State of the Podcast and FSD Trail Update

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[00:01:00] Hello everyone and welcome to Killawada Podcast about electric vehicles, renewable energy, autonomous driving, and much, much more.

[00:01:29] My name is Bodhi and I am your host.

[00:01:31] And on today's episode, I thought we'd do something just a little bit different.

[00:01:35] Well, it's a lot different. We're not going to talk about news or earnings calls or anything like that.

[00:01:39] Anything we'd normally talk about.

[00:01:41] I'm going to give you a little bit of an update on 918 Digital, which is the company that produces and owns this particular show.

[00:01:49] We're going to talk a little bit about a Tesla Model Y design flaw that is irritating the living bleep out of me.

[00:01:58] And then I'm going to give you some of my thoughts on the full self-driving trial.

[00:02:04] I got access to it maybe 10 days ago.

[00:02:06] And I know there's some others in the kilowatt community who have also had access to it as well.

[00:02:11] So I thought it now would be a good time to bring that up.

[00:02:15] So let's start with 918 Digital. When I first started 918 Digital, the plan was to have a network of shows.

[00:02:23] This was more than 10 years ago when I registered the domain name.

[00:02:28] And I had friends who wanted to do podcasts and they all had different ideas of what kind of podcasts they wanted to do.

[00:02:34] And in the end, like in many cases when someone's like, hey, we should do a podcast, those friends decided it was too much work and they didn't want to be a part of it.

[00:02:43] But I kept 918 Digital around because I thought, well, maybe in the future I'll create a podcast of my own and maybe I'll create a couple.

[00:02:51] And then I started Kilowatt and I was like, you know what? 918 Digital owns Kilowatt.

[00:02:57] Now I do two other podcasts and 918 Digital loosely, because I am 918 Digital, loosely produces and distributes those shows.

[00:03:08] But they're not owned by 918 Digital because in the case of Shuffle Playlist, which is a podcast about music recommendations that I do with my buddy Chris, that's a 50-50 split.

[00:03:22] So we share all of the revenue 50-50.

[00:03:25] Same thing with Beyond the Post, which is a podcast about learning how to be a digital creator, whether you're doing TikToks or YouTubes or podcasting or authoring.

[00:03:34] It doesn't really matter.

[00:03:36] The goal is to point you in the right direction because there's a lot of people out there selling courses and all this other stuff, but they're not necessarily helpful.

[00:03:45] But anyway, the point is those shows have expenses.

[00:03:50] 918 Digital covers those expenses, which means I'm paying for those out of my pocket.

[00:03:56] And one day, hopefully they'll make enough money to pay for themselves.

[00:04:01] But I'm happy to cover the expense as we get up and going.

[00:04:07] Like Rob and I just finished season one of Beyond the Post.

[00:04:11] Chris and I just recorded season two of Shuffle Playlist.

[00:04:16] Neither one of those podcasts has made any money.

[00:04:19] But when it does, that money will flow back into 918 Digital.

[00:04:24] I mean, at least half of it will because the other half will go to Chris and Rob.

[00:04:27] But that money will flow back into 918 Digital.

[00:04:30] And my goal is to grow all of my shows.

[00:04:33] So why am I telling you all this?

[00:04:35] Well, I complain a lot about being very busy.

[00:04:39] So I thought I would just kind of break down what it takes to make this show and then what it takes to make the other shows.

[00:04:46] I'll start with Shuffle Playlist because that's the easiest one to make.

[00:04:49] Chris and I hang out for an afternoon and we record all the episodes.

[00:04:54] And then at some point in time, I have to go back and edit those episodes and then distribute them,

[00:05:01] which is to say put them on Acast, which is our podcast host.

[00:05:05] And so it can go out to people.

[00:05:07] Our first season of Shuffle Playlist, we would put the actual song in.

[00:05:13] So if we made a recommendation like Korn and Slipknot did a cover of Sabotage, that was my recommendation.

[00:05:20] That episode's been downloaded.

[00:05:23] Just that one episode has been downloaded over 50,000 times.

[00:05:26] And actually I went back to double check that number because I thought maybe I might be a little bit high,

[00:05:31] but it's actually been downloaded over 65,000 times.

[00:05:35] Now by any metric, if you have a podcast episode that's been downloaded 60,000 times,

[00:05:42] that's really good for your pocketbook.

[00:05:45] However, if you put somebody else's music in that podcast and they're clips

[00:05:50] and we're using them with fair use, we're talking about the clips themselves.

[00:05:55] We're not playing the entire song.

[00:05:57] I'm very careful with how I cut up those episodes,

[00:06:01] which is to say that I follow the law as I understand it.

[00:06:07] I don't want to be accused of stealing some artist's music.

[00:06:11] And we haven't had any take down requests or anything like that.

[00:06:17] So nobody's given us any trouble about the way we edit our podcasts.

[00:06:20] However, I think podcast advertisers are a little reluctant to advertise on those episodes

[00:06:29] because of the music clips that we include.

[00:06:31] And we included the music clips to be helpful for the audience who were making a recommendation

[00:06:38] and we're trying to tell you what we like about the song and why you should listen.

[00:06:41] So it makes sense to have music clips in there.

[00:06:43] Unfortunately, not very many people would like to advertise on those episodes.

[00:06:47] So what Chris and I have done with season two is we put a link to the artist's music,

[00:06:54] like to their Apple Music page, to their Spotify page, to their YouTube page.

[00:06:59] We put a link to those songs and then we encourage people to go and listen to them

[00:07:03] before we talk about the song.

[00:07:05] And we're not putting the songs in there anymore.

[00:07:07] But in terms of time, because that's really where I wanted to stick to this,

[00:07:12] wasn't really trying to go through the ins and outs of the financing of podcasting.

[00:07:17] But in terms of time, that show doesn't actually take me very much time.

[00:07:21] Like I said, Chris and I will come and he'll come to my house or we'll do it online on Riverside.

[00:07:27] I bought him a mic so that he can record whenever he wants.

[00:07:30] And we'll hang out for three hours and we'll record all these episodes.

[00:07:36] And then we'll get together and we'll play a game of Madden football.

[00:07:39] And the season's done.

[00:07:42] Then I have to go and edit those.

[00:07:45] So we've recorded season two, but I haven't actually edited season two because I've been very busy.

[00:07:51] What have I been busy with?

[00:07:53] Well, I've been busy with Beyond The Post.

[00:07:56] Beyond The Post, Rob Dunwood and I are doing something that I definitely don't do with this show.

[00:08:03] We're doing a YouTube, a proper YouTube channel where we actually have talking heads and video.

[00:08:10] This show goes on YouTube, but it's just the audio version.

[00:08:13] There's no video version.

[00:08:16] So that takes time because when Rob and I got together, he's like, man, that seems like a lot of work.

[00:08:21] And I said, I got you because I want to do the video editing.

[00:08:24] I like video editing and I wanted to learn how to do it better.

[00:08:28] And I really do enjoy it.

[00:08:30] But each of those episodes that Rob and I do takes about three hours to edit.

[00:08:35] And then on top of that, it takes about an hour to record.

[00:08:39] And then Rob and I have probably another two hours of meetings throughout the week.

[00:08:44] Just in general, just to keep touch and toss back and forth ideas and get each other's opinions.

[00:08:52] Rob's a great partner in the creator space.

[00:08:55] So is Chris.

[00:08:57] I'm not bashing on Chris, but Chris and my thing is more casual and not really meant to be a business.

[00:09:04] Rob and I really would like the Beyond The Post podcast to make money and do well for a lot of different reasons.

[00:09:12] But we would like people to hear it and get value out of it.

[00:09:17] So but with Beyond The Post, that by far takes the most amount of my time during the week.

[00:09:24] Like I said, Rob and I just wrapped up season one.

[00:09:27] So that's going to give me some more time for this podcast as we are recording and getting ready for season two.

[00:09:37] But yeah, so that's kind of where we are with Beyond The Post in terms of downloads and making money and all that stuff.

[00:09:45] Beyond The Post is very, very new.

[00:09:47] It's only a couple months old.

[00:09:48] And I don't want to give you specific numbers because I haven't really talked to Rob about this.

[00:09:52] And I don't think Chris would care one way or the other if I did.

[00:09:55] So that's that's why I gave you some numbers on the Shuffle Playlist podcast.

[00:10:00] But so that leaves us to this podcast.

[00:10:04] So again, this is this is all to kind of explain to you when I say I'm very busy or I'm overwhelmed or whatever or I don't get podcast episodes out on time.

[00:10:15] These are kind of some of the reasons why.

[00:10:17] I also have a full time job and a family and I have kids in sports and other activities that we have to do.

[00:10:23] So but let's talk about this podcast because I'm eligible for retirement in three years.

[00:10:30] At this point, I don't know if I'm going to retire.

[00:10:33] A year ago, I was confident I was going to retire.

[00:10:36] We've got a new chief in our department.

[00:10:38] We've got some things that are changing for the better.

[00:10:42] And I might stay longer than three years.

[00:10:45] But the whole goal of this podcast when I started it was to have something to do, even if it didn't make money, but have something to do after I retired that would keep my mind occupied.

[00:10:55] And I'm going to tell you right now, I love doing this podcast.

[00:11:00] I met some of the coolest people in my life because of this podcast.

[00:11:04] And I appreciate each and every one of you who listens to the show.

[00:11:09] And I appreciate everybody who writes in.

[00:11:11] And it is people write in and they'll be like, hey, I was just thinking about this and I thought you would like it has nothing to do with electric vehicles like this community for this show is so thoughtful and so kind that I can't even I can't even say enough about you.

[00:11:25] Give you everybody give yourself applause.

[00:11:28] Like if you whatever you're doing, stop and give yourself a hand because I'm being facetious.

[00:11:34] Doing a podcast is very lonely, especially a single mic podcast because you don't really have anything to bounce off of.

[00:11:41] Like I of course I have Rob, I have Allison, I have Steve, I have some other creators, I have people in this community who all ask questions of and get feedback.

[00:11:53] But in reality, like if I'm recording, I'm like, man, I don't know how that sounds.

[00:11:58] I don't have anybody to ask is like, does it sound OK? Does it sound like I'm making sense?

[00:12:03] I'm just doing this. So the more feedback from you and the community, the better the show gets.

[00:12:09] And I have to say, I am so proud of how polite and supportive and kind everybody who listens to the show is.

[00:12:19] So in terms of time, this show takes about three hours an episode to write, record and distribute.

[00:12:31] And that's about six hours a week, which doesn't seem like a lot.

[00:12:36] But when you add in all of the other things that I'm doing with work, because I have an extra I have two extra projects that I'm working on at work right now, some of which I do outside of work.

[00:12:46] I have the podcast that I'm doing with Rob, which takes several hours a week.

[00:12:51] I have my family. I have my kids have their sporting events and their other activities and stuff like that.

[00:12:58] So there's this isn't to be like, oh, feel bad for me because that's not where I'm going with this.

[00:13:04] But this is to let you know, like when I miss shows or if I miss an episode or from late, I don't ever miss.

[00:13:12] I'm late. I'm very optimistic when I make promises.

[00:13:17] I just want you to know, like it's not because I'm not prioritizing this show.

[00:13:22] It's because, you know, things came up and yeah, the show is doing really well.

[00:13:29] This is the most successful podcast I've ever been a part of this this kilowatt right here.

[00:13:34] I cannot even believe how well this show is doing monetarily.

[00:13:38] It's not it's OK. You know, it's not great.

[00:13:43] It brings in some money. It doesn't bring in a lot of money.

[00:13:46] It's not life changing money and it's not pay your bills money, but it does well enough to help pay for itself.

[00:13:54] And the Patreon same thing. The Patreon comes in.

[00:13:57] You can I think you can look and see what the Patreon brings in like sixty dollars a month.

[00:14:01] It's not very much, but the ability to have the Patreon gives people like yourselves a an ability to say, hey, I don't want ads.

[00:14:12] OK, great. Maybe people don't care if they have ads or not, but they want to be a part of a community.

[00:14:18] I think that's what Patreon's most valuable.

[00:14:23] What it does the best is it provides community and you know, you get the good feeling of supporting someone.

[00:14:30] Now, in this case, it happens to be me and I'll just speak for myself here.

[00:14:34] But I contribute to other people's Patreons and I do it because I want to support them.

[00:14:41] I don't do it because I want the rewards that you may or may not get.

[00:14:46] I don't do it because of the extra content, although Justin Robert Young's politics politics politics podcast, I get the extra content for that.

[00:14:53] So I do enjoy that part.

[00:14:55] But you know, if he didn't ever give the extra episodes, I'd be OK with that.

[00:15:00] Like I do it because I want to support what they're doing.

[00:15:03] And I would assume that many of you out there who are supporting this show are doing it because you want to support what I'm doing.

[00:15:10] So thank you.

[00:15:12] Thank you.

[00:15:13] But the whole point to all of this is, again, if you're wondering why an episode is missed or if you're if you just don't understand why you can't keep deadlines or whatever, there's just a lot going on.

[00:15:27] And I wanted to take a moment and be transparent about that.

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[00:17:55] All right. I think I beat that dead horse.

[00:18:00] So let's go ahead and move on to our next topic, which is what I don't like about my Model Y.

[00:18:08] So let me start by saying this.

[00:18:10] I'm usually always listening to a podcast or music.

[00:18:15] If I'm by myself, I don't like being in a quiet room.

[00:18:19] I crawl out of my skin.

[00:18:21] So I'm always listening to something.

[00:18:24] It could be an audiobook, a podcast or music.

[00:18:27] And I have AirPods Pro.

[00:18:30] I love them.

[00:18:31] One of the best purchases I've ever made.

[00:18:33] I've had two pairs.

[00:18:36] Had two pairs in the time that they've been out.

[00:18:41] And last night, as I was coming home from Chris's show, I had them in my ears and I was like, oh, there's Apple podcasts.

[00:18:49] And I wanted to listen to an episode of the SMR podcast, which again, Rod Simmons, Chris Ashley and Rob Dunwood, they host that show.

[00:18:59] You should go watch it.

[00:19:00] They talk a lot about it.

[00:19:01] Evie's on there anyway.

[00:19:03] I realized I was like, oh, they have the Apple podcast app on the Tesla.

[00:19:08] I'll listen to their podcasts on the on the Tesla.

[00:19:11] And it'll be something new and neat for me because I almost never listened to anything on the car.

[00:19:17] And so I took my headphones off and I set them foolishly.

[00:19:22] I set them on a place where they could easily slide off as well as my headphone case.

[00:19:28] I wasn't I don't know.

[00:19:29] I wasn't paying attention.

[00:19:30] I hadn't had anything to drink or anything like that.

[00:19:32] I would just spaced it out.

[00:19:34] It was late for me.

[00:19:35] It was 11 o'clock.

[00:19:37] And so I'm listening to the podcast.

[00:19:41] I make a turn.

[00:19:42] Everything slides off onto the floor.

[00:19:44] I'm like, OK, well, I'll go and I'll figure out where all everything landed after I get home.

[00:19:51] So I get home.

[00:19:52] I start looking for the aftermath.

[00:19:55] I find the charger and one of the headphones just on them on the driver's side mat.

[00:20:00] And I'm like, OK, that's cool.

[00:20:01] And the other headphone is in between the seat and the center console.

[00:20:07] And so I reach my hand back there and I can feel there's like a little bit of give in the carpet.

[00:20:14] And I can feel underneath that center console.

[00:20:17] And I was like, well, that's not good.

[00:20:19] I don't want to push too hard on this.

[00:20:21] So as I'm reaching back there trying to grab this teeny tiny little air pod, I pinch it.

[00:20:28] And it kind of because the AirPods are slicked in there kind of shaped like an egg.

[00:20:32] I pinched it and it just kind of slips through my fingers and drops.

[00:20:36] And I hear it hit.

[00:20:37] It drops in underneath that center console.

[00:20:40] So I don't know if you know this, but and I'm sure this is the case with the Model 3 too.

[00:20:46] But there's like there's carpet in between where your seat is and where the console is.

[00:20:52] So you have the rails that the seat the seat goes forward and back on.

[00:20:58] And then there's a little bit of carpet and there's nothing underneath that carpet.

[00:21:01] And there's even a hole cut as if they were planning on running wire up through that carpet at some point in time.

[00:21:08] It's there on purpose.

[00:21:11] That's where my that's where my headphone went.

[00:21:13] It went right in there and it fell and I stuck my hand down there as much as I possibly could and couldn't couldn't reach it.

[00:21:21] It was pretty far down there.

[00:21:23] So I was like, OK, I'm going to go to sleep.

[00:21:25] So I went to sleep, woke up the next morning, grabbed a magnet and stuck it down that hole to see if I couldn't.

[00:21:33] You know, I was like, what would how much stuff could possibly be down there?

[00:21:37] You know, so I grabbed a magnet and I'm kind of fishing around.

[00:21:40] I can't find it. So I went to the store.

[00:21:42] I bought a more powerful magnet, whether this is a good idea or not, I don't I'm not sure.

[00:21:46] And I shove it down there and I'm trying to find that air pod and I couldn't find it.

[00:21:52] So spent all morning researching the best way to get this stupid air pod out.

[00:21:58] One of the suggestions was to take the center console off and then just reach down and grab it, which is fine.

[00:22:05] But here's the thing.

[00:22:07] You have to unhook some connectors and things like that.

[00:22:10] And I don't want three years from now, Tesla to not warranty something because at some point in time I unhooked a connector

[00:22:21] and they had a you know, they have that report that I unhooked that connector.

[00:22:27] And therefore they're not going to warranty my battery or whatever, you know, pick some ridiculous item that costs tens of thousands of dollars.

[00:22:34] They're not going to warranty it.

[00:22:36] So removing the center console, not an option while it's under warranty anyway.

[00:22:42] So I went to AutoZone and I got one of those little inspector camera scope things and I stuck that down there.

[00:22:50] I could actually see the air pod.

[00:22:54] Now I've invested quite a bit of money in little things to actually pull this air pod out.

[00:23:00] I have a little claw that I'm sticking down there and I'm trying to do that.

[00:23:03] My wife's holding one thing and I'm holding the other and we're trying to work together.

[00:23:07] I spent a ridiculous amount of time.

[00:23:09] Like my wife said, you know what?

[00:23:12] If you take your time and plus your salary, you know what?

[00:23:17] You get paid an hour.

[00:23:18] You just could have bought a new pair of AirPods for the amount of time you're spending on this.

[00:23:22] But around 430 I gave up the ghost and I went to Best Buy and bought a new set of AirPods.

[00:23:30] But I want to know, has anybody else experienced this?

[00:23:33] If you have, email me. It's bodei at 918digital.com.

[00:23:38] Because I genuinely don't know what Tesla was thinking.

[00:23:42] You are definitely going to drop items between your seat like that.

[00:23:46] Why would they put something in there where stuff can just fall through?

[00:23:51] That seems like a big design flaw.

[00:23:54] But yeah, long story short, I'm out $250, which I didn't want to be.

[00:24:02] It's really hard to make that purchase today.

[00:24:07] It was really irritating.

[00:24:09] Anyway, so I'm thinking about when I have a little bit more time,

[00:24:15] 3D printing a little tray that will go in between the seat and that console.

[00:24:22] So in the future, if I drop something down there, it'll fall into that tray instead of falling directly into the abyss.

[00:24:31] Yeah. All right.

[00:24:34] So that's one thing I don't like about my Model Y right now.

[00:24:39] Everything else is great.

[00:24:42] Let's talk about full self-driving.

[00:24:50] I've got to pull up my notes here, so give me just a second here.

[00:24:55] All right. So I've got my notes.

[00:25:01] Let me share the screen with my Logic Pro.

[00:25:06] I'm sure this is great podcasting.

[00:25:09] Okay. So obviously, I can't take notes while I'm driving.

[00:25:16] So what I did was chat GPT, the mobile app has this feature where you can just talk to it.

[00:25:23] And I use this thing all the time to just kind of flush out ideas or just run through different scenarios.

[00:25:29] It's really, really helpful because you talk to chat GPT.

[00:25:32] It talks back to you at the very end of it.

[00:25:35] I say, Hey, can you make me a summary of everything that we talked about?

[00:25:38] And it says, sure.

[00:25:40] And it makes a summary.

[00:25:41] So that's what I did with my full self-driving driving concerns.

[00:25:48] So I'm going to say most of the time, full self-driving was great.

[00:25:52] No issues or very little issues.

[00:25:54] Right.

[00:25:55] It was pretty good, but way better than a new driver.

[00:25:58] Right.

[00:26:00] In most cases, not in every case, but in most cases.

[00:26:04] So the first time that I did the full self-driving was at work.

[00:26:10] We have a gate that we park behind.

[00:26:13] So I get in the car.

[00:26:14] It updated while it was at work.

[00:26:16] So I get in the car.

[00:26:17] I hit full self-driving and it drives through the parking lot, waits at the gate.

[00:26:23] And I was like, what is it going to do?

[00:26:24] Is it going to think it's a wall?

[00:26:26] Does it think it's a gate?

[00:26:27] It hesitated at the gate.

[00:26:28] And as soon as it could safely pull through, it did.

[00:26:31] It did a really good job.

[00:26:33] And again, I'm going to highlight the negatives, but in most cases, it does a pretty good job.

[00:26:41] Here's where it doesn't do such a great job.

[00:26:44] The route selection that it made to take me home drove me through a neighborhood that it didn't need to.

[00:26:52] Like it literally could have made a right and another right onto the main road and taken me to the freeway.

[00:26:58] But instead, it drove me around the neighborhood that the fire station's in for a little bit.

[00:27:03] And then once it decided it was ready to get on the road, it kind of got on the wrong road, but eventually figured itself out.

[00:27:13] I take a specific freeway and I'm not going to give you the details because I don't want people to know where I work or get an idea of where I work.

[00:27:20] But I take a specific freeway home every single time.

[00:27:24] This took the other freeway.

[00:27:26] Will it still get me home?

[00:27:27] Sure. It's a lot more congested most of the time, but yeah, it'll get me home.

[00:27:31] So it decided to take me on a different route than I normally go on.

[00:27:35] And even more than that, it had an opportunity to transfer over to another freeway, which would have got me home faster.

[00:27:43] And it didn't do that either.

[00:27:46] It took me on a very, very long route.

[00:27:49] It took me probably an extra 15 minutes to get home based on the route that it took.

[00:27:54] So not great in terms of route selection.

[00:27:58] Now, when I did this, I did not have an opportunity to choose which route I wanted.

[00:28:08] It might have asked me or might have come up when it was first starting, but I didn't recognize that that's what it was doing.

[00:28:18] So it either did ask me which route I wanted to take and I didn't do it because I was still trying to learn how the system worked or it just didn't ask.

[00:28:28] And it just took the route that it thought it should take.

[00:28:31] Anyway, so on that first drive, it drives me through the neighborhood.

[00:28:39] It's ready to get me onto the freeway.

[00:28:42] And there's a little piece of sidewalk that kind of sticks out right before you get onto the freeway.

[00:28:48] It's almost like they wanted to have a driveway into this specific property, but then they decided not to put a driveway in there.

[00:28:58] So the sidewalk goes straight and it makes a little curve into the road and then just kind of like curves onto the unwrap.

[00:29:07] It's kind of a weird deal.

[00:29:09] Anyway, this little piece that sticks out, I was afraid that the car was going to hit it and I didn't want to do any damage to my wheels.

[00:29:15] So I took over for the car at that point and made that turn because I wasn't comfortable with it.

[00:29:22] And also, by the way, I should say that I set the car to chill mode.

[00:29:30] Initially, at one point in time I had it set to aggressive, but I went in and I set it to chill.

[00:29:37] I can't remember if it was during this ride or at some other point in time.

[00:29:42] But now it's on chill mode just so everybody's aware what we're working with here.

[00:29:47] Now I get on the freeway.

[00:29:51] It does fine on the freeway.

[00:29:55] It's pretty busy, but it's not rush hour traffic busy like it normally is.

[00:30:01] It's doing some funny things with choosing a different lane.

[00:30:05] Like it wants to be in a certain lane and then it wants to be in the lane next to it and then it wants to be back in that certain lane.

[00:30:12] So that was kind of weird.

[00:30:14] At one point in time, we got into the HOV lane.

[00:30:19] And it turned the blinker on several times to get into the lane to the right.

[00:30:25] But it didn't, it never moved like it thought about it.

[00:30:30] There were no cars that would impede it from moving into that right lane.

[00:30:35] It just made a couple of like attempts like that, but it never the blinker came on.

[00:30:40] But the car never went into that lane.

[00:30:42] I don't know what it was concerned about, to be honest with you, but it was very indecisive in terms of lane changes.

[00:30:48] Now I will say that you have to drive through a tunnel at one point on this route.

[00:30:53] So I went ahead and was like, okay, well we're in the tunnel.

[00:30:59] There's no sunlight in the tunnel obviously.

[00:31:02] So I'll hit the blinker and see if it'll move into the right lane now.

[00:31:04] And it did.

[00:31:05] So I don't know if the way that the sun was hitting the road or the sun was hitting the cameras or the sun was hitting the cars around me,

[00:31:12] which there wasn't really any, if that was making it so that it didn't want to make that right turn into that not right turn that that lane change to the right.

[00:31:24] I genuinely have no idea why I didn't want to do that.

[00:31:27] Shadows.

[00:31:30] Shadows still a problem.

[00:31:32] Like even before I had my car, everybody would talk about like the phantom breaking with the shadows.

[00:31:39] That definitely happened.

[00:31:41] Construction zones had a little bit of hard time with the construction zone.

[00:31:47] I won't say that it did awful.

[00:31:51] This is construction on the freeway, but there were some things that were like, ooh, I don't like being in the lane that I'm in currently because it makes more sense to be in the lane to the left and maybe not the lane to the right based on the way that the constructions, you know, set up.

[00:32:10] But it did fine.

[00:32:12] I just wasn't really happy with what lane it shows to be in based on all the factors, the cars where the cones were all that stuff.

[00:32:22] It would have been a lot easier for her in the left lane.

[00:32:24] But I was trying to let its do let the car do its thing.

[00:32:28] I didn't want to interrupt it by too much.

[00:32:31] The goal was to get home without an interruption and I already have one.

[00:32:35] So now it's the cars ready to get off the freeway.

[00:32:38] By the way, we're nowhere near by my house.

[00:32:40] There's a much closer exit to where my house is.

[00:32:44] But now we're ready to get off the freeway and you have you know, you have the the freeway, you have the off ramp and in between the freeway and the off ramp is this thing called the Gore point.

[00:32:53] And it's usually it looks like a triangle in between the freeway and the off ramp.

[00:32:58] That's called the Gore point.

[00:33:00] You don't want to stop on the Gore point because it's called the Gore point for a reason.

[00:33:06] Anyway, when it gets to the to the Gore point, it's like driving in the middle of the Gore point.

[00:33:11] The car is it's kind of shaking because it wants to go right but it's not sure if it wants to go left.

[00:33:18] There are cars behind me there on my right side.

[00:33:20] There are cars behind me on my left side.

[00:33:22] So I ended up just taking over and moving back onto the freeway and then manually driving the car to the next off ramp.

[00:33:31] And then I let the car take over from there.

[00:33:34] That was that was not a comfortable feeling because it slowed down to like 45 miles an hour.

[00:33:39] Keep in mind, not a super busy traffic day, but also there were there were people on the road and they didn't want to go 45 miles an hour or watch me drive through the Gore point like a moron.

[00:33:51] So that was that was a little upsetting to me.

[00:33:56] There were some abrupt braking scenarios like it would just kind of it.

[00:34:03] It would be like it would be like a yellow light and all of a sudden we decide, OK, well now I'm going to break and I'm going to break really hard, which was uncomfortable.

[00:34:14] But it didn't do that too many times.

[00:34:18] Intersections. So making a left turn on an intersection, it was very hesitant.

[00:34:23] Now I don't know if I would have put this into aggressive aggressive mode if it would have been any different.

[00:34:28] But there we could have definitely made a safe left turn several times and the car was just really hesitant about it, which is not great, Bob.

[00:34:41] The other the other thing is right turns like today I was driving back from Best Buy.

[00:34:47] And I was making a right turn.

[00:34:50] So the area that I live in, I live in the East Valley of the Phoenix metro area.

[00:34:55] So a lot of our roadways are four lanes with a turning lane.

[00:35:01] So what I'm trying to get at is these are not congested roadways like there.

[00:35:05] There's plenty of time, plenty of road for everybody.

[00:35:08] Basically, I was making a right hand turn and the car there was no cars coming.

[00:35:15] And the car had a very, very hard time making that right hand turn.

[00:35:19] And I just kind of let it do its thing because there wasn't any cars behind me and I was in any danger.

[00:35:24] So I didn't interrupt it.

[00:35:26] But it did not it did not handle that situation with confidence like I would like it to the same thing with unprotected left hand turns.

[00:35:35] It kind of does the same thing.

[00:35:36] I had a couple of instances where I'm turning out of my neighborhood and it's going to make a left hand turn.

[00:35:40] There's you know, we're not at a light.

[00:35:42] We're not at an intersection or anything like that.

[00:35:44] It's just pulling out from a neighborhood onto a road and it kind of would be out.

[00:35:50] It would sort of start to go out into the road and then it would stop and then start and then stop.

[00:35:56] I had a couple of things like that happen just a couple of days ago on those left hand turns.

[00:36:01] And it doesn't seem to be in one specific spot.

[00:36:04] It seems to be in a couple of different places.

[00:36:08] Now, granted I am driving out of my neighborhood most of the time that I noticed this, but it's not at the same intersection.

[00:36:18] It's not at the X Road and X Road.

[00:36:21] It always happens at this one place.

[00:36:23] It happens whenever I'm turning left on out of my neighborhood.

[00:36:27] There are plenty of Teslas in my neighborhood.

[00:36:30] So it's not as if this road is not well traveled with Teslas.

[00:36:34] There are so many Teslas in my neighborhood.

[00:36:36] So I'm not sure what that's all about.

[00:36:39] While I was visiting or while I was driving to go see Chris's show last night, this was the first time that I did it with night driving.

[00:36:49] So previous to this, I had only done it in the daytime.

[00:36:53] The freeway was busy.

[00:36:55] I felt very uncomfortable on the freeway.

[00:36:57] Again, I didn't know which lane it wanted to be in.

[00:37:00] I don't know that what it was doing was necessarily unsafe.

[00:37:05] It was just kind of all over the place.

[00:37:07] Oh, getting onto the freeway.

[00:37:10] I needed to make a left-hand turn on to get onto the freeway.

[00:37:13] Right.

[00:37:14] And there were a lot of cars waiting to get on the freeway and the Tesla passed all of those cars.

[00:37:20] So these cars are all in the turning lane.

[00:37:23] I am not in the turning lane.

[00:37:25] At least I'm 90 percent sure I'm not in the turning lane.

[00:37:28] Again, when your car does something silly and you're in the middle of a busy intersection at night, you kind of panic.

[00:37:35] But we passed a bunch of cars waiting to turn.

[00:37:40] The light turns green for them to turn.

[00:37:43] I'm in the go straight only lane.

[00:37:47] The car tries to make that turn as if it was in a turning lane.

[00:37:51] I took over, drove up, turned around and got on the freeway that way.

[00:37:58] But yeah, that was unsettling because like I said, I'm 90 percent sure that the lane I was in was not a also you can go straight or turn lane.

[00:38:09] It was go straight lane.

[00:38:11] And I'll have to go back and double check.

[00:38:14] But I drive in that area a lot and it definitely did not feel comfortable or safe.

[00:38:25] Yeah, so I think that's about it in terms of issues.

[00:38:33] Most of the time, full self-driving works really well.

[00:38:37] I'm very, very, very impressed with it.

[00:38:41] Would I say we're close to level three?

[00:38:44] Maybe.

[00:38:45] Would I say we're close to level four or level five?

[00:38:48] Absolutely not.

[00:38:50] It's really good.

[00:38:51] Like, don't get me wrong.

[00:38:53] It's pretty amazing.

[00:38:54] And most of the time, I feel more than comfortable letting it do its thing.

[00:38:59] Even if it takes me on a wonky route, I'm like, you know what?

[00:39:04] I got a little bit of time and I'll see a little bit more of the area that I live in.

[00:39:08] Not a big deal.

[00:39:09] But I will say that when it does weird things, it's like it's very hard to figure out why it's doing a certain thing.

[00:39:20] Right.

[00:39:21] And I think if Tesla gave or flashed up on the screen why it's not making the turn, like cars are coming or whatever, cameras occluded or whatever, whatever the whatever the reason is.

[00:39:34] I think it would be I think it would give the driver a little bit more confidence and understanding over what the system is doing, because right now it's kind of like a black box.

[00:39:47] All right.

[00:39:48] I have actually have one more thing I did not intend on talking for 36 minutes at this point.

[00:39:53] But I have one more thing when the car was making that turn onto the freeway that I didn't want it to make.

[00:40:00] Right.

[00:40:01] That was that McClintock and the 202.

[00:40:04] I drive in that area all the time.

[00:40:07] I know that there is a Fisker delivery hub in that area.

[00:40:15] So when I'm driving up, I make a left turn and I was like, oh, this is where the Fisker delivery hub is.

[00:40:20] I drive into their little parking lot.

[00:40:22] And guess what I see?

[00:40:24] Somewhere between 30 and 50 Fisker oceans waiting to be delivered, which honestly I think is very cool.

[00:40:33] The last time I was over there, there were no Fisker oceans.

[00:40:38] There was like maybe three that I could see in their little gated area.

[00:40:44] There was 30 to 50.

[00:40:46] I wasn't able to count all of them because it was dark, but the parking lot or their little storage lot was very full.

[00:40:54] So I really hope that Fisker is selling those vehicles and those are going to customers.

[00:41:00] I also hope Fisker is able to pull out from where they're at at the moment and succeed.

[00:41:07] But I don't know.

[00:41:09] I saw that as a good sign.

[00:41:10] That's what I'm saying.

[00:41:12] Also, I was at the doctor's office the other day and this is a doctor's office that's right next to a hospital.

[00:41:20] Right?

[00:41:21] So I park in the parking garage and as I'm walking into the medical clinic place,

[00:41:27] I see that there is a Fisker ocean parked in a physician's parking spot.

[00:41:34] I was like, oh, well, that's really nice.

[00:41:36] That's kind of cool.

[00:41:37] Like seeing them.

[00:41:38] I get excited when I see EVs that we don't see all the time.

[00:41:43] But I should even say that because the other day, I think I said this on the podcast,

[00:41:47] I was driving southbound on a road and I saw two Fisker oceans driving northbound.

[00:41:52] And then I saw another one a little bit later.

[00:41:54] Like there's a I think it's a white Fisker ocean rolling around here.

[00:41:59] I'm seeing more and more of these Fisker oceans.

[00:42:02] I'm curious if anybody else has seen them in the areas that they live.

[00:42:06] Send me an email.

[00:42:07] Bodie B O D I E at nine one eight digital dot com.

[00:42:11] And let me know if you're seeing them as well.

[00:42:15] But yeah, I think I'll end that here because again,

[00:42:18] I didn't mean to talk for 40 minutes.

[00:42:21] I honestly didn't think I had enough content to fill up 20 minutes.

[00:42:25] So we definitely did that.

[00:42:27] But yeah, I hope this wasn't annoying to anybody.

[00:42:32] I know that this doesn't really have much to do with E.V.s,

[00:42:36] but I also get a fair amount, not a lot,

[00:42:41] but a fair amount of emails asking just kind of for like status updates on how everything's going.

[00:42:46] So maybe this is this was helpful for everybody.

[00:42:51] If it wasn't, let me know.

[00:42:53] Bodie B O D I E at nine one eight digital dot com.

[00:42:56] You can also find me on X at nine one eight digital.

[00:43:00] Whether it was helpful or not, you can you can you can use both of those email addresses

[00:43:05] or that that X and send me a direct message.

[00:43:08] All right, everybody, that is it for me.

[00:43:12] Oh, that's not quite it for me.

[00:43:14] So I'm going to take a break because all of the things that I was just telling you about,

[00:43:18] I am burnt out.

[00:43:20] But don't worry, because I also during all of those other things that I was doing,

[00:43:25] created more content for you while I take my break.

[00:43:29] On let's see, this is going to go out on Monday morning.

[00:43:34] So on Wednesday we'll have our last news episode before the break.

[00:43:40] And then on Friday we're going to do Rivian's earnings call.

[00:43:43] And the reason why we're doing it that way is because I've already wrote written on Wednesday show.

[00:43:49] And that gives me a little bit of time to get the Rivian episode out,

[00:43:54] because I haven't edited or cut that down at all.

[00:43:57] And then on Tuesday, that next Tuesday, we will talk to the folks from Tello Trucks.

[00:44:06] And that's T E L O Trucks.

[00:44:10] So that'll be Tuesday the 28th.

[00:44:12] On Friday the 31st, we will talk to Glenn Rubin again about his off road adventures.

[00:44:20] I mentioned this not too long ago.

[00:44:23] And then on the 4th of June, that episode will be Allison and Steve Sheridan as well as Pat Dangler.

[00:44:32] Pat had an issue with her wall connector.

[00:44:34] All three of them sit down and they discuss what the actual issue was, how Tesla handled it, and what the resolution was.

[00:44:42] Now if you don't want to wait for that episode to come out, I have good news for you.

[00:44:45] Allison recorded that and also put it on her podcast, the Nocilla podcast.

[00:44:51] And let's see here.

[00:44:54] That would be episode 993.

[00:44:56] So I'll try to put a link in the show notes.

[00:44:59] I don't know if I'll remember, but here's what you should do.

[00:45:02] Go to podfeed.com and click on Nocilla cast and you'll find it, like I said, under episode 993.

[00:45:11] And then on Friday the 7th, I'm going to talk to Dave from Solar Rights, which is an organization in California that is fighting for your rights to put solar on your home and businesses.

[00:45:26] And right now they're coming up with a they're meeting a lot of resistance through with the utility companies.

[00:45:35] So we'll talk to Dave about that.

[00:45:37] And then we're back to our regular schedule on Tuesday, the 11th.

[00:45:43] So hopefully that gives me a little bit of time to work on my podcast that I'm doing with my buddy Chris and gives me some time to just kind of decompress and reenergize.

[00:45:54] All right, everybody, that is it for me.

[00:45:57] I hope you enjoyed this podcast.

[00:45:59] Please don't unsubscribe.

[00:46:01] All right.

[00:46:03] Take care and I will talk to you on Wednesday.

[00:46:50] The 12th, I'm going to talk to you about my personal payment process.

[00:46:55] I'm going to talk about my personal payments.

[00:46:58] My personal payments used to be weighed down by the complexities of in-person payments.

[00:47:03] Then Tap to Pay on iPhone and Stripe came along and changed everything with Tap to Pay on iPhone and Stripe.

[00:47:10] I streamlined my payment process effortlessly.

[00:47:13] Now I can accept in-person contactless payments right from my iPhone.

[00:47:18] So I can pay for my iPhone and Stripe, or other digital wallets.

[00:47:22] Tap to Pay on iPhone and Stripe ensure a smooth checkout experience every time.

[00:47:27] And it's not just me.

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[00:47:36] To learn how Tap to Pay on iPhone and Stripe can help grow your revenue and reach, visit stripe.com slash tap iPhone.