Cars with Hidden Agendas, Part 2: Digital Detours

Say hello, guys, Hello, thank you so much for having us back on the show. We're thrilled. This is something that Scott and I have talked about at length in various other episodes. Yeah, we've we we we discussed the whole Volkswagon think in the first part And I'm gonna maybe give my mouth a rest here because i think I was rambling on a little bit too much about But no, we are. It's so glad to have you guys here. Yeah. So so we were talking in this

first episode. Uh, and if you haven't listened to it, you might want to go back and do that thing, um, because it will make a little bit more sense everything that we're about to say. But yeah, we were talking about the computerization of cars, and specifically about the scandal that just happened with Volkswagen, where as it turns out they put this little bit of software in their cars to cheat on emissions tests for a multitude of reasons.

But we wanted to use today's episode to branch out from this topic and look into the future and say, what does the computerization of our automobiles mean for our lives? How does software deepen and already complex relationship we have with our machines, Because software certainly does change things. Like you, you might have been able in nineteen fifty to release a car and then falsely advertise what its performance was, say you know, it gets this many miles brigallan, it

goes this fast, and that wouldn't have been true. But what software has done is it can make the car dynamically deceptive. Do you do you know what? You know? The way I like to put this, and I was thinking about this on the way into work today, I was thinking that cars are almost aware now, and that's maybe the best way I can I can put it, is that they're aware of the surroundings. They know when there's a pedestrian in front of them to break, you know,

to apply the brakes. They know when there's a vehicle to the left or right of them, and they know that you shouldn't deviate from your lane at that point, the time of day, weather conditions, it's just becoming more exactly right and and aware is maybe one of the best ways to say. I mean, think about like self parking cars. You know that that parking. Now I understand that these aren't thinking objects. They're not really thinking someone. So there was a humane scott. Some of our listeners

might really argue with you. Some of our listeners might be cars. It's because it's true it could be, but but probably auto boats and factors like auto. So it seems like, you know, this maybe the best way to describe as aware. But it's not thinking. It's not like true artificial intelligence. And there's a human somewhere that said if this happens, then that happens, and if this happens, then that happens. And when the two things combine, this happens.

So there's a there's this very logical way of programming in a car. But to us it seems very smart because the cars in the past, they weren't smart. I mean, you had to do everything. Everything was reliant on you or very very simple electronics. But now it's getting so ingrained, so so tightly woven together that modules, modules run your whole vehicle now. And I think for the most part, having smarter, more aware of cars is a wonderful thing.

I mean, in almost every way, this is great. And on this show we've explored time and time again all of the fantastic things you can do with heightened awareness and computerization of vehicles. But there are things that we should be conscious of that are sort of possibilities to watch out for. I'd say, yeah, they're they're doing a lot of really great things, like like making cars safer for the drivers and various objects around them, including squishy

human people. But but there's so many questions that we need to be asking, and need to be asking proactively because uh, technology moves so much faster than legislation and sometimes then uh the human brain. So yeah, right, yeah, well, yeah, this is a big topic to us. You know, how does driving change when your cars in the clouds wax a little bit poetic about it? So I guess the question, Scott, maybe correct me if I'm wrong, is Where do you guys want to go with this, because there's so many

directions we go. Do you want to do pros and cons or do you wanna do you want to get right into predictions? Do you want to talk about hypothetical what ifs? I'm excited. It's not just the coffee. I could share one thing that kind of will get get us started. Maybe. Yeah, I think this is a very simple explanation of what happens. But your car can put itself into something called limp mode if something's going wrong with this, so cars can diagnose themselves. Yeah, there's there's

something called limp in mode. And the idea behind limp in mode is that if there's something wrong with the transmission, it will the engine control module will limit or the transmission control module will limit the number of gears that you're allowed to select. And this is an automatic TRANSMISSI so you can limp into the gas station or the mechanical or exactly right the dealership or wherever, and it doesn't strain you on the side of the road, and

it protects it protects itself. It's protecting its own system. It's saying, well, there's either an engine problem or transmission problem, and we're gonna limit you to how fast you can drive this vehicle, but we are going to allow you to drive it, and we're gonna warn you or tell you get to the dealership because I need to be

fixed right now. Yeah, because otherwise the the event horizon shaped object that that looks that that is what automatic transitions look like, could do very bad things to the rest of your car. And all I'm saying is that this is just one little tiny example of the engineers saying, you know, when when this situation happens, this thing is going to protect itself, and here's how it's going to do it, and we can do that right now, and let they just kind of live in the background somewhere

when that situation happens. This is what you do. And the yeah, the logics there in alarm systems as well, that I would argue they are the precursor to that kind of thing, right, because they would shut down on you remember this story about my old money Carlo had a malfunctioning alarm system for theft, and so every so often it would say, oh, Ben is trying to steal me, and then I would have to go through this series

of arcane maneuvers to get it to start. So I have experience with good intentions gone bad or soured in these kind of fields. The limp mode is just the beginning, though, And one of the big questions that we look at and how driving changes is whether the what is the role of the human? Right will the human be relegated to simply being a passenger with the car being the driver, or will the human become like a teammate like you know is is your car gonna become now your buddy? Buddy?

Yeah right and buddy Yeah. I don't know what that means. It's a it's a it's a show that's gotten their fans of family reverence. That's a little bit of secure. Someone got it. It was worth it, someone got I guess. The ultimate example of all of this is if cars become autonomous yeah right, yes, which Elon Musk recently known for some known for some let's call it ambitious predictions. In the past, he said that he will have fully autonomous Tesla car technology on the road in five years,

but didn't. He also say that watermelons would be sentient by Yeah. That was his main when he was into u C S as and farming. He was more on the sentient watermelon side, but he gave that up and now he's into cars and PayPal and stuff. Just kidding. Didn't he say all these things while giggling atop a giant pile of froyo? Yes? Yes, not to spread a rumor, not to spread. I think it's I'm delighted by Elon Musk's uh crazy wonderful ideas well, as long as we say,

just saying, just saying at the end of it. This might be interesting because we've now got people in the studio who might be less pro autonomous car than the three regular hosts of the show are. I'm typically very pro autonomous. Yeah, well, because Jonathan and Joe and I were all a little bit terrified of driving most of the time. We don't really go for joy rides. Uh so, and you guys might have a different perspective. Absolutely, Okay.

So one thing that that that we have to be careful with is to avoid oversimplification when we talk about autonomous vehicles, and I don't mean just cars here, I mean also autonomous vehicles like you know, airborne things or both both possible to build the problem that we run into is that a broad brushstroke doesn't work. Sure, autonomous cars would save lives in a country like India notorious

and its urban centers for unruling day your c intersections. However, in a country like the US, where there are vast swaths of land that are nearly abandoned right and where there are, in contrast, enormously dense areas like New York, like Boston, places where Boston actually is home to the world's most expensive parking space. Yes, yeah, not we thought it was just the US, but no, it's the world's reigning champions. Yeah, congrats on yet another dubious award. Who

owns that space? Is it a space inside a lab at Harvard? No, it's uh, it's in I think it's in the It's in one of the blue blood neighborhoods. Anyhow, point point being uh. An autonomous car makes sense if you are in a denser area because it reduces accents and autonomous cars have a lot of pros and cons. I am I am probably a little bit less anti autonomous car than you, Scott. What do you think? Well, you know, I don't wanna I don't want to go off on a too big of a tangent here, so

I won't. I'll just keep it simple and get I I like. I'll surprise you by saying I do like some elements of autonomous vehicles, some of the safety features, you know, the automatic stopping systems and the lane deviation and all that. I really like that stuff. But as far as I full on you know, don't do anything to sit behind the wheel, I don't like that idea at all. I don't know. I don't know how far that will um No, I just I just can't see. I I drive for pleasure, Like the weekends, I'll drive

hours and hours just to get a pizza or something. Yeah, I love it, and I can't see giving that up. Ever. Well, I don't know if I don't know how possible it would be on a global scale, if it's if it's distributed in certain regions, because the US itself is so enormous that we would have to treat it region by region, and each state will have its own different legists. Lation. There was that excellent point about technology versus legislation, uh and and how slow one is to catch up with

the other. That's why Tesla, That's why La Musk predicts twenty is his date for fully autonomous Tesla vehicles because not of the technology, which will be ready sooner than later, but because of the legislation. Can I say one more quick thing about this. When I read that topic or that title of that article, what surprised me wasn't the idea that the car would be autonomous by. What surprised

me was the seven five mile range. Oh yeah, and that's something I mean, I mean, think about where we were when we started our show High Speed Stuff seven years ago. You know, it was high speed stuff back then, it wasn't car stuff. Even we together, you know, combined, both of us thought there's no way that autonomous vehicles were ever gonna happen because of the crude way it

had to happen back then. Then it's just seven years ago. Yeah, and back then was just you know, somebody with a remote control essentially making making a lifestyle is our CV. It was ridiculous the amount of infrastructure change that would have to happen again just seven years ago versus now when we we realize now that that's not necessary. You

don't have to bury magnetic pucks in the pavement. You have to have a wire system that's laid out or um, you know, safety walls all over the place, the sensors on every roadside. Yeah, it's not like that now. And and you know everybody understands that. You know that that doesn't happen. You can just build the car and it does everything else for you, and you can put it out on the streets with every other vehicle and will

still operate and look like every other vehicle. To just some background those so people know about the Tesla thing. His prediction was that uh Tesla, the next models of Tesla would be able to go No, no, just the new batteries would enable them to go seven hundred and forties something miles per miles on a single charge, seven seven forty miles per hour. It did say it was ambitious. Yeah, pardon me, insane mode on a on a on a

single charge. The closest he has to that out was something that went a little under five miles for sixty something this long range. Yeah, but at that four sixty number comes at a speed of twenty four point like two miles. Proud. Okay, I don't know if I knew that or not, but I'm just I'm just saying it's ambitious. So on the golf course, right, you will be You will drive back and forth forever on the golf course will be cursed. It'll be like the flying Dutch clubs

here and there, hopping off to take a shot. But but yeah, so that's a I mean, so that is a great point because we're seeing this not just this trend of innovation, but this acceleration of the degree of innovation. Yeah. Another thing about autonomous vehicles that I think is is a very appealing point is the way that research modeling so far has demonstrated these vehicles will probably be able to increase fuel efficiency and reduce emissions by a pretty

significant margin. Yeah, and you guys had a fantastic episode that I would like to plug if any of your listeners haven't checked it out yet, because didn't you all didn't you talk about one of the big questions that relates to this, like what happens when a non human thing? Yeah? Yeah, in this case, what happens when an autonomous car breaks the law? Who is responsible? Is it the programmer, is it the driver, the passenger driver? Is it the car company?

Is it the government whose little piece of the road didn't get out of the way. In time. Is it someone chosen at random? Because they were standing there in the whole VW thing. They're they're talking about criminal prosecution of the people that were involved at the at the headquarters. So it's going to the criminal level. So you're you're right in that, you know, Uh, it could be pinned

on the human. I suppose, you know, because the human is the one that set up those parameters to say that, you know, in this mode, you do this, and again it comes back to that, you know, if this happens, that happens. Yeah, in the episode we did about what happens when a robot breaks the law, that's the title. You can look it up on Google. Yeah, it's from mar Please go ahead. I really it enjoyed that episode. That was one of my favorites we did. But that

one was about the unpredictability of robot behavior. What happens when a robot does something or a computer program does something that it wasn't explicitly told to do. It's misinterpreted some piece of data, it's it's interpreted, Um, I don't know, a a shadow as a person or something like that. And you know that the visual sensors glitching something like that emergent criminality was the idea. But yeah, but autonomous vehicles definitely figure into this because if an autonomous vehicle

causes an accident, who's at fault? Right? Yeah? And does the does the driver have the agency to override something or is it a uh two thousand one space odyssey kind of I'm sorry, how I can't let me do that. I'm sorry, Scott, I can't let you do that. That's a child. Well, this is getting okay, I'll tell you

right now, volks A, right now, Volkswagon. But Mercedes, as if vehicle that is essentially autonomous and you can get behind the wheel and just let it go, let it do its thing, they legally have to say that there has to be a driver in the driver's seat and paying attention, so they're not like doing the cross road,

yeah exactly, and they will not. Well, yeah, but that's up to you, right they You can allow it to do its thing and you know, get you home safely, but you have to be in that driver's seat and they can't say this is an autonomous vehicle, but it is. And you also you also have to be in a in a fit state for driving, so you couldn't go, uh, I don't know, drink a bunch of what do people drink nowadays? Red Bull? Drink a bunch of Red Bull

and vodka. Yeah, and then hopping behind the wheel, Yeah, a couple of gin rickeys and then get behind the wheel right right right, Yeah, seriously, you would want to do that because you're still having to adhere to the the rule of the land, of the rules of the road. Really, um, you know, you can't you can't operate a vehicle while you're inebriated. And and with Mercedes saying you have to have a driver behind the wheel at all times, that's that's saying whoever is in that seat is the driver.

You can't say the car was driving itself. So yeah, and that eliminates any kind of um um fault from Mercedes were saying, well, this car driver itself home. Yeah. That is interesting because at what point is the driver at fault for something that the driver didn't choose to do? Rush Sure, well, and that's kind of the point that

we wound up really talking about in that episode. That's sort of wild West area of of weird corporate policy and like responsibility waivers and and lawsuits that are probably going to have to happen before the law catches up with this technological capacity. So before we move on, one last one last pro uh. And I'm sure that we hear this all the time, both on car stuff and on forward thinking, but there is a compelling case for

safety in autonomous vehicles. And have some statistics. So according to the n h T s A, there were around five point three million motor vehicle crashes in that was Yeah, that's only the ones that were police reported, so it doesn't count all the other ones that didn't get caught. It's resulted in over two million injuries, over thirty two thousand deaths. And on balance, here's the disturbing thing. That was a really good trend. It reflected a forty five

percent dropping accidents from ve to that year. So of these accidents are caused by anyone, right, I guess would be that's a low number. Yeah, it's like like angry owls, is uh, angry owls and occasionally yeah, and and sometimes just Jonathan I'm kidding, I'm kidding, but yes, so Jonathan's

periscoping from the sidewalk. You see him and get distracted, So I I just I just say that because I think it is it is important, um, even because to me that is the most compelling reason for autonomous vehicles in dense areas. Yeah. Absolutely, And I think that Google is Google's autonomous cars up to having had like fifteen accidents over its a few year lifespan now, but it still has never had an accident that was not a

human fault. So amazing stat isn't it. I Mean, really, all those miles driven and every time there's been a collision, it's been the the human on the other side that every time. Oh, I think there's been an instance where it was the driver of the Google car, but it was a human driver, but it was still a human

driver doing something that messed with the programming. Interesting. Well, anyway, I think we should transition from talking about autonomous cars, which we have talked about a good bit on the podcast before, to talking about other aspects of the computerization of our vehicles, in the ways that adding software elements and more and more layers of computerization to our cars could give them hidden agendas, because it's kind of scary too.

I mean, we like to think that our cars can be smart in the helpful ways that we always talk about they can help keep us safe, they can reduce emissions, they can do all these wonderful things. But what if they're not necessarily serving our interests. It's a very good question, Joe. Uh, it could serve. It could serve numerous third party interests. They could work on behalf of insurance companies, right, it could work on, behalf of manufacturers, it could work on

behalf of third party entities, governments, advertisers, advertising. I've got a scenario I want to bring up with that. What about this idea of telematics. Yeah, okay, So telematics active monitoring of driver habits, spatial chronological compilation of where you go and when. So, uh, this will tie into your excellent, your excellent hypothetical later, right, So who holds this data

on you? Right? Uh? So let's say, um, let's say our super producer Noel Brown hops into his brand new twenty seventeen Mercedes Dream Big, right, and he uh, he has an active monitoring system and it is enabled in his vehicle. So they know that every day at five thirty he goes to his favorite coffee shop. It's always

the same coffee shop. He's always out of there by seven thirty when he goes and he leaves from seven thirty, he goes somewhere else from maybe a couple of hours, and then he goes home, and they know the time he goes home. Then they know the time he leaves, they know the average speed he drives, they know the roots he takes, and they can tell when they're going to change. What do they do with this information? Does he own it? Did they own it? Oh? Then it right?

And can they sell it? Because this has already become a problem in other other fields, this big data idea. Yeah, that's interesting, And the way you phrased it, it's sort of undercut an objection I was going to make to the telematics concern, which is that your cell phone is already able to collect this kind of Yeah, we put that in when we had another We had an episode

on the infamous mandatory black box. If you were driving a car in the US and it is not a classic car, then congratulations, you have a black box monitoring stuff the same way that things are monitored in an airplane cockpit. But I love that you say that joke. Is one of the things we said to the people who had these privacy concerns were that your cell phone is already doing this stuff that you didn't want the

black box to do. Yeah, if you don't put your phone in an airplane mode every time you get in your car, then you are being tracked by at the very least GPS and probably WiFi as well, just just by the handshakes that the technology goes through as you're traveling. Yeah, so fantastic, But the there there are some pros and constant this, Like insurance companies would say, well we can and if you opt into this program where we can monitor your driving habits in real time, then we we

can reward the good drivers. So we say, oh uh, Super producer Noel Brown goes to that coffee shop every day at five thirty and he always drives the speed limit. You know, and I have been told you shouldn't do this, that you shouldn't opt in for that kind of program. Yes. Yes, that's the other concern because about half of the people pulled regarding what's called UM usage based insurance or ub I, half of the people pulled say, well, we just see this as a way for a company to inevitably raise

the rates. You know, it's not the hundred times you do something, Right, it's the one time you're like, whoa eighty and a thirty five? Where's the fire, buddy. I've never liked this idea from the very beginning. I don't, I don't. I know it's an opt in uh, you know, part of the whole thing for now, well for now. Yeah, you don't have to do that. You know you're you're doing that to hopefully get a better rate on your insurance. Right, that's the idea. But that's that's your only impetus to

as a consumer. Yeah, but I mean, you're you're just giving more more of your own personal information to somebody. I'm'm a pretty guarded person in real life, you know, I don't. I don't um necessarily like offer up extra information to people if they're not asking for it. Yeah, I learned your last name, like in June. How came you never let me read all your email like my

other coworkers do. And when you asked him his last name, he was he was like, oh, it's ben Jamin, but I didn't mean it Ruby Stein sitting on the table.

One thing that I would say is a difference though between a cell phone um and the possibilities posed by this user based insurance stuff or this real time monitoring, is that you don't need a cell phone for your car to function, and it is I possible that these things would become not opt in material that unless you are implicitly agreeing to this kind of monitoring, not necessarily even with an insurance company, but with a manufacturer, then

your car will not function. I don't think this is too far off though, to say that, you know, you maybe you do have to have the phone in order to make it, to make it work, and possibly you know, with the Bluetooth technology, I mean, everybody knows about that. I mean you can you could be on a phone call, get into your vehicle, and the call picks up seamlessly through the speaker system, through the microphone system. It's they're

already doing this in a small way. It's not out of the question that they would make other things function using that as well. I mean, you know, the the entertainment system that you opt for at the dealership when you buy the car new UM, if you go for the top end systems, so you can get apps and things like that on your in your new vehicle UM

and different even a different even operating systems. So I don't think it's you know, out of question that that you know it's gonna start to operate a little bit

more scene lessly with with your cell phone. Oh sure, yeah, and you could even For example, insurance companies really like knowing how far you drive in order to get to work as kind of a base metric of how many miles you're going to be going per day, and if it if it does a handshake with your cell phone when you get in and out of the car, it could tell if you're walking the last couple of miles to work, and or if you've lied terribly to them

about the number of miles you drive. Well, see, I've recently tried to kind of, you know, mess around with my insurance and I don't mean in a bad way.

I mean just to try to look get my rate lower because I've got a car that doesn't you know, one that I don't drive at all that they think I drive, and trying to get a lower rate that way, And part of this whole paperwork you have to fill out to get this done, or you know online rather um, they ask you how many miles you drive a day, a week, a month, a year, and you're you self report that. This takes the self reporting out of the whole thing, because they can just they just know, they

know how far you drive. And if you say one thing and then you know, it turns out that the reality is something else, they're probably gonna hit you the you know, an extra fine or something, so you know it's it's happening. Yeah. And those are the kind of straightforward ways that you can think about people directly wanting access to information about your driving habits because it is of value to them. But there are all kinds of oblique ways that companies could make use of information about

your location and driving habits. One of the weird scenarios I came up with that your car software might have a hidden agenda would be something like the following. Okay, Lauren, Yes, imagine you are out driving on punstantly on Avenue. I am imagining it right now. Okay, now you are coming up on a fast food franchise location. What fast food franchise would it be? But Burger King? Okay, that was what I was going to say. Weird. Okay, now it's

almost as though we're sharing notes. Now. If your car knows where you are all the time, and especially knows what kinds of business is you've been to before and at what time of day. It might know that you like stopping at Burger King sometimes sometimes to get you

some b K chicken fries. Well, clearly that's the only format that chicken should come in, And it may very well be the case that the auto manufacturer could strike up a deal with businesses like Burger King or or whoever to say, oh, you know, if I think somebody is susceptible to your marketing, I can slow them down in front of billboards for your products, or I can slow them down when they start nearing a location or one of your franchise locations to pull in for some food,

or or even if not slow down, at the very least, you know, give you like a little a little alert through through your speaker system saying like, oh hey, there's a two for five dollar b K Chicken fries deal going on today. And if you think that that sounds all like super ridiculous, I would say hold on a second, because I don't know if the idea of that type of advertising alert is ridiculous. We already get ads served to us on the internet based on our searching history

and stuff like that and imagine. Yeah, yeah, so the the inner the imagine the audio you're listening to in your card any given time. I think radio is sort of on the way down, and digital audio, the kind you're listening to right now is sort of on the way up for in car entertainment. And with digital audio, it seems like it's it would be perfectly easy in many cases for the auto manufacturer to supplement your digital

audio stream with live updated advertisements, dynamic ads. Yeah, I have I've have three things that are all equally important that I want to ask. One, what are b K chicken fries? Oh? Have you never seen them? Because someone is driving by a Burger King right now and they are freaking out. So I've never eaten them, but I've read the Wikipedia page for them. Okay, yeah, you're telling

us about this off air. Yeah, they're they're like chicken nuggets that are just shaped a little bit more like Maza realistics and then you and then you just put them in a little fried container and their chicken fries are they not chicken fingers? Where the where the where the fries on the chicken? Really, that's what I need to know. They're they're just fried. They're just fried chicken. They know this is what this podcast is about, now, Scott,

I'm kidding. My second thing is, um, it feels like there would be a liability inherent in forcing a car to slow down, and then that would be a lawsuit way to happen. But the idea of an alert makes absolutely perfect sense. I think we will see it sooner than later. Should I, in fact, have not said that out loud? Have I just given someone an idea that all of us are going to suffer for? Possibly you don't.

I totally agree. I think that if they start manipulating it to the point where they're slowing you down in front of there, that that can cause a lot of trouble, that serious safety issues. That's something that could happen on a state level. Maybe if you're driving by Pennsylvania Avenue, that's something the government could do. What if your car was just not allowed to drive to certain places during

certain times this? What if what if they just decided that, um, you know, on this road, the new speed liman is thirty five, and we're going to restrict every vehicle. We're gonna tamper with, you know, the the um, the fuel system, on your vehicle, because we can do that electronically via satellite. Now at this point and say you can't go faster thirty five anything below is fine. Anywhere in between, you've got control over that. But anyway, sorry, well I certainly

know that I can't drive thirty five. Yeah, like it seems it seems strange. Well, I love this idea you propose about um an ad revenue model, right, because Ways is a great example or a terrifying, disturbing example the possibilities Ways the navigation Okay, so Ways spelled w A Z E is an app you can get on your phone that will tell you in real time the best way to drive from point A to point B. Will

also update depending on if there's an accident happening. It will tell you if there's right right in real time, and then it's you see other Ways users, so it kind of crowdsources the information. The most controversial thing about it right now is people saying, oh, watch out, there's a speed trap ahead, which obviously law enforcement is not the biggest fan of h But the reason we bring up Ways now is because you know, stuff isn't really free on the internet. What what you're paying with is

your attention rather than your dollars. So you will get ads that pop up saying, oh, here's the gas station. Do you like exceon? Do you like quick trip? It's this ad helpful? Hey, take a survey. Oh they're fresh donuts at Dunkin Donuts. Just so you know, not calling you fat. Everybody's driving around now with you know, ten inch screens right in the middle of their dash, you know, so, so it's easy to serve those ads up anytime they want. Really, I mean, as long as you have it switched on,

it can be there right in front of the whole family. So, Joe, what if you what if you got a brand new car and the dealer says, we have a we have a an agreement with the manufacturer. We will give you a discount on your monthly car. Note if you agree to, uh, you agree to have a commercial pop up on your console before you start the car or before you can get out of it after driving. This is absolutely something

that I can see happening. But no, Scott's laughing, But I think this could absolutely happen because we have already seen advertising subsidized electronic hardware before. Like, if you want to buy certain tablets. Yeah. Yeah, the Kindle, for example, has an AD supported version that you can get us off of. Yeah, just it is cheaper, but it serves

you adds. Just to be clear, Joe, I wasn't laughing at you, I was saying I was thinking of can you imagine how frustrating that would be that if you parked your car and you're ready to get out and the door won't unlock. The handle is you know, nonfunctional until that darn add stops playing for you know, folder whatever fries and ful coffee. Anybody Sanka coffee. There's there is an episode of Black Mirror that kind of a little bit of that. Not in a car like that.

That is one of the most disturbing things I've ever seen. It Was it a real window or was it just another screen? Anyway at the end of that that's a great question. But anyway, Uh yeah, yeah, I think that could totally happen. I wouldn't see it so much as trapping you in the car, but doing something more like what we mentioned earlier, using your your location and your route to say, hey, this person is going to pass

a business. They've shopped at this business before, and the business will pay me if I remind them that they'd like to go there. We see, you've purchased a lot of dull clothing. There's a Michael's a mile ahead. You know what kind of this is maybe a little bit off topic, but it comes back to what we're talking about, and it's example that goes back to two thousand seven.

All right. So you when I in the office the other day, we're talking about some of the possibilities what we're gonna talk about today, and one of the things I said is, well, there's there's this whole double key thing, um, you know, where one key gives you full power to the vehicle. The other one is what they call valet key and limits the power the output of the vehicle. And it's not so a lot of people think of the valley key is just one that won't unlock the trunk,

won't unlock the glove box. You know, it's good for the door, driver's door and the ignition only. But now and and not just now, but you know, recently they've been making keys that have a function to them that they know when you know the key with the black fob on it, uh that allows full power to the vehicle.

And this is typically sports cars. Yeah, I wouldn't be worried about it in my junkie like two no, but you know, like the like do you hand the red key to the valet because you don't want him out joy riding while you're in the mall shopping whatever you're doing, right, Maserati, I would be working well. I mean this is like okay, like the Dodge, the hell Cat models, you know, the brand new ones they do in that Corvette z R

one's had two keys. Uh. The Bugatti Veron has another another key where it's to the left and behind the driver's seat. So that's and this one's cool. I'm getting getting to the point or no, no no, no, no, this is this is cool. You use that key specifically for

a top speed run. So when you put that key in, it goes through this checklist and it asks you are you sure you want to do this, and then it checks the car to make sure that it's in condition to do that, And a top speed run in that car is like two fifty five seven or something like that. So that's why it's saying, is this something you really want to do? Because then it it just you know,

kind of does this on its own. It will activate spoilers and close diffusers, and it lowers itself to the ground. It does all these really cool things, and I was thinking, that's maybe you think that may be the most crazy thing. But this is where it gets back to what you're talking about, like going by a you know, a dealership and saying like, hey, you're due for service or something like that. Right, there's a car out there. It's the Nissan E t R and this is the Japanese version,

only via GPS. It will detect that you're detect that you're on a racetrack, and it will eliminate the speed the speed sensors. So the government, yeah, the governors, I guess, so that um so that you can take it at to full speed. Yeah, because in Japan the cars are limited to top speed of one hundred and eleven miles an hour, and you think that's fast enough, right, But here in the States they allow them up to that. I think it's a hundred fifty six or something like

that in Japan. In Japan, it detects where you are and knows that you're at a known location that's a race track, and it's simply just electronically disables those speed limitters, so it allows like an unlimited top end. Now you could blow up your engine, sure, but it remotely does that. It's very smart in the way that it does that.

So I don't see any problem with having GPS detect you know that you're at Burger King, or at the nearer dealership or near the gas station in town that happens to be offering the lowest price on fuel at the day. Tech Nickel problem, Yeah, exactly, Yeah, well, yeah, there's ethical problems with this, sure, sure, but yeah, or even or going even weirder and deeper, like your phone knows that you're having a bad day because it can read some of your biometrics whenever you put it up

to your ear. It knows that you just yelled at your significant other in the middle of a conversation, and it says, hey, buddy, how about some ice cream? Huh? Or just gonna lead you back into Burger King because they probably have ice cream, they have chicken ice cream. We're monitoring what you just spent a Burger King and buddy, that's not enough chicken fries. I think it's it's all that's out of the question that you know they can read blood pressure from your hand, your hand gripping the

steering wheel, not at all. Well, I don't know specifically about blood pressure in the hand on the wheel, but certainly not a problem that it could buy various means learn things about your condition. Well, your your your car seat already knows about how much you weigh. So it's a short skip and a jump to to a lot of the rest of the stuff and skin conducting, and

the price of those sensors plummets for a while. They're talking about seats that would recognize the owner of the vehicle based on the kind of thee and the weight and all that, and you would learn, it would adapt, and they realized that it was just something people didn't really want. People got uncomfortable. You can see that. Yeah, okay, I've got another one. I don't know if this is feasible at all, because I don't know if any car manufacturers would actually want to do this to their own

customers or vehicles. But I also thought about the possibility of a car that intentionally sabotages its own performance if you don't use manufacturer approved products or parts. Completely believed that could happen. Really, Yeah, it wouldn't drive. It wouldn't be a matter of sabotage. It would be a matter of non compliance. Wouldn't work. It would be like trying to Uh, it would be like trying to take um proprietary plug for one kind of smartphone and trying to

use it on another brand. That's exactly what to say. It becomes a proprietary issue where they would say, Um, we're gonna we're gonna make this thing have a little bit. There's gonna be a quirk to it that we own, and you're gonna have to You're gonna have to adhere to that. You're gonna have to buy our part because otherwise it just simply won't work and it needs to

be replaced. And this doesn't even have it could be something mechanically even it could be the shape of it, or it could be it doesn't have to be electronic, but but electronic is probably the way to go with something like that. Sure, they could do that, they can make it very exclusive. Uh, I mean, aren't there aren't there laws out there? I'm not sure about this. I'm asking if you guys know, aren't there laws that prohibit companies from making things that proprietary and in certain systems.

You know, one thing that comes to mind is in simple and I don't know if this is really what you're getting at or not, but um, car radios, and it's just that that's what in a nightmare situation for a long long time. And of course you know now they've got really really advanced systems and it's it's a

lot more like a computer now. Back in their early days, when you're just pulling one radio out and trying to put another one in and after market one, that was often a really difficult scenario, you mean, trying to figure out which where I went where and they didn't have

the adapter sets like they do now. And yeah, I don't want this to be splitting hairs, but maybe maybe the way to phrase it is that in many industries where they cannot say thou shalt not be overly proprietary, what they do instead is say, these are the standards you must meet at some point that and and do it how you will, but this is what we need to have here. Here's an example, like let's say you go to uh you want a cannon filter for your your vehicle, and they're they're doing a lot better now

working with manufacturers to make these things actually fit. You know, you're not trying to shoot orn something that doesn't work. But but I think there's also that stipulation that once you tamper with the intake, you know, the air intake of the factory vehicle. You know, once you want you do that, you're you're you're giving up. You're right to come back to them and say that the warranty is

still in place of bit. But again, I don't know exactly how, I haven't looked into this in a while, but I think that in the past it used to be that if you do that, you can do that. That's fine. It you can it's possible, it's physically possible to do it, and you probably will enjoy the results,

but you've just avoided your warranty. Now, I think that a lot a lot of manufacturers are working with some of the bigger, more trusted brands and aftermarket accessory type places and saying, yeah, that's reasonable, but we'll work with you on it so that it doesn't harm our system as well or our vehicle as well. You know, the part that we own under warranty for that amount of time. And I think it's just a smart way to do it.

Some high end brands will some high end brands will definitely go in the direction of not only proprietary parts and proprietary software, but measures to prevent too much fusing around with it. Yeah, like, well, we'll allow you to do that, in fact, will make it easier for you. But that comes with a partnership with that aftermarket parts. It'll be almost like how they're in network providers and insurance. I've got actually a positive one if you guys don't

mind a positive one sneaking in here. Yeah, we need it, right, it's always positive on here. Uh So, so maybe in the future, with all of this computerization, recall where the problems might be able to be solved with a software update, the same way that you update an app on your phone. I mean that that could be cool. It's totally possible. In fact, doesn't that happened recently? I think there was

a was it Tesla? Then? I think that there was like a flash update or something that that solves some problems. They don't have a dealership to begin with, so there would be a problem, and it makes some improvements to things that weren't broken to begin with. But Tesla is a very forward you know, I thought it's not out of question that that could happen with other manufacturers as well too, So yeah, they're on it. Although the flip side of enforcing software updates, of course is uh, planned

obs lessons. Yeah. So, anybody who has owned a smartphone, particularly an iPhone at some points noticed that once you get to the point where the iOS is too smart for your current version or generation of the phone, it begins to run less and less efficiently. Could that happen with vehicles? That's that's a question. Could could the software in your you know, two thousand seventeen Mercedes or whatever we said earlier? Could it be obsolete by two thousand

twenty one? So you're saying this is going to degrade over time, like over the years, it just starts to work, and then yeah, like software bloat for your car, like eventually it stops working as well because the software updates have done something to prevent it from our our the

software updates are out pacing the hardware. It seems like you'd have to have a shield in place so that the safety systems don't they're not affected by that, so that you know, that those collision avoidance parts of that system as at if as they've always been, as as quick as they've always been. But you know, maybe the Facebook app doesn't work. That's fine, you know, like that can, that can kind of there's room for air on that versus you know, smashing into a wall or or a person.

Your fuel efficiency declines over time or your or maybe it just becomes less likely to start when you turn the key, and then your insurance company starts charging you every day that you're driving unsafely. Yeah, that's so negative. Well what if it? What if you could do like you can also make real time games. That's kind of

interesting another day, I guess. Oh yeah, yeah, like that game that I'm completely forgetting the name of where you're on the blue team or the green team and it's kind of like King of the Hill and you play with all these other random people and and mostly it just amounts to a lot of nerds like walking around looking for certain like parts of it. Just they're just glued to their phones and like furiously punching on the

like no I'm here button, anyone, anyone. No, I don't know what you're talking about, but I understand the concept in general, of the idea of being able to play a game with your phone. Some people have gamified running through you know, apps like Zombies Run. What if you could gamify drying dry drying, driving driving, Yes, that is the verb. I'm sure somebody has already done this in a way, but they, you know, do it through your

phone or something like that. You can gamify and sleep now at this point, because they've got about talk to your your mattress really oh right, right, yeah, then all kinds of sleep technology. You had poor sleep last night. Him. Uh. And of course there's the old worry about hacking. Uh, there's there's I mean, I guess it's everything old is new again. It's it's happened, it's happening right now. Well maybe not right now, but oh yeah. We've certainly talked

about that on the show before. Um. But one thing I do want to say right as we as we finish up here, on top of the fact that, I want to thank Scott and Ben for joining us just so much. Thank you, real pleasure to have you guys on the pleasure is all ours, and thank you again for having us on the show. We have We always love getting out of the studio, our own studio and

coming over to your studio and which is the same studio. Yeah, well, you know, there's a whole different theater of the mind, Joe, come on. Yeah, it's like we only have our have our own show, our own stage or something. But but no, it's it's fun too. It's fun to come in and do another show occasionally. Yeah. But the thing I want to come back to is that I really, on the whole, I feel pretty good about the computerization of cars and the things that will allow cars to do. I certainly

don't want to be a downer on that. In general. Yea, with new frontiers and technology, it's always important to explore the things that we might want to be worried about so that we can bring them up with with manufacturers and regulators before they happen, of course, and now is

the time absolutely to do that. I read a thing from the Boston Consulting Group that said that premium cars these days run with from a hundred microprocessors and like a hundred million lines of code, which is more than a fighter jet for the record, So I mean, if you were planning on comparing your your car to a fighter jet, then it's a useful way of putting things to perspective. But yes, so so, there's so much of

this out there. There's only going to be more in the future, and we're curious to see how it all shakes out. But hey, what about you guys at home? Uh, do you have crazy computerized cars? How do you feel about them? Is your car night writer? If so, call me? Uh? You can? You can get in touch with Scott and Ben how Oh yeah, you can visit us at Facebook or Twitter where we are car Stuff hs W. Can

find our website car Stuff Show dot com. And if you want to email us directly with a feedback or an idea or just a funny joke, but make sure it's good, then our email addresses car stuff at House of Works dot com. And you can get in touch with us by emailing us at FW thinking at how stuff Works dot com. You can visit our website, which is also FW thinking dot com. You can find us on Twitter, Facebook, or Google Plus. I think you can

figure out how to do so. Uh. We hope to hear from you, and you will hear from us again really soon. We're more on this topic and the future of technology. This is forward sinking dot Com brought to you by Toyota Let's Go Places,