Gene's Offroading Adventure

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[00:01:03] Hello, everyone, and welcome to Kill a Watt, a podcast about electric vehicles,

[00:01:06] renewable energy, autonomous driving and much, much more.

[00:01:09] And if you're like, hey, man, isn't there supposed to be music in here?

[00:01:14] Yeah, there is.

[00:01:15] But for some reason, my music's playing really slow.

[00:01:19] But my interview is playing really fast.

[00:01:22] So I decided that instead of changing

[00:01:26] my sample rate to 48 kilohertz,

[00:01:30] I would leave it at forty one point or forty four point one kilohertz

[00:01:35] so that the voices don't sound sped up and funny.

[00:01:38] And we would just not listen to music at all,

[00:01:41] which is normally sample rated at 48 kilohertz.

[00:01:44] Why this is doing this?

[00:01:45] I have no idea.

[00:01:47] It's just I'm recording a lot of these podcasts lately.

[00:01:51] And these are the kind of weird things that come up every now and again.

[00:01:55] Anyway, on this episode of Kill a Watt,

[00:01:58] we are going to sit down with Glenn Rubin and Glenn is going to tell us

[00:02:01] all about his experience off roading in his cyber truck.

[00:02:05] I know many of you enjoy this past time based on the emails

[00:02:08] that I've had with you.

[00:02:10] But even if you're not interested in off roading,

[00:02:12] I still think you're going to enjoy the interview.

[00:02:15] You're going to learn a lot. I learned a lot.

[00:02:18] All right. Let's go ahead and welcome Jean to the show.

[00:02:21] Thank you, Bodie.

[00:02:22] Good to see you again for the second time.

[00:02:25] Yeah, this is this should become a regular every three or four weeks.

[00:02:30] We get together and chat about the cyber truck.

[00:02:32] It's a fun discussion.

[00:02:33] That's fair.

[00:02:34] So last time we just talked about the cyber truck and your overall impressions.

[00:02:39] But what you really got this truck for was to do some off roading

[00:02:43] and some camping. And now you've had the opportunity to do that.

[00:02:47] What are your thoughts?

[00:02:49] I was very impressed, actually.

[00:02:51] I came home from that last camping trip,

[00:02:53] which included some rough roads and stuff.

[00:02:56] I came home with a big smile on my face because I, of course,

[00:02:59] had apprehensions.

[00:03:00] I've owned many sorts of very capable trucks in the past

[00:03:03] and was worried that this one would fulfill my expectations.

[00:03:07] And it really did.

[00:03:08] So we can talk about that as the podcast goes along.

[00:03:11] But I was pleased.

[00:03:13] Excellent. And just so everybody kind of gets a picture in their head,

[00:03:17] where did you go and what type of terrain did you encounter?

[00:03:20] OK, so I'm in the Ventura, California area, which is near Santa Barbara.

[00:03:26] And whenever I go on my camping trips, I generally head east,

[00:03:30] maybe over in the Four Corners area, Navajo, Hopi lands.

[00:03:34] This one was over into the eastern Sierra, also known as

[00:03:39] Inyo County over by Lone Pine Bishop Independence.

[00:03:45] It's actually a fabulous county in your county.

[00:03:47] I think it's in the lower 48.

[00:03:50] It's like the second largest county with the lowest population density.

[00:03:54] So that's hard to believe here in California, but it is.

[00:03:57] There's some nice wild lands there.

[00:04:00] That answer your question?

[00:04:02] It does. And I think this is a really big side note,

[00:04:05] but I think I went to a a like

[00:04:09] a mule day like a donkey day in Bishop.

[00:04:13] Right. Is it Bishop? Yeah.

[00:04:14] Mule days.

[00:04:15] Yeah, my wife and I happen to be driving by and we're like, what is this?

[00:04:19] Because we still live in Nevada and we drive back and forth

[00:04:21] there is ono when she was looking for a job and we stopped

[00:04:25] and we enjoyed, you know, lots of really tasty food and then went on our way.

[00:04:29] Yeah. Well, that's the the general vicinity for sure.

[00:04:33] OK, excellent, excellent.

[00:04:35] And then in terms of terrain,

[00:04:38] we were in a lot of because Cybertruck's very heavy.

[00:04:41] We're in a lot of soft train, hard train, rocky train.

[00:04:44] What did you get? OK.

[00:04:45] So on this particular trip, because there were several other

[00:04:49] people and vehicles that wanted to go along.

[00:04:51] We didn't go into as rough an area as I had hoped for,

[00:04:55] because we had other people who had like trailers to pull

[00:04:59] and normal view, like, you know, not really off road capable vehicles.

[00:05:03] So we actually camped in an area near independence

[00:05:06] in a BLM campground at the base of the eastern side of the Sierras.

[00:05:12] But from there, there are some roads that travel

[00:05:15] up into the steeper portions of the lower east side of the Sierras.

[00:05:21] This is under Mount Whitney.

[00:05:23] It's really beautiful.

[00:05:24] We're under snowcapped mountains and what you kind of call a high desert

[00:05:28] around 4000 feet, just incredible views in every which direction.

[00:05:34] And I did make a point because I really wanted to test it out

[00:05:38] to do a nice loop up into the mountains there.

[00:05:42] Of it was only about 20 miles, but nonetheless,

[00:05:46] it took four hours to do it because it was challenging.

[00:05:49] And I have really good feedback I can give you from that.

[00:05:53] I was determined to get something in that I'd be able to

[00:05:55] to give you some interesting information.

[00:05:59] OK. And what do you got?

[00:06:01] OK. So I'll just start at the beginning of all of that.

[00:06:05] So what we were traveling on is it's not a graded road.

[00:06:09] It's just the more off-road stuff is going to be a track,

[00:06:13] meaning you've got where the left tire runs and the right tire runs

[00:06:17] from all the trucks that have been there before you.

[00:06:19] It's not flat graded. You always have a berm in the middle.

[00:06:22] And these roads that were going up and crossing some alluvial fan areas

[00:06:27] of the eastern Sierra are get flooded and washed out.

[00:06:31] In fact, these kinds of roads, as many of your listeners may already know

[00:06:35] and may have seen, they actually turn into rivers.

[00:06:37] So when there's a ton of rain coming off the mountains,

[00:06:39] it travels patho-lease resistance.

[00:06:41] And if there's kind of a road there, that's where the water flows.

[00:06:44] And so during this

[00:06:49] 25 mile loop that I did,

[00:06:52] most of it was more like driving on a riverbed

[00:06:56] because there had been quite a bit of flooding there.

[00:06:59] And so it was all very rocky,

[00:07:02] sometimes with rocks strewn about the size of

[00:07:06] watermelons, small watermelons, not big watermelons.

[00:07:10] Can be very steep and you can also become rutted.

[00:07:14] Again, some of your listeners may have seen this if they've done off-road stuff.

[00:07:17] But when you get water flowing down a road, you can get ruts

[00:07:20] that might be, say, a foot wide and as much as three feet deep

[00:07:24] where the water has found a soft part of the earth and it really undermines it and stuff.

[00:07:28] So it was quite rough going.

[00:07:30] Now, the Cybertruck has had a pretty amazing updates that I just got in yesterday.

[00:07:36] But for the trip that I did, it was before we had locking differentials.

[00:07:42] If you have listeners who are familiar with some serious off-road stuff,

[00:07:47] they know the value of locking differentials if they've ever had them.

[00:07:50] And so I was driving this on open differentials

[00:07:53] and it still did a really, really great job.

[00:07:56] Kind of going into this before you started, right?

[00:08:00] You're let's just say you pull off the main road

[00:08:02] and you're ready to start your off-roading experience.

[00:08:04] What are some of the worries that you had in the back of your mind?

[00:08:09] Well, I didn't have too many worries because I've done this sort of travel all the time.

[00:08:13] But I was concerned that the suspension just wouldn't articulate very much.

[00:08:19] When you don't have good articulation, you end up

[00:08:21] lifting a wheel off the ground a lot.

[00:08:23] In other words, let's say the right wheel needs to drop down into a gully or something.

[00:08:31] The vehicle sits on the left side, let's say the left front

[00:08:34] and the right one is sort of up in the air.

[00:08:37] When you have an open differential, the power always goes to the wheel

[00:08:40] that has the least traction.

[00:08:42] And you can get in a situation then that you're on basically maybe one wheel drive.

[00:08:47] If this happens kind of diagonally or catty corner from each other,

[00:08:51] you can get in that situation off-road easily.

[00:08:55] One wheel on the front axle is in the air,

[00:08:57] one the opposing wheel on the back axle is kind of in the air

[00:09:01] because the car is being supported by the other tires diagonally.

[00:09:05] Well then the power goes to those two and there's no forward motion.

[00:09:08] You have a problem.

[00:09:09] Basically, you can usually roll back in a case like that,

[00:09:11] but then you have to take a running start on it.

[00:09:14] And taking a running start off-road over rocks is like,

[00:09:18] you're just asking for a problem.

[00:09:19] You're just asking for damage.

[00:09:21] You always want to go as slow as possible, just creeping along.

[00:09:26] So that was one of my concerns that the suspension wouldn't,

[00:09:29] you know, keep all four wheels on the ground all the time.

[00:09:34] This is where locking differentials come in.

[00:09:35] If you have locking differentials and you lift a couple wheels,

[00:09:38] it doesn't matter.

[00:09:39] It will still make forward motion

[00:09:41] because the locking differential sends the power to all four wheels,

[00:09:45] not just the two that have the lesser traction.

[00:09:50] And actually, I'd love to talk sometime maybe later on in this

[00:09:54] about open differentials and why they are the way they are

[00:09:56] and why they're so much safer when you're on pavement.

[00:10:00] That's why most vehicles come that way.

[00:10:02] But as far as other things, well, that I was concerned about,

[00:10:07] really not too much else, but I did learn on the drive

[00:10:12] about some fabulous things about the Cybertruck that,

[00:10:15] one in particular, that I never really had before

[00:10:17] in all my off-road vehicles that made this drive really great.

[00:10:23] And that would be the front camera.

[00:10:26] That front camera, which up until this point,

[00:10:29] just helped me pull into the garage so I wouldn't hit the back wall,

[00:10:33] you know, was helpful in a parking lot

[00:10:36] or getting between two vehicles or something like that

[00:10:38] because it is a pretty big truck.

[00:10:40] And the front camera has the lines that you can follow,

[00:10:44] just like your other many other cars.

[00:10:46] They have a reverse camera, all the Teslas,

[00:10:49] you have a couple of white lines that show you exactly

[00:10:51] where your tires are going to run.

[00:10:53] Well, off-road on trails like this,

[00:10:56] where you have to not fall into ravines

[00:11:00] that have been cut by the water

[00:11:02] or get over or around large rocks without doing damage to your truck,

[00:11:07] is really common that you're going to have a co-rider,

[00:11:09] which I did, that's going to hop out,

[00:11:12] go up ahead with a walkie-talkie,

[00:11:15] and basically guide me, the driver,

[00:11:18] a little to the left, a little to the right,

[00:11:20] you know, guide me through it, basically spotting me.

[00:11:25] But two things with the Cybertruck,

[00:11:27] it has that sloping down front hood,

[00:11:30] so I can see the road in front of me

[00:11:32] maybe 10 to 15 feet ahead of me.

[00:11:35] When I've had full-sized Fords and Dodges, for instance,

[00:11:39] with that big hood, you see the road like 30 feet in front of you,

[00:11:43] and then you've got to memorize that whole thing.

[00:11:46] Where are the rocks?

[00:11:49] Where are the crevasses that you have to be careful for?

[00:11:51] You have to memorize that,

[00:11:52] or if you're lucky, you have someone to get out and tell you.

[00:11:55] But the Cybertruck was so easy.

[00:11:57] No one ever had to get out because I can see the ground up close,

[00:12:02] and then having that large screen,

[00:12:04] I don't know how big it is,

[00:12:05] it's like 16 inches or something like that,

[00:12:07] I can feel the whole thing with the front camera,

[00:12:10] and I can see you right in front of the bumper,

[00:12:13] exactly what I have to pick my way through,

[00:12:15] exactly the decisions I have to make.

[00:12:18] And that was fabulous.

[00:12:20] I mean, that just made it, it made it fun.

[00:12:23] It made it fun and a whole lot less stressful.

[00:12:26] That was really helpful.

[00:12:28] I did, if you look on a Cybertruck or if you own a Cybertruck,

[00:12:32] you'll see in front of the rear, the front tires,

[00:12:35] there's a air deflector that comes down under the bumper or like an air dam.

[00:12:39] I removed those already.

[00:12:41] I removed them back at home, weeks before and left them off.

[00:12:46] I'm not sure if it makes a difference in range or not.

[00:12:48] I don't think so because I'm getting good range.

[00:12:50] But those come off pretty easily and I removed those

[00:12:53] because they definitely would have gotten torn off without a doubt.

[00:12:57] And other off-roaders on videos I've seen on YouTube,

[00:13:00] some people have lost those things on rocks.

[00:13:03] So I would advise anybody else, just take them off now before you break them off.

[00:13:08] It's good advice.

[00:13:10] Yeah.

[00:13:12] Okay.

[00:13:12] So the screen on the Cybertruck is 18 and a half inches.

[00:13:16] So it's massive, much bigger than what's on my Model Y and your Model Y.

[00:13:21] But so that's really nice that you get all of that real estate on the screen

[00:13:26] to look and see what's in front of you.

[00:13:28] What other things did you experience?

[00:13:30] I'm guessing you experienced going up grade, coming down grade.

[00:13:35] You didn't have the new feature that is, I think it's called Trail Assist,

[00:13:39] which is basically off-road cruise control.

[00:13:41] You didn't have that.

[00:13:42] It was all on you to make these decisions.

[00:13:45] Easy, hard, stressful.

[00:13:48] What was the experience like driving in those situations?

[00:13:51] Okay.

[00:13:51] So I'd say overall this drive was less stressful and easier

[00:13:55] than it would have been in any of my other vehicles I've owned.

[00:13:58] Mostly because, well for one big reason, because it's electric.

[00:14:03] With a gas or diesel engine, you have a narrow power band.

[00:14:07] So you're always using your gears to try and stay in that power band.

[00:14:13] A good off-road vehicle is going to have a transfer case,

[00:14:17] which makes your gears much lower, like cuts the ratio in half of any of your gears.

[00:14:24] I've always used manual transmissions in all of my vehicles.

[00:14:27] So when you have a truck like the Dodge I had before,

[00:14:32] which was a diesel with a six-speed manual and a transfer case,

[00:14:36] it had really, really, really low gears.

[00:14:38] So it could creep along at one to two miles per hour

[00:14:41] and still be in the engine's range.

[00:14:44] But with electric, you have full torque even at one RPM.

[00:14:48] So off-road, when you need to go really slow,

[00:14:52] like on something which is sort of like stair steps

[00:14:54] with rocks thrown all over it.

[00:14:57] You can try and go around rocks, but sometimes the only way to get around it

[00:15:00] is to go over them, to actually put your wheel on the rock.

[00:15:04] And you need to go very, very slowly.

[00:15:07] Just really at a crawl, like what a baby would crawl.

[00:15:14] Doing this with electric, as I expected,

[00:15:18] was so much easier than doing it with a fossil vehicle.

[00:15:22] There's no, you don't have to pop any clutches.

[00:15:24] You don't have to, even with an automatic,

[00:15:26] when you get up to something that's a little bit tough to get over,

[00:15:29] you'd have to kind of gun the gas a little bit.

[00:15:32] And then it's going to sort of jump forward.

[00:15:34] But with the electric, because it has all the torque,

[00:15:36] all the horsepower, even as low as one RPM,

[00:15:38] you can really feather your way over anything.

[00:15:42] And when you come down the other side of the rock,

[00:15:45] it's nice having the regenerative to a braking, you know, to slow you down.

[00:15:53] So that I found, yeah, to make the whole thing a lot easier.

[00:15:58] I was surprised at the end of that trip that we were gone for four hours.

[00:16:02] I was like, wow, that was four hours?

[00:16:04] Because it was pretty stress-free.

[00:16:07] It was pretty nice for only 25 miles in four hours.

[00:16:11] Yeah.

[00:16:12] On my other trucks, it would have beat me up a lot harder.

[00:16:15] I would imagine with the Air Ride suspension,

[00:16:18] it is probably pretty smooth in terms of your ride.

[00:16:23] Yes, that's true.

[00:16:24] Also, you know, as I mentioned on the last time I was talking to you,

[00:16:26] with the Cybertruck, is that you can tell that the chassis is really, really stiff.

[00:16:31] There's no flex there and only this suspension is moving.

[00:16:36] I didn't know that that really adds to the capability

[00:16:38] of getting through the sort of terrain I went through.

[00:16:40] But it makes it a lot nicer when you're driving it

[00:16:43] and you don't feel like you're hearing all these creaks,

[00:16:46] moans and groans and creaks coming from the chassis.

[00:16:49] It's just sort of a more comfortable feeling in that way.

[00:16:53] Nice.

[00:16:54] So what other things did you come across in your ride or in your adventure

[00:17:00] that you were like, oh, this kind of surprised me?

[00:17:03] Yeah.

[00:17:07] It would be nice.

[00:17:08] Okay, some of the suspension adjustments, for instance.

[00:17:18] Gosh, I'm not sure where I was going with that.

[00:17:20] If you're driving it on the road and you're not in off-road mode,

[00:17:22] if you set yourself for a higher suspension

[00:17:24] and then you get over a certain miles per hour, it just sort of goes down.

[00:17:29] So once I realized I really need to be in the off-road mode

[00:17:33] and then from the off-road – and this was on the old software –

[00:17:36] into, I think it was Baja mode, then it would remain wherever I left it.

[00:17:42] But when we get out of the vehicle, for instance – this is an annoyance.

[00:17:46] If you get out of the vehicle and you shut it off or put it in park

[00:17:48] to get out to walk around, stretch your legs and stuff and look around,

[00:17:51] when you get back in the vehicle, it set it back to,

[00:17:54] I think, just medium height, for instance.

[00:17:57] And then you have to go out of your way to go put it back where you left off.

[00:18:00] I can see that would be an annoyance.

[00:18:02] And you might carry on the road not realizing

[00:18:06] that the vehicle is now sitting a lot lower

[00:18:08] and you might actually bump into something.

[00:18:10] This is actually solved on the new software, but that was on the old software.

[00:18:16] Gosh, I wish there was a lot more to tell you about.

[00:18:18] It was just so uneventful considering it was a really pretty technical road.

[00:18:25] I have been in worse, but I felt confident that the truck

[00:18:30] would be able to handle those things.

[00:18:32] Now with the new software, which I'm looking forward to when we talk about that,

[00:18:36] I'm going to be really, really pleased to tell you about some things there.

[00:18:39] How would you rate the difficulty level for your 20-mile trip?

[00:18:44] Right. So, old school off-roaders, we always had a one through five scale,

[00:18:48] not a one through 10.

[00:18:50] I would say this one was a four, what I was on.

[00:18:54] Okay.

[00:18:56] Yeah, it's rather steep.

[00:18:59] This was a loop of 25 miles and so half of that would be 12 miles.

[00:19:05] And that was about a 3,000 foot elevation gain.

[00:19:09] That's quite a bit.

[00:19:11] And it was only for the very first mile, like rough washboard,

[00:19:19] but it pretty much turned into river bottom after that.

[00:19:25] And we had some river crossings because there's still a fair amount of water coming through.

[00:19:30] And rocky road, the kind that's rather jarring.

[00:19:33] In other words, the rocks and the small boulders and the

[00:19:39] watermelon-sized rocks that I have to get over are sitting on a really hard-packed soil,

[00:19:44] not a softer sand.

[00:19:45] And people who've done some off-road driving, they know that difference.

[00:19:49] That makes for a lot more jarring when you do hit something.

[00:19:53] There's no deflection of it into the soil.

[00:19:55] You're going to get the whole brunt of that.

[00:19:57] Okay.

[00:19:59] How would you, I'm curious as to your thoughts,

[00:20:01] and it sounds like everything is pretty easy,

[00:20:03] but could you tell the difference with the stir-by wire system?

[00:20:06] Yes, actually. I really like that.

[00:20:11] Not so much that you don't get so much kickback into the steering wheel,

[00:20:14] which can be exhausting, but that it's variable.

[00:20:18] Tesla has really done a nice job on this.

[00:20:20] I believe the variability of the sensitivity of the stir-by wire is dependent on speed.

[00:20:28] For instance, if you're going slowly in a parking lot,

[00:20:31] you don't need to turn the steering wheel very much.

[00:20:33] And you get a lot of steering from your wheels.

[00:20:37] You know, it'll make a pretty sharp corner.

[00:20:39] So that makes maneuvering in small places really, really easy.

[00:20:42] And then as you speed up, say you're on the freeway,

[00:20:45] it becomes less sensitive.

[00:20:47] Another thing to note is that if you're going at slower speeds,

[00:20:50] say in a parking lot, if you turn the steering wheel to the left,

[00:20:54] the front wheels turn to the left,

[00:20:56] the rear wheels turn to the right, meaning that the tail end will swing out and around

[00:21:02] to help you fit into a parking space or anything.

[00:21:05] When you're at higher speed, if you move the wheel to the left,

[00:21:08] say you're going to change lanes on the freeway,

[00:21:10] the rear wheels also turn to the left.

[00:21:12] So you're just crabbing your way over into the other lane.

[00:21:17] And that's it should be that way.

[00:21:19] That's well thought out.

[00:21:21] If the wheels did the same thing at high speed that they do at low speed,

[00:21:25] it would tend to make you want to roll over, actually, if you think about that.

[00:21:28] It's just gonna be too sharp of a turn.

[00:21:30] So that steering, I thought performed flawlessly.

[00:21:33] One of the things I never think about that probably everybody wonders if they'll think about,

[00:21:39] and I used to think about this idea of steer by wire, it seems kind of scary, right?

[00:21:46] I mean, I think it has backup.

[00:21:49] It's like triple, what do you call that?

[00:21:51] Redundancy.

[00:21:52] Redundancy.

[00:21:53] I think it's something like triple redundancy.

[00:21:55] And then you have to remind yourself that that's the way

[00:21:57] that's the way way, uh, Airbus airplanes fly, you know, by wire, steer by wire, all that stuff.

[00:22:04] But the reality is when you're in the vehicle, you never think about that.

[00:22:08] There's nothing about its performance that made me feel like the car wasn't reacting

[00:22:12] properly to what the steering, the input I was giving it with the steering wheel.

[00:22:18] Excellent.

[00:22:21] What else?

[00:22:21] What else happened on your trip?

[00:22:22] What was your, what is your spotter's overall impression?

[00:22:25] Had they been in the truck before or were they experienced with Teslas at all?

[00:22:30] Yeah. So, um, the fellow who's riding shotgun upfront, my friend Phil,

[00:22:37] he's been a long time Tesla fan. He's got a model three long range right now.

[00:22:42] He had another model three before that, but it sadly got totaled.

[00:22:46] And he's done a lot of off-road driving.

[00:22:47] He's been all over Baja, all over mainland Mexico with me all over the Southwest.

[00:22:53] He's an avid off-roader. He has a Toyota Tacoma. He does have a Cybertruck on order.

[00:22:59] He can't wait to get it. And he was really stoked about how well it performed.

[00:23:04] So, he's just chomping at the bit to get one.

[00:23:06] The other people, there were two other people sitting in the back seat,

[00:23:10] Bill and Linda, they actually bought my Dodge, my Dodge from me,

[00:23:15] my previous Dodge four wheel drive truck. And that's what they're driving these days.

[00:23:18] And they've been on a lot of rough roads also and a lot of trips with me.

[00:23:21] And they were actually really impressed as well. They really liked it.

[00:23:26] The fellow Bill, he's an electrical engineer.

[00:23:29] And that's not quite the same as a mechanical engineer, but he's an engineer all the same.

[00:23:33] So, he was so interested on how everything works and why it works.

[00:23:38] The thing just back to the steering, I just want to mention.

[00:23:42] For the type of off-road work I was doing, I was thinking it would be nicer

[00:23:47] not to have rear steering. It was never a problem for me.

[00:23:50] But when you have rear steering, if you're getting yourself through a really tight spot

[00:23:56] and you get the front through, you really don't want the back to swing around at all.

[00:24:00] You just want to go straight, especially if it's a rock you're trying to avoid so that

[00:24:03] you don't do wheel damage or tire damage. So, on this trip, it never was an issue.

[00:24:10] But I was sitting there telling myself, you know, it would be nice if you could turn off

[00:24:14] the rear steering, which in the new update you can.

[00:24:19] That's great.

[00:24:20] Well, that kind of leads me to my next question, which is what improvements,

[00:24:25] if you could sit down with the Tesla team and you could have a discussion about what

[00:24:30] improvements you think they should make to the Cybertruck, what would you,

[00:24:36] what kind of improvements would you suggest specifically about off-roading?

[00:24:41] Right. Pretty much everything that the new update had.

[00:24:46] But I'll tell you some of them, if that update hadn't come through first,

[00:24:50] I'd be telling them, I'm dying for these locking differentials.

[00:24:54] And, you know, we don't have autopilot yet, which I really miss.

[00:24:58] You know, there's a lot of things we don't have yet, which will be coming.

[00:25:01] All those things I'd miss, but I was just chomping at the bit.

[00:25:04] I was just hoping that the next update we got would be the locking differentials,

[00:25:09] because they give me a lot of confidence.

[00:25:13] You will not get stuck with locking diffs wherever you go.

[00:25:16] It's just literally not possible.

[00:25:20] There are videos on YouTube you can find of a Cybertruck on an incline

[00:25:24] stuck in the snow, and I'm looking at that and I'm going,

[00:25:27] it's only stuck because of the open differentials.

[00:25:29] I've seen other videos stuck on sort of the kind of terrain I was on.

[00:25:33] I've seen some in the sand that have been stuck,

[00:25:38] and they were all because they had open differentials.

[00:25:41] And that makes the difference on a vehicle between something

[00:25:44] that gets stuck easily and is absolutely unstoppable.

[00:25:49] And even on the other vehicles I've had, I only had rear lockers.

[00:25:53] Most people, if they have a locking diff, it's only on the rear,

[00:25:56] which makes you 95% unstoppable.

[00:26:00] But if you have four wheel lockers,

[00:26:03] all four of those wheels are going to turn.

[00:26:05] And unless you're faced into like a giant boulder or a brick wall,

[00:26:10] the vehicle will go forward.

[00:26:12] It will get over whatever you put on it.

[00:26:15] So that would be the main thing I would ask the Tesla engineers to do for me

[00:26:19] if I was being critical about it would be, I need those differentials.

[00:26:23] I was so pleased after this 25-mile trip that I did

[00:26:28] that I never really got in a situation where I needed the diffs.

[00:26:32] I never had to back up and take something at speed.

[00:26:34] But I know that once in a while, if you do a lot of this stuff,

[00:26:38] the locking diffs are an absolute lifesaver.

[00:26:41] And you don't want to get stuck 25 miles down a four-hour road

[00:26:46] and try and get help.

[00:26:47] I mean, there's like no tow truck that could come in there and pull you out.

[00:26:51] You got to be able to get out on your own.

[00:26:53] Other things would have been to be able to turn off rear wheel steering.

[00:26:56] Again, on that trip, it wasn't a problem, but I could see how it could be.

[00:27:02] Another one is I'd like to have the suspension be a lot more flexible,

[00:27:06] which I haven't been able to try it yet.

[00:27:09] Flexible meaning that it would articulate to greater extents,

[00:27:12] have greater travel.

[00:27:13] But my understanding of the updates is that they do allow for that.

[00:27:19] And there is a video.

[00:27:21] Oh, the one that you sent me.

[00:27:24] Who was that?

[00:27:24] Was that Redline or?

[00:27:25] Do you know?

[00:27:26] That was Top Gear.

[00:27:28] Top Gear.

[00:27:28] OK, Top Gear did a video of the Cybertruck versus the Rivian actually.

[00:27:36] They did a video with the new software.

[00:27:38] And if anyone's watching that, if you watch the original rock crawling one,

[00:27:43] that's the kind of terrain I was on for the whole 25 miles.

[00:27:47] And those things are always much steeper than they look like on video

[00:27:51] because I've done lots of videos, really steep stuff and it looks flat.

[00:27:54] You know?

[00:27:55] So they did some pretty rough stuff on it.

[00:27:58] And also on the Top Gear video, if you're watching that

[00:28:00] and if you're not used to doing off road,

[00:28:03] they did some high speed driving also over some, we call them whoop-de-do's.

[00:28:08] They're like dips and things that make you think you're going to leave the ground.

[00:28:11] And even they even did a jump with it.

[00:28:15] Nobody in real life does that.

[00:28:17] Don't do that.

[00:28:19] For one thing, it's just freaking dangerous.

[00:28:22] You know, you can kill yourself with a wrong move.

[00:28:25] So I think of that video, Bodhi, that you sent me.

[00:28:28] The stuff that people should really pay attention to

[00:28:31] that was really well done is the first segment of the video

[00:28:35] where they're doing the rock crawling.

[00:28:36] For me, because that's the kind of stuff that I would do.

[00:28:40] They did it at low speed.

[00:28:41] They did it really well.

[00:28:43] And they also removed the air dams from below the bumper

[00:28:47] in front of the rear tire that you'll notice.

[00:28:49] They did the same thing that I was recommending earlier in the interview.

[00:28:51] Excellent.

[00:28:54] Do you want to talk about the open differential,

[00:28:55] since we're kind of on that topic anyway?

[00:28:57] I do.

[00:28:58] This is something I just really want people to understand for their own safety.

[00:29:01] Okay?

[00:29:03] All cars, every car in the road has a differential

[00:29:06] and whatever the drive axle is.

[00:29:08] The reason it's there is if you're going around a corner,

[00:29:12] think about it, you're an intersection, you make a right turn.

[00:29:15] Think about, let's just talk about the back axle.

[00:29:17] That's where two wheel drive car, rear wheel drive will have a differential.

[00:29:21] The rear tire and wheel that's close to the curb is going to move very slowly.

[00:29:27] The one that's on the outside, so you're making a right turn.

[00:29:30] The one on the right side will move slowly.

[00:29:32] The one on the right side, the left side has to go around a much larger radius

[00:29:36] and it needs to turn maybe three times as many times around

[00:29:41] to take you around that right turn.

[00:29:44] Now open differentials are designed for cars that drive on the road,

[00:29:50] on pavement and so they send the power to the wheel that has the least amount of traction.

[00:29:57] They do this for this reason that I will tell you.

[00:30:01] Imagine being on a windy mountain road that's slick with water or ice,

[00:30:08] even worse ice and it's a windy road and you have a big drop off that if you went off,

[00:30:13] you're going to be dead just right off the cliff, right?

[00:30:15] So if you're driving down this road with an open differential,

[00:30:20] again that differential sends the power to the wheel that has less traction.

[00:30:25] Even if you're in four-wheel drive, it's only going to send the power to the wheel

[00:30:30] up front and the wheel in the back axle, the ones that have the less traction.

[00:30:34] Because the wheel that has the wheel and tire that has the more traction

[00:30:39] is what's keeping you from flying off the curve right off the edge of the cliff.

[00:30:45] With a limited slip differential or if you lock up your differential,

[00:30:51] it's going to send the power, excuse me, with a limited slip it sends the power to the wheel

[00:30:55] that has the greater traction or to both wheels if it's a locking differential.

[00:31:01] But either way, if you're on a curvy road and you're driving with differentials locked

[00:31:06] or limited slipped, it's dangerous in the sense that if you give a little bit of power,

[00:31:11] not even a lot, especially with an electric motor, if you give a bit of power

[00:31:15] and you're on ice, you're going to break that wheel away.

[00:31:19] You're going to break the traction even a little bit.

[00:31:22] And if you do that at the moment that you're on a curve,

[00:31:25] you're going to fly right off the edge of the mountain.

[00:31:27] That's it.

[00:31:29] And for this reason, vehicles, even if you're buying four-wheel drive,

[00:31:35] you know, Ford truck or Dodge, Chevy, whatever, Toyota,

[00:31:39] you almost never have the option of actually locking differentials because the manufacturers

[00:31:44] don't want that liability of sending you off a cliff.

[00:31:46] I was really impressed that Tesla actually gave us actual mechanical lockers,

[00:31:52] not what Rivian does where they use software to try and give you what's called electronic

[00:32:01] traction control, which once you're off road really doesn't work as well, but is safer

[00:32:07] when you're on the road.

[00:32:09] Tesla really gave us the hard, it's hardcore off-road stuff to have actual locking diffs

[00:32:15] and it can be dangerous if you don't use it right.

[00:32:18] So I wanted to give this little speech so people don't use it the wrong way and kill

[00:32:23] themselves.

[00:32:24] It's really to get you through the really difficult terrain

[00:32:28] and then you want to turn them off right away.

[00:32:31] Excellent.

[00:32:32] No daily driving with the locking differential.

[00:32:35] Don't do that.

[00:32:36] And if you try and do it on pavement anyway, you're going to really, you're going to

[00:32:38] damage the vehicle incredibly.

[00:32:40] Imagine go back to that tight right corner where you have a differential.

[00:32:45] This allows the left wheel and the right wheel to travel at different speeds.

[00:32:49] If you have locking, they have to turn at the same speed, which means something's

[00:32:54] going to have to give.

[00:32:56] You make that curve and you have a heavy vehicle on tires that are getting good

[00:33:00] traction.

[00:33:01] Usually you're going to end up bending up one of the axles,

[00:33:05] one of the half shafts or breaking a constant velocity joint.

[00:33:08] So if you drove, tried to drive on pavement around curves with the lockers on,

[00:33:13] you won't go very far before you've really broken something expensive.

[00:33:18] Yeah, we don't want that for sure.

[00:33:21] Especially on a cyber truck because who knows how long it'll take you to get

[00:33:25] you apart and how expensive it will actually be.

[00:33:28] Not to mention how embarrassing it would be.

[00:33:30] Sure, sure.

[00:33:32] Some friends of mine, they have a Jeep and they, well, they used to have a Jeep

[00:33:35] and they did a lot of off-roading.

[00:33:38] It is really nice the off-roading community where if you do get into a

[00:33:45] spot of trouble, there's usually someone around that can help you get

[00:33:49] out.

[00:33:50] But the goal is to never get into that.

[00:33:54] So it's good that they have the locking differentials.

[00:33:56] Right.

[00:33:58] I'm not the most social person.

[00:34:00] So the places I like to go to is where there's nobody.

[00:34:03] So the trails I like to go to and with my small handful of friends that

[00:34:08] we go together, it's never these Johnson Valley off-road parks and whatnot

[00:34:14] where there's a lot of people around or popular trails.

[00:34:17] If it's a popular trail, we generally don't go there.

[00:34:20] So we many times might be 50 miles to the next person or even more at

[00:34:25] times.

[00:34:25] And I also have, I've done a lot of Arctic traveling up in the Arctic

[00:34:29] where we're talking rough dirt roads that can go to the hundreds of miles.

[00:34:33] And so you really have to be able to deal with it on your own.

[00:34:39] I mean, it's great when someone comes along and helps you, but it's just

[00:34:41] not going to always be there.

[00:34:43] Sure.

[00:34:44] Sure.

[00:34:45] Let's talk about the modes because you said that you had Baja mode

[00:34:48] when you were out, but you had to reset it.

[00:34:51] Did you also have Overland mode?

[00:34:54] Yeah, you have both Overland and Baja.

[00:34:56] Now, again, this is the old software.

[00:34:58] How soon we forget things.

[00:35:00] I think you had to be in Baja mode for it not to keep setting the,

[00:35:06] yeah, to keep your ground clearance up higher once you hit over 25 miles an hour, 20, 25.

[00:35:12] I think in Overland, it would drop you back down to medium again.

[00:35:16] I can't remember and there's no way to figure that out since I've already done

[00:35:19] the software update.

[00:35:22] When you're in these modes, do you get a like a pitch and a yaw as your,

[00:35:26] because you want to know what angle you're climbing this rock at, right?

[00:35:31] You don't want to go too far over or is that just all natural?

[00:35:37] You just feel that.

[00:35:39] You just feel it.

[00:35:39] There's nothing in there that tells you, hey, you're at this degree at this angle.

[00:35:44] Yeah.

[00:35:45] Even in the vehicles I've had before, Toyotas and Jeeps and stuff where they

[00:35:49] have a pretty high center of gravity, I've never rolled one over.

[00:35:55] It's pretty rare, but it happens sometimes where you're wondering if you're pushing

[00:36:00] it a little bit, but you have no choice.

[00:36:02] It's like I got to get from here to there and it's pretty steep.

[00:36:07] When people talk about off-road, we're always on a road.

[00:36:10] We're just on some dirt track.

[00:36:12] It's technically a road.

[00:36:14] Someone's done it before, right?

[00:36:16] So if someone's done it before and they're not laying at the bottom of the ditch,

[00:36:19] you'll be able to do it too.

[00:36:20] You'll be able to do that.

[00:36:21] Yeah.

[00:36:23] The people that get in trouble are the ones that actually leave the road and they try

[00:36:27] and make a new road, and then suddenly they're traveling someplace where no one's ever been

[00:36:31] before, which is illegal in most places and just immoral.

[00:36:34] I mean, the world's full of car tracks all over the place.

[00:36:37] Please, we don't need to make any more.

[00:36:42] In the case of the Cybertruck with the batteries on the bottom and stuff,

[00:36:46] and in that particular trail, I was never in a situation where I was leaning all that far,

[00:36:50] but I can't imagine there being a point where I'd feel like it might roll over on its side.

[00:36:55] That wouldn't be like.

[00:36:57] Okay.

[00:36:58] Anything else about the overland and Baja mode we should know?

[00:37:01] New, otherwise?

[00:37:03] The new stuff, I have great things I can tell you.

[00:37:04] Yeah.

[00:37:05] Okay, go.

[00:37:06] I kind of wish I was sitting in the car going through it, but I'm not, so I can't.

[00:37:09] Would you like to pick up your phone and walk in there?

[00:37:12] You know what I think I can do on my laptop right here?

[00:37:15] Yeah, this could be really great.

[00:37:16] On my laptop, I actually saved a picture of that.

[00:37:21] So let me just get to that real quick.

[00:37:25] So here's some features that are really nice.

[00:37:29] Will you ask me about what I would have asked Tesla to do?

[00:37:34] What improvements Tesla could do when I had the previous software?

[00:37:37] Of course, it was locking differentials.

[00:37:39] We now have that.

[00:37:42] There's so many options on here.

[00:37:43] I don't want to go through every one of them.

[00:37:44] It'll just bore everybody to death.

[00:37:47] There's two basic off-road modes, one called overland and one called Baja.

[00:37:52] And with each one you can make sort of different settings.

[00:37:56] The gist of it is that the overland would be used more on a graded dirt road,

[00:38:01] might have occasional dips and stuff.

[00:38:03] A situation where you'd be traveling at a bit higher speed,

[00:38:06] basically graded dirt gravel washboard roads.

[00:38:12] And when you're there, it has different surfaces that you can choose all-purpose, rock, gravel,

[00:38:19] sand. And that adjusts the suspension a little bit differently just so the

[00:38:24] vehicle has better control depending on those.

[00:38:26] When you're in the Baja mode, then that gets one, it's a bit more technical things.

[00:38:34] And that would be, you'd be driving at slower speed over a lot of rocks,

[00:38:39] climbing along at very slow speed, which is pretty much what I was doing.

[00:38:42] And on Baja mode you have the choice of having the differentials, you can have them open,

[00:38:48] you can have the rear one on or you can have them all on.

[00:38:51] And you can actually do that in the overland mode also.

[00:38:55] So there's a fair amount of overlap between these two.

[00:39:00] On one hand it's a little bit annoying because it gives you something to think about.

[00:39:04] With my other four-wheel drive trucks, you just had what you had.

[00:39:08] And then it was just a matter of your skill to get through everything.

[00:39:11] So this will take me a little while to get used to and I'm guessing that what I will do

[00:39:15] is probably just land on a couple of settings that I like to use and just

[00:39:18] ignore all the rest of them.

[00:39:21] But things that they did with the new software that I love is, as I mentioned

[00:39:25] at least 10 times already, locking differentials.

[00:39:28] I love that we can turn off the rear steering.

[00:39:32] That's fabulous.

[00:39:34] And then when one is sitting in their Cybertruck and going through all these different modes,

[00:39:41] which will be a little bit more up-depth than what is on the screen on my laptop

[00:39:47] that I'm reading out here, is that depending on what modes and what terrain,

[00:39:52] they give you a little bit of an idea on how the suspension will change.

[00:39:56] And in the rock crawling mode, for instance, you will keep your four wheels on the ground

[00:40:04] much better than in any of the other modes.

[00:40:07] We talked about that before where I talked about good suspension on a truck means all

[00:40:12] four tires, all four wheels are on the ground at all times no matter how twisted

[00:40:17] the terrain gets.

[00:40:20] And previously on the Cybertruck and even the trip that I did,

[00:40:24] I think I did a couple of times I might have lifted a wheel or something like that,

[00:40:27] but the Cybertruck can go up really high and go down quite low, which means the suspension

[00:40:33] has a lot of distance that it can travel.

[00:40:36] But articulation is something else.

[00:40:38] It would be like if your left front wheel was really tucked up into the fender

[00:40:43] because you're taking it over a pretty big boulder, will the right front wheel still

[00:40:48] be on the ground?

[00:40:49] And so on the case, I believe that it's in Baja and I believe it's on the rocky

[00:40:54] mode.

[00:40:55] The suspension will push that wheel all the way down until it reaches the ground.

[00:41:00] It will allow the maximum differential between the left and the right side,

[00:41:05] which is really great because previous to that, whatever your setting was for

[00:41:10] suspension, the wheels would only move up or down maybe four or five, maybe

[00:41:15] six inches from that setting.

[00:41:17] Does that make sense to you?

[00:41:20] Yeah, yeah.

[00:41:20] Or was that-

[00:41:21] Absolutely.

[00:41:21] Yeah.

[00:41:22] Okay.

[00:41:22] No, no.

[00:41:23] In other words, the wheels will go to the maximum extremes that the vehicle

[00:41:27] allows for.

[00:41:28] And this is something that off-roaders, we call it articulation.

[00:41:32] They all know what I'm talking about.

[00:41:33] It just makes the ride so much better.

[00:41:36] It makes your forward motion so much easier when you have all four wheels on

[00:41:41] the ground.

[00:41:45] Other things we have on here is stability assist.

[00:41:48] And this is something that you can turn off or have down to a minimum.

[00:41:53] That's really important.

[00:41:55] And I hope that this applies to ABS braking as well.

[00:42:01] People get in trouble on say gravel roads, washboard roads with ABS braking

[00:42:06] because the way ABS works is when you apply the brake.

[00:42:10] If the brake system feels like any wheel is slipping a little, it

[00:42:13] actually disengages the brakes from that slipping wheel so that you don't skid

[00:42:19] out.

[00:42:20] But when all your wheels are on a washboard and all of them have poor

[00:42:23] traction and you put the brakes on, like in my Dodge truck, like in a

[00:42:27] Nissan I had and like a Toyota pickup I had, you have no brakes

[00:42:32] because everything is making poor contact on a washboard road.

[00:42:36] The car doesn't want you to skid out.

[00:42:40] So it actually reduces your braking terribly.

[00:42:43] I did not have this happen to me in the Cybertruck, but somebody else in some

[00:42:47] video said they had the same problem on the Cybertruck on a washboard road.

[00:42:50] They applied brakes and the skid control on the braking basically

[00:42:59] prevented them from having full braking when they really wanted it.

[00:43:03] So this stability assist that I see on the software, and I haven't tried

[00:43:06] this off-road yet, the fact that you can turn off the stability

[00:43:09] assist, I think that that's what that's all about.

[00:43:12] It's going to stop the anti-skid brakes as well so that when you apply brakes,

[00:43:16] whether you have traction or not, those wheels will lock up.

[00:43:18] You really want to have the ability to do that.

[00:43:23] Let's see.

[00:43:25] Wade mode.

[00:43:26] You did mention that you went through some water.

[00:43:29] What is Wade mode in terms of navigating through the shallow water?

[00:43:33] Yeah.

[00:43:34] So since I live in Southern California, all my travels are more in the

[00:43:39] desert areas.

[00:43:41] I'll probably never ever use Wade.

[00:43:43] The water that I went through was not even to the bottom of the doors.

[00:43:46] It was maybe as high as the axles.

[00:43:48] It wasn't much, but I can explain what Wade mode does.

[00:43:51] Wade mode evidently is supposed to cover you like look right here.

[00:43:57] I'm not sure how many feet, but maybe up to I don't know,

[00:44:00] like three feet deep or something like 32 inches deep.

[00:44:04] That you can safely travel 32 inches.

[00:44:06] This is much higher than say the battery.

[00:44:10] And so what Wade mode does is the batteries, which are on the floor of the

[00:44:15] Cybertruck, basically in the middle.

[00:44:19] They're on the bottom.

[00:44:20] So the floor is definitely not 32 inches off the ground.

[00:44:24] All those batteries are in a compartment, right?

[00:44:27] In their big case.

[00:44:29] And so Wade mode uses the onboard compressor to positively

[00:44:35] put positive pressure into the battery pack.

[00:44:38] So any place that water could leak into, it won't.

[00:44:42] Because basically the battery pack is just going to be blowing bubbles.

[00:44:45] You know, blowing the water out.

[00:44:46] That's smart.

[00:44:47] That's what Wade mode does.

[00:44:48] I don't think I'll ever be any place where the water is that deep that I'll need to do that.

[00:44:54] But my understanding just reading the instructions,

[00:44:56] it takes a little while to pressurize it.

[00:44:58] It says you would basically stop.

[00:45:00] You put Wade mode on and says right here, it can take up to 10 minutes

[00:45:06] to fully fill and pressurize the battery pack.

[00:45:10] And then I assume something on the screen will say, okay, you can drive now.

[00:45:14] You pressurize.

[00:45:15] But that's what that is about.

[00:45:18] Okay.

[00:45:18] So you're not hitting the button and immediately traveling through your...

[00:45:23] No, according to this, you'd have to wait, which makes sense.

[00:45:26] You have a compressor that has to charge that up.

[00:45:30] Smart though.

[00:45:31] Yeah.

[00:45:31] Smart way to do it.

[00:45:32] And then this is one of the cooler features.

[00:45:36] And they talked a little bit about this in the video.

[00:45:38] And I'll put that video that I sent you in the show notes as well.

[00:45:40] Yeah, that'd be great.

[00:45:41] But trail assist, which is like off-road cruise control.

[00:45:47] Yeah.

[00:45:48] So of course, I haven't been able to use this yet.

[00:45:51] But my understanding is you can set it down as low as one mile per hour.

[00:45:59] I can see how this would be pretty nice.

[00:46:01] I'm not sure if I'll end up using it.

[00:46:03] It's so easy to drive the vehicle at one mile an hour by just barely feathering the accelerator

[00:46:10] just lightly.

[00:46:12] And that's what a person does.

[00:46:14] If you need to go over a boulder instead of around it, let's say again, a watermelon-sized rock.

[00:46:18] If you can't get around it, you can't go over it with the center of the vehicle

[00:46:22] because it's just too big.

[00:46:23] Sometimes you have no choice.

[00:46:24] Put a wheel over it.

[00:46:25] This is where you want to go really slow.

[00:46:28] The front wheel is going to have to go over it.

[00:46:30] The front wheel is going to have to go over it.

[00:46:31] And ultimately, the back wheel is going to have to go over it.

[00:46:33] You want to be able to approach this, come up to it and go as slow as you can imagine.

[00:46:39] Go up it and you want to come down the other side really slowly because you don't want the,

[00:46:43] let's say, the front wheel.

[00:46:45] You're getting it over this watermelon-sized boulder.

[00:46:47] You don't want to come down and have fast and have the suspension compress

[00:46:52] and you're going to hit that rock on the bottom of your vehicle and do damage.

[00:46:55] So you want to come down really slowly.

[00:46:57] That's what trail assist would work really, really well.

[00:47:00] I've spent my whole life with all my other vehicles,

[00:47:04] just doing this by feathering the accelerator pedal just ever so slightly

[00:47:08] and by having low enough gears and whatnot.

[00:47:10] And that's how I did it in the Cybertruck over all the rocks I had to go over

[00:47:14] is by barely feathering.

[00:47:16] So it remains to be seen whether trail assist does this better

[00:47:19] or if I did it just as well just feathering.

[00:47:22] I'm not sure.

[00:47:22] But I get the idea.

[00:47:24] I'm glad they added that for people that have less experience.

[00:47:27] It might be a really great thing.

[00:47:30] Yeah.

[00:47:33] I don't know if this is my favorite feature, new feature,

[00:47:37] but it is one that I think a lot of people are going to enjoy,

[00:47:42] which is cyber tent mode.

[00:47:44] Oh yeah.

[00:47:47] I'm glad you brought that up.

[00:47:49] Do you want me to talk about that?

[00:47:51] Yeah, please.

[00:47:52] Okay.

[00:47:52] So actually that's a really great feature.

[00:47:54] That is something I'd hope for.

[00:47:56] They call it cyber tent mode because if you have a cyber tent,

[00:48:03] which is the tent that fits into the back of the Cybertruck,

[00:48:07] you can't be in that tent and have the…

[00:48:14] What's that called?

[00:48:14] The thing that closes in the back of the truck.

[00:48:16] The tonneau cover.

[00:48:17] Tonneau cover.

[00:48:18] Thank you.

[00:48:18] That's a roll down tonneau cover like when you have a roll down desk

[00:48:22] for those who don't know.

[00:48:23] You really can't have that close up on you because you'll be in the tent,

[00:48:25] you'll all be squished together.

[00:48:27] So it keeps that open.

[00:48:29] But the part about cyber tent mode that's really great is that it levels the vehicle out.

[00:48:37] I haven't had a chance to try that so I'm not sure how steep of a hill you can be on,

[00:48:43] but that's always the problem if you're sleeping in your vehicles trying to get it level.

[00:48:48] Sometimes you're putting rocks under the tires or pieces of wood or whatever to level it out

[00:48:52] because we all know it's really hard to sleep anywhere if you're not level.

[00:48:56] And so the idea of this is that we'll use the air suspension and completely level the truck.

[00:49:00] Rivian has something like that on their truck too.

[00:49:03] I think they just call it camp mode or something like that.

[00:49:06] It does a couple other things about…

[00:49:08] We'll keep the electrical outlets on, a few other minor things.

[00:49:13] What was it about that Bode that you were most interested in?

[00:49:18] Well, two things.

[00:49:19] One is the climate control, having access to that.

[00:49:24] And the second was bed leveling because my wife and I took the kids camping just recently

[00:49:29] up in Sholo.

[00:49:31] And the spot that we had for our campsite, we were at a campground,

[00:49:37] state park, and the spot that we had was not completely level.

[00:49:41] So where I was, I was kind of at that peak of the pitch.

[00:49:47] And where my kids were, and my wife was, it was kind of more leveled out.

[00:49:51] Now this isn't a lot of space.

[00:49:52] We're in a six-person tent so it's not like my kids were miles away from me.

[00:49:58] But for them, it just kind of leveled out a little bit.

[00:50:01] But for me, it was very difficult to get comfortable because I was constantly turning.

[00:50:06] And then we eventually flipped the direction at 3 o'clock in the morning that everybody was

[00:50:12] sleeping and then everything was fine.

[00:50:14] So for me, that leveling because I was like, good Lord, I do not remember camping when

[00:50:19] I was younger and that being a concern ever.

[00:50:26] I pretty much just slept wherever I slept.

[00:50:28] But I was like, man, I feel like I'm going to roll over on my family the whole of the night.

[00:50:36] If you can't sleep level, you want your head at the high point.

[00:50:39] If you're trying to sleep with your head at the low point, it's impossible.

[00:50:42] It's really hard to not be rolling sideways.

[00:50:44] So whatever you do, if you have your head at the highest point,

[00:50:48] that's your best bet.

[00:50:49] But just being level of course is a luxury.

[00:50:52] Yeah.

[00:50:52] My kids had a reason for wanting to sleep where they slept and I was like, all right,

[00:50:56] well it's probably not going to be as big of a deal as I think it's going to be.

[00:51:00] I haven't really even figured out what my whole sleeping situation will be.

[00:51:04] I guess this is one side of the Cybertruck that bums me out is that there's no place to

[00:51:13] put the spare tire other than in the bed of the truck.

[00:51:15] If I'm by myself, that's not a big deal.

[00:51:17] I don't have to take the tire out of the bed of the truck.

[00:51:20] But if I was with my girlfriend or whomever, my son or something,

[00:51:25] and we wanted the whole bed of the truck and we were planning on sleeping in the

[00:51:27] bed of the truck, we'd have to roll that tire out.

[00:51:31] That thing weighs 110 pounds, the spare tire.

[00:51:35] And I did buy because by myself, I can roll that thing out the back.

[00:51:41] Let's say I get a flat and I need to use the spare wheel and tire.

[00:51:44] I could roll that thing out the back and deal with it.

[00:51:46] But to pick up the 110 pound wheel and put it in, I can do it in a pinch.

[00:51:51] But you never know, you might hurt your back in your middle of nowhere.

[00:51:53] So I did buy from Harbor Freight.

[00:51:56] It was like $40 a little ramp, a folding ramp thing to roll it in and out.

[00:52:00] I've tested it that I can do that.

[00:52:02] I've tested the jacks that I bought.

[00:52:04] I tested all the equipment I got for changing a wheel and tire in the wilds.

[00:52:09] I tested all that out in my driveway to be sure that everything would work.

[00:52:13] The jack would have enough range and be able to lift the vehicle and everything.

[00:52:16] But going back to something that I'd like to tell the Tesla engineers,

[00:52:19] but there's no way they can fix this.

[00:52:21] This would not be software.

[00:52:24] Would be to fit the spare tire on the Rivian pickup.

[00:52:27] It does have a space under the bed for a spare, but it has a teeny tiny little bed on it.

[00:52:33] This is a much larger bed.

[00:52:34] So even with the spare tire in the bed, I still have much,

[00:52:36] much more space than the Rivian bed would have had.

[00:52:39] But as far as what my sleeping arrangements will be as time goes by, I'm not sure.

[00:52:44] There are some people who are working on some top pop top sort of shell slash tent

[00:52:50] things for the Cybertruck.

[00:52:52] I also always bring a two man tent along because a lot of times I really,

[00:52:57] after driving a lot in the truck or whatever vehicle I have,

[00:53:00] I don't also want to sleep in it.

[00:53:02] I want to get away from it.

[00:53:03] So I always bring a tent which sets up really fast.

[00:53:06] And often it turns out I just set the tent up and that's where I sleep.

[00:53:10] And that's also convenient in case you need to use your vehicle during the day.

[00:53:13] You don't want to tear your whole camp down in order to do that.

[00:53:16] You can just drive away and come back and your tent and your table

[00:53:19] and awning and everything is still there.

[00:53:22] So I mean, different people have different preferences here.

[00:53:26] But yeah, so whether we're using...

[00:53:31] Oh, I thought about this because you were talking about leveling the truck out

[00:53:34] and everything.

[00:53:34] So yeah, if you're sleeping in the truck, the leveling's great.

[00:53:37] You have a spare tire to deal with.

[00:53:39] And if you're sleeping in a tent, well, that's got nothing to do with the truck.

[00:53:42] You just look for a level spot to do that.

[00:53:45] Excellent.

[00:53:46] I think we covered quite a bit here, Gene.

[00:53:49] Is there anything that maybe I didn't ask and I should have?

[00:53:55] You didn't ask how my range was doing because I remember I was so pleased.

[00:54:00] I was getting three miles per kilowatt, which is like extraordinary.

[00:54:05] That was what I was getting up to the point we had talked last time.

[00:54:10] This trip that I went on because it involves some 65 mile an hour

[00:54:13] and 70 mile an hour driving and under much extreme colder temperatures,

[00:54:19] for instance.

[00:54:20] I did less than that, but I'm still at about 2.8 miles per kilowatt.

[00:54:28] This is sort of important because it would be easy for a truck to only go

[00:54:33] two miles per kilowatt.

[00:54:34] And if you throw that into say a 1000 or 2000 mile road trip you're going on,

[00:54:41] that makes a big difference in how long you sit at a charger and a big difference

[00:54:45] of how much you spend on electricity.

[00:54:48] I just always believe in trying to have anything that uses energy in the world be

[00:54:52] as efficient as it can be only because there's only so much to go around.

[00:54:57] We do have the climate to remember, even though we're driving on electricity,

[00:55:00] the more electricity that you use, if you use excessive electricity,

[00:55:04] someone's going to have to generate that.

[00:55:07] So I would mention that.

[00:55:09] I would really like to mention, I even made a note to it,

[00:55:12] that the suspension on the Cybertruck is so much more comfortable in the seats,

[00:55:18] so much more comfortable than my Model Y and even my friends' Model X's.

[00:55:24] It's really a luxury.

[00:55:25] And when I got home from that trip, which was a total of about almost a thousand miles,

[00:55:32] I got out of that and got into my Model Y, which normally feels fabulous.

[00:55:35] It felt like driving a dump truck or something.

[00:55:39] I just felt like every crack in the road.

[00:55:43] So the cool thing on the Cybertruck is that it is super comfortable.

[00:55:47] I would just use it as a daily driver,

[00:55:49] except for the fact that it uses a fair amount more electricity than the Model Y does.

[00:55:53] That's really the only reason why I just don't drive it always.

[00:55:57] Nice.

[00:55:58] And how was the charging in and around Bishop?

[00:56:01] That's really great.

[00:56:02] They covered $3.95 really well.

[00:56:05] Lone Pine was one of the really early chargers they put in.

[00:56:09] There's a town south of Lone Pine called Mojave,

[00:56:12] which is a town of maybe 3,000 people, but it has – no kidding – three or is it four?

[00:56:20] It has four charging locations.

[00:56:23] Four of them.

[00:56:24] So most people are charging up on that long drive in Mojave,

[00:56:28] and that took off a lot of the charging crowds at Lone Pine,

[00:56:33] which is maybe 100 miles north of that.

[00:56:35] And then 100 miles north of that is Bishop,

[00:56:38] which has two locations with a total of probably 30 or 35 stalls.

[00:56:47] So yeah, it's great there.

[00:56:49] Tesla covered it really well for an area that's not traveled heavily.

[00:56:53] Excellent.

[00:56:54] And I know I asked you this last time, so I'm going to ask you again,

[00:56:57] is there any place that you would like to promote or push people to

[00:57:02] find out more about what you're doing?

[00:57:05] I sent you a message this weekend and you're like,

[00:57:07] oh, I'm at this solar event.

[00:57:09] You're doing a lot.

[00:57:10] So what would you like to promote?

[00:57:13] May I promote the solar a little bit?

[00:57:15] Absolutely.

[00:57:15] Please do.

[00:57:16] Okay.

[00:57:18] So I'm in California, and I know you have listeners all over the place.

[00:57:23] But the public utilities commission, which is supposed to protect the public from

[00:57:32] the activities of the for-profit utilities,

[00:57:36] they're supposed to control our rates a little bit.

[00:57:38] Anyway, it's been a war zone in California.

[00:57:41] Of the public utilities, which excuse me,

[00:57:45] they're private public utilities.

[00:57:46] I mean like Edison, San Diego Gas and Electric, and PG&E.

[00:57:49] Those would be the three companies that are for profit

[00:57:52] they have been fighting rooftop solar, something fierce in California.

[00:57:56] And when our governor came into office,

[00:57:58] he fired many members of the California Public Utilities Commission

[00:58:02] who were supposed to look out after the public's good,

[00:58:08] you know, that we're not overcharged and whatnot.

[00:58:13] He fired all those people and he basically put in lackies from the utilities.

[00:58:19] And they've been changing the rules on us in insane ways

[00:58:23] and really killing rooftop solar.

[00:58:25] The utilities love to make their own electricity with solar and sell it to us,

[00:58:30] but they don't like us to have it on our roofs and make our own.

[00:58:33] And at this point, they've been so successful.

[00:58:36] The installations of solar in California,

[00:58:39] which used to be a model state for this, is down by 80%.

[00:58:44] And there's more than 18,000 solar employees, solar installers,

[00:58:50] who have lost their jobs.

[00:58:51] And many, many companies have gone out of business.

[00:58:55] This is actually something that's starting in California.

[00:58:59] It started a little bit in Nevada and Arizona,

[00:59:01] but pushing it in a big way in California

[00:59:03] because they'd like to do this the entire country over.

[00:59:06] This is something that's really great.

[00:59:08] If you're in California, contact your legislators.

[00:59:12] There are things that they can do to reverse these acts.

[00:59:17] And actually, Bodhi, I was hoping I mentioned to you in an email.

[00:59:21] Maybe you can edit this out if you want people to hear about it.

[00:59:23] But I have a couple of people,

[00:59:25] if you would like to interview them sometime

[00:59:27] and talk about this whole issue in depth.

[00:59:29] BD Yeah, I would love to have them on.

[00:59:31] But Gene, thank you so much for coming on and discussing this.

[00:59:35] I think it's really informative

[00:59:37] and I think people are going to get a lot out of this.

[00:59:40] So let's see here.

[00:59:44] Do you have any social media?

[00:59:45] BD I don't.

[00:59:48] BD Okay, we'll just call it good.

[00:59:49] BD Yeah, nowhere to put links on.

[00:59:53] Not related to this.

[00:59:55] I'm a musician, so I've got all this stuff.

[00:59:56] Yeah.

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[01:02:34] All right I want to thank Gene for coming on

[01:02:36] and being so generous with his time.

[01:02:37] Gene's a lot of fun to chat with as you can tell.

[01:02:41] I sure hope you learned a lot because I did.

[01:02:43] But again, thank you Gene for coming on

[01:02:46] and participating in the show.

[01:02:48] All right everybody that is it for me this episode.

[01:02:52] Hope you all have a wonderful next couple of days.

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