All right, we'll just take a moment everyone, because this is obviously a John Kodogan episode. We're all three of us are here, and I imagine there's a lot of car companies listening right now. They're just waiting for their lawyer to come in the office. So we'll give you guys a minute. So just get your note pad and pens ready and we'll transcribers. We'll start in a second. Yeah, the transcribers. Wasn't that fun last time? Yeah?
John, I don't know if you know this, but last time you were here, we had we're chatting about.
A variety of topics and an email from.
A certain car company and there was four or five pages of transcription of a particular section.
They didn't like that.
I am absolutely toughed that you paid someone to transcribe word for word.
Yes, that's not liking it is okay, that's allowed.
Do you know what of the funniest things about it was some idiot from these car companies was paid good money to transcribe this podcast. Let's just call this idiot. Oh, I don't know, no. But the best bit is.
Was there a threat that went with it? Please tell me there was it? Was injurious falsehood.
No, no, it was a veiled threat. It was one of those ones where if you ask them to, you know, follow it up, they probably wouldn't. But I was just so pleased that someone actually wasted time transcribing.
Yeah, it is awesome, and then that nothing screams validation louder than that. Yep, we care about what you said. Here's a transcription and the threat.
And as I'm reading it, I actually left. I'm like
that bit was quite funny. Actually, yeah, it was such a BS transcription too, because it was a bit of a sort of back and forth between between us all and like some some big chunky bits from yourself and then Paul, then you, then Paul, and then it gets to Gordy and it was like my one line in this school play, and it was like my big one line in this entire thing was something so unimportant like yeah, and I bet she's got an itchy vagina, right, And then it goes back and forth like enough to dip
him over the edge. So John Kodogin's in the house. Welcome buddy, Thank you.
But I am sorry though that the podcast has come to this, because last time I spoke to you it was going so well, and how long has it been on the slide where you had to get you know, dredge up me again.
Yeah, well let's it.
Trevor wasn't available, so we thought, you don't want to know what Trevor's been up to, mate.
He's been back on the piss, he's fallen off the wagon. The guy who doesn't drink has been seen out the front of a pub and he's back on the lemon Ruskies. Like, what a fucking units.
I do hate it to see a good man's slip.
So I thought we'd kick off this discussion.
You went on a trip recently with Mitsubishi to the Flinders Rangers and this is the.
Most dignified car company tantrum of all time. Dude, Like, I roast the shit out of their marketing for the Outlander plug in hybrid and they said, yeah, we can see where you're coming from. Would you like to come to the Flinders Ranges because it's actually pretty good off road and we want to show you. And what was I going to say?
No, fuck off, come on, I'm doing my hair that I went.
Yeah, okay, well that that'd a bit. That sounds like fun because all of a sudden, you've got resources. You can interview the CEO, and the tech guy comes along, and they've got a cinematographer and you can actually it doesn't look like a vlog because somebody else is shooting it with a proper camera, and you can put it together in different ways, and there's a master interview with the boss and a master interview with Yoda of this stuff.
It was all quite It was almost like, you know, being a professional.
It'd be also interesting to see what they use on their behalf as well, do you know what I mean, Like you'd be there kind of doing your thing. I wonder if they'd use any John Kdogan grabs.
Well, they didn't really. I knew Oliver Man, who was their marketing director for ages and is the sort of Yoda of their pr. I've known him for a couple of decades, so he knew me quite well. But the rest of them expected me to be the character on YouTube, like that toxic shitthead who just comes out occasionally in the most garage. And I think it was it was just difference, like I don't know meeting anybody else who's got a persona, but it's less than you expect in many ways.
Well, I was actually curious to see what you thought, because a lot of people don't know and they didn't really advertise this week. We found this out after. I think it was the original launch of the outlanda plug in hybrid that their CEO drove across part of the Simpson Desert in one and it was lightly modified. I think it all terrains on it, and it was a couple of other sort of bits and pieces, but it
was fairly stock in that regard. What did you think about the actual And obviously this isn't a land Creus of three hundreds. You're not expecting it to be able to climb a rock face.
Now, It's not one of those high luxes where some punter goes to ab and slaps fifty grand on them desk and goes.
Just get started and I'll tell you when you stop, mate.
So it's not that. But the reality is I see a lot of families, right, and they get a land cruiser or a high lux and they spend twenty grand on it, and it's optimized for their adventuring, which they do for two to four weeks a year, which is something like ninety five per percent of the time, the driving that they do, it's not optimized for and in fact it's fairly shit at that Whereas you know, we didn't do that kind of real aggressive, hardcore four wheel driving,
but we did some stuff that would have stopped some other soft roaders, right, And it was really interesting to drive a vehicle that's only got electric drive to the wheels at that speed and the super all ohel control it's very capable. You get two wheels up in the air and everything had just there'd be a like a pause. Things have been spinning and the super all wheel control got a problem. Houston and figures it out and then
you just start moving again. So hats off to them for having the balls to do that and bringing Satan along, Like Jesus, that's a ballsy call.
But they all want their best behavior, making sure we're recording them.
They were refreshingly authentic, normal people.
That's good, which is.
Kind of very unlike a lot of other car company interactions you have as a journalist where they've all got the game face on and it never drops.
How was that, by the way, how was it mingling with the vultures that is the car industry? The other journals because I walk into those things and I'm just like, well, I do not fit in obviously.
Well imagine being or not universally but almost universally detested. Because one of the most hilarious things about car makers and journalists, right, car makers invite journalists to have their product reviewed, but they hate criticism and motoring journalists spend their lives reviewing cars, so they spend their lives actually assessing critiquing other people's products, and they hate it when their product is critiqued by anyone. And I find that
totally perverse. Like You're going to review endlessly some product right from all these different manufacturers, and if you fuck it up, you hate being reviewed critiqued.
It's like you condition out but you can't take it.
Yeah, and I'm happy for anyone to critique me. Yeah, oh a ton of there's a ton of critique. Like you put your head above the trend. There's no shortage of freaking critique, dude, you know.
Yeah, Well, look, I think it's interesting when you mentioned the journalist's side of things, because that landscape is changing. Like back when you were sort of properly in the industry, it was typically older men who had been doing it for a long time. They had a big bank of knowledge and you could actually rely on them to give you a good comparison to other vehicles these days, go to an event and it's full of influencers.
Excuse me, sorry, could you just come me in influence that I was just pointing past you? Other influences right, Yep.
It's genuinely just people that they know having a social media account that will get them some coverage for their brand, and they know most importantly that that person probably won't be critical because it's a new car and.
It's a free lunch.
So that that landscape is changing a lot, and it's moved very much away from being in a position where you can openly be critical about something on a manufacturer event because they're so perfectly crafted for them to get the sort of outcome that they want from it.
Here's the information, here's the product. You can take as many selfies as you want, here's your video assets, here's your still image assets.
Just be nice, yep, exactly, That's all you have to do.
But the funniest thing to me is like when I was in the industry, I would have a woman from a particular car company ring me up after everything I did on Wheels magazine or something, and I'd see her number come up on the phone and go Jesus, and I just say, OK, what have I got wrong this month?
You know?
And since I burned all the bridges, like since the carnage, a post apocalypse of me, I never get a call. It's like you can strafe at will hell, fire missiles, whatever any ordinance you want, and it's like the response is deafening silence. Like you get a transcription. I get nothing.
That's a good Can I ask what was it? What was it? Like? Sort of going back a little bit that time when you're sort of breaking out and you're doing your own thing, like it's it's kind of like you've broken format, you know what I mean.
It's like you've burnt the Koran on the steps of the moths, right, You've.
Kind of you've done this set way and everyone's happy, smiley people for a long long time, and then all of a sudden you're like, fuck it, I'm going to do my own thing. I'm going to go shoot my sheer it literally in my garage, but I'm going to talk about what I really think Is that a nerve raking experience or is that? But is it also a liberating experience.
It's nerve wracking first and because you don't know what's going to happen, right. It's like getting into the ring. When you get into the ring with an opponent for the first time. You don't know what's going to happen. You don't know if they're going to murder you, right, and then you figure them out a little bit and you're just kind of playing along. And then so it really was utterly nerve wracking to do it because there's no coming back, right. It is Dresden on the fifteenth
of February nineteen forty five. And then afterwards it's just liberating. Now I've got two different camps of car makers. I've got the car makers that I will communicate with and I'll say, hey, I'm doing a package on you, and you're not.
Going to like it, you know, so you word them up.
Well, I've got a small number of car makers that I've got enough respect for. Principally they're pr people. I think they're professional or ethical whatever. I've got a decent enough relationship with them. It's not whether I like them or not. It's whether I respect them professionally, and I just word them up. I say, hey, just say you don't get blindsided. You know this release that you put out.
I'm having a real crack at it. And they're the ones who've often said to me, like, we love your staff, dude, as long as it's not about.
Us, right, it's a media watch.
Yeah, it's kind of that, and the rest of them it's just a gravity bomb from left field. And I do find it liberating not to not to have to worry about like I remember one time a major car company that no longer operates in Australia. All manufacturers cars in Australia, which one had a had a lion on the bonnet, and there was a story on I think it was a current affair. No, it's today tonight, and they were really not happy with it, and all I was, all I was. The only thing I did was I
was interviewed, right, so a producer rang me up. I never heard of this producer. I didn't know them. And I was on the road to Canberra and they said, we'd really like to talk about Asian cars and the proliferation of Asian cars. I was like, yeah, okay, sure, but I'm on the road to Canberra, and they said we'll just do it in the studio at Parliament House,
and I went sure. So I drive there and I'm dressed like a scumbag like I had now like in my regular and I had to dress up like a criminal, so I had to put a proper shirt on and you know, leather shoes and all of that stuff, and walk in looking like a borderline criminal tooir the National Monument to the death of integrity. Anyway, we do this, we do this interview. I'm happy with everything I said, but the rest of the report was a piece of shit and factually incorrect, and I had nothing to do
with it. Anyway. They're advertising dude, their top advertising dude goes talks to seven stop advertising dude, and the usual threats come out, and I go under the bus. I go, hang on a minute. Everything I said was accurate and right, like factually correct. The rest of the report, go and talk to the reporter about that, because that ain't me, dude.
It's the good thing about free media with stuff like that. And I imagine when you sort of break away from say a magazine or what you're sort of traditionally used to. As you said, it's like, fuck, I'm how am I going to own a living? I'm going out on my own. I'm doing this YouTube thing.
It's not even that. It's like to get a story up on tabloid TV. The approvals process is like Jesus, You've got to get a reporter on side, and he's got to get a producer on side, and the executive producer's got to sign off. And one time, when I was working for Channel nine, the executive producer of a current affair says, come out for lunch. I go sure, right, So we go out to lunch to that restaurant in Crow's Nest where they do all the deals, that Chinese restaurant.
And I've got ten pictures right, like in my repertoire, I've got here are the top ten stories I think we should do, because when does this opportunity come up? Like statistically never and I go boom, mostly because it's TV and everyone's got a short attention span. Most impressive story. First toll road challenge right where we go and get identical cars from an identical start point. We end up in the CBD. One car does a rat run another car takes the toll roads right, and the EP looks
at me and goes, dude, that's not for us. I can't see that working. So about six weeks later, I get this call from a reporter and he goes, mate, mate, we need a story. We need it pretty quickly. We need to do it. This week got to be carstory. Blah blah blah. I got toll Road Challenge and the goldfish has gone around the bowl but ten times, you know, and they go, yeah, okay, we'll do that challenge.
It breaks.
It's freaking tits off that we've got the chopper up and all of that, and and that we're next thing. I know, we're doing toll road Challenge in Melbourne and challenge in fucking Brisbane and they've got no idea what's going to rate.
Right.
Yeah, So when you're doing your own thing, you have this meeting with the production team in the freaking shower every morning and you go, we're going to do this, and the team goes right, and we just do that. It's great, very streamline.
I wont saw a news story speaking of Tolero challenges similar sort of thing, which was demonstrating how terrible Melbourne traffic was right, and they literally got a car starting from point A to point B during peak hour and Steve Montaghetti starting in point A to point B and it was like fucking hell. I just remember them selling the shit out of this. I'm like, this is this is news? What's name he Robson doing? Isn't she a certified journal No, she's She's got a fucking lizard on
her shoulder and probably a porno passed. I imagine we did.
The same thing on sixty Minutes with Liam Bartlett when he was on sixty We we got I think it was Steve Montaghetty and he ran along. He ran from the spit to the CBD and it was like a photo finish at the opera house and the way sixty Minutes roll there was like fifteen camera crews and the chopper and it's like, yeah.
Steve Montaghetti, just on a side note, was like a mega name at my primary school because I'm pretty sure he was from Geelong. When he was in the Comwealth Games or the Olympic Games or something, he was running and they got the satellite TV up for us to watch it at primaries.
And now how the tides have change. You just walked through that. Hey, kids, you need me to do a talk, and then the police come and take it away. Stay away from the children. Yes, I'm curious.
I watched twenty videos on the weekend about the cyber truck and look if you put the styling to one side, because I think it looks totally fucking stupid.
If you put that to one side, well.
Let's put it down as distinctive.
Yeah, distinctive, there it is.
I just think electric trucks in general are just such a stupid idea if you try and use them as an electric truck which is towing safe.
On fundamental physics, they're ridiculous.
It's insane. The battery is enormous.
When you get into this law of diminishing returns, right, because when you make the vehicle bigger, you need a bigger battery to haul it around. And batteries are bloody heavy things because they're not very energy dense. So you need a heavy battery to hold a comparatively small amount of energy with respect to the amount of energy you would have with, for example, hydrocarbons. And therefore the bigger
you make the vehicle, the bigger the battery. And the more energy the battery has to stump up just to move the fucking battery from A to B. So that's kind of a problem, and you make the vehicle bigger and bigger and bigger. And when you talk about something like the Tesla Semi or these trucks that have been converted in Melbourne and Sydney to run on electric with the swappable batteries, it just makes to me less and
less sense. And it only makes sense in the context of this sort of religious fervor that evs are being embraced within, like the regulatory framework and all of that kind of thing, because on fundamentals, they're just stupid.
Yeah, and I actually you can tell that Tesla is worried. No one's going to buy this one. It's disastrously late. But two, didn't Elon Muska like it was twenty nineteen.
Yeah, didn't he produce more children than cyber truck during that time much.
But he promised it in two years. It took four years. He promised it to be forty grand at sixty yep, and he promised, and the sixty eight hundred k's of range and it's got like five hundred.
And the sixty grand one you won't be able to buy till twenty twenty five if ever. Yeah, And then to show you how I guess scared they are of this, they fired their PR team famously a long time ago, and people don't know that. In Australia they still have a PR team, but they just name them something different, so that on the books that don't look like a PR tell ye, yeah, something like that.
So probably Pavlas coming pissed from his Christmas party and he nearly had a bomb mid sentence going.
No, no, no, that's staying in. I'll replay that in isolated later on.
That'll be the promo.
What you just saw. What you just saw is also his com face.
Yeah, I thought that's where.
That's how you guys because you ended up working for John, isn't that.
But yeah, So they famously fired their PR team and in the States they haven't run a press fleet for I think for probably five or six years. If you have a look now, every big name YouTuber has a press car.
They're doing ridiculous brownlee.
Yeah carwow, shut the ship out of it? Did you say that?
So they all have and that to me tells me they are very concerned because when modelesque Plaid came out, they basically just didn't give anyone anything and they all had to rent cars from zero to get what they needed. So I think they are desperately worried about this. And if you look at this further afield, we have the announcement from Hertz and six to that they're binning Tesla's because they're depreciation disaster appreciation disasters that the price is
fluctuating like a massive amount. Repairs are expensive, They're just not a good idea. So I think the gloss is really coming off Tesla at the moment, and further afield to electric vehicles in spaces where they don't belong. So entry level cheap electric cars kind of makes sense because consumers can afford them, but expensive electric cars the sales are declining, and in that pickup truck world they are just so stupid because.
Like I said, Ford's got as many f one fifty Lightnings as you want to buy, pretty stretching over the horizon, right, And it's really interesting to me that these mainstream manufacturers forward General motors, they're all sprinting away at a million miles an hour at the moment from their earlier commitments and the way they do business, they don't say no, we bone that. They go on, we're just delaying our twelve billion dollar EV plan, and we're delaying it until
the heat death of the freakin universe. But no, we're just delaying it. And the Volkswagen is doing a similar thing, right because after Diesel Gate, Volkswagen had to clean itself up publicly on an image basis. And then so what they did was they instituted this guy, Herbert Dis as the CEO, and his mission was to talk up the clean, green, electrified Volkswagen of the future. And aren't we nice now? We're no longer conspiratorial criminals aiming to poison humanity where
we're really nice dudes now. That'll be in the transcript.
Right and were actually a year are not far off?
And what started with a V I'm pretty sure. But anyway, the bottom line there is that the union's got a couple of seats on the Volkswagen board and they started to have a look at how many jobs were going to be lost and they had basically a tantrum. And the result of that is they boned mister Dis. And he's okay because he landed on his wallet. They put in a friend of the family from Porsche as the CEO, and his job is to keep saying yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
But they're walking back from Trinity and walking back from the two billion dollar EV factory conversion in Wolfsburg, so seemingly everyone's walking back from it. And Tesla's in this position where it's making a high capital cost item with relatively low margins and it's just had a major price company. He can't do that too much before you go out the back door. With cars, you can't just twenty percent off today, twenty percent off tomorrow. You can't have a
fire sale after that. That there's a limit to the amount of discounting with cars. But also the nature of.
The business pisses customers oft and customers were okay when the resale value of EV's on the second hand market was strong because there were long wait times. That's now gone. I have for car sales alert for model threes and model wise. Every day there's like an extra thirty or forty listed and they going down. Old mate, that just dropped me off here in the Uber Tesla Model three driver.
He basically bought his at the peak his car lost about eight thousand dollars over the time he owned it, and now is a second hand vehicle.
It's tanked.
So I think that the thing that Tesla doesn't understand, or is starting to realize very quickly, is that in a race to the bottom of the Chinese the Chinese will win.
They've got under leavers, they can pull.
On price, and they've already flogged the Europeans and the US other US brands on the price walk, but China's going to have them, So.
He's going to have the mass market too. Right, Tesla doesn't have a mass market car like the entry level.
Tesla is much something thousand dollars.
An affluent person's car. You don't have to be super wealthy. But the other interesting thing that I saw in the past couple of weeks was a story in Daily Mail or one of those online newspapers. A woman journalist there grabs a who's having a Corolla, like a twenty eleven Corolla as her day driver. Right, she drives to Melbourne from Sydney regularly. She gets an Ionic five.
Right, this is the story I brought up the other day.
Yeah, it costs like fifty percent more and takes fifty percent longer yep to do that drive. So unless you are embracing electrification as if it's a religion, that's intolerable.
And some of the hoops she had to jump through like she was on Vodaphone and that didn't have network coverage at the charger she was at, so she had to walk like four, She had to get a kid in the car, She had to get a stranger to plug the charger into the car while she was four hundred meters away of McDonald's where they did have a hotspot.
Unbelievable.
So she has to waive at this stranger the kids and he has to plug the bloody the charger in while she's got coverage like this is not robust infrastructure.
No, Well, in Australia, it's proven to not be the case.
And we actually just did a drive with two seven series because we did this a while ago in a Q five diesel and an EV six ye and the drive ended up being slightly cheaper in the EV six because one of the chargers a full seventy or seventy old killer. What our charge was free. Had it have not been free, would have been more expensive. And people
complained that the cars weren't the same. So we took a seven forty, which is internal combustion turbo six, and then we took the I seven drove them from Melbourne to Sydney and we had the exact same experience where I'm going to ruin the story here because the video is not live yet, but the petrol car was cheaper. And in addition to that, just before we got to Tarkata, which is a halfway point, almost ran out of charge, and then the Optus network failure happened and all the
EV chargers weren't working. And Tarkata this time a year is wonderful. It's about forty eight thousand degrees and there's shitloads of flies.
For some bizarre reason.
This was the only TV charger they didn't have on the Optus network, so it actually worked. But had it have not worked, the guy said I we should reroute, and I said I'm not going to reroute because if I was an average consumer here and my family was in the car, I wouldn't have just assumed that this would work because it's electricity and I can plug it into a car. Electricity is not down. It's the phone network.
But you need the phone network to activate the thing, and they've just actually announced the other day they're putting tap and go terminals in. I'm like, all right, well, that still doesn't solve the problem. When you tap and go it needs to authenticate, which it needs phone coverage. We're gonna have the same problem.
Might rock up to this charge. I think we really realized when an absolute shit show that thing caused, like absolutely people couldn't get ambulances and all sorts of stuff like the fact that you're stranded.
That was an unmitigated disaster. And the way that that lady, the CEO handled it was fucking comical as well. That was the worst thing I've ever seen. But look, I mean this all sounds very anti EV, but I've had an EV now for four years and predominantly charged it at home. Don't have an issue, but that's because my second car and any work car I want to take typically internal combustion. So on a public holiday or excuse me, there's another one public holidays, you.
Seem to lud proudly brought to you by the Car Expert Christmas party.
Poor John is just like I did this podcast. One little shit bought his dog the other fucking Pavlay just was on the verge of vomiting all over the desk. What have I signed up for?
No, it's okay, dude, I got some meth in the bank.
Everyone's happy.
But yeah, I just think that I'm not ragging on evs here. It's just Australia sucks. And I read somewhere that they're about to put SLAS in so service level agreements on public charging that is funded by taxpayers, and it's about fucking time because the private companies are just taking all your taxpayer dollars.
On this issue of Australia's fucked. Okay, when I burned all the bridges a few years ago now, but their smoke was still in the air pretty thick around the world. I used to refer I started referring because every when you do a show and it's just you, everything's got to be a character, right, So I don't call the joint Australia. I call it the Shitsville. Yes, And I used to have people email me all the time and comment like and hear.
Why you're just fuck were?
They mainly from queensa scam country between New Zealand and.
I'm sorry, I'll tell my mum to stop emailing's annoying.
Kind of like that. But now I call the giant shitsville. Nobody arks up, Nobody says no, no, it's not fucked because it.
Is, because it's true.
Yeah, and look on a comparative level between us and you know gars are at the moment, obviously Australia is significantly better, but I mean still better than Yemen. Yeah, there are a lot of places that are significantly worse off series as a country.
Ayria, Ethiopia is probably not great.
We have become a shithole, yeah, we have, we have, and it is depressing.
I find like when you go overseas you sort of have this realization where Australia is not that sort of like check out what you can do in Australia. It's very much what you can't do, or a country of rules of what you can't do. And I sort of look at that that that whole debarcle. My family is all from Melbourne and during the way like the COVID was treated down there with Dan, I couldn't believe it. I wanted, wasn't it. I wanted to pack my ship and leave the country. And I'm like how is that
guy allowed? Like, how is this sort of stuff allowed? But I think on a world scale, it very much is like we are lucky in a lot of ways, but we've got a lot of fucking rules we have.
We have this pedestrian overpass in our suburb between two retail precincts, and it was terrible because the it was it was very narrow, and that meant that the traffic going from the massage parlors on one side to the massage parlors on the other side it was always a bottleneck, right, So they fixed it up and we've got a nice wide new pedestrian overpass now over the railway line and the and the main sort of street. So traffic between massage parlor is very efficient.
Yes, much less is now punctual to get a much less time is wasted betwixt you know, venues.
And I looked up today when I was you know, en route, so to speak, and there's this sign that details what's prohibited on the freaking overpaths. One too many prohibitions in most of that. But it's highly competitive. That's the best part about competition. But it's just like fucking seventeen things that aren't allowed on a pedestrian overpass, like and they could have done better because there was no
AR fifteen symbol with a line through it. You know, there was no There was no crystal meth in a syringe with a line. These were just things like no riding a trailbike over the pedestrian.
My local park has a sign no ship that says and it's like a tiny park in the middle of like sort of a town square, and it says it literally has a no horses sign the every time, and then there's like there's also like a like a marijuana leaf symbol and then the no thing and pops is all my kids always like pointing at the sign and going, dad, what does that mean? I'm like, trust me, by the time you're old enough to understand, that'd be scrubbed off.
Horses love merrill.
Have you ever got hired with a horse? It's also the best the horse turns into a unicorn. That's how that invented. I did want to talk about just real quick. I did see one of your videos which was about six dumping Tesla's. I know they've still kept the byds, but it's an interesting one. And again I know this feels like a real big dump on Tesla, but it does.
It does feel like an interesting one that the fact that they've gone and kept one ev company and dumped another one purely for what maintenance reasons or at.
The end of the day, Rental kind of hurts did this as well.
Well.
It was even funnier when Hurtz did it because because when Hertz announced this major acquisition in the United States of Tesla's, it was like one hundred thousand Teslas and Tesla's share price topped one trillion US dollars. So Elon Musk's walking around with a big TP in his trousers all day long. The CEO of Hurtz doubtless ditter, you know. So it's like very aroused at that time. A few years later, right, the reality has bitten. Tesla's had the
big price cut, there's been major depreciation problem. And this is this is bad for individual owners, but it's a disaster for car rental companies because they own, they buy the car, and then they get rid of it, and the difference in those costs times the number of cars
is very significant on their bottom line. And the other thing with rental cars is punters crash them all the time, and Tesla's are freaking expensive to repair, and both of those things in concert it just ruined the deal for Hurtz. But they all got their stiffies out of it and they got their big valuation and now it's just time for reality. You've got to pay up right, And the same thing happened as sixth and it's just not a
viable thing EVA is currently. You look at the lineup in Australia, there's a couple of affordable ones, right, but they're really just rich virtuous Twats, Toys, Present Company, etcetera.
Absolutely yeah, And I mean you just have a look at the average Australian who is currently struggling to feed themselves, and you want to go tell them to go buy seventy thousand dollars EV suv because you're doing the right thing. Like no, I actually would like to just feed the family first.
And he's just driving around the kids in the back hungry. But fuck them, I'm saving the world though, Dad can have a snack. No, I'm too busy sorting out my carbon footprint.
Yeah, but net zero right, cars like Arsenal transportation cars, they call them quote unquote light vehicles, they're about ten percent of our national emissions. And therefore, if we waved Harry Potter's frigging let's call it wand at the whole problem and changed every car to a Tesla tomorrow, and it's like Oprah, You've got a Tesla, and you've got a Tesla. All right, everyone's got a Tesla. Emissions improved
by ten percent. But we're still the world's biggest exporter of coal and the world's biggest exporter of liquefied natural gas. So that's not intensely hypocritical or anything, is it.
You know?
So if you wanted to divorce yourself from coal, you could spend twenty grand and get a kick ass solar array on the roof of your house and a decent battery, and it would be a big battery, would be twenty killer what hours for home system? You look at that ridiculous Kia EV nine that's just been launched. It's got a one hundred kilo what our battery? And this is a Kia for a hundred thirty thousand dollars air ffes.
What do you think it looks? How did you how did you hide Paul we just in.
The video of it recently, I said the exact same thing. I actually like the way it looks.
I don't mind it visually.
Oh my god, Seriously, it's the biggest hunk of shit.
Weighs two point six tons and it's five and a half meters long.
Yeah, you don't have the range. It weighs an enormous amount. You're limited on towing capacity, You're limited on anything that you want to do with it. You could buy a top spec Carnival plus have an MX five or something like two of them will I don't even know what the numbers are.
By a Diesel Carnival, you could put a kick as solar array on the roof and a battery on your house, and you could live to all those Hireity of twenty twenty four at the Marriott in a hot tub full of cheerleaders.
Yeah, hang on, I'm doing the masks on that account. Six cheerleaders. Now. You said hot tub, right, okay, so carry the too, carry the two Now where was that such parlor? Again, that's not part of the I think you're looking at a very specific customer with the with the EV nine because, like all the things you just mentioned, Jesus Christ, like on all that, and you still want to spend one hundred and thirty grand on an ugly looking fucking beast. But Seria does look good.
I'll say, how do you save the planet two point six tons at a time? Like not possible? Right, What Australia needs is an EV with about one hundred and sixty k's of range that costs about thirty grand. Maybe one hundred and twenty would be enough if it was real range, because that'd be a let's see, thirty to forty kilo what our battery. It'd be fun.
I think it's coming small amount. It'll be a light calf, it'll.
Be Yeah, you can call it, call it the HITOI Ka doesn't need an EV nine, it needs a CHTOI yeah.
I like that.
We designed it in our studio in France.
Yeah, I totally.
I just look and for some people they'll want to spend one hundred and twenty hundred and thirty because it's the newest thing and it's it's great and all that sort of stuff. I think if you're buying it for that reason, you can go buy whatever you want. That people buy half a million dollar Porsch that is less practical than a thirty thousand dollars case around.
None of these things have to be economically rational. There's no case for economically economic rationalism of your house or fashion items or any of that. Nobody ever says, oh, my rolls. You know you don't justify that.
Yep.
Yeah, it's just when you try and justify it with this virtuous stuff that it really all just falls apart.
So quickly.
I had some guy tell me about oh, well, you know, I pointed out these deficiencies, and one of these geniuses in the comments says, well, you can't have You can't make an omelet without breaking a few eggs. And I immediately went, well, where's your fucking omelet?
I want to see this omelet?
Yeah, because you've got the extra cost, and you've got the charging, like you have to do special ops planning to charge on a long drive. That's not fun, and you get yourself in situations where you're at a choke point. If the next charger doesn't work, you're screwed. That's not fun. It's okay if you're a motoring journalist and you just make a call and go.
Bring the tow truck. Yeah, but if.
You just done to one hundred and thirty grand on your new EV and you're in that situation that's very stressful.
Okay, well, I was just going to ask you, then, what do you think is the future? Then? Do you think just sort of looking at what Toyota is doing by delaying EV's I mean, that's a massive company, one of the world's biggest car makers. You would think they would have some idea of what's going on?
Do you reckon?
They've got the right idea about going hold on, We're going to wait till battery tech improves. Is battery tech improving? I mean you look at Tesla's the forty three eighty CEL that still hasn't really materialized or brought any advantages.
But it's not really a tech change because there's still a lithium based battery. Right. The tech doesn't change. There's refinements of the tech, but there's no new battery tech. New battery tech is a little bit like Elon Musk's based on Mars that he promised in ten years and twenty eleven, still about ten years away. Full autonomy is twelve to eighteen months away, right, Fusion powers five to ten years away. It's been like that since last twelve
years old. Right, it's that kind of thing. So you know, lithium ion batteries were commercialized in the early nineties, so we've had them for thirty years. The tech is mature, that doesn't have a tremendous amount of refinement left. And the thing is, you know, one of the reasons why Porsche take hands burst into flames all the time comparatively, it's because they're tuned for performance. They're tuned for a
high discharge rate. So you're in this box. If you're the designer of a battery to do a particular job, if you tweak it for discharge to make lots of power quickly, you compromise other areas such as safety and reliability. Right battery life, for example, if you tweak a battery to accept a charge quickly, you compromise its life. All engineering design is compromise based. You're in a box. You know, when you.
Think about it, they're trying to meet every brief They've got eight hundred volt architecture. They want it to charge super fast, they want it to accelerate super fast, they want it to do everything, which a battery at the moment isn't really designed don't.
We all we want everything to do everything, and you can't. The only problem is you can't have everything where would you put it? So, in answer to your question, what's the future, the future is largely internal combustion based, but there will be an incremental increase in the number of evs subject to the world's resources and the capacity to produce the batteries, et cetera. Hydrogen's got a long way
to go because of the infrastructure. The reason we're doing evs is because we've got the infrastructure more or less, like we've got wires and we generate electricity. That's doable. Okay, Hydrogen's got no infrastructure, so that's a much bigger challenge.
You use petrol stations. Yeah, I was going to say it's a sham, hasn't You could do anything.
You could have a rays on the roofs of petrol station with high pressure electrolyzers and you could manufacture it on site from water. That's pretty easy to do. But there's also the question of how green it actually is, and there's that There's that European physicist, a chick who's really good on YouTube. I forget what her name is, but she's done a whole exhaustive thing, like she's she's actually got real skin in the game of being a scientific,
full on genius. And the reality is that blue hydrogen, green hydrogen, gray hydrogen. It's all pretty filthy, right. It's just like when you drill down into batteries, they're pretty filthy. There's no exhaust emission in the city. And if you never studied STEM, that's all great, zero emissions, but it's
really not like that. And the other problem is if you want to make new vehicles and solve this problem with new vehicles, you have to make the vehicles, so you need the steel and the aluminium and the glass and the plastics and the paint and all that stuff. And none of that's clean and free either.
Do you think It's almost like ev the pr of ev worldwide got so excited too soon. It's almost like we progressed on the evolution of this thing without really taking our time, because there are a lot of faults, as we've talked about for the last half an hour in this thing.
If the problem is CO two, and it seems to me, like I'm not a climate scientist, but it seems to me that the problem is CO two and therefore it seems to me that one of the best things we can do is be as efficient as possible with our use of limited hydrocarbon resources that would reduce the amount of CO two being liberated into the atmosphere. For disambiguation, hydrocarbons are coal, natural gas, and oil, not just the
fuel that you put into your car. It's when you turn on the lights in Australia, it's all that coal and burn and it's gas as well. And you need, like, you need all of this stuff for industry, and we have to have an advanced civilization that's not optional. So we need concrete, and we need ammonia, and we need steel, and all of these things are energy intensive mother lovers
to make. And I don't want to go back to a world without steel or concrete because we're all going to be sitting on the dirt floor.
Yeah, that's the thing that kind of blows my mind with all of this. People want this green, carbon zero world, but they are not willing to make any of the compromises. Because if I said to you, okay, you really want to be carbon friendly, ride a bus with fifty other people. So that is the best way to do it instead of you driving in a single vehicle, whether it's get on train.
No one's willing to do that.
Don't buy a phone because it's full of ye they need to make, but no one's willing to do that.
So it's like this selective.
Live closer to work, that's right.
Yeah, it's this selective thing where people want to everything. It's like that battery situation. They want everything but can't get everything.
I've had people say to me. I say this kind of thing routinely on my channel, and people say, oh, the problems just the world's overpopulated, And I'm going, so you're volunteering to be part of the solution exactly, we can organize it like to remove yourself from the pool. Nobody wants to be part of the solution because the solution is unpalatable. You buy a smaller car.
Nobody wants a smaller Heavens, everyone wants, you.
Know, if you can afford a Model S, you buy a Model S or an EV nine or a cyber urinal.
It literally it does look like a big, old pissed truck, doesn't It.
Was inspired by a railway urinal. I'm sure.
I look at the way they're doing this and they have, you're right with the influencers. It's an interesting tactic show everyone the cyber truck with influencers because I think people who already hate it have made up their mind. So if you get a car journalist in there and going, well, fucking look at the gaps here, look at this, look at this the video is I'm kicking it. Oh, mate who hates it is sitting there going yeah, see, I
fucking told you so, blah blah blahlah blah. But if you get people who are and let's be honest, like Matt Watson, for instance, from karwaw, he's actually pretty good. He's somewhat balanced, but he's even like jizzing on this thing, right, but it's content, right, it's kr waw. So he's not doing it on his own thing. He's very much on the influencer path of this, and so I think they're kind of showing it off to people who already love it, like they're controlling the narrative.
How long do you reckon it's going to be until some influencer in Marraca gets one of his mates with an aar and it all ends badly.
That's exactly what I was thinking, because it was Tesla that started marketing the fact that it's bulletproof, and you're going to get some idiot who will go they said it was, so sit inside it and someone will end up getting hurt, because it's one of those claims that even if it wasn't, don't tell people it's bulletproof because they're stupid people out there. They say that armored cars are bulletproof, but they only sell those to governments and people that actually need a bulletproof.
Sitting in the test car and shootout exactly. Here's our certification for this level of protection.
So I don't think I wanted to touch it.
And I know this whole episode sounds like hating on EV's and I'm sorry if it.
Dies for disambiguation. I don't hate evs either, but I freaking hate the way society is a lab for a whole bunch of unproven things, Like there was a massive truck fire in your about.
EV fires, I'm curious about that. Yeah, so tell me what you know about the truck fire for example.
Well, that truck was a truck owned by Sament Australia. It's a relatively modern but not new Kenworth and it's been modified by a company at Centerlink by the cup here to have six hundred killer what hours of swappable batteries in it. There's three packs. Two of the packs go in where the fuel tanks would conventionally be between the front wheels and the drive wheels of the prime mover, and one battery pack goes under the hood so to speak. Right,
So these batteries are they must be air cooled. I don't see them being liquid cooled if they're swappable by forklift, right, and one of them obviously overheated. Okay. The most hilarious thing about this is the retrofitting of the battery conversion was funded by the taxpayer, so we all paid for that.
Lovely.
That was a hugely entertaining spectacle on the Westgate Freeway, and the most likely explanation for that failure is that the truck has got a full trailer of cement. It climbs the Westgate Bridge and that requires a It's a pretty high bridge, so it requires a pretty serious discharge on the battery generates a lot of heat. A few hundred meters later, near the Todd Road exit, it catches fire because the battery is in catastrophic therm or runaway, and then the road is shut for like twelve hours.
And it's just a hasmat hilarious experience that when these things burn there are clouds of hydrofluoric acid, hydrochloric acid, carbon monoxide, and cobalt compounds, none of which you want to be near. It's all bad shit to breathe. The cobalt is just bad to get on your skin. You don't even have to breathe it. So I don't think we should be using society as a laboratory and ambient
motorists and business owners as labrats. That sucks. That would be like Boeing designing a new plane, building a prototype and then booking paying passengers from Sydney to London. That's unfreaking acceptable. So this is kind of where we're at. We don't have appropriate countermeasures for fires right of any ev in parks and all of that stuff. And you know, the religious ev evangelist types will say, oh, but EV's don't catch fire nearly as often, and therefore that's okay.
It's not really okay if it's a lower probability event and you just happen to be in it with your family and the basement of some car park and the sprinkler systems not cutting it. That sucks.
I'm wondering as well that I hear that used a lot where they say that there's a per hundred thousand. There's less EV fires when you think about it, though they're over the past five or ten years. There are less old evs than there are less old cars. So I wonder if that number of cars that have caught fire that are internal combustion are perhaps just old cars that have caught fire, whereas we're getting less EV fires because majority of them are new.
Your vehicles are more reliable. But this will do your head into what's the number one cause of vehicle fires?
Don't know?
Awesome?
Oh really, there you go.
What's the number two cause? Ye crashes? Yeah, okay, that's not really powertrain specific.
Yeah exactly, stuff that happens.
Yeah, So there's that, and then there's do you remember there was a fire of a battery pack that had been removed from an MG.
The shadow of the car park. Yeah.
Yeah, So this was a rental car holding yard and for whatever reason, it's a couple of geniuses at the rental car holding yard pulled a battery out of a damaged battery out of an EVA and just sat it on the ground for whatever length of time and it got rained on and all those things. Just shouldn't do it to a battery. There's and it took out five cars, including the car that donated the battery, but four other combustion cars are out. Is that a case of one EV fire and four combustion fis? Come on?
Yeah, that's that's that's all. Yeah, it's all very valid.
And I saw your stuff with the the Reno in the jeeps that had the exposed battery within the vehicle.
That that blow my mind.
It'd be the same as having a fuel tank with a sort of lid that was screwed on under the seat, just leaking gases into the castle. When you lit up a fag, the whole thing went up.
This is what I mean about regulations and using society as a lab You shouldn't do that. See, there are building regulations about gas. If you've got gas in a building, like methane, like natural gas, there are regulations about what sort of pipes it has to be in and all of that kind of stuff that's taken care of when you look at a petrol station, there's all of these regulations about how that place has got to be constructed to minimize the risk, right, And petrol stations are pretty
safe places for this reason. It's fucking dangerous stuff, but petrol station's pretty safe. What we're doing here is we're implementing this technology and allowing manufacturers to write the standards as they go. And therefore the Wrangler four ye doesn't have a physical flaw. And the floor of the rear seat is the top of the battery case, which freaking sucks, obviously. And in a combustion car, they've got this cute thing called a firewall. It's called that for a reason. Right,
the Wrangler doesn't have a firefloor. That's a design deficiency.
Right.
You need a fire floor between you and the battery.
You can watch this video and just seeing the roof of this car just fly into the air as the gases build up, it is.
Just it spends a lot of time airborne and it comes down freakin' hard and heavy. The other thing is there's a whole bunch of firefighters right there. They spent two minutes irrigating aggressively. Inside. They had two lines running inside the passenger compartment. This vehicle was parked, and the battery still exploded in It was a deflagration, not a detonation, but it was still explosive enough to propel the roof off the vehicle and then down just a few meters away.
And there was another one in Colorado where Arangler four ye was inside a single car garage in a private house and the firefighters just standing there. The captain of the firefighters are standing there and the rest of them are all around looking into the smoke alarm that they'd been called to, and the garage door. You do it, frame by frame. The garage door just bulges out. I've this and it flies at him and hits him on the head. He's like five or ten meters away, and
he's luck. He's wearing his helmet because the helmet's got a big gouge in it, and the helmet comes off and he's okay.
So it's crazy watching that door actually just explode off the house because it looks like something supernatural.
It looks like it looks like VFX in the movies.
Yeah, yeah, it's phenomenal, but that actually happens. Yeah, I wonder where the technology is with with like these fire departments being out of smother ev fires.
You don't smother them, well, you can't smother them becaurse when the battery overheats and the electrolyte inside the battery decomposes, part of what it decomposes into is oxygen gas. So most conventional firefighting, like if you've got an incinerator in your backyard and you're burning paper or water or something and it gets a little bit hot, you want to put it out. You get the garden hose and it deprives. It sucks the water, sucks the heat out, and deprives
the burning material of access to atmospheric oxygen. You can't do that with a battery because often you can't get to the battery and even if you could, it's making its own oxygen.
Yeah, there would be obviously, I don't know, fire departments, fire regulators, all that sort of stuff working on this sort of thing, you know what I mean.
Internally you all have an intense discussions, but externally they're going, ah, she's all good, dude, Yeah, it's a safe.
But there's no answer. That's the problem.
It's not as if they could change the regulations tomorrow. And it would fix everything because.
Here's a different kind of foam. Yeah, that's that's it.
You're using the wrong one, you idiot.
Someone said to me, it's really simple. We'll just use liquid nitrogen to put them out. Okay, I've got Oh yeah, we'll just use liquid.
Because you ever.
Played around with liquid?
That's it. Exactly where we're going to go.
Liquid nitrogen rus that's right.
One of those in Gaza.
Could freaking liquid nitrogen. You can't even store it in a sealed containing You've got to leave. You've got to they're called duas those containers. It has to keep evaporating otherwise the container over pressurizes and explodes. And what are you going to do? Run it hundreds of meters through a building in a sprinkler system.
Luck with that the ev fires out, but the building collapse just because of a giant explosion.
Because of a giant icicle.
Imagine that.
It is genuinely thing. You can't just tomorrow do it. Because people need to park their cars at home. You can't just say, oh, you can't park in a garrete. I live in an apartment building. What do you want me to Where else are you going to park out? On the road or something. So there is no easy solution. I think that we're going to get to a tipping point soon where someone needs to come up with something or to say no, you can't do this or you
can do that. And this is an issue globally as well, so that's right.
I think we're going to start to see this crack down a little bit though, because I mean even little name things like electric e bikes and scooters. You saw that that's the Uber drivers. Actually it was a three was a sharehouse of three blokes and they are all Uber delivery guys. So they had their e bikes charging and one of them's got serious burns. The other two escapes.
But he's the problem with You've got to say to yourself, we've had this technology for thirty years, right, lithium ion batteries, so why hasn't why don't power tools explode all the time? And the answer is because they don't have very much energy and they don't discharge very fast, so they don't get very hot. When you're talking about devices like bikes,
they're often made on the cheap in China. They're also amenable too mechanical damage because they're push bikes and they get ridden in the wet so they get wet internally. If they're not sealed, like if they're not IPX eight rated or something IPX seven or whatever it is, then that really is a problem. And it's a similar problem for cars because you're talking earlier about cars getting older.
One of the things about cars getting older is people not off and they nudge something underneath, they go over the median strip occasionally, or truck loses something and they go over whatever the truck loses, and cars still going okay. They think it's okay, and then six hours later it's parked in the garage and have a thermal runaway.
Yeah, and I think that's what's probably going to propagate all of this. It's the e bikes and all that stuff, because pauses that causes is I guess what I'm trying to say is that's more an immediate threat because they're manufactured to a lower standard than.
An electric vehicle.
Typically some of them obviously have design floors, but for the better part there's a lot of engineers that sit there and go, Okay, how's this going to work?
Well, what battery management system in a n EE bike? Right, what cooling system.
Like a BMS on a car is highly sophisticated. There'll be a lot of circuit breakers, there'd be a lot of mitigation points to stop something going wrong before it does.
But on a knee bike.
There's a freaking liquid cooling system that kicks in. Like you're charging the car and all of a sudden you hear a whirring sound. That's the cooling system. The battery's just gone. I've reached the threshold.
Can we charging cables as well too? I remember when Trevor was coming in, he was telling us about, like a lot of the forums on people who own certain evs, they're like, oh, my cable's fucked. I can't afford you know, blah blah blah. Oh just get this one off eBay, Like literally, what are you doing? Ali, don't do that?
Yeah, the manufacturer one that's four hundred bucks, Ali Barble will send me, sell me one for twenty five ninety nine.
It's the same as tires were two weeks later. What's that smell? That's my memories burning up in flame. But it's like tires, people skipping on tires.
Like this is the only shit that connects you to the road and you want to go get a set of chang Lings or something like that, because they're now.
But if you can afford the cable, you don't want to buy the cable.
You can't can afford it.
You just paid seventy grand for your EVO whatever.
Yeah, yeah, yes, anyway, all right, enough shitting on EV's for the moment. I want to just run through a few of the questions that we got from last time you were here, And I'll start off with this one because it looks like it comes from a blog. He's asked if you're married.
Well, I'm on the record on my channels. I'm very good at being married, actually having done it six times five XY's one current wife. No plans to upgrade at this point.
I've always thought of you as a bit like Elizabeth Taylor. I'll give you just multiple partners.
Well, it's like this my other website, marriage Expert up. Who do you want to get relationship advice from someone who's only been married once?
Like that?
What do they know?
Nothing? What a weird question there, just in the group.
I'm glad we got the.
Anyway, Actually, just on that, I actually no kid.
We started with the most important question how do you know that's from a bloke. It could be from a chick. I looked at his profile picture, Trevor, I guarantee exactly.
Hey, it could be a reverse catfish where they're actually like a supermodel or something.
Either. You should look into that. Yeah, yeah, yeah, you know that's Trevor Long sitting in his fucking cool pra going are you married.
We had someone ask and I can't remember if we went through this in the episode, they asked whether your studio is real or a green screen? It's real?
Background is It's just it's just like everyone else's garage. But it's a character, so I have to call it the fat Cave. And it's only got one additional function most people's garages have. I guess they've got three functions, which would be to store a car, to do a bit of home maintenance, and other sort of workshop type stuff. And mine is also a gym, so there's those three. But it's a studio as well.
So I always like, I always watch those videos and I come out of it thinking, fuck, I wish I had a neighbor like John. It'd be like this grumpy prick that would come out of the garage door would go up, and you'd just be like looking over my backyard, going, what are you fucking doing it like that? For your little shit? You know't do it like that? And then well you have a couple of beers and you give me the right advice and everything's good.
Yeah.
Yeah, I'd be welding and cutting everything up, and because I couldn't tolerate the way you were going to do it.
Yes, exactly, you'd be doing it for me. I'd be going, hey, can you put this flat pack together like flap pack?
Someone else has asked how you make money and whether it's just from YouTube.
No, I don't know if that's what you want to answer it.
No, that's fine. YouTube is part of my income stream, but seeing new cars for people is a substantial part of it. Nova at least thing is a substantial part of it. Sponsored segments or a substantial part of it. I've got a gift for you guys too, speaking. Yeah, hang on, we'll do this. We'll do the rest of these comments first, because this is gripping stuff.
I need a new flashlight, so yes, I need.
To given what enthusiastic I need one.
For the front of the back.
Let me scroll through these you guys talk amongst.
Actually, do you know what you did let me down in a recent video? I have to say, like, yeah, big time.
Yeah, that happens a lot.
No, but it wasn't a Snapchat video, don't worry it was. It was, but it was close. I saw like five minutes, what was you going to review the Manscape five point zero? And I got fucking he's gone for five minutes, And I thought, all right, I'll click on this. You're going to have your old fellow like wristwatching over and you're like really going to shave up your dick.
No, it was the full you obviously didn't watch to the end. No, because it was the full O H and S tripping as a risk mitigation, sure, yeah, sure, over your deck or the cord. Yes, yes, all of the above. Manscape is an extremely interesting concept to me because when I think Manscape Ambassador, I get a picture in my head. It ain't me.
They tried to get Trevor Long on board with that, but it just kept getting caught in his nipple head.
I just love the opportunity with Manscape to do the play on.
Words thing, right, like ball deodorant, Like.
These two products are essentially the Batman and Robin for your dynamic duo.
Right, So yeah, look, the rest of these I can't find the other question. The rest of these were actually just really quite positive comments.
About a lot of We've got a lot of people asking to come for you to come on regularly, actually really yeah, and ditch Trevor, but people.
With no life.
Actually this one is quite good.
So hi Paul, mate, I don't know you from a bar. So I used to watch John Kodogan and think he was a funny dude and hung on to every word he said. It's going good so far, And I too bracket like him.
I own a m R. Triton close bracket.
But mate, there's a butt here.
Yeah.
But mate, I've come to a recent conclusion that he's an absolute wanker. And yes, I've just ordered oh my god. Oh this was on the back of the Amorrock thing. So the purpose of this message is not to mass out your ego, but to confirm any thoughts you may have had about this guy's status as an A grade dickhead.
Well, I've always aspired to you know, here's the thing that's good. He's the thing to people of this nature, right, because I'm all for that, that kind of comment, that's that's great. And you know what I note about that, He's one of my most engaged viewers.
Absolutely.
And my enemy is not I'm not on a better way to put this is, I'm not on a mad quest to be liked. Come on, dude. My enemy is indifference. I hate the thought of somebody being indifferent. If you get a reaction out of somebody, and in particular, if somebody is offended or confronted by something, I say, then that's good because in the olden days before we're all total fucking sooks about being offended, when you were offended,
it was an opportunity. It was like reality knocking on the door and saying, hey, you might like to go on a voyage of internal discovery about why you're offended, right, because either he's a dickhead who's wrong, or you're a dickhead who's wrong, or you might just need to recalibrate your perception of this or that and not just have some emotional reaction to something because you don't like it, because the facts don't give a shit whether you like them or not. As that with that, I kind of
dig that. I kind of like it when people go, are you fucking wrong? Mate? You know in it ain't shit from claim about Like if somebody is saying that to you, they're engaged, so most of the battle is won, and then it's just well, how do I It's like on radio. I used to work on radio, and very click quickly dawned on me that the callers, the purpose of responding to a caller wasn't for the caller. It's for everyone else.
Oh yeah, it's entertainment, right, yeah, it's how.
Can I make this good in some way? Like I remember in the middle of the night, we had some woman who had a problem with a hot water right in a unit, and I'm going I kill me now, I'm going, well, can't you just get down there's a there's a stopcock on a hot water system and you just get down you you know, you turn that off and then you won't have water.
She wanted you to come around to her house, so can you just.
Can you just see if there's some sort of tap looking thing down there? And she said, I've got another problem. I go what she goes, I'm blind? I oh fuck man? Agree difficulty nine point nine. So we went to a break and I got the producer to call the Fieries brilliant and they came over and fixed the problem, turned the stopcock off and stopped the water. We called her
back and I felt really good after that. Hilarious, But that's like, it's not always just about exploiting someone, It's about how can you use this, how can it be part of a narrative?
You know, It's interesting after nine merged with Fairfax, they took over Macquarie, the shafted a lot of radio presenters that had been there for quite a long time and then installed nine cronies in there, and it's interesting to see that revolving door at the moment. Basically, all these people they put in, they Gordyill from the radio world.
They realized that none of them really.
Worked because they were kind of okay on TV and didn't really work out here. But it is interesting in that radio world, they really don't want anyone that is
super polarizing. And then when they mergers and acquisitions happen and you get managers coming, they just want to shake something up to make it look like they're doing something, and then all of a sudden you have these idiots come on and host radio shows they know nothing about, and then you end up in the scenario now where half of them are no longer doing the radio thing anymore.
So when I worked at TUE, which is basically defunct now, at about this time, maybe three or four weeks earlier, there were all these people they'd have auditioned for the summer slots and macause all the regular presenters will be taking time off, and half of them were from TV and they were all hopeless. Yeah, absolutely, they were all dead,
said hopeless. And when you go to TV and you see how that works, even if you're doing live TV, Like I remember once I was doing a live thing on weekend Sunrise and it was just a news report about a bad crash that had happened on a holiday weekend, and they wanted thirty seconds, and I said, well, I'll just write a thirty second script and read it into the prompter at the news desk. So I do that.
They've got a driver for the prompter. Any muppet can do that, Like it's thirty seconds, and I just read it on the prompter and as I'm reading it, the driver in the control room is just scrolling the prompter for me. Right, and this is for thirty seconds. When I do a segment, I read the prompter for fifteen minutes, and I've got to drive it, so I just pause it when it needs to pause.
I've got a little like a handheld.
He's a whiless keyboard, you know. I just use the space bar to start and stop.
Actually, there's another question I just came up with. So you're reading off for a prompter. Yeah, you come up with all your witty stuff.
When I'm at Darth Vader in the background over my shoulder, I'm reading that. I'm generally reading the prompter. And the reason I do that is because, oh there's a couple of reasons, like some of these convoluted jokes are hard to remember, and they're really that they really require sequencing. And it's not like Eddieza does the same show for six months. This is like different jokes about a different
thing every day. Right. So when I did that one about Janus Electric because I called him j Anos j Anos and a comment I got back to me and said, I think the jay is silent. I thought, that's fucking hilarious. And one of the one of the ways you can you can do humor is you can do yeah, And right, I thought, what about yeah? And I actually spoke to the founder, right, Hugh, Hugh Janus, And so I did this whole riff on Hugh Janus, and part of it was part of it was Johnny Cash, boy named Sue,
but it was boy named Hugh. He learned to fight, and his wits got hard, and his fist got hard, and his wits got keen, and he moved Rome from town to town to hide his fucking shame and all this stuff. Then I said, he became a baker, you know down at when he's sexy Land at Morphet Vale there in South Australia. People come from all over to see bakery. Hugeanus has big buns twenty years in a row. Now he's got the best chocolate log in all of more.
So, if you've got to do that, yeah, it has to be.
It's going to be the promptery.
Is there anything that's.
Too hot for YouTube that you've got to slap on the wrist from YouTube for.
I've had a.
Few videos demonetized, but that's really.
Just okay, So it's Ai that's going.
Yeah, it's just AI doing that. So I haven't had a video demonetized for ages now, so I must be well within the box there. I hardly ever criticize individuals because that opens the door to defamation. But a car company can't defame you, so you know, they can send you one hundred transcripts, that's fine, But you can't defame
a carmaker. You can't defame a vehicle. There's an obscure tort called injurious falsehood that they can threaten you with, but the standard of proof is very high, Like they've got to prove that when you defame somebody, or when somebody takes action against you for allegedly defaming them, and you want to rely on truth is a defense, the burden of proof is on you. You got to prove that what you said was true. That was pivotal in
the Ben Robert Smith case. So the reverse is true in injurious falsehood because the burden of proof is on them. They have to prove it's false, they have to prove that you acted with malice, and they have to prove that they suffer damages. So unless they can prove all three of those things, it's not going to get up, you know. So it's usually just a threat. But carmakers are just often hysterical tantrum mongers. They just don't like
being criticized. They get that. But you shouldn't shoot the reporter if what you say is fucking stupid.
Yep, yeah, man, if something's true and you're talking about it better.
Or even if it's just your opinion, because honest opinion is a defense. And that's how restaurant critics get away with it because was the food good, Well, that's fairly subjective unless it kills one hundred people, then it's objectively true that it's bad. But so it's kind of that.
It's an interesting one to hear about car companies like just being absolute fucking so thingy about opinions or even content pieces like I guarantee you that clip that went viral with the cyber truck beating the Porsche towing another Porsche that was a Karwow piece, and I guarantee you Now, there would be some pretty heavy letters from the people at Porsche to KRWOW, But can I just say one thing.
They would have ignored everything in like the last two months of Karwaw just jizzing all over Porsche with like the GT three rs and all that sort of stuff.
I don't think they would actually care because if you look at that, anyone that has half a brain looks at that video and realizes it's a base Porsche or a Carrera Tea or something, it's it's a real well drive. Yeah, nothing up against an all wheel drive flagship. It's like, all right, we'll go get a nine to eleven turbo and then see if it does the same thing.
It is such a.
That's that's what irritated me with those videos, even the sled pulling thing that they did. You're not proving anything here. What I need you to prove is how far it'll tow and what it'll actually toe over a certain distance.
Nobody in the real world gives a shit how quickly it toes something four hundred meters.
That's it, right, They've done.
That shit about the bulletproofing ye aspect of.
Yeah, yeah, that's that's the problem they're going to have. The core thing with the rest of their performance cars was yeah, fast in a straight line. It was kind of acceptable that that's the thing. You're kind of ticking the box on fast in a straight line for a big uit is okay, that's half a box tick. But the rest of it, it can't actually do. So that's where you've got your bigger issue.
But I think that's hard. That's the point I'm making. It's like they're putting out all these sparkly, little snackable pieces because I don't think they're necessarily really trying to impress the full on car guys. I think they're trying to impress the kind of ignorant. You're repressing the guy that ship looks cool. I've got the money for that, don't fucking buy that. Yeah, but they're repressing the guy that wants to be seen in that. One of the.
First owners was a co founder of Reddit, so he was obviously hand picked, and his quote was words of the effect of there's lots and lots of like so far, and I'm going to be the coolest dad dropping my daughter at school and that's the main thing. And I've gone, you vacuous twap, you know, like, if that's the only way you can be a cool dad, harder, if you can only do it with a product.
Taking soccer once in a while, and unless.
Some dad turns up drops kid off in a Blackhawk, we're still win.
We're fuck you. Watch it'll be on right now, it'll be like, oh yeah, people just typical dad's trying to make to each other. Well, I hope you all enjoyed that.
It was a bit of a chat about nothing in particular, but yeah, that's kind yeah, becase whenever you try and plan these things, it just ends up just being a bit planned. Whereas we got over an hour worth of good chat in there, so for free.
You're not paying for these people to demand your money back if you yes.
But I would highly recommend going to John's YouTube channel and just having look at some of those videos that we spoke about. Not so for work, Some of those are not safe for work. I do like the dustings of bikini clad women in the videos.
Like you got to express VPN and you've used this like like stock footage of this chicken a bra with some of the best hits I've ever seen, and I'm like, hang on, what am I buying here? Is this internet protection of them? Whatever it is?
Yeah, that's just demographic data. That's a decision based on demographic data. My audience is ninety five percent male, ninety five percent almost as old as me.
But it is it is good. You just sometimes I just want to commentate it because it's like, okay, we're talking about express VPN. Here's a chick with a big rack. There's another one like drinking wine in her panties, and it's all about like internet protection. I love it.
Now I've got this present.
Here we go. I wonder if it vibrates.
It's very difficult to find presents for dudes such as you, right, because you've already.
Got everything correct, like you want to get cyber trusting.
No inflatable cyber truck. The thing is, it's really easy to find presents for a winer. You just give them a hundred bucks or a blanket they right. But for guys like you've got everything now, this is obviously to share. I gotta put my glasses on, so just this is I got to get it.
I'm hoping this is a gun for next time Trev comes in the studio.
Well, it could be a gun of sorts, but I've got oh, look at this. SAPI got some manscaped crop reviv ball tona and some crop preserver ball the odorant. I'm not insinuating.
And listen, you, being the Croatian that you are, you're going to need the ball the odorant.
But look, it's just like chicken soup and you've got a cold, it can't hurt, right, that's right. Like nobody's ever been criticized for too liberally applying the ball the.
Owner I'll put it on now.
Now this is this is to share obviously.
Oh okay, you know.
And I've got the you've got the scrotum shaving kit as well.
This is actually called ball tona you pop down to the institute.
It's called crop revival or crop preserves.
And the other one is this one.
Jesus, I've got the little, I've got the well, it's Christmas, and I thought, who doesn't want a nice, a nice smooth sack for Christmas? I've got the this. Have you got a jugonomically designed scroton raiser with very little residual? You're going to need.
A smaller one for Paul's Yeah, that's yeah. What do I do with that?
It?
No prompter? Now all right, this is what's hard as a convoluted joke. I've got some extra raises to I expect we'll all be having a shower after this as we did last time, just to share. There's four different raises there that should be this should be good for at least a week. I've got crop exfoliator, so this is a scrotal exfoliator. And this one is crop gel, which is a clear groin shaving gel.
Unquote fantastic, And this is from our friends at Manscaped.
It is.
Look at that.
That is sensational. I wonder if he's getting right in. That smells wonderful.
That's wonderful. Smell my balls, Paul. Yeah, fresh right.
If I just handed out a couple hundred buck notes, you guys would have just gone out. I'll throw that the cash and never see it again.
You know this is going to be my wife's, your favorite food.
Socks, socks and freaking undies. Like you know, this is just socks and undies. One step.
This is thank you, mate, genuinely appreciate already.
If you don't already, man skirt like just you'll be walking through the office and you'll have let's just say less.
Drage gliding balls.
Yeah, you won't rustle anymore.
Just make my workers falling to the floor, just fainting. Yeah, I think it is. I think this is the season. This is the time where I'm gonna shave the sideburns. Off my dick.
Yeah, good rocking that scrobble mohawk. That's still okay. But the sideburns after go.
I'll still leave the whispery mo. But whatever that is.
Like horns on the hood are okay, gas hogs intwn.
This is bloodyal this is that's for your nuts. It's incredible for.
The ergonomic design. Right. You don't want a long handle on a razor.
Nobody wants that, absolutely not.
Just remember to share.
Yeah, well, bloody, I got it first week. You can have a second. Yeah, you can have the joys of picking the hair out. Yeah, mate, thank you very much. That's very kind. We'll have to bring a gift in next time. I think last time.
You gave me a gift. I've got that beautiful mug.
Yeah, I've I've been looking for that in the backdrop of your videos. Mate. You need to throw it at someone.
Yeah, the next comment of that pisses you off.
Just fucking love it at them. Perfect.
I'm disappointed that I didn't get a transcript.
You'll probably arranged one after.
I was going to say, I'll let you know in this one savaged anyone in particular.
Enough, it was more later, Yes, if you do have any right questions. Have you ever seen that movie The hurt Locker? Yeah, yeah, so our lawyer right now is like Jeremy Renner. He's putting on like a big bomb disposal outfit on he's currently working.
He's not like the first like the guy who Guy Richie.
Yeah right yeah. Now he's calmly walking to the that's right, there was two. He's calmly walking to the truth bombs that you've dropped this episode, so appreciate that, mate. Thank you for coming in my pleasure.
Contact at the Drivers Show dot com today you shoot us an email. We're going to have John on again at some point in the future when we can finally organize ourselves.
Yeah, maybe when you sober up. That'd be nice.
I do apologize for that, but I did wear the shirt yeah, I know, around in public. Yeah, to Christmas party too. That's a big f you to the Sydney office. Ye. Contact at the Drivershow dot com today, you let us know if you have any questions, leave us a rating. Check out John's channel as well for all the great stuff that he does. And thank you mate for coming on.
And for the presents. I mean, this is fantastic.
My pleasure. Merry freaking Christmas,