, don't you think? It's not great, I think, for people in the world to have too many, I think, car companies trying to slip their hands into our wallets and purses and trying to extract more capital from their customer base.

41:34I just in general am kind of anti that, squeezing customers for more money. And yet they continue to go on and do this exact thing because obviously they're going to do that. They want more money. They don't want to lose their customers at the point of sale. They want to continue to extract more money from them. And I just think, you know, this was always going to be the obvious result of, I think, like you said, merging software with the cars, making cars, you know, sort of updatable, constantly, continuously updatable computers. It was going to be an inevitability that they were going to try to charge us for every last little thing, from seat heaters to steering wheel heaters to more acceleration for your car.

42:18It's just... That's the one. It's the Mercedes one today where it's like the car, the EQS 450, it costs like$150 ,000, right? Yeah,$125 ,000. Well, that's the base model. I mean, come on, what are we? Sorry. That's the peasant model. I had no idea that you were already optioning up. Oh, yeah, of course. Are you kidding me? Do you think I'm just rolling through the configurator without hitting buttons? Sure. Nicely optioned. It's above$125 ,000. And then it's what? To add 90 horsepower? No, it's at 80 horsepower to pay 90 bucks a month or$2 ,000. A month? A month? I do like the idea that you have some consumer optionality there.

42:55You're like, you know, this month I don't need the juice. If you're like gunning it through a green light, not a red light, never run red lights. If you're gunning it through a green light at 12 a.m., would it just like kick back in the middle of your acceleration? In the middle of the billing cycle? That's a really good question. I know. We got to test this. Yeah, we got to test this. Does anybody have$125 ,000? We'll only buy the base model. Let me go check my budget really quick to see if this would allow for the purchase of an EQS. This is why we got to do it, is to floor it during the billing cycle changeover.

43:32That's great. I've never been more excited about a review idea in my entire life. But don't forget, these companies, they can be shamed into backtracking and backpedaling on these decisions. BMW was shamed into backpedaling on the decision to charge people a monthly fee for access to CarPlay and Android Auto. So don't put it past the ability of the customer base to locate the shame center in these. But is the Mercedes customer really the type to shame for something being too expensive? Aren't they the type who is like, make it more expensive? LeBron James would not pay$8 for Twitter Blue. Like rich people are cheap.

44:11Like that's how you get to be rich is by being cheap. He's the spokesperson for the Hummer EV, too. So it's not like he's expressly frugal when it comes to his own. No, no, it's not one for free that way. If you paid me to drive a Hummer EV and then gave me a Hummer EV, I'd be like, the Hummer EV is great. Yeah, of course. LeBron's got it figured out. He hasn't paid a dime to experience the Hummer EV. But so the weird thing, Alex, is the pricing here is either it's a monthly fee, which is just very funny, or you can just pay flat. It's like 1950 flat out. So like somewhere someone's doing the math on how many times they're going to gun it.

44:48And they're like, well, if I gun it once a month for 200 months, like this is going to even, like, I don't, what are they thinking? It's utterly bizarre, but it's great. 20 months, sorry. How much more acceleration do you need? I mean, like if you've driven one EV, you've probably driven them all. It's just sort of an experience that I've had over the last few years. They all kind of accelerate at the same pace, which is very quick, obviously. because it's an electric motor and it just immediately, you're right out of the gate. You're going fast. And I'm curious, especially for Mercedes customers, that doesn't seem to be a customer base that really is desiring this extra boost.

45:27It depends on what kind of Mercedes customer you are. They do make a lot of very fast cars, and that's fine. The new AMG C63 is like a hybrid, like F1-inspired hybrid. Like, great. That's that customer. But the really expensive ones are like for chauffeurs, right? Like the chauffeur driving. Yeah, the S-Class. And that's what this is. And if you're driving your car, pull over, Google what the EQS 450 looks like, and be like, should this go fast? And the answer is no. Like, this thing should ooze down the road as luxuriously as possible. It looks kind of like a lazy whale, you know? That's why it's like even weirder that they would charge for each month.

46:09Like the chauffeur's like, oh man, this month I really need that extra. Like I know who's going to be in the back. They're going to want to feel that power. So I'm going to pay for it. Look, the most luxurious cars in the world that are designed for people in the back seat, your Bentleys, your Rolls Royces, often hellaciously fast for no reason. Yeah. And I don't know why that is, but it's always been true. To get to the airport. Yeah. The only cars that weren't that way for a minute were Cadillacs. Like if you got into like an old Cadillac limo, you're like, oh boy, I don't know if we're going to get where we're going.

46:38but this is nice see this is why i think bmw has the right mind of this we just ran a review of the i7 and there's a lot of ridiculous things about the i7 but the most ridiculous is that it has a drop down 36 inch screen for the back for just the the back passengers for the for the rear passengers only like you can watch like you know all of your favorite you know uh john wick movies while being chauffeured around on beautiful, you know, 4K. And it's just like, that's the kind of feature that I want if I am a rich aristocrat who is being chauffeured around town. I don't need the boost. Give me the screen.

47:17Give me the giant screen. Yeah. No, it's all very good. The future of cars definitely looks like all of these companies are like, what's the richest company in the world? It's Apple. Where does Apple make all of its money? Taking 30 % of all transactions on the phone. How do we make the car more like that? And that is just where they're headed. And we got to shame them out of that. I mean, that's fundamentally sort of what's at the crux of why GM is restricting access to CarPlay and Android Auto for its future EVs. It's because they see that market potential. They see that total market, addressable market.

47:49And they're like, we want that. We want all of that. We don't want to share space with Apple and Android, despite the fact that the vast majority of our customers want to use their phones in the car, want to project the screens into the car. it was forget that, forget that sentimentality. We are going to lock them into our system because it's worked for the phone companies. Why shouldn't it work for us? We have a captive audience. You're in the car. You're not going anywhere else. Why can't we have that money? The problem is I'm in the backseat of your car with a phone. I have a question about this because I was thinking about this coming in.

48:20There's like, we've talked a bunch about the TV business on this show. And it's basically what happened in the TV business is like the hardware of selling a TV stopped being a good business. You can't make anybody selling people a screen that they watch things on. So they all had to find other ways to make money. And that's why they do all the weird intrusive stuff and try to sell you streaming services and all that stuff. Did that happen with cars? Like for so long, you could just sell me a car. And that was like a pretty good way to make money by like making cars and selling them to humans. Is that not a good business anymore?

48:49Like why are all these companies trying to be software companies? Just make cars. I don't know. Like what changed here? I genuinely don't know. Have you read about the car business over the last 20 years? It wasn't like exactly like smooth sailing. You know, they were, you know, they operate extremely tight margins. You know, it's incredibly expensive to make cars. And, you know, they had to, they've been bailed out many times over the course of history. I think, yeah, I think that that is sort of like what's going on here is that like, you know, they're subject to the ebbs and flows of the economy.

49:20And so they need to have more revenue. They need to identify additional revenue streams, especially now when the pivot to electrification is costing them so much money. I mean, this is just billions and billions of dollars that they are just lighting on fire in order to pivot to electric. And, you know, while selling all the gas cars, continuing to sell all the gas cars, and that's funding the whole project. So we should talk about that. But the other answer to your question, David, is a lot of them are selling fewer, vastly more expensive cars, right? Like that's been the solution to the problem that Andy's identifying is they're like, all right, it's going to be$100 ,000 pickup trucks.

49:57And the audience is like, yes, it turns out that's what we've always wanted. And so you see the cars are getting wildly more expensive because they haven't figured out this other revenue stream that the TV industry figured out, that Apple and Google figured out. Like, we can make money after the sale. And for TVs, that subsidizes the cost of TV. That's why you can get a cheap TV because you're buying an entire business model. When you buy a car, you're still buying a car. They haven't figured out this business model. So the way they've responded is by just saying, all right, cars are going to go from$25 ,000 to$60 ,000 on average, like over the course of a decade.

50:35And we're going to sell more$100 ,000 cars than ever. It is crazy to me how many new cars come out that you can just option to$100 ,000 in the blink of an eye. Well, more people are leasing too now, right? Like that's one of the ways they found this revenue stream is, okay, we're going to make leasing really, really attractive. So then we get monthly payment from you. And some people are paying like$400 a month. Other people are paying like$1 ,000 a month. So they can drive those$100 ,000 cars and look really cool and hopefully afford that. Yeah. Actually, BMW once told me that they sell every BMW three times.

51:06Yeah. They lease it first. They buy it back. They sell it as certified pre-owned. They get it back and they sell it as used. And they tried subscription too. They tried to say, hey, we have leasing. We have obviously retail business. But maybe you could subscribe to a BMW instead and get a new different BMW every month. Maybe that would work. And no, no, it doesn't. But that doesn't work. Everybody around them saw that there was a BMW driver. And they're like, oh, no. And all those people were like, oh, wait, I don't actually want to be a BMW driver. Never mind. You'd be surprised. Yeah, that's the downside of a BMW is you have to be a person who drives a BMW.

51:38David's saying that as somebody who lives in the D.C. area where BMW drivers are the rudest in the entire world. That's all BMW drivers. No, it's particularly bad in D.C. Is it? Like you're a baby government lawyer with a 3 Series. You are a dick. That's just the way it goes. At some point, we're going to talk about how it is like unofficially illegal to stop for pedestrians in this town. And I just absolutely do not understand it. If somebody is standing in the crosswalk, you can't stop. We're BMW swag. Stop it. For all we know, people are in their BMWs right now just barreling towards their house, David.

52:14I have one more question on this, and then I want to talk about the Prius because I think the Prius is very interesting. Which is, I'm assuming, the next turn of this. Like, let's say in the best case scenario, we figure out the software thing. though like everybody sort of gets used to the idea that there's going to be some kind of like software tax you pay to the car company for your infotainment system. I'm assuming the next turn of that is not and then cars get cheaper again like TVs did. I'm assuming it's just this is just a new cost associated with owning a car along with all of the other costs associated with owning a car, right?

52:42Well, there is an argument that some of the company, you can buy into this as much as you want. And I don't think it's really been borne out or proven yet. But there is the argument that with over-the-air software updates that people will be going into the... And also with electrification, people will be going to the dealers less, going to the service centers less. There'll be less maintenance that's needed. And when things break, the company can just push an update and potentially fix whatever the problem is, as long as there's obviously a software problem. Once you get into all of the moving parts, which is the majority of what goes on inside of a car, I wonder how much that argument actually bears weight.

53:17But that is an argument that the companies are making. But it's a bad one. So let's, David, I want to talk about the previous ID2. I just, we were talking about how much money the companies are spending on electrification. And that's part of the news this week, right? GM and Hyundai both announced plans to build plants for batteries. And I'd say it's a different plan. So that's a lot of infrastructure that's getting built here. GM killed the Chevy Bolt, which was built on its old platform. So it can focus on its new Altium platform. We're hearing a lot about what Tesla's carbon footprint overall is.

53:47It feels like the, boy, we're spending a lot of money to electrify story, kind of like hit ahead this week. Yeah, it's just a ridiculous amount of money that's being pumped into this. And, you know, I think obviously the tax incentives that the government passed as part of the Inflation Reduction Act is having a much bigger effect, I think, on a lot of this than I think people originally anticipated. But yeah, the expansion of the capital projects, the, you know, more models being brought out uh previous generation models being phased out um i i do and i think sales are up like you know uh ford has said that it expects to sell like 150 000 evs this year and tesla's margins are getting a little bit slimmer too which is i think a really interesting uh byproduct of all this they've been slashing prices they cut prices like five times since january which is an insane amount of time to slash prices and and yet their margins are still shrinking like every quarter.

54:44So it's clear that like the market is getting more diversified. There's more cars that are coming out. More factories are coming online. And yeah, it's just like, you know, we're all on the boat now. We're all heading towards that big electric future that we've been promised for such a long time. Yet it's still impossible to buy an electric car. And yes, if you're actually shopping for one of these cars, leasing is probably the best option right now because there is a loophole whereas the cars that are not eligible for the tax credit, the 7 ,500 tax credit, are eligible through lease. So you can get a Hyundai, you can get a Kia, you can get all these cars that are not made in North America and still get that incentive if you lease.

55:24That's an amazing loophole. That should be the title of the podcast episode. We've identified a tax loophole. We should do that. That should be the title of every episode. We would triple the audience. So if all the investment is going in now, right? So we're building the battery plants. We're shutting down the existing lines. so we can spin up the Silverado EV lines. When's the payoff? So I think the payoff comes when it becomes profitable because right now all of these companies are losing money on these projects. And it's the ICE cars that are supplementing all of the insane investments that are going into this.

55:58So I think once that flips, once you see the electric business actually in the black and the ICE business are starting to sort of recede and fade into the mist, then that's, I guess, what is the payoff? But that's not till 2030, 2040 even. It also depends a lot on how much they can continue, how much these companies, which are all publicly traded companies and have shareholders and have people that are invested in them, can continue to sort of make the argument to their investors that, yes, this is all going to be worth it in the end. But I think the sales numbers are backing it up. It was like 8 % sales were EVs last year, and this year we're on track for like 12%.

56:39I mean, that's like an incredible jump, I think, for the US. It is kind of incredible that Tesla's feeling the heat enough to cut prices. Nine times, or five times. Five times. Yeah. And Musk is definitely under a lot of pressure. He basically said in his earnings call last week that he doesn't care about margins anymore. He's like, he's all about volume. Volume is now, you know, it used to be a margin business, and now we're a volume business. And so it's an interesting pivot, I think, on his part. Maybe his mind is somewhere else these days. I don't really know. I can't speak to that. One of the things you've been saying over and over, Nilay, for like forever on this show is that the truism about Tesla is they will always sell every car that they make.

57:22Is that cracking? Like this thing where there is like essentially infinite demand for Teslas and people will keep buying however many they make until some unforeseen moment in the future. Like is if I'm Tesla, am I nervous that that moment has arrived because like Ford and Rivian and others are starting to figure out how to ship stuff? Yes. And I will. Here's what I'll say about Tesla. Tesla has been a monopoly and we just haven't called it that. If you wanted to buy an electric car, your choices were a Tesla or some ugly garbage. The Chevy Volt. It's just true. And it's like, if what you wanted was a good, reliable electric car with meaningful range, you had one choice in the market.

58:01And you see what a tiny little bit of competition in any market will do. We talk about this all the time in the virtual house. Tesla is facing the tiniest amount of competition. Ford is like, here's 15 Mustang Mach-E's. And Tesla's like, we got to lower prices. Right? Ford is like, we can ship five F-150 Lightning. and Tesla's like, we got all our prices again. And then we're going to recall all of them. Yeah, VW put out the, what, the ID.4? I mean, the thing is like a shoe. It's slow and boring and the software is bad and Tesla's cutting prices. It's like not even great competition. And all the things that people love about Tesla, the software updates, the goofy weirdness of being able to like fart with the horn, Elon generally, that was all just along for the ride of it effectively being the monopoly player in the market for electric cars.

58:52And I think it says a lot too, that when they had the master plan event recently, cars kind of like were almost an afterthought to the whole thing. It was, you know, it was a very ambitious, very sort of broad and, you know, you know, like sort of blue sky rainbows kind of vision for the future, sustainable energy and all that stuff. It sounded great, but cars barely kind of factored into the whole thing. It was more about energy storage and supply chain and all these other things that were sort of like under the surface of how Tesla works. So I think it's kind of interesting that, and obviously the Cybertruck is supposed to come out later this year, but he's basically seeded the electric truck market to Ford and Rivian.

59:34And I think you're going to see Chevy's going to be coming up. Rivian is like, we've shipped five trucks. Some of them don't work. But that's the market. That's the whole electric truck market. That's more than Cybertruck. Yeah. Yeah. I would just say like there's a big market and people want them and Chevy's going to have a Silverado and Ram made all the noise about the revolution. And it's like basically the same truck with like an electric drivetrain. Very funny. I just think like our friend Sean O 'Kane, ex-Verge reporter Sean O 'Kane, now Bloomberg forever in our hearts is an expat. He noticed that the latest Tesla filing with the SEC, they've now included the line, one of our goals is to increase awareness of the brand, which is like the ever so subtlest hint at advertising, which they have never had to do.

1:00:17And I just, again, I just keep coming back to this. Like they've sold every Tesla they've ever made. Their problem was making enough cars because they were the only provider of cars. And they're still basically the only provider of electric cars. I don't think that's like the end of the world for them. but competition changes things dramatically and quickly and even the slightest bit of competition has made tesla so much more reactive to the market than it's had to be like the model 3 looks old like just it's it's looked the same for a long time we're expecting a refresh andy there's been some weird leaked renders of like new model 3s i think we kind of buy them don't buy them but even the refresh kind of looks the same as what we've seen for a long time and you see every other car maker has to like dramatically change how the cars look every so often just to keep interest up.

1:01:01And we haven't even talked about the China situation. I mean, that's like a podcast unto itself. But yeah, I mean, Tesla's, I think, really feeling the heat in China where because that country's EV industry is just booming. They are just producing like the Shanghai Auto Show just happened and it was all Chinese makes. It was you didn't see barely anything else from any other company and Tesla's really counting on the Chinese market as a way to sort of, I think, really kind of fund the entire operation. And they're struggling there too. So I think that that's, it's not... It doesn't China not, like not a huge fan of Elons?

1:01:37Well... Did I make that up? No, I think they are because they let him open his own factory without a state-owned partner, which they have not done for any other US-based car company. Any of them that want to go into China have to have a joint venture with a Chinese company, and Tesla was allowed to go in solo. Okay, so we keep talking about the Teslas and the electric cars and everything, but what about the hybrids? Because Prius just had a new refresh that came out, and that was like the original electric car for a lot of people. That came out, what, 2002, 2003, and everybody's like, I have to have one.

1:02:12That was the original Tesla, right? Yeah. You remember everybody in Hollywood was like, this is the car to drive. Forget my BMW or my$100 ,000 Mercedes. I just want to drive my beautiful, ugly, ugly, ugly Prius. And the Uber and Lyft ruined that for everybody. Everyone. Well, I think Toyota did a smart thing and they made it actually look halfway decent this time around. I think, you know, C.E.W. did a review for us and he had a lot of fun with it. And he was very honest about the Prius and sort of its place in modern culture today. just as an aside every time i say anything bad about big trucks and suvs online on twitter on the verge i always get a torrent of hate mail from the big truck and suv uh lobby and um they always find a way to include the prius as a um as an insult it's always used as like i bet you enjoy driving your prius it still occupies this place and i think a lot of people's brain as like the vehicle of choice for the media liberal effect.

1:03:18Granola. Yes, exactly. Granola, latte sipping, New York Times reading, Prius driving. I think it's so funny. They will go first. It's amazing to me that it has sustained over decades as this like, you know, albatross, I think, in a lot of ways. But yeah, I think the new one looks pretty sweet. It's not any faster than the previous generation models. I think this is the fifth that Toyota has come out with. And the mileage is a lot better. The hybrid motor is a lot better. And I think it's interesting too, because Toyota has really come out and said, we are sinking a lot of our reputation on hybrids.

1:03:54We're going to go electric eventually, but they are not being as aggressive about it. And they're posturing as GM and Ford and a lot of these other companies. They've said, we think that hybrids and also hydrogen has a potential, has a role to play in sort of this massive shift that's taking place. And I think the Prius has sort of been, they're positive of that. The Prius is still very popular. Why do they do that though? Like, because you're right, everybody else is all in on electric and just kind of like, and hybrids exist, forget them. We don't like them. Like, are hybrids just, the margin is too bad on them or what?

1:04:30But isn't the answer just that people have to buy cars right now? Like, I just feel like even what we were talking about, right? Like we're at this phase where electric cars have been like just around the corner for so long. And now just around the corner is like, you know, somewhere between one and 15 years from now, it's going to be really easy for you to buy an electric car. And somewhere between one and 50 years from now, the electrical grid will be able to handle all of that and the range will be better. And it's like some people need to buy cars that like get them to work right now. And I feel like I've just hit this point where like hybrids are are the answer.

1:05:02Like, why aren't we talking more about hybrids? It's like in this world that we live in, we have the thing between where we've been and where we're going and it's hybrids. And the fact that we just jumped straight to electric seems crazier and crazier to me. Well, so wait, I can answer this question because I now own a plug-in hybrid and having a car with two drivetrains is a very confusing situation. I think the Prius is a really great hybrid because it's like a series hybrid in the city against what, 56 on a highway against like 54. like it's the prius was designed to to mostly run on battery and the engine kind of helps the battery along most of the other hybrids on the market are like there's one or the other and sometimes you have them both going but when you're done with the battery you just have an engine that gets 22 to the gallon which is basically my jeep why do they do that when the prius has been doing this very well for 20 years because until recently the prius looks like a reject athletic shoe and is notably very slow.

1:06:03Yes. Okay, it's the slow. Like the most slow. Yes. And even the new one is still kind of slow. I think they made it zippier. They definitely made it look a lot better. It looks super cool now. Yeah. And I think 54 to the gallon is going to be extremely compelling to a lot of people. But these automakers are competing in markets where, like we said, like you're sitting in the back of the car and for some reason you still want it to be fast. Yeah. Right? And like the sort of the architecture of the Prius is designed to be slow and efficient. And all the plug-in hybrids are designed to, even Toyota's other hybrids, like their mild hybrids and the Sequoia and all their other new cars.

1:06:37They're like mild hybrids that make you accelerate really fast. And then the gas engine turns on. The RAV4 Prime has been like, I think, one of the more popular cars on sale for the last couple of years to the point that like the dealer markups were almost like 100%. Yes, during the pandemic, RAV4 Primes are going for like 100 grand. Yeah. Yeah, you would actually make money when you bought one. Yeah, it's pretty good. We should have just set up a RAV4 Prime flipping business. I don't know what we're doing on the show. I think one of our coworkers almost did that. Well, Andy told me about a guy who was flipping Wrangler, plug-in Wranglers, right?

1:07:15Oh, yeah. Yeah, it doesn't seem like it's completely above board, but I'm sure it's working out great for him right now. I mean, Jeep's another one. They're definitely going all in on the 4xe. That's their brand and their way into the market. And you can claim to be, you can still claim to be environmental and that you're doing all this stuff to reduce carbon emissions. You can appeal to that segment of the car buying public, but you don't have to worry about doing too much with infrastructure. and you don't have to worry too much about, you know, the upfront capital costs that like GM and Ford are currently finding is way more expensive than they ever thought.

1:07:58I mean, you know, GM's making like four, building four battery plants. I think Stellantis is only building like one. That sounds like Stellantis. It's just sort of like - They only sell five cars. Yeah, it's just kind of - Stellantis is on the we forked Android and we'll do it ourselves path in all things. Like everyone's like, what's a good thing we should do? Should we use Google services? and Slantis is always like, we're going to make our own Android. And everyone's like, should we build our own cool batteries? And Slantis is like, no. That's the company. Just as a general rule, everyone's like, we should do something good.

1:08:28And Slantis is like, hmm, Fiat. You know, it's like, fine. I kind of want to go back to the hybrids just real quick because you guys know more about this than I do. So right now there's basically like two kind of ways to do the hybrid. There's the Prius way, which means you really integrate the drivetrains, but it goes really slow. And then there's the other way where it's just two drivetraps and it switches over. And that's just generally kind of a crappy experience. Yeah, it's a little blurrier than that. But yeah, that's more like mine. Like the Jeep 4xe's, the way they're designed to be used is you drive around the battery until the battery's dead and then the engine turns on.

1:09:03Okay. And it's just a very different way of thinking about it. And the way it's use case and the way that we use it are that like mostly we drive to school and the grocery store and we do that trip every single day. And we can make those trips on battery power. And then if we ever have to go anywhere, we've got an engine to like handle the distance. And so that's like a fine trade-off. Yeah, yeah. But like what, is it just physically impossible to make the Prius go fast? Or that kind of drive train go fast? Wait, I have to Google, can you make a Prius go fast? I'm sure there's things I've ever Googled.

1:09:37I'm actually shocked I've never Googled this. I'm sure there's some sick resto mods out there of the original Prius. Okay, the first answer, highlighted. Literally, like, people have Googled this so much that there's a featured Google snippet with a highlight. Amazing. Amazing. And the highlight is technically yes, but probably not in the way that you might like to add a horsepower to a Prius. It's just like strap another car to the front of your Prius. What you do is you pull out the engine and you put a V8 in it. And then your Prius will go. just motor. But no, I mean, it's smart though, right?

1:10:17Because like David was saying, psychologically, I think as a planet, we are not quite there yet. We're not quite ready to go all in on electric, despite the fact that electric cars have existed for the last decade plus. You know, we're still waiting for that kind of like magic, you know, car to come along with all the perfect infrastructure and all the right requirements that everything but it needs for everything that they have in their lives. And so the hybrid is a great bridge, I think, between the two worlds. And it's usually like 20 ,000 more. It's just very obvious that this is a much more, this is the most complicated car we've ever owned.

1:10:53It's like, it has had to go in, we bought it in what, October? It's had to go in three times for software updates just to manage the transition between gas and battery. Is it just because Jeep sucks though? I mean, there's like a almost 100 % chance that it's because Jeep sucks. But it's very pretty. It's like a Tamagotchi. You have to care for the Android system every day. It has, you know, meters in the dashboard. It's great. It's super fast. Andy, the next time you get angry truck owners in your email, send them to me. And I'll point out that one, my actual truck is probably bigger and faster than theirs.

1:11:24And two, that my hybrid is probably also faster than their truck. And I can just take it from there. That'll work. I do. I think this previous is great. If I, if it, I think we're going to see big markups on it, but I do think it's a sign of the transition. And then there's like other weird, I don't know if y 'all saw the, Lincoln Nautilus that came out this week. It has an incredible interior. It has like a wraparound array of screens in front of the driver in addition to all the other screens. And like, I'm not sure what they're supposed to be. Like, it's like a NORAD command center. It's like, it's very confusing why all the screens are there.

1:11:57And it has a hybrid, but then like Lincoln's product managers are like, but it's not a plug-in hybrid because the Lincoln owner does not want that. So how do they determine that though? I'm so curious about like, you know, where, how, how do you, you can't talk somebody into plugging their car in. I don't understand. Well, because Lincolns aren't primarily like, they're like town cars. They're, they're mainly for chauffeurs and Uber drivers. But why does the chauffeur need like an array of screens? You have to like look at this. It's so many screens. Do you see the Uber drivers now? They've got like four phones.

1:12:27You can run the Uber app, the Lyft app, another. Yeah, like let them do all their apps in one spot. In this car, I'm looking at the marketing materials for this car, and there is a whole screen that looks, I don't know, like it's about 12 inches wide in the middle of the dash that just shows the weather. Yes. Why? I am in the car. I can see out the windshield. I can open the window. I have so many ways to understand what the weather is. But sometimes you want to know what the temperature is. A large screen in the middle of the dashboard. Don't you just want to like know in your soul what the temperature is?

1:13:00No, I just want to plug in my phone and use CarPlay and not think about this anymore. That's what I want. I'm just saying, to Andy's point, if you think your buyer needs this many finicky touchscreens, you don't think they're ready to plug the car in? Like, where is the disconnect here? Yeah. I mean, this also speaks to why the average sales price is at the ridiculous level that it is today. like$50 ,000 or something like that for, you know, for a new car. You know, it's a lot of all that money is going mostly towards feature bloat. I feel like it's just screens and too many features, stuff that most people don't want or need and haven't asked for.

1:13:43I think if you look at the vast majority of surveys that have been conducted over the last independent surveys over the last like five years or so, most people are just like, my car will not stop yelling at me all the time. Everything is beeping at me and I don't know what's happening. People don't like that. Yeah, I would not say the user experience of the average modern car is great. I can't stop looking at the pictures of this Lincoln Nautilus. I cannot stop looking at pictures. So I just, one last thing that I have to say on this and then I will stop looking at pictures of the Lincoln Nautilus.

1:14:12It's so much. And also, it's a 48-inch screen in, I don't know what you might call it, the dash, the four dash. Where do the airbags come out? They come out the post dash. It's just Siri saying, oh no, you've been in an accident. It's fine. But the main infotainment system, if you just look at it, look at the bezels on that screen. Oh my God, I know. And look what's on that screen. It just repeats the stuff on the other dash. I can see my nav twice. I can see what song I played twice. No, no, no. That's where they stuck CarPlay. They're like, you idiots want your dumb CarPlay. Here's a dumb screen for it.

1:14:51And then big screen. From 1996. The big one's going to be running Sink 4, 5. Yeah, yeah. Like, even the car company doesn't know what I'm going to want to put on this screen. So they're just like, do you want bigger nav? That could be fine. Here's the weather. Like, this is nothing. Rematch, please. Yeah. I saw the Volkswagen ID.7 last week, and it had one of the air vents that are controlled through the touchscreen. You have to like tap a circle and move the circle around in order to get the air to hit you in the exact same way. You know, sort of similar to like the Model 3. And just it worked so bad.

1:15:32It was so terrible. Wait, is this CarPlay? Could be. It could be. Is this secretly the first for the new CarPlay? I'm so confused. Look at this thing. It looks exactly like CarPlay, right? And then the big curved screen on what I will now insistently call the 4 - is the same things. But if this was the first thing with the new CarPlay, it would have been huge and noisy. Did Lincoln fake CarPlay? We should cut all this out because this is nonsense. This is nonsense, but this isn't CarPlay. Okay. But do you see what I mean? It looks like CarPlay, but it's not CarPlay. But you look at this and you're like, this is what Apple wanted to do with CarPlay.

1:16:14Put it on every screen. Yeah, 100%. But I'm just saying, look at this picture and that center stack screen. Where's the picture? That's like fake CarPlay. It's like sync, but it's made to look like CarPlay. Yeah, what if CarPlay was everywhere? Is Apple's whole? Yeah. So I think Lincoln faked a fake CarPlay. I think that picture is not CarPlay. Anyway, nonsensical. Let's just like wrap this up. So Andy, we have to let you go here in a minute because you have better things to do than keep talking to us about touchscreens. But the one other car news thing I thought was interesting. this week was this cruise was in an earnings report as part of gm that cruise continues to just burn money and it feels like we there were all these lift layoffs and we're in this moment of like the ride sharing industry is very much under threat cruise can't make any money like all of this feels like it is sort of collapsing in real time like all of the dreams of how we were going to get around feel like they are dying all at the same time yeah so uh cruise is gm's um uh autonomous robo taxi uh division and they reported or gm reported that the the uh they they burned or lost like 561 million dollars uh in the first quarter of this year 30 million dollars of revenue which is an insane most of that revenue is just from interest i think on you know other unlike operating expenses it was like not from customers that pay for the service i mean they do have a few customers they do like a thousand rides a day which is like you know what Uber does in Kansas City, I think.

1:17:41So it's a little bit unclear as to when this is supposed to... They've said a billion dollars in revenue by 2025, which is two years from now. How? Are they taking all the Chevy Bolts? They're going to be replacing the Chevy Bolts with the Origin, which is their steering wheel-less and pedal-less shuttle that is in production right now in their factory in Lordstown. and they're still all in. They're still all in. Their big announcement was crews now can operate driverless during the daytime. Hooray! It was exclusively at night for the last year. Is that true? And now they're finally allowed. Good Lord.

1:18:25They're finally allowed to operate during daytime hours when all of the people actually need the service. Why does the government allow the new ones to come out with no steering wheels? Isn't that like a requirement right now? So they can get an exemption from the rules that require them to have steering wheels. They're looking to get that. Amazon has already starting to produce its also steering wheel-less autonomous shuttle through Zoox. And they've said that they don't need an exemption. They're actually just going over the government and just like go. They're just going to ignore it. Yeah, they're ignoring the rule.

1:18:58They're saying we've self-certified. We don't need steering wheels because we checked it out and it's cool. according to us. Can't the government come back and just slap them upside the head? They have. And they said, you did what? And they said, we did this. And the government said, hang on. And Amazon said, no, it's cool. Trust us. And that's sort of where things are at the moment. I don't know if there could potentially be a recall. There's only like, you know, a handful of these cars. Where do they operate in Seattle? No, they're in the Bay Area too, but I don't think that they're actually on public roads yet.

1:19:29They're just making them. They're just doing it. Yeah. They're just going for it. Just going to be for the airport. All of this is on a hope and a prayer. The whole autonomous stuff. We already see it. They're in the trough. Things are not going well. Argo shut down. Waymo had a bunch of layoffs. And yeah, David, you just mentioned the ride-hail industry as a whole, the one that actually has human drivers, is going through a bit of a rough patch. Lyft just laid off another 2 ,000 people. So it's rough out there. And yet they still seem to think that people want to use these cars and they'll want to share them, too.

1:20:06They think carpooling is going to come back, even though that was a failure the last time around, even before the pandemic wasn't working out. They keep forgetting that people drink like like if you're carpooling and you hop into a car and you're like, oh, I'm going to sit next to the stranger. Oh, the stranger next to me is drunk and about to vomit. That's, and there's no like driver to be like, hey, that guy just puked in the back. Like that was what made Lyft and Uber so popular initially was it because it was a bunch of young people taking it after drinking. Just pooping in the back of Uber.

1:20:37And like poor, sad Uber driver being like, now I've got to go hose out the back. That's why they all have Uber Max. I will say one time when Max was very young, she puked in the back of an Uber and the driver, like it was like as though nothing had happened. Like he was just so used to the notion that there'd be vomit in the back of his car. I felt so, but we left him a huge tip. But just this sort of like resigned-edness. Yeah, just the - Where he's like, all right, well, I'm going to get out my puke kit and like handle this again. And wouldn't you have felt so much better about it if there was just a robot driving in that car?

1:21:06And then you would have been like, yes, puke, puke all you want. It doesn't matter. That's what happened with Car2Go. Because you remember Car2Go? Oh, yeah. There were these little smart cars that were very popular in like New York City. Only weed dealers used them in like me right after the weed dealer used it. Really? Uh-huh. That's why it's spelled, right, Alex? Yeah. It was not me. It was not you. Don't smoke and dry. Can we play the laser bong song? Can we send Andy out with the laser bong song, please? It's going to be my walkout. I can't be clear about what this is. It's going to be my WWE walkout music.

1:21:39Laser bong. All right. We got to take a break, Andy. Thank you so much, man.

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1:24:07Okay, we're back. Alex, how's that laser bong? I'm doing great. I'm just flying. Flying. Just fishing with a rake. Is that? That's not right. Duck hunting with a rake. That's the sentence because you're so high. Oh, I just got it. Yeah. I am very sober. I swear. That's how we know. Like, I just say weird Texas idioms about being stoned. We'll see if Alex gets them. All right. We are well on our way to going over. So we're going to have a lightning lightning round. Alex, you want to go first? Okay. Disney's back at it again. I love it. And I love it. I'm so happy. So to recap, there was the big, you can't say gay in school.

1:24:49You can't teach gay stuff in school. That was like the Ron DeSantis bill. Disney at the time, Bob Chapik was in charge and he spoke out and he said, Bob two. Bob Chapik was in charge and he said, hey, this is not great. We have a lot of like gay cast members. That's what they call their employees at the parks. We have a lot of like gay people that just work here. And are you aware that we make musicals? Good sir. Yes. Hello. We have all of Pixar. That's pretty gay sometimes. And so they spoke out against it. Ron DeSantis was like, okay, I'm going to destroy you. And like said it very publicly and loudly.

1:25:25So part of this was also that Disney World has its own like special monetary zone in Florida that they kind of run along with a board of ostensibly like voted in people. But it was really kind of Disney's people. Ron DeSantis was like, I'm going to get rid of all of Disney's people and put all of my friends in and like actual friends. So it was like people who donated to his campaign and really hate gay people. Other people who donated to his campaign and probably feel whatever about gay people. So he puts all these people in, only for them to realize that the previous board has absolutely screwed them over, ceded a whole bunch of the power to Disney.

1:26:02And Rhonda Stance was like, I'm going to destroy Disney. And then just decided to start enacting like more punitive stuff, specifically new taxes that were going to affect people going to the parks and people trying to drive over to the parks, like new tollways, stuff like that. because there's now actual monetary harm for what Ron DeSantis is doing, Disney was like, okay, well, we're just going to sue you because you're using the government to inhibit our speech, which is like absolutely true, right? Like Disney sucks in a lot of cases, but in this case, they don't suck. And Ron DeSantis is like, yeah, I'm going to be as cartoonishly villainous as possible and then be shocked when like Disney's enormous lawyers come in and just slap.

1:26:44Yeah, it's pretty good. Like the whole situation is pretty good. I will say that if only this had a little bit of copyright law in it, it would be like a perfect Ne-Li story. I mean, it's going to happen at some point. It's going to be there. Just you wait. Ron DeSantis is going to do something with Mickey Mouse and it's going to happen. I don't know what he's going to do with Mickey, but it's coming. Oh my God. No, if you will recall, like I got there, I got to the copyright law so fast. If you will recall when Disney first came out against Don't Say Gay Bill, for extremely valid reasons, of many of our employees and customers, like, are gay.

1:27:17And like, this is a totally valid way to live your life. Their response from the right was, hey, we should get rid of Disney's copyrights. It was just like, it was a weird knee jerk. It was crazy. And I was like, I'm the person who's been fighting against the overwhelming maximalization of copyrights for so long. And now, oh, this is how we're going to do it? Fuck. Public domain Mickey. But now it's like, it's just come down to like really basic. I read the complaint. It's like very basic elements of contract law. Like we signed a contract with the government and the new government's like, we don't like it.

1:27:55So we passed a law to undo a contract. Like there's a thousand years of English common law that says you can't do that. Like the lawyers, Disney's lawyers must've been just so excited this whole time. They're like, we're not even going to do anything. We're just going to sit back and wait. It really seems, can you imagine if you were on the old board and you wrote so their argument is they put out notices and like print newspapers so they were having these meetings these public meetings they passed this can you imagine walking out of the last one of those meetings i mean like did we just did they just they didn't that that board he didn't no one all right like and then you just have to sit on it until the new board is impaneled and they go to their first meeting and they're Like, they did what?

1:28:38Like, just imagine being the lawyers who pulled off this scheme for Disney. Like, it's just very good. I hope they got a lot of stock options. And then obviously they've been sitting on this complaint in their back pocket. Just waiting. Right? They're going to do some stuff. And Disney's like, all right, you did the thing. Like, here's our lawsuit. And it turns out, across the board, the government of the United States, state, local, federal, has less well-paid lawyers than Disney. Probably true of almost anyone you were to pit against. It's great. I love it. It's... Isn't Ron DeSantis a lawyer?

1:29:09Didn't he go to law school? Did he? Not very well. Is he reading the public notices section of the Orlando Sentinel? He certainly is not. It's very good. All right, David, what's yours? Listen, if there's ever been a reason that local newspapers need to survive, there's the good one right there. I love that. So mine is Amazon killed its Halo division, discontinued a bunch of Halo devices, the Halo Band, the Halo View. It shipped all this stuff, I think, like, I mean, honestly, you could convince me this was like 45 years ago, but I think this was like 2020. They launched this fitness tracker, the Halo Band, all this fanfare.

1:29:44They were like, we're doing this cool stuff. Do you remember that its thing was it could monitor your tone when you were speaking to other people? Yeah. There was like crazy uproar because it was, this was like the worst idea of all time. It was like tone police for ladies. That's what everyone was. Yeah. No, like literally. And then they had the one that was like, it could generate like a 3D image of your body to measure your body fat, which is awful. That's what everyone wants when they're trying to lose weight. It's like, show me everything. Zoom in, please. And then try to sell me clothes on Amazon.

1:30:16Yeah. Like Amazon just did not think that through. Especially from Amazon. What I really want is Amazon to look at my body and be like, can we tighten it up a little bit? Like I've always wanted to be judged by Amazon Prime. And then next time I'm shopping, it's like, maybe size up one. Do you ever think, was this ever related to the fact that Bezos got super swole along the way? God, he's so swole now. He's got people who works him out while he sleeps. There was a time when like Bezos was not yoked. That's true. He should have just been like, I used the halo band. He would have been a lie, but would have been better than Humane's.

1:30:51Yeah, what he actually used was the power of being divorced. The true halo band. Like he like found a... I'm married to divorce. I've never met a divorced person that doesn't get swole. Oh, it's a move. The new one enters the scene and suddenly you swole. The true best thing about this was so when the Halo came out, the company everybody identified as like totally screwed by this was Whoop, which is another one of the like trying to do really sophisticated stuff about fitness and activity. And so Will Ahmed, the CEO of Whoop, is just having like a field day with the fact that this is shutting down.

1:31:28And Whoop has been very, he's just on Twitter, just like dragging Amazon everywhere he can. And my favorite one was there's this tweet from, I believe yesterday, where he quote tweeted his own tweet from 2021, where Whoop was printing onto every one of its circuit boards, the phrase, don't bother copying us, we will win, which was directly a message to Amazon about the halo. So he quote tweets that with a picture of the CNBC tweet announcing advertising Amazon shutting down Halo with the peace sign emoji, and then has spent the last 24 hours just retweeting everybody who says mean things about Amazon Halo.

1:32:07And it is truly terrific. That's a legend. And I really, I've never been, I've never liked Whoop more than I do at this particular moment in time. I was like, I want to go get a Whoop band right now. Like, yes, do it. It's the year of efficiency at all these companies. And did anyone ever think the Halo group was going to make it? No one did. Yeah. I don't think they even, like, they were looking for jobs as they were designing it, probably. They're, like, writing back on the whoop boards, like, we're not copying you, but here's my number. Yeah. All right, here's mine. Mine is maybe my favorite piece of news.

1:32:38It's so silly. So Tesla's in a bunch of lawsuits about full self-driving. One of them, there was a fatal crash. Very sad. The person died. They're suing Tesla. And as part of the lawsuit, they're saying, we got to enter all these statements that Elon Musk made about full self-driving being safe. safe right he's representing to people that the thing is safe the thing is not safe it crashed killed their client here they say tesla's argument is that elon should not be deposed in this case about these statements because they might be deep fakes this is true you're like he gets deep faked a lot we don't know what these statements are we don't know where they came from okay and actually like yeah in a normal circumstance you're like all right it's the ai time like we're doing this maybe it's deep faked it's true like he gets deep faked a lot yeah if you're the pope like at any moment you might be wearing a puffer jacket.

1:33:25I can't get enough of AI Biden wrapping ice spice. Like it's a real problem. Except this specific statement, which is a Model S and a Model X at this point can drive autonomously with greater safety than a person right now. That's the statement. He said it at the code conference in 2016. He said it to Walt Mossberg and Kara Swisher in a room with 400 people in it, many of whom, including me, were live blocking it. there's like you just go watch you go on youtube and watch it well i mean are you sure he wasn't a deep fake maybe he sent the robot out it's just like i'm you know watch like casey and and lauren good and i are just like sitting there like looking at him say this just hanging out it's like what like we got all the way to like the judge in a trial having to issue an order about deep fakes and no one was like have you seen the youtube video of him obviously saying this And he's also been tweeting about how great it is for like a decade.

1:34:24There's like dozens of pieces of evidence that he said this. Yeah. But this is just inevitably going to be the most fascinating Supreme Court case of all time, right? Like where deepfakes are like beelining to the Supreme Court now. This feels right. Like the 2023 story is Elon Musk litigating deepfakes at the Supreme Court. Like that's where this has to end. The argument is Musk cannot recall details about the claims in that, quote, like many public figures, he is the subject of many deep fake videos and audio recordings to purport him to show him saying and doing things he never actually said or did.

1:34:54And it's like, yeah, that's true. But this is a video from 2016 where 400 people in a room heard you answer this question. I love he's just trying to be like, maybe everything is fake. Maybe every time you see me, I'm fake. And therefore I shouldn't be held accountable for anything. I'm like, that's a bold legal plan. So the judge didn't buy it. shopper guys by the way you can just go go on go on Verge TikTok you can see the video we made of him saying it and me looking at him saying it maybe were you also deep faked yeah who knows at any moment that was the same code where Josh Topolsky asked him if we were living in a simulation and he was like yes and then he was like but I swore a blood oath to my brother to never talk about this in a hot tub which is just an incredible answer that is all absolutely gonna come back in this trial Yeah, that absolves him of all of this.

1:35:47It's a part of a simulation. Yeah, he was like, that was a simulation of... You can't be held responsible. That code in 2016, I remember it was just like a very good code conference. And as somebody who's now co-hosting this conference, that's like the high watermark that I'm aiming to hit again. But you just go watch it. Like he's saying it. Anyway, the judge says, Tesla's position is that because Mr. Musk is famous and might be more of a target for deep fakes, his public statements are immune from scrutiny. In other words, Mr. Musk and others in his position can simply say whatever they like in the public domain.

1:36:15than hide behind the potential for recorded statements being a deep fake to avoid taking ownership for what they actually did say and do. So the judge at least is not buying it. Yeah. But I would just point out that having to get all the way here where there's video of him saying it in code is absolutely bonkers. I just, that's my favorite part of this. He and his lawyers were like, yeah, it's fine. We can bluff our way through this. It's ballsy. It's just very much like, uh... That's fake, Your Honor. Like every article is like, he said this in code. like here's a link to the video. It's like, it's not even like a bootleg video.

1:36:49It's just like on the Recode channel. Like it's our channel. You're going to have to go like testify that it's real, that you witnessed it. I was there, sir. Elon Musk is going to buy code for$44 billion just to get out of this. Elon, you know, look, it's my first year hosting and I'm not sure if I have the authority to make such a deal, but I will sell you code for$44 billion. Make the checkout to Neelai Patel. You're the singular solution I trust. All right. I got to go. because I don't know. This might be my last day at Fox Media. You just sold code. He's already writing it up right now. Eli sells code to Elon Musk.

1:37:26Immediately fired. It's going to be a great conference. I hope you all go. All right. That's it. That's the Vergecast. The site was amazing this week. Please go check it out. We've been quick posting a lot more. We've been mixing it up in the comments. It's like the end of the social web era. Endless amount to say there. Ben Smith, the former editor-in-chief of BuzzFeed News, is going to be a decoder next week. We're going to talk all about it and his book Traffic about BuzzFeed and whatever. All that's on my mind, it just occurs to me more and more people are coming directly to our homepage and we are mixing it up in comments with folks.

1:37:55So if you want to like hang out with us during the week, just we're there. Just like hang out with us. It's great. It's a good time. What else do we need to plug? Everybody should also go read V-Song's story about the Dyson Zone, which is a truly delightful story and also hands down the funniest set of pictures we've put on our website in a long time. The Dyson Zone is a ridiculous thing that does not need to exist, but it's wonderful. Neel, I convinced her last week that she actually liked it. She loves it. And watching her realize she liked it in real time, ah, priceless. I know a lot of people who purport to hate things I actually love.

1:38:27Yeah, it was me and the Apple Watch. And V was like, the way that she was talking about it, I was like, no, you gotta turn this around, V. Let's be honest. It's great. David, it says, Go Big David on next Wednesday's show. What is that? Go Big David. but that's what my dad used to say to me before Little League games. Go big. So next Wednesday's show, we like accidentally built this very cool episode about like the future of making movies. We have a whole thing about the Blackberry movie, which is coming out. I talked to a bunch of directors about how to make a movie entirely on screens, which was really fun.

1:39:00And Andrew Marino, our producer, went on like a month-long investigation into why director's commentary is dead and I think may have single-handedly brought it back. It's an incredibly fun episode and one of my favorites we've done in a while. So come back for that next week. And last thing, speaking of movies, if you're in New York next week, we're doing a sneak preview showing of the BlackBerry movie. Oh, cool. It's good. It's really good. It's going to be real fun. I'm going to interview the director afterwards. It's like 100 people. We'll have a post on the site, but we'd love to see you there.

1:39:29It's really fun. They agreed to do it with us on kind of a whim. It's going to be really cool. Come check it out if you're new. That's May 4th. Okay, that's it. That's the Verge Cast. Bye. And that's a wrap for VergeCast this week. Thanks for listening. If you enjoy the show, subscribe in the podcast app of your choice or tell a friend. You can send us feedback at vergecast at theverge.com. This show is produced by me, Liam James, and our senior audio director, Andrew Marino. This episode was edited and mixed by Amanda Rose. Our editorial director is Brooke Minters, and our executive producer is Eleanor Donovan.

1:40:05The Vergecast is a production of The Verge and Box Media Podcast Network. And that's it. We'll see you next week.

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