[SPEAKER_00]: Hey, case.
[SPEAKER_00]: Welcome back to TFL talking trucks and today you've got me instead of Andre.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, yeah, likewise.
[SPEAKER_01]: So it's the two of us again at least for this week next week.
[SPEAKER_00]: Back to the 18.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, exactly.
[SPEAKER_01]: Back to the guys out there having Andre on the podcast.
[SPEAKER_01]: But for today's podcast, you and I are going to be talking about something a little similar
[SPEAKER_01]: This is going to be the most unwanted truck-tech truck-tech that nobody asked for, and this is a list that I understand you agree with very much, but I might try and play devil's advocate here a little bit, even though my truck is 30 years old.
[SPEAKER_01]: So a lot of the things on this list are things that I probably mostly agree with as well.
[SPEAKER_00]: So before we get into it, let's talk about Andre.
[SPEAKER_00]: He's flying back from Germany.
[SPEAKER_00]: He was just doing a Mercedes Sprinter van program.
[SPEAKER_00]: So he's going to have some Sprinter videos to share.
[SPEAKER_00]: But more excitedly, he's on his way to Detroit.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, where he's, what's he picking up the ram, right?
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, exactly.
[SPEAKER_01]: They are going to get him a more affordable trim.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, that's right.
[SPEAKER_01]: Of a ram pick up to drive back here to Colorado, to test out.
[SPEAKER_01]: So that we can show what that looks like.
[SPEAKER_01]: Because a lot of the trucks that we get in the press fleet, they're not trucks that we get to spec out ourselves.
[SPEAKER_01]: So a lot of times people are watching the videos on these trucks, and they've got all the options, they're the highest trim level.
[SPEAKER_01]: And I understand why the manufacturers do that.
[SPEAKER_01]: They want to show off the nicest features you can get on those trucks.
[SPEAKER_01]: But a lot of people out there are audience and us ourselves, we would like to test out trucks that are a little more affordable.
[SPEAKER_01]: That's what they're sending us.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, I think Iran was kind enough to actually build, because we've been you know, whining and winging about how expensive trucks are.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so they actually built out a full size ram.
[SPEAKER_00]: Is it going to be though?
[SPEAKER_00]: Is it a 1500?
[SPEAKER_00]: It's a 1500, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: So it's a full size of teenagers.
[SPEAKER_00]: And it's going to be, I think it's penistar power.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_00]: No, it's working.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's a hurricane.
[SPEAKER_00]: I want to say it's a hurricane.
[SPEAKER_00]: Anyway, we'll figure it out when he comes back with the truck, but it's exciting that we're actually going to have a truck that isn't like $800 million, but is relatively affordable and is something that you guys have been asking for for a very long time.
[SPEAKER_00]: Now, before we get to kind of unwanted truck tech, let me ask you about your comments.
[SPEAKER_00]: I don't know if people know out there, but you have an old school comment, so tell me about your truck.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, I've still got my same 12-out of comments that we've done a bunch of videos with, I've had it for the entire time that I've been working here.
[SPEAKER_01]: So for the last five years, and it's a great truck.
[SPEAKER_01]: So recently I went through and did a couple upgrades, a little bit of maintenance on it.
[SPEAKER_01]: So it's got a rebuilt transmission as Rams do.
[SPEAKER_01]: You know, Rams do something they like.
[SPEAKER_01]: So rebuilt transmission, I also put a rebuilt transfer case in it as well.
[SPEAKER_01]: Wow, that's an old video.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, that isn't a little bit because you go to the top on that thing, though.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, and I take the top off in the winter a lot, but I was mostly looking at my hair doing.
[SPEAKER_01]: I guess that hasn't actually changed that much.
[SPEAKER_01]: But yeah, if you're watching this podcast, Cole is pulling up some footage of my truck on prior videos that we've done and it's driving really well.
[SPEAKER_01]: I did a bunch of steering parts on it and brake parts, hub assemblies with the wheel bearings, all kind of stuff.
[SPEAKER_01]: So it's driving great.
[SPEAKER_00]: Now, the reason I brought this up because this truck has none of the unwanted truck
[SPEAKER_00]: doesn't even have back seats.
[SPEAKER_00]: And of course, if you, if you are an old school truck lover, then you can always get an old truck.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_00]: And you can always still out there.
[SPEAKER_00]: They're still out there and they're relatively affordable and you can always make it your own.
[SPEAKER_00]: But so let's get to this list.
[SPEAKER_00]: So I found this list on top here and it was a list basically that was meant for card tech.
[SPEAKER_00]: But we can certainly adapt it to truck tech because it's very similar.
[SPEAKER_00]: I have to say something that I think is a hot take case, but I think I'm not that far off on this.
[SPEAKER_00]: I have never lived through a time where manufacturers seem to care less about what the buyer wants than now.
[SPEAKER_00]: Everybody is out there talking about the stuff that the manufacturers are putting on their trucks on their cars.
[SPEAKER_00]: they're hating on it and yet the manufacturers just kind of ignore what people want and keep going down this road and then they blame the either blame governments or they blame you know competition but like I said I have never lived in a time where the manufacturer cares less about what the actual customer wants and I'm going to blame Tesla on this
[SPEAKER_00]: Right.
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, there's this there's this coal is there's like a Steve Jobs famous Steve Jobs saying maybe you could find it where he basically said Don't ask what the customer wants because they don't know what they want.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's something like that.
[SPEAKER_00]: Right.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's a famous quote basically like when the iPhone came out He he he he made the he made the You find it.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, let's see Steve Jobs families famously said you can't just ask customers what they want and try to give that to them By the time you get a built they want something new
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, and so there's this pervasive ideology, I think, in Silicon Valley, where basically the customer doesn't know what they want because they're not, you know, at the forefront of new technology.
[SPEAKER_00]: So you give them what they want.
[SPEAKER_00]: from your perspective because they don't know what they want and the problem with that and it's pervasive now in the car and truck industry and all kinds of places to problem with that is you know when the iPhone came out everybody was like oh my god that is so you know perfect this is what I've been looking for because before the iPhone I remember they were like those motor of flip phones right there were those Nokia phones
[SPEAKER_00]: But I knew exactly what I wanted.
[SPEAKER_00]: There was no doubt that I knew what I wanted.
[SPEAKER_00]: I knew I wanted a phone that would not only work as a phone, but that in fact, you know, you could not only text on but column, but you could actually, you know, cruise internet on.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_00]: It had games on it.
[SPEAKER_00]: Right.
[SPEAKER_00]: I knew I knew exactly what I wanted.
[SPEAKER_00]: And it wasn't that I don't think that revolutionary that Apple came along, just put all this stuff that I wanted, basically my computer on my phone.
[SPEAKER_01]: And I think that that quote of Steve Jobs, that quote of his works better with technology, because technology always has to be on the bleeding edge of what's possible and what's new.
[SPEAKER_01]: And it's hard for us who are just regular consumers.
[SPEAKER_01]: We don't live in that world.
[SPEAKER_01]: to see what that next step is going to be.
[SPEAKER_01]: So we can't necessarily say what we want.
[SPEAKER_01]: And that in the auto industry might even be true of some luxury cars, of some super cars, things like that, where they are also at the bleeding edge of technology, but for trucks and for four by four is the formula for what works really hasn't changed that much over time.
[SPEAKER_01]: So you don't necessarily, I don't think you really need to reinvent the wheel,
[SPEAKER_01]: to make trucks that people want because what makes a truck functional is the same things that have made trucks good and trucks functional for the last 100 years.
[SPEAKER_00]: Back 100 years.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_00]: First, the first like, you know, consumer truck came out.
[SPEAKER_00]: Let's call out the Model T truck, which we have, by the way, in our fleet.
[SPEAKER_00]: So, usually at TFL, we do this list and we start at number 10 and we go number one, but I will jump to number one right now because I think this is undoubtedly the most unwanted truck tech that I have yet to see anybody, anybody saying that they would actually like, and that is automatic stop-start.
[SPEAKER_00]: I think that is universally hated.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, yeah, which is fair enough.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's it's definitely frustrating like I said.
[SPEAKER_01]: I think I'm going to try and take a little bit of the devil's advocate position.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, so that's cool.
[SPEAKER_01]: This is not just so that this is not such a one note or kind of podcast.
[SPEAKER_01]: So when I will say to its credit, we just recently did an MPG test in different driving modes on a Honda Passport.
[SPEAKER_01]: And on that passport, the biggest difference between sport mode and normal mode was a little bit what Garrett was holding, but also using stop start.
[SPEAKER_01]: And the difference we saw in MPG was five, five miles per gallon, which is a good amount.
[SPEAKER_01]: The other thing with stop start.
[SPEAKER_01]: If it feels a little funky, your AC is not running while the engine is stopped, so it might get a little hot in the vents.
[SPEAKER_01]: But people will talk a lot about all the wear on your starter motors, but these vehicles go through such rigorous testing and they've beefed up those starter motors to be able to handle that.
[SPEAKER_01]: So I'm going to take the position that it's not all that bad yet.
[SPEAKER_01]: So I don't think I'm going to get a lot of people agreeing with me.
[SPEAKER_00]: I don't think I'm going to
[SPEAKER_00]: The reason for that, of course, is because of EPA and cafe numbers, which now are relevant because the Trump administration still has the cafe numbers in place, but they've got rid of all the penalties.
[SPEAKER_00]: So it's a toothless regulation right now.
[SPEAKER_00]: And back then, when the penalties were still in place, and when corporate average, whatever cafe stands for, we're important,
[SPEAKER_00]: every, not even mile, but every added half of MPG was super important.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so what that allowed you to do was on that little monrony sticker, maybe put down 20 MPG versus 18 MPG or 19 MPG, because it does actually make a difference.
[SPEAKER_00]: The downside, of course, you said, is that their conditioning doesn't work.
[SPEAKER_00]: And the bigger downside for truck people is that,
[SPEAKER_00]: when you do put it in the car, you put a little force under on that engine, shuts off, you probably can't feel it because it's a little tiny thing.
[SPEAKER_00]: But when you're, you know, and you got a big old V8 under the hood, every time that thing comes to life, the whole truck kind of evaporated.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, so it's a strange feeling.
[SPEAKER_00]: It is, yeah, it's like an understanding.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I kind of equated to a golf cart, which is not a good thing, coming from a trucker world, because that's how golf cart works.
[SPEAKER_00]: They kind of, they do the same thing.
[SPEAKER_00]: They, they spring to life.
[SPEAKER_00]: The gas ones at least when you, when you put the accelerator,
[SPEAKER_00]: Now, to some extent, this issue has been solved with the latest hybrids, because the hybrids allow you to maintain air conditioning and maintain all the functions without the engine running, and often they're a little bit smoother on startup, or they can start up once it doesn't.
[SPEAKER_00]: With the hybrid, what can happen is you can roll a little bit before the engine comes in.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, so you're not actually every time you press the accelerator, I'm like a golf cart doesn't snap the engine on.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I think that, especially with Toyota, with Ford's hybrid, I kind of alleviated that, but I still think what, especially I think Erx people is that you have to turn it off every time you turn the truck on and off.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, and for the auto stop start to have a bearing over the field economy figures like the EPA figure, it has to reset to being on every key cycle, otherwise they wouldn't be able to include it in that number.
[SPEAKER_01]: So that's the reason that a key cycle's back on all the time, which I agree is annoying, because in general you want a vehicle to start back up with whatever settings you left it with.
[SPEAKER_01]: So that would make the feature a lot less annoying.
[SPEAKER_01]: Again, my personal feeling is the same as what's being expressed here on.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's not my favorite piece of technology, but there is an argument to be made for it.
[SPEAKER_00]: All right, let's go to the top of your list and number 10 on their list.
[SPEAKER_00]: So we're now we're going from one back to 10 that will come down is a link he basis.
[SPEAKER_00]: What do you think of link he basis?
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, that pretty much universally.
[SPEAKER_01]: I don't like I'm sure statistically you can you can reflect the benefits of it.
[SPEAKER_01]: You can show that it helps people stay on the road.
[SPEAKER_01]: But here's where it really irritates me.
[SPEAKER_01]: when we drive out to our company ranch, we store a lot of vehicles and a lot of videos.
[SPEAKER_01]: There are so many people on bicycles.
[SPEAKER_00]: There are.
[SPEAKER_00]: And legally.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's a big bike path for boulder cyclists.
[SPEAKER_01]: Massive.
[SPEAKER_01]: There's as many bikes as cars on this stretcher row.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, there are.
[SPEAKER_01]: And you legally have to give them space three feet.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yep.
[SPEAKER_01]: By law.
[SPEAKER_01]: And they're in the shoulder.
[SPEAKER_01]: They're not on the bike path.
[SPEAKER_01]: They're exactly.
[SPEAKER_01]: Exactly.
[SPEAKER_01]: So, in order for you to do that, you got to move across the lane a little bit and I've had in several vehicles the steering wheel take over and steer me back toward the cyclist thinking that I'm doing that by accident when it's very much intentional.
[SPEAKER_01]: And me moving out of the way to give a cyclist room and the steering wheel taken over control and steering back toward them.
[SPEAKER_01]: is not fun.
[SPEAKER_01]: I really really don't like that.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, and then, you know, GM even makes it more annoying because they vibrate your seats sometimes.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_00]: So you got with a GM because they got the seat vibration in a lot of cars.
[SPEAKER_00]: You have the steering wheel vibration in the most annoying cases that the wheel actually jerks out of your hand.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_00]: And by far, what makes it super, super annoying beside the fact that the truck thinks like it's trying to outsmart you.
[SPEAKER_00]: So it's actually, you know, driving versus you driving, which is kind of stupid.
[SPEAKER_00]: We'll get to that later.
[SPEAKER_00]: But the thing that really pisses me off is it's impossible to find out where you turn it off.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'll give you an example of that.
[SPEAKER_00]: We've got that Honda Passport Trailsport sitting right on front of these doors and Honda lent us.
[SPEAKER_00]: I don't know how to turn that off.
[SPEAKER_00]: I've now spent at least 20 minutes trying to figure out some cars.
[SPEAKER_00]: There's a little button.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_00]: There's a little button on the Honda, but it's only for when you're using cruise control.
[SPEAKER_00]: Right.
[SPEAKER_00]: But I don't know, I don't know where inside all of the menus you actually disengage that.
[SPEAKER_00]: And the other frustrating thing is, and some vehicles, it's in the center, dashboard, right, in the
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, and sometimes it's in the big screen it varies based on manufacturer and of course if it's your own vehicle You're not necessarily gonna have this problem, but it's super annoying just figuring out where to turn it off And it's even more annoying if it turns back on now in Europe.
[SPEAKER_00]: They've got these rules
[SPEAKER_00]: where I think it has to turn out every time you cycle the engine along with like the dinging when you exceed the speed limit.
[SPEAKER_00]: You don't know how you guys do it in Europe.
[SPEAKER_00]: I think I would take a screwdriver and stick it in my ear if I had a every time I went in the car the first thing I had to do was turn link keep off and turn that speed warning.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, because we used to have the any else creditier.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: And every time you key cycle that you had to do the over the speed limit warning.
[SPEAKER_01]: And that alone was one of the worst things about owning that vehicle.
[SPEAKER_00]: It just makes, you know, I think me and you loved drive.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_00]: And it just makes driving crap.
[SPEAKER_00]: It just makes it no fun.
[SPEAKER_00]: And it just makes it annoying.
[SPEAKER_00]: And you start to dread it instead of start to look forward to it.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, one of the reasons, this is, this is maybe sounds weird to abstract, but follow me for a second here.
[SPEAKER_01]: One of the reasons I like cars and not horses.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's because the might of their own cars don't make decisions for themselves, right?
[SPEAKER_01]: So until now.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, until now.
[SPEAKER_01]: So I'm not to me that doesn't feel like progress.
[SPEAKER_00]: All right, number two, or number nine, so that was number 10, number nine on the list here is pop out door handles.
[SPEAKER_00]: Now, this is the thing that has been around a long time, but Tesla really brought it into the mainstream, and this is exactly where we get to this moment in time, where the manufacturers are doing stuff that people hate.
[SPEAKER_00]: They're all kinds of issues with pop
[SPEAKER_00]: Right, but, but there are some.
[SPEAKER_00]: Hey, Cole, would you be so kind and Google this really in half pop out door handles?
[SPEAKER_00]: I don't want that.
[SPEAKER_01]: We've driven a really.
[SPEAKER_00]: So the problem with pop out door handles is, is first and foremost.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, it's like a, asked a Martin style.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, it's got the ones where you push on it.
[SPEAKER_00]: which is, you know, less annoying than the ones that actually pop out.
[SPEAKER_00]: But I always worry about, you know, we just had a Tesla Model S from 2014 and we just so, it's got pop-up, door handle, it's got 104,000 miles, but I just worry that that's going to fail.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, and they do especially those those old Tesla pop out door handles fail.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, 100% they do now now making really annoying Tesla took another step further down this road.
[SPEAKER_00]: They got rid of like actual door handles period in the Cybertruck.
[SPEAKER_00]: Remember how that worked?
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, if only that was if only that was the worst thing about Yes, but it's horrible.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, I agree.
[SPEAKER_00]: So on the Cybertruck the way that it works is you've got these like hidden
[SPEAKER_00]: black panels that you have to push, and then the, you know, then the door pops open.
[SPEAKER_01]: Well, you'd hate to ruin the, will be blinds.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, blinds have a thing.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_00]: And of course, the biggest issue with with those little hidden buttons is, unless you know they're there, most people are just walking up to it.
[SPEAKER_00]: They're like confounded by how you get into the thing.
[SPEAKER_01]: I mean imagine trying to get your parents or grandparents or somebody into that vehicle and explaining that to them.
[SPEAKER_01]: You'd have to do a lap around the truck every single time to open it for them.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, and then the other part that kind of goes along with that is electronic doors period.
[SPEAKER_00]: So in order to make these things work, you can no longer just have a mechanical mechanism that opens up the door the way that we've had it forever that works, you know, on vehicles that are
[SPEAKER_00]: into their life cycle.
[SPEAKER_00]: Now you have to have electronic ones where obviously if there's no power, you can't open the door.
[SPEAKER_00]: They're usually our manual handles, but their hips.
[SPEAKER_00]: In the cyber truck, they're very hard to find.
[SPEAKER_00]: And if there's an emergency, let's say a fire or something, it's very dangerous.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I just don't understand why we need electronic door handles.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I'm so grateful that in the truck world we stuck to mechanical ones.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, it for the most part, it hasn't infected the truck market too much, but there are some Fenders.
[SPEAKER_00]: We have the Hummer EV right now.
[SPEAKER_00]: What's the door handle like that?
[SPEAKER_00]: I think it look like a Hummer EV.
[SPEAKER_00]: I think if I don't like if it doesn't stick out in my brain I think it's just a regular door.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, it's a regular door handle.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, thank God shows how much we're actually paying attention to these door handles Yeah, maybe we should more
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, yeah, if you have to think about it, you're not making a better design.
[SPEAKER_00]: You're making your work.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, that is the kind of thing that ideally should just blend in the background and not be memorable at all because it just works.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_00]: And then I was talking to a friend of ours who's an engineer and a lot of the companies will use the fact that because they're electrical out of these vehicles, they have to have very good arrow.
[SPEAKER_00]: In other words, you don't want to have anything that creates bad wind flow.
[SPEAKER_00]: But the percentage of like, like, when disruption that a door handle versus a sleek door makes is so miniscule that you could, you couldn't even measure it in terms of fuel economy.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's not like, hey, if we, if we make the door handles flush and electric with the door, then we're going to get two MPG better.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's not measurable.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's that much, it's that little of a thing.
[SPEAKER_00]: So it's just a style thing that, you know, Tesla started and everybody jumped on the
[SPEAKER_00]: paying attention to number eight bad touch screens.
[SPEAKER_00]: What do you think a touch screen is case?
[SPEAKER_01]: I definitely think
[SPEAKER_01]: They're being overused, that's not really a controversial take.
[SPEAKER_01]: There are some upsides.
[SPEAKER_01]: So for example, on some of the newer Ford trucks, you can go in and set up your instrument cluster to show you in great detail.
[SPEAKER_01]: All of the temperatures.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, those are good for all of the fluids on the truck.
[SPEAKER_01]: Which is awesome.
[SPEAKER_01]: That's a huge amount of information that you could program into the display.
[SPEAKER_01]: And you can reconfigure that display, depending on what it is you're doing, if you're maybe on a light off-road trailer, if you're hooked up to a trailer.
[SPEAKER_01]: So the modularity of a screen.
[SPEAKER_01]: can be good.
[SPEAKER_00]: Look at all the fingerprints on that one on the screen though.
[SPEAKER_01]: That, yeah, that doesn't look bad.
[SPEAKER_00]: Okay.
[SPEAKER_00]: The good news, once again, the truck world is a little bit inaccurate and I created an accurate it from all the silliness in the car world in that the trucks aren't always on the bleeding edge of technology in a lot of ways, which is I'm thankful for.
[SPEAKER_00]: So I'll give you an example of that.
[SPEAKER_00]: Many of the trucks that we have
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, especially if you're getting in and out of a truck, you've got gloves on.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's nice to have actual physical buttons for things.
[SPEAKER_01]: So I appreciate that.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, at this point in this day and age, I think a lot of screens in place of physical buttons or actual physical analog gauges feels more like cost-cutting than a luxury feature.
[SPEAKER_01]: So
[SPEAKER_00]: And to be fair, you can take that instrument cluster that's in front of you with the old, you know, driver-centric dashboard, and you can configure that in a lot of truck manufacturers due to show your temperature gauges.
[SPEAKER_00]: You don't have to have it in the big screen.
[SPEAKER_00]: It can be in the small screen.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's right.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, like on on the boards, it is in your instrument cluster screen.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yep.
[SPEAKER_01]: So, yeah, there, I think there are some perks to how much you can, you can kind of change up the displays on the
[SPEAKER_01]: So, at times it's cool.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's not bad.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I'll tell you where it's gone really into the deep end.
[SPEAKER_00]: This is GM, of course, where they put their light switch in the screen now, where they're going to get rid of the physical light switch.
[SPEAKER_00]: And there's, I don't know what it is about that, but that to me is just like one bridge too far.
[SPEAKER_01]: That, that we talked about last week because that's just a glaring example of cost cutting.
[SPEAKER_01]: So, that, that much is pretty irritating.
[SPEAKER_00]: And then the other thing that really irritated me was when we had the
[SPEAKER_00]: not the warlock, the one that we had before them with the new hurricane, the 1500, it had a passenger screen.
[SPEAKER_00]: What do you think of passenger screens?
[SPEAKER_00]: not strictly necessary as a waste of time you've got i'm looking at my phone yeah i think every passenger has this in their pocket yeah i don't i don't think it's needed yeah and it really annoyed me or because and this is a roman thing i suppose you might feel different about it because you're much better shaped than i am but when you turned it off it actually reflected an image of myself so what i was looking at when i was in the passenger's inner seat was my
[SPEAKER_00]: And I was like, I can't sit here because I'm feeling so bad about myself.
[SPEAKER_00]: Right.
[SPEAKER_00]: Looking down on this now mirror that is reflecting the, you know, my belly fat and the way the seat belt is squishing me.
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm sure is an unintended consequence.
[SPEAKER_01]: But yeah, it don't need that reminder.
[SPEAKER_01]: At best it feels like an unnecessary gimmick.
[SPEAKER_01]: Like because I'm not sure it's anything that anybody was asking for.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's something that they threw in there just to add something to it that wasn't there before.
[SPEAKER_01]: But it's not the kind of thing that I really think is going to get people going to dealers in Drow's to buy those trucks.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, so I mean, initially when the first time I saw one of those past Gisscreens was like on a Ferrari and what you could do there is you could like see how fast you were going.
[SPEAKER_00]: which is kind of cool enough for our, yeah, I guess.
[SPEAKER_00]: But what, what do you need that screen for in the truck?
[SPEAKER_00]: I guess you can have the passenger control of the music, maybe do the navigation.
[SPEAKER_00]: But you've got that screen in the center where you could do that anyway.
[SPEAKER_00]: It just seems like an erroneous and extraneous bit of screen there, just for the sake of having it.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, it's definitely nothing spectacularly exciting.
[SPEAKER_00]: Do you remember when like a lot of high-end SUVs used to have the screens in the back of the headrest, so that kids could play video games?
[SPEAKER_00]: You don't need that anymore.
[SPEAKER_00]: No, everybody's got a phone.
[SPEAKER_00]: Even back then people had like iPads, and it just felt like it was just there.
[SPEAKER_00]: And whenever I'm looking at like use cars that have those things, I'm like, why?
[SPEAKER_00]: Why?
[SPEAKER_01]: There was a brief moment in time before the tablet that those screens in the backs of vehicles were great and that moment passed.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_00]: All right.
[SPEAKER_00]: Number seven, if I'm wrong, number six, feel free to correct me.
[SPEAKER_00]: But it's a voice control, which now for we've been doing this for 15 years, 16 years.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_00]: Never worked.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, Siri, Siri works, so if you're hooked up to Apple CarPlay, that works great, but any, any kind of native voice control system that comes with the car.
[SPEAKER_01]: not usually good, especially in the truck world.
[SPEAKER_01]: You could maybe make an argument that some of them Mercedes systems or it's also annoying because it's always like hammered CDs or you know what I mean?
[SPEAKER_00]: They always use a name of the manufacturer and then you're talking about the vehicle and you just... You might have just...
[SPEAKER_00]: Cute.
[SPEAKER_00]: Sorry.
[SPEAKER_00]: That in someone's Mercedes.
[SPEAKER_01]: Sorry about that.
[SPEAKER_00]: I forgot.
[SPEAKER_01]: You can't say those words.
[SPEAKER_00]: Um, what I was going to say about this, the other issue with it is, um, no, this is what I was going to say.
[SPEAKER_00]: So this week, we've had some news regarding this, uh, and you just said, Siri, GM announced that they're actually removing Apple CarPlay and Android Auto, not just out of the electric cars, but out of all their vehicles that includes their gas and electric, everything they build is going to not now have that.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, she's unfortunate because that's a system that the majority of people use.
[SPEAKER_00]: This is what I mean when I say that manufacturers are doing exactly what people don't want.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I understand that there are issues with data and that there's money to be made.
[SPEAKER_01]: But the funny thing about that because if I remember right, it was a while ago that this news was initially coming out and that I was reading about it.
[SPEAKER_01]: But if I remember right,
[SPEAKER_01]: Believe that GM was saying they didn't want to continue using Apple CarPlay because they wanted to protect that data from their customers and everything.
[SPEAKER_00]: Which do you got to use for selling to?
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, with the on-star systems.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: So Apple, you know, say what you will about the company, but in general, historically they've been very protective of their customers information.
[SPEAKER_00]: more so than general motors so for general motors to make that claim that they're trying to protect is bold that it is is bold and for me oftentimes if I'm driving a vehicle that I'm not driving just to get some place right if I'm driving a vehicle
[SPEAKER_00]: Um, that is fun to drive.
[SPEAKER_00]: I don't really care that much about that.
[SPEAKER_00]: If it's like, you know, like we have this old Fiat now, that's a who to drive and I don't even have the radio going when I'm driving that because it's so much it's so engaging.
[SPEAKER_00]: Or if you're driving us, let's put it in truck world, let's say driving a TRX or a Raptor R or something that's got a lot of, you know, light in the pencil is Nathan would say.
[SPEAKER_00]: I don't care, but let's say I'm driving either a vehicle car or truck that is just a commuter thing.
[SPEAKER_00]: In the morning, I take our dog blazey for a walk and the one thing I do is listen to podcasts.
[SPEAKER_00]: And then my favorite thing is I just get in the car when I come to work and with the Apple car play, it just jumps right over and I'm listening to exactly where I left off.
[SPEAKER_00]: And to me at this point,
[SPEAKER_00]: I choose, you know, we have a largely the vehicles, and if I'm just commuting, I choose the vehicle based on if it has car player not, and it's also true for like long road trips when you're using the application, because I like using ways, and it runs off the phone usually.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so Toyota tried this, so Toyota was the last company that held out not having
[SPEAKER_00]: And eventually, even they gave in, because they realized that the market demand was so strong for these two products that they could no longer say no to their customers.
[SPEAKER_00]: And yet here we are with GM going the exact opposite direction.
[SPEAKER_00]: So I guess I'm just going to say, good luck with that GM.
[SPEAKER_00]: I hope it works out for you, but I think a lot of people are going to turn away from your vehicles, because those are...
[SPEAKER_00]: There's this thing, right, like what's it called?
[SPEAKER_00]: It's a technology derived car or something like that, you know what I'm talking about?
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm not sure I do.
[SPEAKER_00]: Where the vehicle is defined by the technology and not by the engine or not by the, that's what's happening to cars, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: They're basically becoming phones with wheels.
[SPEAKER_01]: And so GM is kind of tragic when you say it like that.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, but yeah, it is.
[SPEAKER_00]: Software defined vehicles.
[SPEAKER_00]: Right.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so when you take software out of it, especially popular software.
[SPEAKER_00]: And it's something that people have learned to live with and have learned to love.
[SPEAKER_00]: I think you're, you know, you're treading on thin ice.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, yeah, it's it's not a good development, but in general for voice control on vehicles, most of the native systems are not very good, so that's one area where I mostly agree with this article.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I think we've gotten to the point now with voice control where people have given it, you know,
[SPEAKER_00]: one chance and then another chance and now we're at three strikes and people and even try it.
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, we used to do this thing called, uh, uh, uh, snarfs where we would try to have a take us to snarfs.
[SPEAKER_00]: Remember we would do this right here.
[SPEAKER_00]: And we would have it.
[SPEAKER_00]: We would be like, hey, you'd tell the navigation and take me to snarfs, which is the same way shop.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_00]: And like nine out of ten times it didn't work.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I think people just got frustrated with it.
[SPEAKER_00]: yeah so all right let's keep going i think we're at number six or number five and that is touch sensitive control to the words have to controls hate them hate them with a passion yeah yeah not only a steering wheel is the worst case scenario for them because your hands are obviously constantly moving around the steering wheel and it's easy to accidentally brush up against them
[SPEAKER_01]: But even in other areas of the vehicle, whether you have a climate panel that has touch-sensitive controls or any other buttons on the car or the truck, it just makes them less engaging, less you don't get that feedback of an actual physical button.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, and that's that's why I think God for Trump's because for the most part truck manufacturers at least the big three American ones have not gone to these have to controls even though they have done so in their cars Yeah, I think I think there's a realization with trucks that people are using them as work tools and you sometimes wearing gloves or You're sometimes you know covered in dirt right and so having have to control seems like the exact opposite opposite thing that you would want in a truck
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, yeah, which is again, to your point in general why it's good that for the most part they're keeping these out of trucks and I think it should stay that way because there's even manufacturers that have put these touch sensitive controls in their cars and they're walking that back because they realize that most of their customers don't want that even though they might they might look nice and photograph well it's not something that most people are interacting with.
[SPEAKER_01]: And yeah, not as much in pickup trucks, but we also on this channel we talk a lot about and tow a lot with SUVs and there are several SUVs that use these kinds of controls.
[SPEAKER_00]: And this is on the list, but I'm going to add it to it because it's just as annoying.
[SPEAKER_00]: And once again, Tesla is to blame for this because they pioneered it.
[SPEAKER_00]: And that is vent controls that are electronic.
[SPEAKER_00]: Where you can't just reach over and like, oh, I'm hot.
[SPEAKER_00]: So I'm going to point the vent at my face.
[SPEAKER_00]: You have to go into the screen, and then you have to manipulate the magic screen so that the air flow is just right so that it hits your face.
[SPEAKER_00]: And while you're doing that, you're about to hit them.
[SPEAKER_00]: Telephone Paul.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's one way to make, and otherwise, very easy thing.
[SPEAKER_01]: Very difficult.
[SPEAKER_01]: More difficult.
[SPEAKER_00]: I had this really embarrassing moment where I was driving.
[SPEAKER_00]: I don't want to name names, so I don't want to shame people, but I was driving a car.
[SPEAKER_00]: And this was a car that had just gone to these kinds of vents.
[SPEAKER_00]: It was actually an SUV, I was driving an SUV that went to this, and I was having dinner with the designer, and I asked him, I said, what are you the proudest of, and he said, I'm so proud that we were able to get the money to incorporate the screen control events.
[SPEAKER_00]: I just looked at him and I'm like, that's the hill you want to die on.
[SPEAKER_00]: Really, that's the hill you want to die on?
[SPEAKER_00]: And I like the guy, we get along really well, but I just like, we are in two different worlds, my man.
[SPEAKER_00]: I don't understand why you think this is good, how you think this is good, or how this makes my life any better driving, right?
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, because it doesn't make it easier.
[SPEAKER_01]: No, it doesn't make it less expensive.
[SPEAKER_01]: No, it doesn't make it more reliable.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, exactly.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's not more durable.
[SPEAKER_00]: And the crazy thing is you don't realize just how many times you mess with those things.
[SPEAKER_00]: Oh, yeah.
[SPEAKER_00]: Right.
[SPEAKER_00]: The idea is like, well, I'll just set it.
[SPEAKER_00]: But no, I'm always, you know, the sun comes out.
[SPEAKER_00]: The cloud goes over the sun.
[SPEAKER_00]: It comes back out.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm always changing them around and to do it electronically is such a pain in the butt.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I know that I'm sure there are a lot of Tesla lovers out there who will hate that because they love that.
[SPEAKER_01]: Not on this podcast.
[SPEAKER_00]: Not on this podcast.
[SPEAKER_00]: You're in a different podcast.
[SPEAKER_00]: All right.
[SPEAKER_00]: Next on our list case is this is not a problem that trucks have, but some do hidden glove box releases.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, well, we could keep harping on the cyber truck if we need to.
[SPEAKER_00]: We'll just skip over that one.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's not a big deal breaker when it comes to trucks.
[SPEAKER_00]: But this next one is, and this also bugs me, volume down while reversing.
[SPEAKER_00]: Have you seen that?
[SPEAKER_00]: You put in reverse and you're listening to a favorite part of your song, or a good part of a podcast, and all of a sudden it goes quiet because you put the car or truck the reverse.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, which is irritating, but I've got even one better.
[SPEAKER_01]: What's that?
[SPEAKER_01]: So I'm sure you've noticed in many of the four trucks that we've had here at the office recently, behind our parking spaces.
[SPEAKER_01]: If you're backing up to one of those parking spaces, there's a slight curb.
[SPEAKER_01]: There is a curb, we have a slight curb.
[SPEAKER_01]: So one that the rear bumper of the truck can clear, just fine.
[SPEAKER_01]: We know that because we've backed up to this curb many, many times.
[SPEAKER_01]: But if you back up to that curb and you try and get the bumper to shoot over the curb so that you're not sticking way the hell out of the parking space, it jams on the brakes.
[SPEAKER_00]: Oh my gosh, yeah, you know this Honda here, yeah, it won't let you go into reverse and it won't release a parking brake unless you have your seatbelt on.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, that's what you want to do as well.
[SPEAKER_00]: The vehicle thinks for you or tries to outthink you.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's so irritating.
[SPEAKER_01]: I've got another similar one.
[SPEAKER_01]: We just had a GM truck.
[SPEAKER_01]: We had a Dermax just like the Dermax that we own, but it was one from a dealership that we used to do a side-by-side MPG loop.
[SPEAKER_01]: In that truck, until you buckled your seat belt, you couldn't pull it out of park.
[SPEAKER_01]: So if you just had to move it forward to feet, which we do a lot when we're shooting because maybe you park it, you get out, you look at where the truck is and you want to move it just slightly to get a different shot of it.
[SPEAKER_01]: You can't do that until you get in, put on your seat belt, move it into drive and then you can put it back in a park, take your seat belt off and get out again.
[SPEAKER_01]: So there's just more nannies, it's more ways in which they're telling you that you're being too
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, and it's slowly creeping in and it's becoming more and more pervasive and making just owning a vehicle less than less fun.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I think that's why there's this, I think, increased interest in, like, your truck, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: People want and go back.
[SPEAKER_00]: to the good old days when trucks were just honest.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, and my truck trust me, which is good field.
[SPEAKER_00]: Your truck is stupid, but it's great.
[SPEAKER_00]: Exactly.
[SPEAKER_00]: Doesn't try to overthink you.
[SPEAKER_00]: All right, next on this list is, this is interesting.
[SPEAKER_00]: So they said slow electric tailgates.
[SPEAKER_00]: They have a range over here, but trucks also now have electric tailgates.
[SPEAKER_00]: What do you like electric tailgates on trucks?
[SPEAKER_01]: I don't mind tailgates that lock, I think that's nice, damp and tailgates that doesn't bother me.
[SPEAKER_01]: But you don't like the full electric ones.
[SPEAKER_01]: The thing that I really don't like that much are the incredibly heavy tailgates that open six different ways.
[SPEAKER_01]: And have speakers built into them and everything because ultimately, what's probably the first part of your truck that's gonna get beat up and abused?
[SPEAKER_01]: Tell you.
[SPEAKER_01]: Let's tailgate.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: Tell you it all, my truck, if I beat that thing up and need to replace it, I gotta shoot paint at it and paint can be expensive.
[SPEAKER_01]: But the tailgate itself primed and ready for paint on my truck is a hundred hundred forty bucks.
[SPEAKER_00]: And for a while there there was a ring of these I guess somewhere that we're stealing maybe they still are but especially forwards had their tailgate stolen because like you said they're the most easily damaged part of the truck and so
[SPEAKER_00]: they have to give replaced.
[SPEAKER_00]: There's a market for replacements and the more stuff the tailgate does, whether it's a barn door style or whether it's like you said the multi-pro that opens up.
[SPEAKER_00]: The more expensive it is to replace that and the more expensive it is to replace when it gets stolen.
[SPEAKER_00]: So, you've got this part that's easily removable, fits every vehicle in that same category.
[SPEAKER_00]: So, it's going to have a big market and, yeah, it's right.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's just another one of those parts that feels gimmicky because I'm really, I'm not, I don't, I'm not convinced that the tailgate needs to be innovative anymore than I think a tailgate that locks again.
[SPEAKER_01]: That's great because if you have a tonneau cover, especially a hard tonneau cover, and a tailgate that locks and you can keep things in your bed pretty secure, then that's great.
[SPEAKER_00]: So we're looking at this forward detail again.
[SPEAKER_00]: How about like all the bottle openers and all the measuring tape you care about that or are
[SPEAKER_01]: I don't think that's bad.
[SPEAKER_01]: If you're going to put some kind of texture or pattern on the inside of the tailgate it might as well be something you can use to measure why not and a bottle opener.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's not like that takes up tons of material so sure.
[SPEAKER_01]: But yes, it's the ones that open a bunch of different ways and have speakers put into them and you're just making it more complicated, more heavy and expensive for really no added benefit that I can see.
[SPEAKER_00]: The ones that open up in two different ways, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: The GM one where it opens up half way basically, the top part opens, or the ram ones that can split.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, but I'm talking, oh, then.
[SPEAKER_00]: Now I'm talking about the, we're dropping out.
[SPEAKER_00]: We're dropping out.
[SPEAKER_00]: There's two buttons on it.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I never know which button to do it.
[SPEAKER_00]: I don't know if it's the wrong button.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, hit the wrong button.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: The top part opens, but not the whole thing.
[SPEAKER_01]: When if you have both sections open, it's kind of an awkward process closing the tailgate.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, I know what you mean.
[SPEAKER_01]: All right, you're lifting up on the bottom middle section and it closes a whole thing.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's weird.
[SPEAKER_00]: All right, and this last one that Top Gear had was Pointless Balls.
[SPEAKER_00]: Toyota is especially, uh, meaning like John's.
[SPEAKER_00]: Chimes and dings and dogs, and you don't know what the heck the truck is angry at you for.
[SPEAKER_00]: And we kind of touched upon it before when we said like when you're backing up now, of course, a lot of trucks have the backup sensors.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, which are pretty useful.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm not, I'm not.
[SPEAKER_01]: Sure, sure.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, yeah.
[SPEAKER_00]: But there are some vehicles, like I said, especially Toyota where, oh my god, the, especially in trucks, the incessant beeping or gonging or bogging when you don't have your seatbelt on, especially when you're driving around the ranch where you're not the only thing you're going to hit, you know, is maybe a crazed prairie dog and you're just trying to do work with a thing.
[SPEAKER_00]: And now you have to put your seatbelt on every time you want to pull it into the garage.
[SPEAKER_00]: How cool would it be?
[SPEAKER_01]: This, this is actually a Tommy point.
[SPEAKER_01]: this is something he said in the past, but how cool would it be if you could go to a dealership and buy vehicle where you sign a contract to say, I realize that this is not going to beat at me and warn me if my door is open and my seat belt is off and I know what I'm doing and if anything happens, it's on me and me alone.
[SPEAKER_01]: Sign that contract and then you get a truck that
[SPEAKER_01]: without your seat belt on because you're driving around with a sheep belt on.
[SPEAKER_01]: You're going to be getting in and out of it all the time.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, doing the work, which is work.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, obviously we're not again seat belts.
[SPEAKER_00]: No, no, no, no, of course when you're on the road.
[SPEAKER_01]: But if you're driving around the ranch, you're getting in and out constantly.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, I mean, I mean, the way that people do that right now is they buckle the seatbelt behind them.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, or again, like on on that Dermax, I was talking about that doesn't let you throw it into reverse or drive unless you have your seatbelt buckle up.
[SPEAKER_01]: What if you're getting in and out because you're hitching up a trailer?
[SPEAKER_01]: So you go to drop it in to drive to pull forward so you can get the hitch out of the hitch receiver You got to buckle up your seat belt just so you can move it forward a foot So you can take your seat belt off put it back in park and then walk back there.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's just adds more steps.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yep.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, I want to talk about some
[SPEAKER_00]: actually is one of the things I want to talk about that is kind of unwanted and this is a really insider thing so remember when we had the Tacoma and we were trying to tow with it and it wouldn't it wouldn't see the brake controller do you remember that issue yeah you remember why because you had to select what kind of a what kind of a trailer you had whether it was electric over hydraulic hydraulic and you had to select and if you didn't select the right one the brake controller
[SPEAKER_00]: And that seems like an unwanted level of technology as well, where you're actually having to tell the truck.
[SPEAKER_00]: I like, this is what I'm trying to transition to.
[SPEAKER_00]: We've just spent 45 minutes of kind of white winging and whining.
[SPEAKER_00]: But there is some really cool new truck tech that I think is actually very beneficial.
[SPEAKER_00]: So I want to kind of highlight some of those things.
[SPEAKER_00]: I want to ask if you like them.
[SPEAKER_00]: So let's start with the trailer stuff, the towing stuff, a lot of trucks now have a screen that allows you to actually configure the kind of trailer that you're working with.
[SPEAKER_00]: And then it keeps track of like how many hours you've put, how much you've told with that thing.
[SPEAKER_00]: Do you like that?
[SPEAKER_01]: Sure, I could be breaking it on it.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's nice to have metrics for how many miles you've pulled your trailer because that gives you a better idea of what your maintenance intervals actually need to be rather than estimating how many miles that you'd driven your trailer.
[SPEAKER_01]: So I think
[SPEAKER_01]: Especially for hot shotters or people that are telling long distances that can be really helpful information to have because again, it's just a hard thing to try and memorize every time that you're pulling a trailer.
[SPEAKER_01]: So yeah, I like that.
[SPEAKER_00]: I like that.
[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, you can knowing that you can name the trailer and we have, well, we have two different trailers that we use a toe with.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yep.
[SPEAKER_00]: If you don't count a little motorcycle trailer, and it's nice because you can store the breaking on it.
[SPEAKER_00]: So it knows exactly and you could store how many hours.
[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, miles you've put on it.
[SPEAKER_00]: So you know what it's time to change the tires.
[SPEAKER_01]: No, but I don't love, though, is that a lot of trucks when you key cycle them, they go out of Tohal mode automatically, which is strange because the trucks still realizes that there is a trailer plugged into it.
[SPEAKER_01]: So you would think that it would start back up and stay in Tohal mode for a lot of people, so what, you know, you press one button.
[SPEAKER_01]: But again, a lot of times when we're towing, we're in and out.
[SPEAKER_00]: It should just stay one at the time.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's like when you turn off the start stuff, it should just stay two.
[SPEAKER_01]: It'd be one thing if you disconnected the trailer, the truck sense that you disconnected the trailer, which it does if you do.
[SPEAKER_01]: and then turned off to a hall mode, but the fact that every time you get in and out, you got it.
[SPEAKER_00]: I also love when the new trucks know that there's a trailer attached.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's so great.
[SPEAKER_00]: So like, no, my favorite feature that actually when it comes to towing is the RAM feature where not only does it know that you're towing, but it asks you to make a quick, right, quick left turn and then it identifies the blind spot and it extends it to cover the trailer, which is really cool.
[SPEAKER_00]: And it is.
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, and obviously,
[SPEAKER_00]: I was just driving our disco, and that has big ass mirrors, but for some reason mirrors over the last five years have gotten smaller.
[SPEAKER_00]: I don't know why, maybe because of arrow or something like that.
[SPEAKER_00]: But if you don't have adequate mirrors, it's really nice to have blind spot monitoring that only covers the truck, but also covers the trailer.
[SPEAKER_00]: And when the truck does it on its own, like with the Ford, you have to tell it how long the trailer is.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_00]: Whereas with the ram, it figures it out.
[SPEAKER_00]: I think that's also very clever tech.
[SPEAKER_01]: It is, yeah, luckily Mirazon most trucks, at least there's a uh, telling option, telling mirror option available, which still gives you a good, good amount of mirror.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yes, yes, uh, other things I love on uh, new trucks when it comes to like, uh, things, uh, trends or technology, um, now a lot of the truck makers are basic building off-road trucks.
[SPEAKER_00]: A lot of the trims are, you know, there's like three or four different off-road trims, which is great because in the past, you know, you used to have like, you could get the FX4 or not, but now you've got the FX4, the two different tremors, the Raptor, the Raptor R, and one of the benefits of that is that you're giving like altering tires and the past trucks came with basically street tires.
[SPEAKER_00]: which were great, but then when you took them off-road or you took them into the snow, they weren't so good.
[SPEAKER_00]: Now with these ATs that are standard on many trucks, not only did you get snow performance and off-road performance, but you get a kind of a cool look, too.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, I agree.
[SPEAKER_01]: I would say as time goes on, off-road trucks are just getting better and better because they're extremely popular.
[SPEAKER_01]: Lots of people, lots of people buy them.
[SPEAKER_01]: So it makes sense for manufacturers to lean into that.
[SPEAKER_01]: Make more of those models, offer more features, so offer trucks just getting better.
[SPEAKER_00]: And the other thing where there's a Renaissance, and I think this is where Electric Truck, Ruby and his done a good job, is storage.
[SPEAKER_00]: So in the past, you know, you're a truck, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: If you wanted to store something, you put it in the bed.
[SPEAKER_00]: Pretty much.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's it, but now you've got underseed storage.
[SPEAKER_00]: with like compartments that are there, so if you need to store some emergency equipment or if you need to put something that's hidden, you can put in there.
[SPEAKER_01]: There is, uh, there's nothing under my seat, so I could.
[SPEAKER_01]: I can't.
[SPEAKER_00]: But also rolls out.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: Celebrate and stop.
[SPEAKER_01]: I've got cubbies behind my seats.
[SPEAKER_01]: And then come in a net.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yes, yes.
[SPEAKER_00]: I know you're all a school, but I'm saying it's nice, especially with Ruby and like that little passage that goes down the tunnel.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, a gear tunnel?
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, I mean, these, this is nice.
[SPEAKER_00]: This is good stuff to have or like forward where they do the big center, you know, cubby in between, and then it kind of, then the shift lever goes down, tucked away, and then you can fold out the top of it and actually put a like a laptop on it.
[SPEAKER_01]: Really?
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: What was that?
[SPEAKER_01]: 1952 Dodge M37.
[SPEAKER_00]: That was a little scary truck.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yep, it's got a, it's got a little gear tunnel under the bed.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, that's huge.
[SPEAKER_01]: M37.
[SPEAKER_01]: Wonderful.
[SPEAKER_01]: But also, see if we could find a picture of the bed.
[SPEAKER_01]: Okay, let's see and then we'll talk about other stories.
[SPEAKER_01]: I don't know if they called it the gear tunnel.
[SPEAKER_01]: I think that's yeah, to yeah, maybe fun of picture Yeah, didn't it have like like an ammo box basically I basically yeah, I think it was more form munitions than Camping stoves, but
[SPEAKER_01]: But yeah, if you look at a picture of just the side of the truck, you'll probably be able to see if you're watching this as a part of the truck.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, it's got right behind the cab.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, I see it.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, it's got a little, a little door that opens it goes all the way through to the other side, just like a Rivian.
[SPEAKER_01]: Virtually this truck indistinguishable from a Rivian.
[SPEAKER_00]: If, you know, a Rivian was green and had big fenders and only straight lines.
[SPEAKER_00]: Only straight lines.
[SPEAKER_00]: The other thing we're getting much more storage is now, of course, Ram does the ram box and the bed.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's just trading bed storage for different kinds of people.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, it is lockable, or you could get a ton of cover.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, it is lockable.
[SPEAKER_01]: Because the thing with the RAM boxes is then, then it's just for feet, the bed all the way.
[SPEAKER_01]: So, like the, how narrow the wheel wells would be, it's that narrow.
[SPEAKER_01]: But you could put a rifle back there, you don't have to hang it, you know?
[SPEAKER_00]: Sure.
[SPEAKER_00]: And for the heavy crack.
[SPEAKER_01]: Also just do a ton of cover.
[SPEAKER_00]: I don't know if you do a telecover.
[SPEAKER_00]: Our canyon also has storage in the, what's it called?
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm spacing out.
[SPEAKER_00]: Under the seat?
[SPEAKER_00]: No.
[SPEAKER_00]: Telegate.
[SPEAKER_00]: In the telegate.
[SPEAKER_00]: Oh, sure.
[SPEAKER_00]: There's a storage compartment in the telegate.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's kind of a weird place to go.
[SPEAKER_00]: What would you put in there?
[SPEAKER_00]: I had a jumper change.
[SPEAKER_00]: Oh jumper.
[SPEAKER_00]: Oh, okay.
[SPEAKER_00]: One.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: There you go.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_00]: I just think that there has been a renaissance of storage in drugs a little bit.
[SPEAKER_01]: Some smaller mid-sized trucks do a pretty good job with storage.
[SPEAKER_01]: The by the Honda Ridge line going all the way back has had that cubby that's underneath the bed floor, which is great unless you have a bunch of stuff in your bed.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, the Santa Cruz is the same thing.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, Santa Cruz.
[SPEAKER_00]: So yeah, yeah, it's good, it's good and it's bad.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's good for like tailgating.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's bad for like, because your spares there as well.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, so if you get a flat and you got a bed full of whatever.
[SPEAKER_01]: You're not getting it.
[SPEAKER_01]: You're going to be scooping rocks out of there until you can get to it.
[SPEAKER_00]: And then, of course, Honda has done the cleverest thing with tailgate and that it makes it open both ways.
[SPEAKER_00]: So it jerks down and it opens sideways.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, I was saying bad things about tailgates that open several different ways.
[SPEAKER_01]: I don't feel as much that way with the Ridgeline tailgate.
[SPEAKER_01]: I think the Ridgeline tailgate is still relatively simple, but it's just a cool hinge mechanism, whereas, yeah, there's other tailgates out like a lot less.
[SPEAKER_00]: Now, this is kind of a controversial one, but I actually like it.
[SPEAKER_00]: So, of course, we have gone from no off-road modes, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: From like, if you want to go off-road, you put it in four-high or four-low, or if, you know, four-auto has been around a while as well.
[SPEAKER_00]: But now, of course, you've got, like, two to this is weird thing where you have, like, two sets of off-road modes.
[SPEAKER_00]: You've got the on-road modes, and you've got the off-road modes.
[SPEAKER_00]: And they're not together.
[SPEAKER_00]: But like you have to be in like for low to get the off-road modes, and then the off-road modes are like, you know, like rocks and gravel and to your point sometimes there's too many off-road modes because there's You know, there might be a rock crawl mode and a snow and ice mode, but what if you're rock crawling in snow and ice?
[SPEAKER_01]: We've been doing rock crawl instead of snow and ice and you break the front diff and then the truck grabs the brakes and breaks a front diff And then another youtuber tries to make it seem like That was your fault.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yes That's that that's the known to happen.
[SPEAKER_01]: Could you imagine if that were a situation?
[SPEAKER_01]: No, I can't imagine that But what what what what what what I do like we were rock you you were in I I'm on your side with this You were rock crawling even though it was in the snow in the snow so I think you were in a fine mode
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, we're going to make me really this, huh?
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, the truck didn't like it.
[SPEAKER_01]: So that's too many off-road modes, perhaps.
[SPEAKER_00]: But what I do like is the way Ford does it now, where you select the off-road mode that you want.
[SPEAKER_00]: And then it puts the truck into whatever it needs to be.
[SPEAKER_00]: Right, so it automatically puts it in for a low.
[SPEAKER_00]: It automatically locks the diffs.
[SPEAKER_00]: I really like that.
[SPEAKER_00]: I think that is smart.
[SPEAKER_01]: I do too although sometimes it goes a little too far because a lot of the Ford programs if you put it in a rock roll mode it automatically locks the rear diff and if I need to still make tight turns I don't want the diff locked up until I need it so there's a lot of times that I'll go in a rock roll mode on a Ford product but then immediately unlock the rear diff because it's not quite necessary yet.
[SPEAKER_00]: And the other thing that's happened in trucks, picking up off road stuff, which is nice, and we were just off-roading the two, we have two kangins here, we've got the AT4X, and then we've got the AEV, and it's just like that.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's become very easy to lock and unlock dips with the turret, remember you got to put it in a neutral, and then you got to unlock it, and then it won't unlock, the tundra is guilty of this, and then you got to drive it, and then find you like, oh, there, it's just unlocked.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_00]: Whereas with the,
[SPEAKER_00]: with the GM products now, they've kind of gotten away from the G80 and it's just like, whoop, or the Ford product, whoop, whoop, whoop, whoop, whoop, whoop, whoop, whoop, whoop, whoop, whoop, whoop, whoop, whoop, whoop, whoop, whoop, whoop, whoop, whoop, whoop, whoop, whoop, whoop, whoop, whoop, whoop, whoop, whoop, whoop, whoop, whoop, whoop, whoop, whoop, whoop, whoop, whoop, whoop, whoop, whoop, whoop, whoop, whoop, whoop, whoop, whoop, whoop, whoop, whoop, whoop, whoop, whoop, whoop, whoop, whoop, whoop, whoop, whoop, whoop, whoop, whoop, whoop, whoop
[SPEAKER_00]: uh... jeeps got the problem with that lever so that you got to pull that lever down and that lever can be hard to get some time for four wheel drive for four wheel drive the lever you like the lever i don't you know i don't like on the jeep uh... unlocking and locking the uh... sway bar yeah the right bar it's drink is a little but the locker engagements pretty good lockers i mean jeep will say that the lever is there on purpose so that it's very mechanical it's a very lively yeah
[SPEAKER_01]: uh... agreed what do you what do you think of uh... uh... the trend to turboify everything is that good or bad i know i know a lot of people hate the fact that mid-sized direction of force under turbos for us here up in the mountains it is objectively good because a turbo force cylinder versus a naturally aspirated v6 the the character of those engines pulling a trailer in the mountain in in the mid-sized
[SPEAKER_01]: World of difference.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, I mean compare the penistar to like the Tacoma.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, the gladiator Tacoma or like a star I mean people people aren't gonna want to hear this, but a third gen Tacoma versus a fourth gen Tacoma pulling a trailer up here in the mountains.
[SPEAKER_01]: World of the different part in a big part because the eight speed but the V6 makes all its power up high whereas the 2.7 has a lot of power a lot of torque down low so that truck is just effortless
[SPEAKER_01]: Screaming I'm just expecting a song from that flying through the hood any moment We're doing it like it's just it's like six stars RPM all the way up here whenever we have a video where I have to pull the trailer To the hike with of naturally aspirated V6 midsize truck
[SPEAKER_01]: It's uh, it's not good news.
[SPEAKER_00]: Let's go back to what people hate.
[SPEAKER_00]: This is in the GM products.
[SPEAKER_00]: They hate the cylinder deactivation.
[SPEAKER_00]: It has been nothing but trouble.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's never good.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_00]: Nothing but trouble.
[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, part of having the V8 is the fact that you have a V8.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I get that you're trying to say fuel, but why bother?
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, exactly.
[SPEAKER_00]: If you're going to have a VH just have a VH.
[SPEAKER_00]: Did we make it all the way through the list?
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, we made it.
[SPEAKER_00]: Oh, wow, look at that.
[SPEAKER_00]: I was just trying to come up with some positive things.
[SPEAKER_00]: We were so negative for so long.
[SPEAKER_00]: So I wanted to talk about some good stuff as opposed to some bad stuff.
[SPEAKER_01]: Well, and ultimately too, capability.
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm going to look at, look at where even mid-sized truck towing figures.
[SPEAKER_00]: Oh, my God.
[SPEAKER_00]: Oh, yeah.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, it's funny.
[SPEAKER_00]: Her is probably the biggest one that people aren't going to want to hear.
[SPEAKER_00]: But it's absolutely true.
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, people hate death.
[SPEAKER_00]: They do.
[SPEAKER_00]: The first thing they do is they pull it off because they think that it robs them with power and fuel economy, which it does.
[SPEAKER_00]: But, Bud case, the technology has come so far.
[SPEAKER_00]: Take like a 1980s diesel without death, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: And it's probably making 400 pounds of torque and probably putting out like 300 horsepower, or something like that, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: Today you can buy a truck with death that is making 1,000 pounds of torque.
[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, five-year-ends power figures are on diesel trucks these days.
[SPEAKER_00]: You can make more by pulling it out.
[SPEAKER_00]: Of course.
[SPEAKER_00]: But I'm saying that the advances in technology and how good it has gotten over the last, let's say, 20, 30 years are astounding.
[SPEAKER_01]: Diesel engine power figures are in the same.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: There's no diesel truck.
[SPEAKER_01]: that you would go buy from the dealership today and in HD diesel truck that's underpowered.
[SPEAKER_00]: And not nearly.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm saying that because a lot of people are pulling the deaf systems off because they're thinking of those first gen diesels, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: Word robbed the truck of efficiency, it robbed them of power.
[SPEAKER_00]: But the technology has gotten so far from where it started that you can have your cake and needed to today.
[SPEAKER_00]: And if you really want to pull off the deaf system, you're doing it for other reasons
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, I mean, ultimately, a lot of that still about longevity, and especially EGR systems.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, they're painted the ass, you're right.
[SPEAKER_00]: They're expensive to maintain.
[SPEAKER_00]: They cause issues, member Alex with his.
[SPEAKER_01]: Uh-huh.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, his deaf injector.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, there's come in to have a lot of his problems.
[SPEAKER_01]: And he had to go pull it out and soak it in a water.
[SPEAKER_01]: So that is truck wouldn't be in limp mode.
[SPEAKER_01]: I don't know how many times, too many times.
[SPEAKER_00]: He got, but he maybe he got a bad one because we had, we never had that issue with the exact same truck that we had the same ram.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, and we put like 35,000 miles on it.
[SPEAKER_00]: So not a huge amount, but we did enough, but we never had issues with it with with yeah.
[SPEAKER_00]: So it depends.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, I got to sneeze go sneeze.
[SPEAKER_00]: So, but yeah, I would say that the like you said the improvements in torque and horsepower and towing are just through the roof.
[SPEAKER_00]: I, you know, you could take a full size truck and now easily tow 10,000 pounds.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_00]: or more.
[SPEAKER_00]: And if you really want to push it, you could tow 14,000 with the thing.
[SPEAKER_00]: And you could take a heavy duty truck until 30 plus thousand pounds, which would be terrifying.
[SPEAKER_00]: These are like numbers that semi-use to do.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: In the Ford Super Duty, theoretically, as much as 40,000, even though that number was set with a truck that didn't have like a passenger seat or a spare tire, or
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, no, I'm insane telling figures on Truxie's day.
[SPEAKER_01]: So tons of capability, tons of power and torque, transmissions that have tons of gear ratios, which is great, especially when you're pulling in the mountain, you know, 10 speed or an eight speed versus back in the vein.
[SPEAKER_00]: And tons of course for these trucks are so much more comfortable.
[SPEAKER_00]: As much as I love to be trucked, the thing is pretty raw.
[SPEAKER_00]: It is pretty raw.
[SPEAKER_00]: Tread lightly.
[SPEAKER_00]: Well, you don't tread lightly, you don't try.
[SPEAKER_00]: But it is pretty raw, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, you are the master of your old chip when you're driving that thing.
[SPEAKER_00]: And it engages all of the senses.
[SPEAKER_01]: Well, yeah, you got to remain aware as well.
[SPEAKER_01]: Because it doesn't stop very quickly.
[SPEAKER_01]: I've noticed.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, it'll panic you when it starts up panic stop in that truck and it smells like a diesel the whole time It's running.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yes, but today's trucks, you know, there's nothing that a Mercedes or a BMW has that it modern truck can't have
[SPEAKER_01]: Nothing important, anyway.
[SPEAKER_00]: Right, except for towing and hauling capability.
[SPEAKER_00]: You can't change your volume like this.
[SPEAKER_00]: Like, you can't do that, yeah, thank God.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_00]: But everything else, like in terms of like, you know, heated and ventancy, it's in terms of massaging, see, it's in terms of, you know, stir-ups, all that stuff is in a truck today, which is also wonderful.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_00]: But you're paying for it.
[SPEAKER_00]: So guys, next week, Andrew, we back.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, exactly.
[SPEAKER_00]: And look forward to seeing that the affordable truck
[SPEAKER_00]: should be interesting maybe maybe we should do the podcast walking around the truck was yeah see what people think yeah if you want to see it yeah that's in a belly the other all of you guys do it thank you for putting up with me for being here for these two weeks I appreciate it and appreciate being on the truck yourself and remember if you want to go to some of our other podcasts check out our car check on animal as well I don't see a fella in the first time he and the new and
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, and there's a great episode where you guys did the scariest cars.
[SPEAKER_00]: So if you want to see some scary car stuff It's seasonal and I'll number it all to you felt that come and we'll see you guys next time.
[SPEAKER_00]: Ciao