AAH #717 - Designing for the Future w/ Ralph Gilles Stellantis' Chief Design Officer

Speaker 1: I'll online after hours is brought to you by bridge Stone Tires Solutions for your journey.

Speaker 2: Gary, You're ready for a show.

Speaker 3: Absolutely, Happy Halloween.

Speaker 2: Happy Halloween.

Speaker 3: That's right.

Speaker 2: I hope I get a bunch of candy tonight.

Speaker 4: I'm sure you will. What are you dressed as?

Speaker 2: I'm actually I'll probably watch television. Okay, So do you

have something to try to stomp us with? Well, you've

been doing so well these last few weeks. So as

you remember, two weeks ago it was the important from Detroit ad that was done with eminem right, which you got right. And then last week it was off to

Hill Valley, California, the site of the DeLorean in Back to the Future. Yeah, okay, so now where you go?

To Hollywood?

Speaker 4: On October thirty first, a major car company established its headquarters in Hollywood. What company was it?

Speaker 3: You're not going to give us a year?

Speaker 4: If I gave it the year, you get it like that?

Maybe notague that hollywoods major car major car company, Hollywood, California, Hollywood, California. Well,

I mean remember Harley Earl was big in californ you know, I mean, no.

Speaker 2: No early Earl. But it was like he didn't establish

any headnubs.

Speaker 3: But not Fisker.

Speaker 5: Not Fisker.

Speaker 2: That's not a major car.

Speaker 3: I I give up Lucid.

Speaker 4: Major car company.

Speaker 3: Okay. Toyota, oh really yeap.

Speaker 4: In nineteen fifty seven it opened its headquarters in what had been a Rambler dealership.

Speaker 2: Toyota and I knew, but I didn't know it was Hollywood.

Speaker 3: Toyota Motor Sales USA. Correct. It was kind of a

trick question.

Speaker 2: Of course, it was a trick question. Joe, come on,

So we've got to introduce who we've got here on this sh today. We've got Ralph Gills, head of design

at Stilantis. We've got Joe Domagio from Haggerty. Great to

have you guys here. We're ready to talk design with Ralph,

especially all kinds of things. But Gary, I know you

had one particular area you wanted to get into.

Speaker 4: Well, okay, it's been a while since you've had Ralph on the show. And you know, Ralph, you've been with

i'll call it Chrysler for lack of a better term, because that's where you started in ninety two. Okay, So

here we are some years later, and you have made a tremendous career as a designer at a car company that is morphed, and it would be interesting for the audience, I think, to learn about how you got into this whole thing that brought you here today.

Speaker 5: Well, Chrysler was a big part of my life as a young man. I mean, it's that company I wrote

a letter to when I was a kid, you know, sixteen year old. I fired off a letter to then

I Coca and they wrote back to me, you know, recommending colleges, and what happened to be CCS in Detroit.

And I'm proud to say I'm on the board of the ma Ala Mater, which is an honor. So I

found myself. I had a few offers when I graduated,

and Chrysler spoke to me, obviously because I remembered the letter, but also I love the nimbleness of the company, the fact that I'd just seen the Viper at the Auto Show the year before and the Porta Fino year before that.

So it was a very exciting car company that was on the move. I could see they were putting the

footings in for the new Tech center in Auburn Hill, so there was a lot of excitement surrounding it. So

I just dove in and I look back and it has been a blur. I mean it's I've had eleven

CEOs in my you know, in my sights, lived through a lot of changes, a lot ups and downs, a lot of amazing moments, and I couldn't be happier with my career.

Speaker 2: But you're still there. And I bring that up because

that's amazing in the sense that it has. Any other

head designer bedded car company as long as.

Speaker 5: You have you would know, I mean, he's a trivia master.

Speaker 4: But.

Speaker 2: Maybe maybe somebody like.

Speaker 5: Something.

Speaker 3: Yeah, Patrick, come on, yeah.

Speaker 2: Yeah, I don't even think Patrick was there that long.

But I mean, look what I'm getting at that is really remarkable. I mean, obviously the company loves you, because

otherwise they would have given you the boot.

Speaker 5: Oh thank you jeez.

Speaker 3: And did you start at the Tech Center or was it still Highland Park?

Speaker 5: Literally I interviewed at Highland Park and the paint was drying at the Tech Center, so I I mean, the design office was the first operational piece of the building and the pilot plant, so yeah, I remember it was so sparkling new back then.

Speaker 4: But you know, part of your career wasn't always doing design.

I mean you you were in two thousand and one made director of Large Cars and Family Vehicles, which this guy who loves the Viper, Large Cars.

Speaker 5: And Family that's what they call the rear drive studio back then, so which included the Viper. So for me,

it was like a dream come true Jack Crane who had just retired, and there was actually a gap between Jack Cray and myself almost over twenty years, more than twenty years. So I was the youngest director at the time,

you know, thirty year old I was made director. I

couldn't believe it. I didn't feel ready, to be honest

with you, but they saw something in me, so I dove in and took over. That was right as we

were designing the Magnum three hundred Gen three Viper at the time, so I was in nirvana, you know. But

then later on I did end up running a brand for a while.

Speaker 4: So, yeah, you were president and CEO of Dodge.

Speaker 5: I forgot about that and and motorsports at the time.

And then underneath that, behind the scenes, I was deeply involved in SRT, so SRT, you know, working with when the Germans were with us with Daimona Chrysler, days. If

you remember, AMG was the love child of Wolfgang Bernhard, so when he came, he he was you know, we had SVE at the time, especially Vehicle Engineering, which who was managing more or less just the viper, and he loved that idea. So we started, you know, trying to

come up with something catchy, and SRT stuck after many different names that we floated internally, you know, so it's.

Speaker 4: Surge of interesting to think about. So during these years,

I mean that, you know, cars that we all still think about, like, you know, the Crossfire came out when we were there, and the PT Cruiser, the original PACIFICA three hundred m. I mean, so you were talking about

the nimbleness. So explain how all of these cool vehicles were.

Speaker 5: So a lot of those cars, when you say that, I get little smiles and I get palpitations because they all had a meaning. There was something behind those And

when I think about those cars, I think of the personalities, right, the people that pushed those forward from this house Sprolis right before I got there too. You know, you still

had the energy from mister Letts there, you had Tom Gail's energy in the room, you had these people that wanted to do something different, right, we had something to prove.

You know. Christ was always the startup and I mean

not startup mentality, but this kind of underdog mentality. So

we always hated just doing another car. We had to

do some we used called it segment busters or white space vehicles. PT Cruiser was exactly that. Why not you

know the Prowler that was born. When I was there,

I was like, whoa, I think came out of left field.

That was Tom Glee's path for Hot rods manifested into a production car. I mean, just incredible stuff and three

hundred m for an American car company. It was very

forward thinking, you know, extra cab forward. I mean, Winshill

was nearly Lamborghini fast, you know, and then yet it was still functional. It had a very innovative power train layout.

Speaker 2: Also designed to be sold in Europe. Remember it was

a three meter car and it had to be three.

Speaker 5: Just under me.

Speaker 2: That was a magic right because otherwise the taxes go crazy.

Speaker 5: Exactly. Even the engine displacement was under three lead. It

was right at three leaders, which was the magic leaderage back then. So a lot of those things which make

it exciting we never knew what the guys were going to ask us to sketch on next, you know. So

it was that dynamic. We thought our leaders were just

so so aspiring, inspiring to work for these guys, and we just loved it. And concept cars were just being

made left and right. I mean every year there would

be at least three, three to five concepts, you know, which I didn't understand the Pebble Beach thing, but most of them were made for Pebble Beach here we showed them at Detroit Motor Show. But then there was a

whole other dynamic where these things took over the lawn at Pebble Beach for just decades. It's amazing.

Speaker 2: Concepts have largely gone away, not not not just at your company, but.

Speaker 5: They're making a company that are they Yeah, we we just did our We just showed them differently. They don't

necessarily they're not born at auto shows like they used to be, but they're shown on their own thing. We

create shows around them or create videos for them, like the Chrysler Halcyon we did last year. So we are

starting to and the Europeans are still doing it with with some of what they've done with the Perjot brand and other things.

Speaker 2: So yeah, I figured they got the acts because they're expensive to do.

Speaker 5: Extremely it's more so not so much a cost. I mean,

they're between a million to three million dollars. It's more

the effort. You could be putting that effort to a

real car, you know, and if you look at production, cars are getting much more let's say advanced anyway, So that same energy, why not directed to the real deal?

Speaker 2: Right, But that always created desire as the one I want.

Speaker 5: You're right, I do miss them personally because that's why I'm in the industry. When I saw these cars, and

you know, I doubled. I was so in love with

even if you know, in the back of you mind, men never see the light of day. But the fact

that they the passion is right there in front of you.

Speaker 4: Well, you guys remember the you know, the Detroit Show and Kraussler would be just rolling out with the concept car.

Speaker 2: Then the other guys are like, oh, go to your unveils.

Just because they were shows. It wasn't just here, here's

a new one. It was theater.

Speaker 5: But there was method to the madness, right, So they were trying to show the potential of the company, right, where we could go next. They were dreaming out loud.

If you thought about what Chrysler was showing in the early nineties, it was a path towards the three hundred AD ultimately three hundred of HEMI powered V eight something something aspiration.

Speaker 3: It was also a very post Saya Coca path, Yes exactly, that was very much in the state Carca is gone, and yeah, there's a there's a modern future for this company.

Speaker 2: So where where do you want to lead the public?

Speaker 4: Now?

Speaker 2: What do you want to get them ready for? Now?

Speaker 5: I think what you've seen happen, at least in my time, I've seen the brands become much more focused. Right. There

was a time when Dodge had ten nameplates making everything right.

Today Dodge is a performance muscle car company. Chrysler is

we're actually in process of redefining Chrysler as we speak.

It's alive and well, we have some tricks up our sleeves, ramas trucks, you know what I mean. And then Jeep

is if anything, Jeep has grown. GPS only have two nameplates.

Then it had three. Now we have eleven. Now we're national,

I mean international. We sell Jeeps in every single country

in the world, and some of them are dedicated for five or six countries. And you know what I mean.

So Jeep, I watched Sheep just explode to the point where I believe the name, the brand name is up there with Apple, Nike, you know, you name it. So

that's been something that's an active project. They didn't happen

by accident. We put a lot of work to that.

I set up studios in Italy to understand that market better and it's paid off. Same thing with South America.

It's number one in South America. It's segment right.

Speaker 3: Christ was still just a North American.

Speaker 5: I think today it kind of became that way based on the formats of vehicles. A mini event is a

uniquely American thing at the size that it is, but given the right vehicle, you never know, it could be relevant again in international markets.

Speaker 3: Why is it worth your bother?

Speaker 5: Because Chrysler serves a purpose that the other brands don't, which is well, Dodge, We've made Dodge about ultimate muscle car, performance, cheap is off road, ram is towing things around. There's

a lot of customers out there that don't do any of those things right. So they like a gorgeous commuter.

They like a gorgeous, stately car that's affordable. So yeah,

I think we can use Chrysler to go against our Asian competitors. Again, as the other brands have got more focused,

it actually makes room for Chrysler.

Speaker 2: So as you're thinking towards the future, have you got radical enough ideas where you think we've got to prepare the public for this. I'm getting back sort of the

concept cars.

Speaker 5: Here always, and that's what the House yawn was about.

You know, here's a gorgeous I thought dropped a just concept car that made you think twice and they worked because we have a younger generation now saying the words Chrysler are coming out of their mouths right, So not just minivans, we do other things, so stay tuned on that.

A lot of work to be done. And you know

what we're focused on now is like we're launching so many types of vehicle, especially for Jeep, that the concepts are the production cars. Really, we're focused on just getting

those things launched and seeded, especially as we electrify. That's

a whole different message.

Speaker 3: Speaking of Electrify, what do you think when Scout announced last week that they're going to have a range extender, like they had to pull back from all EV.

Speaker 5: Well, I mean half the team is my team, hi guys?

Speaker 3: That yeah, yeah here right.

Speaker 5: Ralphie's graduate school. No, they did great work. I thought

the car itself, the Rivian are both the x FCA designers crisis.

Speaker 3: That explains a lot.

Speaker 5: So they're very beautiful, I think, uh but there the range extender is a technology that we've already have going.

It'll be in the RAM here soon. So yeah, I

think it's a nice solution, especially for that that person who's on the fence. It's really eli.

Speaker 3: It's just interesting to me that they were all in this is going to be an all new brand with the heritage nameplate EV only. But then you know sometime

in the past year they're like, ooh yeah, maybe not.

Speaker 2: Well, you know, the customer or the marketplace has a boat, right, And I think it's very smart to come out with an E wrap. I really do.

Speaker 5: It's also physics, right. The larger vehicle gets, the more

difficult it gets to be pure pure EV based on the use. If you have an urban use cycle, no problem.

If you have a suburban one, then it's a difference.

Speaker 2: If you're towing hauling heavy loads all electric is hard to pull off.

Speaker 4: Ralph, you mentioned Jeep and as you know better than the three of us do, the competition in that sphere is getting very, very tough. So I mean, so, how

do you, from a design point of view, maintain.

Speaker 5: Jeepness well, become more Jeep? I think there was. I

would say we went through a bit of a softer Jeep cycle. If you look at the last generation Cherokee.

I have some regrets about that vehicle. It serves us well,

it's sold surprisingly well, but the new replacement is going to be cool. It's a lot more in I would say,

in the lane of jeep again, you know, and that's something we've all looked back and said, Okay, what have we done with Jeep. Let's double down on what Jeep

is as a lot of I hate to call imposers, that's rude, but a lot of other brands have, let's say, borrowed from Jeep to look jeepy. You know, even when

I hear people describe other vehicles as Jeeps, it pains me because it's like it's used as an adjective, which in a way is a compliment. Because your your brand

is so known for what it is that people use as an adjective. So we just have to do more

jeepy jeeps, and we have. I'm very proud of the Recon.

When you see the new Recon in perpose, and first people struggle to understand what the scale is, but when you see it in life, it really checks a lot of boxes. I think the Recon is going to be

a runaway and I drive a Wagoneer. I didn't drive today,

but I drive it for the last month. The new Wagoneers.

It's the urban side of jeep, you know that, which Grand Cherokee started and still does very well today. That's

that just shows you the streatch that jeep can have.

So really excited to see those two take off.

Speaker 4: Is there is there an issue that you guys worry about in terms of expanding Jeep too large.

Speaker 5: Uh, let's say we were on the verge of that and we we checked it at the right time. I

think it's perfect right now. The amount of vehicles we

have is calculated by the markets, and I say we have eleven nameplates, but none of those eleven co exists in the same market at the same time. So at

max you'll have maybe five in one market.

Speaker 2: So that's a good point. I hadn't really thought about that. Yeah,

So how about vehicle interior? You know, right now, especially

in China, the hot thing is what they call iv I in vehicle infotainment, and it's all about the graphics and you know the sceneless electronic or digital ecosphere. You know,

so that your your phone and whatever thing your home even is pairing with your house. How much are you

guys involved in.

Speaker 5: That big time? We're fully aware of it. Let's put

it that way. Where we have we I have an

outpost in China and I spent I did some mystery shopping in China six weeks ago. I was in Buanzhou

in Shanghai and went literally mystery shopping at many, many, many different brands, and I was impressed. I have to

admit I was impressed by the So they have dealership row.

Could you walk from here in the mall? So imagine

what we enjoy as a typical American mall. But there's dealerships.

Every fifth store is cars, you know. So they took

the concept you saw Tesla do at malls, and they've that's how they sell cars. So while people are shopping,

so it's very uh yeah, and they had to they start with a car blanche. They had no legacy things

to worry about. They just started and they have a

more of a cloud based system, so the car is always connected. If you go in underpass, you lose a

lot of those features. But so it's kind of a

glorified phone in your car. But I was there. They

had karaoke in the car. They had, you know, again

the use case in China, there's a lot of traffic.

People spent a lot of time hours just sitting still in a car, so entertainment is a big deal. So

the car is almost an entertainment source.

Speaker 2: But I got to believe, you know, just the way the graphics are presented, the callers, everything to do has got to be something that the designers so would love to be a part.

Speaker 5: Yes, And behind all that is a very special chip the entire industry knows about. It's a qual Comb chip

and we use the same chip. So we're actually putting

that in our new products and it's known that it's in our latest vehicles will have the qual Comb chip.

That's the magic is the light. It's the gaming engine

type of capabilities, and we use Unity software, which is the same stuff they're using. So it's really the other

part of that is how big of a drive you put on the vehicle, how much computing power, and you have to make the calculation between do I put this much computing power and give up on that feature? And

in our market, certain things matter more to our customer than just being entertained. So a lot of that is,

to be honest, it's beautiful, but it's fluff. It doesn't

make the car better. It just makes the car more exciting.

And when you're when you have ninety car companies fighting for relevance, you've got to get that customer in that first huns when they're in the mall right, sitting there, it's the open the door, it's wild biz bang, you know, it's all that that. But after a few weeks of

owning the car, it's back to you know, does it run well? Does it do you know what I needed

to do? So a lot of that shine I think

is it's fun, but it's not, you know, the core of what a car is about.

Speaker 4: So to what extent do you have in your studio people who are doing.

Speaker 5: That that digital design very good questions. So I would

say ten years ago we had twenty people. Today it's

under my watch, I have one hundred and eighty ps. Wow,

and that's just us. So we have a whole other

software team. We had zero software engineers today we're close

to twenty three hundred. So we're building that muscle up

and it's it's necessary, and that's all getting ready for the future. Some of the stuff is launching today, but

we've been working since Silantis formed. We had to build

a software team. We were too reliant on the outside.

We kind of use Panasonic and you know, Harmon and companies like that. But now we're trying to basically do

it ourselves, which allows much faster reaction, better bug finding.

You know, we can your stuff overnight to do over the year updates. That that's part of it, but it's

really as we change our minds because the thing, you know, software is like a car. You start two three years

ahead and you're stuck with it right those days. Don't

have to be that way. Now we don't have to

be stuck with it. We can play it, adapt right

to the last minute, and then launch as required.

Speaker 3: Is that software expertise based here in all over.

Speaker 5: It's all over most of it is. Some of it's

in Europe, some of it's here, some of it's in India, some of it's all over the world, but the vast majority is in Europe in US.

Speaker 2: You know. The other trend that we're seeing coming out

of China is man their product development process so quick and instead of having, you know, a new car come out four years later, you do a major refresh four years after that, you do a new platform. You're going

bang bang bang bang bang, which, in a way, I gotta believe, appeals to designers because you can get new designs to the market that much more quickly.

Speaker 5: And some of it and I think that's the exciting part about electrication, right. A lot of our production cycles

are tied to validation. And when you put a powertrain,

a gas power training in the car, you automatically have sixteen months of validation. That doesn't matter if you've done

it before. The minute you change the mass of the car,

the shape of the car, you start all over. With

electric cars, it's much much easier. Matter of fact, it's months,

if not weeks, you don't have and you get your EPA certification almost overnight compared to you know, sometimes the government will slow walk the executive order approvals, so that is exciting. So that and then when you have we

just went through a big platform birth called Stella Large, and we spent the last three years making our stell A large family vehicles. Once we've done that, we've now

starting to master that platform. So understands you know, the

hard points all that. So the next generations are a

lot easier to make, you know, So we're you're going to see many babies coming off. Tell us that name again,

Stella Large, that's the nickname. It's still Antis shortened to Stella.

Speaker 3: Yeah.

Speaker 2: Sounds like somebody's four platforms, right, So stell a small, stell a medium, still a large, and then frame frame further.

Speaker 5: I watch right now. I've been focused on Stell Large.

We have a couple vehicles off medium that we're working on and small, the Avengers off the small in Europe.

Speaker 3: So is the new charger on Cell large large?

Speaker 5: Yeah, the recon the new wagoner s The.

Speaker 2: Charger looks fantastic. I saw it. I saw it a

week ago and it.

Speaker 5: Was like hockey bastard. But when I see that vehicle,

because one thing to see it in the studios for all these last couple of years. But I was downtown

at Greektown and I saw one rolling down the street.

I heard it before I saw it. So the frat

Sonic was.

Speaker 2: Rat Sonic was running and I didn't know what it was.

Speaker 5: I was in a Harley David. I didn't know what.

I turned around, whipped around it. Oh, it's a charger

on my Hardy. Yes, it's one of ours. And then

the guy I took my phone out to take a picture of a car design or redesigned, and the guy rolls back. Oh, and he put you go ahead, man.

And he was a guy with a yellowjacket, one of our test drivers, and he just waited there for me to take the picture. I mean us about that car yet, yeah.

Speaker 4: A few weeks away, so talk to us about you know what went into that. I mean, because you guys

were really you know, it's a big gamble for that vehicle.

Speaker 5: Maybe, so we'll see. The time will tell Gary if

it's a gamble. But I look at it this way.

So we have a very good base of Moparians. I

call them mo part lovers, and I'm one of those people.

And I when we started off to replace the Challenger and charger. We knew that the wheelbase wouldn't be variable,

and this time around, for this particular car, we had to stick with one wheelbase, so that really made the Challenger to me a non event. I didn't want to

do a long wheelbase Challenger. This wouldn't look right. So

we got that out of our system, and I let the entire studios sketch whatever they wanted. Didn't put any

boundaries on them, and they sketched all kinds of interesting things.

None of them tickled me, so I got frustrated and I and the story goes, and it's true. I actually

went to our museum and I got a black sixty eight charger. I just parked it in the studio and

walked away. I moved it there. I had the guys

leave it in the studio. I didn't say a word.

I just didn't bother them for about six weeks, and sure enough, before I knew it, the sketches changed, and I knew the designers would see what was going on, because that there's something about it's my favorite mo part of all time as a sixty eight, and there's the lines on that vehicle that you still respect to this day, and I think they did a beautiful job of echoing that vehicle, which is ours. I mean, I think you're

allowed to mine your own goodness. Yeah, there's nothing wrong

with that, as long as you're not be holding to it.

I think the charger came out with a perfect balance of futurism and a little bit of classicness there.

Speaker 2: Well, one thing that flipped me out was that a wing.

I think you call it ar wing.

Speaker 5: It's called the rwing.

Speaker 2: R wing. Okay, that's integrated into the leading edge of

the front end, which is almost invisible. You don't even

see it until you get up closer and it's like, wait a minute, what's this big gap there? Does it

work aero wise?

Speaker 5: It's worth roughly eighteen miles of range. Yes, it is,

and it brings the And we could do it without the IC engine because there's two versions. The IC has

a different front and altogether. The thing is, we could

have made the electric when you used the IC engine, we would have had a bigger front, but I wanted as well, so I negotiated hard with engineering to differentiate the electric from the gas. So it's one of those

if you know, you know things. But the car does

look different when it approaches you now and when you photograph the cards without question.

Speaker 3: How did you arrive at the hatchback or lift gate or whatever you want?

Speaker 5: Function and arrow at the same time. So we wanted

to add another element because again it's competing with u vs.

Now there's so everything is a crossover. So how do

we give it crossover type of functionality without losing the esthetics?

And it turned out yes, and the hatchback design, which we hide, you can't even tell.

Speaker 3: It's That's why I was confused first.

Speaker 5: I'm like, is that yeah, so it's it's kind of a secret. Oh yeah, it's a hatchback which I hit

my mountain bike in there. I still look cool going

up the mountain.

Speaker 2: Bike too, all right, I was just out on the trail. Yes, ye,

talking about aerodynamics. You guys are building a wind tunnel.

Speaker 5: Well, we already have one, so the winter we have put in the Yes, it's already in. It's Alreadian. It

just went operational two weeks ago. It's beautiful and it's uh.

It was a twenty nine million dollars project, so it wasn't wasn't easy.

Speaker 3: Is an hills, Yes.

Speaker 2: It's full scale tunnel.

Speaker 5: Yeah, we shut down the current. We had a full

scale for over twenty five years, but it didn't have It was actually a state of the art until it except for the rolling road, so we kept having to go rent one in we're in Carolina's I think it's a NASCAR tunnel. We would rent for rolling road work,

which is more accurate for all kinds of things, you know, because you know the air moves, you have to move the massive air under the car. So now we have that,

so I'm extremely happy. But ours is more than just

a rolling road because it can handle a heavy duty truck to an a segment car. We can move the wheelbases.

It's and do yaw. Now we can do ninety degrees yaw.

So it's great for sound.

Speaker 2: You do y'all with a moving ground plane?

Speaker 5: Yes, yes, yes, yes, you have to come see do a show. And our guys running it are such nerds

they would they would love to host you there. It's

it's incredible. It's sopreme come true.

Speaker 2: You know, simulation computational fluid dynamics c FD. Yeah, what

you all want a real.

Speaker 5: Yeah, there's it's especially it's more for noise than you think and you know, the ones where you see the smoke.

We can get pretty much within five percent or less with just simulation, but the noise is very hard to simulate.

So so that's what we're working on. And as you

electrified noise becomes more important, wind noise, the road noise, whistles, little strange things that you can only find.

Speaker 2: Yeah, you know, it's interesting in formula one. You know,

I'm told by people who are on the sidelines of it, that has really become a simulation war, especially with the price cap right now, and so CFD plays such a big role. But they need their moving ground plane wind

tunnels because CFD isn't quite there. But they even say

sometimes they CFD it to death. They put it in

the wind tunnel to death, and they take it to the track.

Speaker 5: And my favorite part is when they have an accident, a part rips off and they're just as fast as who knows whatever.

Speaker 3: This is so rough.

Speaker 4: What is your take on pure digital design in no clay?

Speaker 5: We tried that and I joke that that's how the Dodge caliber happened, So we killed that. I think it's

a mixture and we have we use a clay as a validation tool more so than we use it for hunting design, but most of it, especially now, so my designer is able to create the surface now very quickly, especially younger guys. They come out of school and we've

started to buy these tools for them, so they can make a car in three D and we can mill it if we want to, or live in three D for a long time. So these different three D tools

are just incredible now. And what I do now is

virtual reviews, So we put these goggles on. We're all

in a room looking like morons, but we're reviewing the car.

Speaker 2: It's a resolution good enough because some of the goggle stuff I've seen.

Speaker 5: As a asked me that question last year, I would have said no. But as recently as four or five

months ago, the qualities jumped. And what's cool is now

they're see throw. I can talk to you and see

the car and step in. It's incredible. You feel like

you could just touch a car, get on your knees and cite the line down the side. It's getting quite good.

It's tough to still tell the scale, so you get a little scalosis. You don't know if it's you what

size it is. But the design is pretty close, especially

comparisons A to B. You can do, but you need

to touch it. Yes, I agree with you got to

touch it, feel it. And the best part for me

is is I do a lot of my design assessment after hours, So when all the designers have gone home, I creep into the studios at six thirty seven o'clock at night, and that's when I look at sign because no one's gonna bother me. I'm just sitting there, contant

up on the chair and just stare at a car for half an hour. And I can't do that if

it's locked in a digital file somewhere, right. So I

really like the clay tools. They're not expensive to do.

Problem is, it's us dying, literally a dying art. So

we have artisans retiring every year and we're struggling to replace that skill.

Speaker 2: Set because usually these are BFA sculptors right now.

Speaker 5: They are they didn't used to be today. We do

take We go to ccs and we find ceramic artists, We find any kind of fine arts. Some of them

we can train that like three D. Others just stumble

on the career somehow. But for every three that retires,

we can find one or two it's really getting Luckily, the technology is making up for that because we had over one hundred clay modelers when I started, like one hundred and fifty clay moles. Today we have like thirty eight. Wow,

and I kiss all four cheeks of those two thirty eight clay models. They're worth their waiting gold.

Speaker 2: You know what about looking at it in natural light or can you get the light right in?

Speaker 5: Yeah, and you'd be shocked. You got to come. We

should do a tech thing that you'd be amazing. Yeah,

we have a video wall the size of this whole room where you can basically look at high resumeentry. You're

probably gonna ask it about AI soon, right.

Speaker 2: Well, first we're going to take a quick commercial break and give a shout out to our sponsor, Bridgestone. But yes,

we're kind to come back and talk about AI. First,

bridge Stock excellent.

Speaker 4: Making a life full of memories one road trip at a time, that's what really matters.

Speaker 2: Bridgetone weather Peak tires.

Speaker 1: But the seventy thousand mile womened warranty.

Speaker 5: Sight and I could see her facial expressions.

Speaker 2: Okay, we're back, and you're right. I want to ask

you about AI because some of the artwork that people are posting car stuff, We'll let stock cars. It's pretty cool.

Speaker 5: Yeah, So our we embraced it right away. So my

counterpartner Europe, myself, we have a sub team that just looks into AI and actually is developing AI. And even

our IT team at work came to us and said, hey, to say, I thing's here to stay. What can we

do to help you? And they set up basically a

captive AI so we can freely populate with our own stuff.

We can touch the Internet without putting our stuff out on the internet, right, because that's the danger is leaking out.

Speaker 3: Yeah, you just gave it away exactly.

Speaker 5: So we have our own internal AI system and it's amazing.

The kids love it. I love it. But I can

tell what's done in an AI what's done home. But

we use it like if you have five designers. We

use it as a six to one or you know what I mean. So it gives you a perspective much quicker.

It is making the rendering. It's making us lazy, I

would admit, because the rendering is so good. I mean,

you could put a sketch in there and say I want it at sunset red you know Candy Apple red boom there it is literally twenty five.

Speaker 2: Do you use it all for inspiration?

Speaker 5: I guess yes, yes, Yeah. We actually are working on

a monospace project and we had ten ideas from our own designers and they are all different, and we just let it go and it created.

Speaker 2: A one hundred what do you mean vinyl space.

Speaker 5: Like a minivan next generation? Oh, okay, minivan. Yeah, so

it it just literally filled the wall of the same but different in your sitting, Why does he have to do that? Anyway? We use AI like that. We use

it to mosh ideas together, we use it to write essays. Apparently, No,

it's fun.

Speaker 4: So you were mentioning, you know, the color bang is done.

So I got to believe that when you guys first installed ALIAS, it was the same sort of feeling, right, And so I mean, what did that do.

Speaker 3: To design?

Speaker 5: It made us more efficient? Speed? I would say speed.

We found in the years that I've been involved in now thirty three years, almost speed time to you know, we can process through so much stuff, so much quicker.

And now we're experimenting with digital research, right. We used

to build models and taking the clinic and we're experimenting with well, can people look to design just two D very high resolution to D and give us useful feedback that against saves time, right, So and we're not the only one. A lot of people are doing that in

other industries. So yeah, speed, it's just compressing the process.

Speaker 2: So we're talking about all this future stuff. But you

guys also came out with this nineteen sixty seven GTX restomod. Yes,

I think that's Mopar, right, that's doing it with Create motors or Create electric motors. So, I mean there's this

nostalgic pull back to you know, you mentioned the sixty eight charger, which I agree with you. There's not a

line rung out of the car. It's so perfect.

Speaker 3: Who designed that?

Speaker 5: Oh, George, I forget his last name, his name is George.

Speaker 2: Yeah, but anyway, Yeah, this GTX, I mean there's still it's worth going back into the past, right.

Speaker 5: It's fun and those cars are ever ever green, they everlasting.

So what can you do with these things? And there's

a huge community is that is tricking them out and making them electrified and Mopar is part of that story and our team Marktrossel was involved in that project. So

it's that seam as we speak, I believe right now we're debuting it at SEMA Show so cool.

Speaker 4: So is you know, is mining the past useful in the twenty first century.

Speaker 5: Or is it just selectively? I think again you can't

be beholden to it. But our customers like it as

much as we do. I think when you put a

little it's like a To me, it's like music, right, there's certain rips and music never go out of style.

The same thing with design. If you can use it

sparingly and choosingly, that's in a way that that's our gift.

That it's our gift from our the people that had the brands before, right, And it's our job too, I think, to take care of it. Right. If we choose to

push it away, that's fine. And you look at Kia

for example, Kiah there's their strategy is no strategy like whatever design they want, there's actually you cannot find any kind of link between.

Speaker 2: The heritage to call on, but it's working for them.

Speaker 5: It does exactly, and I think there are spaces in our portfolio for that. But there's certain nameplates like the Wrangler.

I would say the Charger is one of those where you can have a little funds. But out of our

our one hundred name plates that Silantis has, if we play with that on five cars, what's the harm? You know,

the Fiat five hundred is not an example of very well done, you know, I would say heritage heritage using you know, a DNA transfer.

Speaker 2: I would say, well, that brings up an interesting point.

Then how do you decide where to go with design?

Is it marketing feeding into you, Is it your designers taking the ball and running with it, or.

Speaker 5: Depends on the type of vehicles. Sometimes it is a

marketing brief from a segment that they may be already in right or again as a legacy company, you may own a segment for a long time said I want to keep that up, whatever that is. So marketing will

tell you, well, we're deficient here based on data, this is what we'd like in our next car. Sometimes it's

it's literally opening it up to the studios and seeing and now we have the luxury of having zeros all over the world. Literally, I can have people in Italy

sketching on a ram truck if I want to, and I have done that just to see what happens, you know, and then well we'll present I always try to do the upstart design right, something you would never have expected.

Put that in front of myself and the brands put let's say, the evolutionary design and then another revolutionary design, and look at them and say okay. And usually we're

taking a clinic. Sometimes there's one that is so obviously

the right one that everybody likes it and we just go with it, But often not, we always have an upstart design in there.

Speaker 2: Clinics can be dangerous though, too.

Speaker 5: Right, Yeah, I hate them, I used to hate them.

I still don't think. We kind of push away from them.

But there's always some thing valuable, but you can't because you're automatically dealing in the past. Right if someone most consumers,

especially our own customers, consumers don't want us to change anything.

They tend to like what they have.

Speaker 2: That's right. But you know, in my experience, when a

car comes out, if everybody's comfortable with it, it's not going to last. There, I go on, people should be

a little bit uncomfortable. Maybe it should take them a

year or two to go. You know what. I really

like that that design grew on.

Speaker 5: Me, and I love that you said you liked the charger, but I got a lot of hate when I posted on my Instagram. A lot of people didn't like it,

and it says, oh, what's this? You know?

Speaker 2: You know when I saw it in person, I was like, oh, dang, they got that right.

Speaker 5: I don't I don't mind the Cruis.

Speaker 3: Were you in that promotional video that Kuniscus did. Did

you make an appearance?

Speaker 5: I don't know.

Speaker 3: There was a promotional video. It was like a whole

stick where they went back in time with the Dodge Brother.

I wasn't okay, I didn't think you were, but Kuniscus was in. It had a million YouTube comments. It was,

it was, it was. It was entertaining.

Speaker 5: But the energy I love to watch. I love to

see the banter because it's obviously they're they're intrigued by something.

Speaker 4: So so to John's point, Okay, when when you guys designed something, you're even a brief, you designed something, and then you take it back to marketing or engineering and they push more top management, I mean, how do you how do you deal with that?

Speaker 5: Like I have for so long? You know, I I

love it. I typically if I don't agree with them,

I tend to do a second model. I'll do the

one that they call it the Homer Simpson effect. You know,

that's the car you really want, I'll do it for you.

And then we do the one we believe in, let's say, and then we keep them alive and and put them in front. And usually the right one tends to win,

or we use a clinic as a tiebreaker, but more often than not, I have, luckily, I have a good credibility in the company, so they tend to kind of believe me and they work with me, and I do love that because they are consumers too, so there's always something valid in their criticism. So I try to extract

that and improve it design.

Speaker 2: I'm a big believer that the auto industry is actually a fashion industry. I do. I think that more and

more and so and more and more so exactly, Joe, Because you know, people love buying new cars, they really do.

And when they buy a new car, they want everybody to know it's a new one, exactly. And so you've

got to give them something, even if it's an evolution of a design. Like you said, it's been in the

market and those people they don't want anything change. Actually

you still got to change something.

Speaker 5: Yeah, And I you know, there's times I think about what would have been like to be a designer in the fifties. I mean, they had new front ends every year. Right,

you go down to the auto show and there's a new front end on the fifty seven to fifty eight fifty you know what I mean. So there's something there

we'll get back to. I don't know, because now it's

more tech, right, we'll update the tech is.

Speaker 2: But you know what, they didn't do all new bodies, right, So and I studied what Fisher Body did in the nineteen fifties, and they'd come out with an all new design, and then the next year they would change the front end, and then the next year after that they would change the rear end, and then the next year after that they'd change the roof line, and then they do another car.

So really you had almost four years of the same basic car that was just and it seems to me that could be done today.

Speaker 5: We do it in three year cycles. We have MCA's

midlife cycles, but we tend to change the tech every year.

There's something again through the feedback through customer, and we can watch the customer. Now the minute you buy the car,

we can actually see what features people are using right away say Okay, they didn't touch that feature at all, so let's get rid of that and replace it.

Speaker 3: What's an example of a feature use?

Speaker 5: Oh my god, right now they're not using the day mode, the white screen versus black. People tend to stay in

the black screen, So we're going to sun them down that probably over time. A lot of apps that we

have on there that they don't use. I can't even

begin to tell you. It's amazing.

Speaker 2: But that's the beauty of the digital stuff, right you can tell what they're using or not.

Speaker 5: Yeah, yeah, yeah so that so so Ralph.

Speaker 4: You mentioned you have studios all around the world. But

if we think about vehicles coming out of Jeep or Ram, for sure, I mean, there's an American voice to these these vehicles.

Speaker 2: So how do you.

Speaker 4: Guys in design make it so that voice is retained going forward, even though they may be designed elsewhere.

Speaker 5: Wow, well, I have a brand head. So you know,

in the case of Ram, I have Mark chossel A.

These guys that live Beria. That's all they do, and

they do they're the clearinghouse for even if they get help from other students around the world. It has to

go through them and they can tell they know what makes a RAM a RAM, and they do spend time before we give those sketch assignments. We have a bit

of a seance with those designers and take them through you know, what is a RAM? You know, we kind

of educate them a little bit. Not always. Sometimes there's

that the innocence we're looking for, but most of the time we sit through a workshop basically saying where we want to take Ram's, what's good about RAM, what we want to reinforce, and they get it. Designers are incredibly

good at being anthropologists right. They know how to understand

culture and they understand a products potential. You'd be surprised

you can take a designer from where in the world, brief them and then they're going to pop out the right thing.

Speaker 3: How did it go with the Italians working on RAM?

Speaker 5: You mentioned that earlier quirky stuff we didn't use on Jeep.

We have used a lot of their ideas on RAM so far, not but it's it's just I love they come at it a different way, especially with light signature and stuff like that.

Speaker 2: You know, you mentioned that you've got a design studio in Shanghai. I think you said, are you working with

Leap Motor.

Speaker 5: I can't say too much about that, Okay, but yes we are.

Speaker 2: Okay, Okay, darn it, I guess I will not ask you more about motor. Leap Motor is a Chinese company

that Stalantis has teamed up with to do electric cars because you know, look, the facts of the matter are is that China has got the supply chain locked up for evs. They've got a cost structure that nobody else

in the world can match. So Carlos Tavares said, hey, look,

if you can't, let them join them, and so Leap Motor will be building cars for export out of China to be sold by stillants and at least right now manufactured in Europe for a stallances.

Speaker 5: We're helping them with distribution and we have obviously a significant amount of shares in their company. And the rest

is out of my wheelhouse.

Speaker 2: Yeah.

Speaker 4: Well, we talked about interiors, but we've been talking a lot about the digital displays and so on. But I mean,

people still sit in seats, there's still steering wheels, still an ip I mean, what's going on in that space?

Speaker 5: Yeah, and there's still lows about you know, there's there's impact laws, and the US is the most stringent. Right,

we have to have knee blockers and you have to test unbelted. That's the biggest thing. People don't understand the

US market. You have to test without seatbelts at up

to thirty five miles by our believe, where in every other country in the world you're allowed to use seatbelts.

So in a European only car, you don't need knee blockers because theoretically your body would never touch the instrument panel.

So that's a big thing. So that does kind of predescribe.

And then you have digits and people, how do you control the car? As the tech gets faster, voice control

is going to be is very good already is very good.

So I think we all love Night Rider, grew up with these kind of you know, whatever sci fi movie you can think of. There's always like an AI voice

operated dynamic, which look, how good Alexa is at your house? Right,

same thing. I think cars will be that way in

the future, which means you have less and less and less input devices in the vehicle and the screens become more display than input as well.

Speaker 2: So how do you do decide what goes in the screen.

What should be enough on the stock?

Speaker 5: You don't want too much. First of all, redundancy is

a pain in the butt sometimes even we're guilty of it.

You can have four different ways to do the volume in your car, right whether steering wheel, knobs, you know, screen whatever, or even voice. So we got to get

down to a simple input device. But the biggest challenge

is layers. You want to avoid layers. That's why screens

tend to be so large, so you can show multiple things on a screen, versus if you had a small screen, you have to page through it. So that's why screens

tend to be fourteen, twelve inch or more inches. Nowadays,

even ten is a small screen today, you know. So

I think that's here to stay. It's not as esthetically pleasing.

I think over time we're seeing, hey, could you just use a heads up display in smaller screens. And there's

going to be times when we push against that technology, just like everything else, a bit like fashion. Like you said,

you go, everybody's doing screens and then one day nobody does screens and it's like, maybe that's the coolest thing.

So you can just voice control and that's it, you know, So we'll see, but we're looking at all the above.

Speaker 4: I was gonna ram tungsten recently and I was just like awestruck, Like Jesus, it's just like this, this was the room of someone's house. I mean, you know, and

I just wonder, you know what sort of thinking goes on?

Speaker 5: Yeah, you guys, Well, the Tongusen is a unique that's a pinnacle for a reason. Right, it's the ultimate. It

has everything, But you can go to different rams and not have a long a lot of that stuff. So

luckily in the vehicle like the RAM, we can cover ten different customer types with totally different configurations of the same product. But I don't think that's everybody wants that,

you know, it can't be overwhelming. It's impressive, but it's overwhelming.

So maybe we peaked in a way. Maybe that's the

pinnacle of that type of thing. And as we as

these technologies cross over, you have let's say the older tech merging with the new tech. Eventually you fade out

the old stuff and go a new way. So I

think you're we're in the middle of those crossroads. If

I would put it that way.

Speaker 2: How far do you want to push designed way? I

guess what I'm sort of sneaking in here is what was your reaction to the Tesla robo van.

Speaker 5: It's cool, I thought, I thought it's bigger than you think.

Though it's a large.

Speaker 2: It's a twenty person yeah exactly, but it could be you know, shrunk down, and you know, it doesn't have to.

Speaker 5: Be, especially if you look at most of those autonomous vehicles.

They don't spend any time on the freeway. They're all

city based, so air dynamics is not so critical if it's if it's some fifty five miles an hour, so you can start having with shapes, you know. So I

think there is going to be a commercial side of autonomy that is very intriguing in terms of, you know, if a vehicle isn't owned by an individual, it's style that important, right, If it's a service vehicle, it has to look cool, but not necessarily be.

Speaker 2: I don't that thing I think looks cool. I mean,

if I were to put a.

Speaker 5: Different kind of cool, it's cool to you, but if somebody might be hideous because it's oh.

Speaker 2: No, I think it's probably hideous to a lot of people.

But you know, the way I describe it is a nineteen thirties year Art Deco streamlined locomotive. I mean that

that's what I you know, sort of see as the underlying inspiration for that.

Speaker 5: Yeah.

Speaker 2: But I think even you know, if at least certainly with upscale customers, when you go to an event, you want to emerge from something impressive, correct, So even if it's not yours, I think it's got to look cool.

Speaker 4: So what does what does an what does an EV powertrain do.

Speaker 5: For a designer like myself? Yeah, well, in sir, that's

what the healthy on concept was all about, by the way, so dedicated EV no multi energy. Yeah, you can start

moving the cowl. Let's say, you can move the cowl

around cooling like we did on the charger. The cooling

device is quite small, so we got rid of that.

It took advantage of not having to have a big radiator anymore. That's just the beginning of it, clearly. So

the more and more you know, but you get to twenty thirty and you start having maybe exclusive platforms that just are EV. In our case, we have multi energy

for many good business reasons and good practical reasons. And

actually the way the market is it's about right today. Right,

So as we go forward. We're always fantasizing. If you

look at our concept work, you'll see many examples of us toying around with that exact idea, you know, moving the and a lot of these electric cars can be rear drive because the cars are so heavy. Now that

traction is on an issue anymore, you can use rear drive quite safely again, you know. So there's there's that

which really frees up the front of the vehicle. So

stay tuned, you know. But the downside, I would say

the electrified cars they tend to be a little taller because the batteries. The thinnest battery out there is about

one hundred millimeters.

Speaker 2: Talk about that because putting making a car electric can really affect the proportion. Zon Yes, you've got, like you said,

battery in the floor. Okay, so either people in the

rear seat are sitting on their tailbone or you've got to raise the roof. But you don't want to raise

the roof, and then you want to really fast windshield, so you got to move the people back, and you want to fast back light, so you want to move them forward, but you want to have luggage space too.

Speaker 6: And you just tell me about introductory design training as you just you just describe my brain every morning when I walk into studios.

Speaker 5: But the charge, I would go back to the charger of the new charger as being a result of a lot of good work from a lot of good people, right, because when you first got the package, the charger was going to be three inches taller than today's car. Today

it's eight millimeters taller and it has a battery under there, and you can't tell. When you get in the car,

you're just as comfortable. It's roomier than ever. So we

managed to hide that that all that that vertical height in the design and also in the packaging, in the seat design and the floor design. So that took a

lot of coordination, a lot of hours to find every last millimeter and make it robust. We have skiin plates

under there, so you know, so it doesn't foul if it hits something, So a lot more mitigation than our competitors do because of the car soldo, so there's a lot of that going on. So it's a different kind

of challenge. We love it though. It's part of the excitement.

Speaker 2: But evis am I right, they tend to have longer wheelbases to try to accommodate all.

Speaker 5: Yeah, if you get into once you get above ninety kilod hours, you've got a space. You know, you need space, right,

And people don't realize that they're not stacked. No, they're

usually like called the mattress, the thin mattress. That's what

the batteries look like. But they also need a little

crush space for side impact all that stuff and cooling.

People don't realize batteries have to be cooled constantly cool or heated, you know. So there's that's all kinds of

stuff going on.

Speaker 2: In fact, you know, I've been told by the guys who do all the plumbing for ice vehicles there's actually more to and why are hoses in an electric car than there is in an ice car?

Speaker 5: Yeah, especially if you want to do a good job, you can do it just with heat sync you know, transfer that way, but the better ways, I think the way our team is doing it with cooling, and even the motors are idioms on the charger are cooled as well, cooled and heated. So you've got a lot of you know,

ideal temperature management going on.

Speaker 3: So in the charger packaging. When you have the gasoline engine,

what what are you doing with all that space that had been batteries it.

Speaker 5: I think the mice are going to hang up. So

it's like it's like a crawl space in an old home or something.

Speaker 4: So, so what are you finding as you guys talk to younger generations about vehicle design?

Speaker 5: What?

Speaker 4: What are they interested in?

Speaker 2: What do you? What do you?

Speaker 5: There's a they're in. They're not monolithic, you know. There's

some that are nostalgic just you know, they look at the past with envy and they love Actually they're the ones who like the charger more you believe it or not.

They love that that. There's something just like vinyl records

are back in fashion again, right, there's some thing about the nostalgia. Like then you have the innocence that didn't

really give it a thought till now, so they don't really know what they like or don't like. And then

you have the futurists that are kind of anything goes.

And I love those kids because those are ones I tend to see in colleges when I go shopping at colleges.

It's incredible. You know, they're so inspired by the drones.

For example, I've seen more drone vehicles than cars, like cars that don't even have tires anymore. They have propellers

instead of tires, or they're One guy showed me a nuclear reactor drone thing that's has lasers levitating it. I'm like, sure,

where do you? I mean, Yes Center, Forsheim. In Europe,

there's a school early design, school of Turin. I mean

all over, but the most common one would be CCS, my Oma mater and then Art Center and Art Academy.

I give Art Academy a shout out.

Speaker 3: We've had some good designers come from the place in San Francisco.

Speaker 5: But to be honest, the thing I should talk about is that design is not just car designers anymore. So

my office, the complexion of my office is now ux designers, which I get from the gaming and the street from Carnegie Mellon, for example. Never used to go there for recruiting.

Now I'm going there as much as I can. I've

got quite a few Carnegie mellondreds. The designers that were

taking from product design were putting in interiors. You know,

before it was always a car designer, extra guy. We

had to make force them to do in tiers, and to be honest, our interiars sucked for a lot of years because of that. So now we have product minded

designers that do a better job. So the complexion of

our design staff is completely different than it was even ten years ago.

Speaker 4: So what's the culture like within that. I mean, you've

got these disparate people.

Speaker 5: Well I forced them to coexist. COVID wasn't wonderful. We

hired a lot of designers during that time. And but

by doing like to yesterday, we had our were talked about before we got on camera here our spectacular event.

So we had a costume competition in our dome. We

have this giant dome and we use it every year, fourth year running now, so we do events like that.

We try we had a picnic, and we do off things that have nothing to do with designing cars to get people to become human, to exchange ideas, to just be themselves. And we find that that has created a

glue that keeps us going because it's not in the easy industry, especially now so competitive and there's a million reasons to go try something else elsewhere, So we try to create a bit of a social bond that ends up creating great designers out of it.

Speaker 4: Do you find people wanting to come into the curR industry or is it harder today than it was five years.

Speaker 5: Ago or easier. Three things happened. One, Detroit became super cool.

So thank you Jesus, because it helps Detroit. Oh my gosh.

People want to move here. They love it. They spend

time downtown. I mean some of them are yelling at

I mean, can't we have a think tank downtown Detroit?

Why are we have all the way up here Armbernill's a whole forty minutes north, you know. So there's this

incredible magnetism that Detroit finally has, which I'm sure it had back in the forties and fifties. But there's a

lot of excitement around just being in this city. Two,

it's gotten so tech forward. There's so much tech in

the car itself that we're attracting nope problem people from the tech industry. And there's a few people during COVID

that we were able to hire where they were so they could work wherever they were in the world, they could work without having to move here, So that we still have a fraction of those people. Still. It's most

more and more so on our software side and our UX side. And the third is is the magic is back.

There's something about you know, people say kids don't like cars, that's a bunch of hockey. They love cars. They may

choose to get into cars later in life or whatever it is, or they're practical if they live in a city, who needs a car. But if they don't, the car

makes a lot of sense. So we're finding that there's plenty.

Speaker 3: Of attraction for the industry, and on our side of things at Haggerty, we've done a lot of research and gen Z is actually interested in classic cars and as well as new cars.

Speaker 2: So you know, there's you know, we've talked about it on the show before, but you know, I was at the Dream Cruise here in Detroit in August and I thought the Dream Cruise was going to die out, that it was a boomer thing, and what's the boomers were gone, that was the end of the Dream Crews. No, the

boomers were in a distinct minority, and so it was teenagers, twenties and thirty somethings, very diverse, ethnically diverse. It was

so to your point, Joe.

Speaker 5: Yeah, Redwood, Yeah, that's a phenomenon, right, all these young kids.

Speaker 3: And we just finished. We do a thing at Hagarady

called our bull Market Lists, where we assemble lists about ten cars that we think are poise to go up in value. Not so much so that you can make

money on collector cars, but as like a way to get into the hobby and enjoy a car and like kind of probably get your money out of it if you decide to sell it. But anyway, we just did

our eighth annual and it's going to debut on December ninth, and we gather all the cars at Lime Rock Racetrack in Connecticut because it's a good place we can draw on owners in the New York metro area. And a

lot of our owners this year were young, you know, a lot of non gray haired owners, like a surprising number of younger owners. And that was partly reflecting some

of the cars we chose, which are ones that appeal to gen z. There might be a car that you

have some history with in our list this year, et cetera.

But yeah, it was it was cool to see all the young people.

Speaker 5: There, and I love seeing all the influencer content. You know,

they'll find an older car that we've forgotten about and they'll discover it as if it's brand new again, you know, and then it just creates this fanfare around it.

Speaker 4: So the auto industry is alive and well in terms of what you guys need to develop the next generation.

Speaker 5: Yeah, there's so much more dimension to it. You know,

it's a challenge as well, right, reinventing you know, modifying that, you know, getting the cars to be relevant for the twenty thirties, making them more efficient, more tech forward, all that stuff.

Speaker 2: So you know you're the one who brought up drones too.

I mean Stillantis is a big shareholder or investor, I should say, Joby Aviation your design staff doing anything on drones.

Speaker 5: We have consulted them and we're watching that space extremely closely.

The Evitola she's taking flight now. They've had their first

else this year, So yeah, watching that space. I think

I think it's here to say, I think the drone thing is so elegant way to travel or for short, you know, that last mile but in the air makes a lot.

Speaker 2: Of sense, especially in high congestion areas. I think it'll

catch on as soon as it's available.

Speaker 5: Yeah. Archer is the company that we're oh.

Speaker 2: Archer, Yeah, yeah, Joby is another one.

Speaker 5: Archer aviation.

Speaker 4: It's a Toyota one.

Speaker 2: That's yeah, that's right.

Speaker 3: This is the flying car thing.

Speaker 2: Well, I don't want to call them flying car, but they're not there the passenger drones.

Speaker 5: Yeah, but the big thing is that they're electric power.

That's extremely efficient, especially for that use case.

Speaker 3: Yeah. No, exactly right.

Speaker 2: And you know Honda's into it, Hondas into it, and Mercedes is into it. It's interesting to me how many

car companies are focused on that space. Well, let's go, okay,

Joe's tried to pull some info out of you. I'm

going to because we're getting down to the end here.

What about another viper?

Speaker 5: You promise they wouldn't touch you? I have that same dream.

That's probably the number one question I get anytime I go to any auto thing whatsoever. I get that question

a lot. It's not my choice. I will sketch vipers

till the cows come home. I love I love the

idea of that vehicle.

Speaker 2: Hard to do a business case.

Speaker 5: Probably think about what the viper was when it came out, right, it was it was an incredibly interesting thing. It was

cool looking, it was fast for the times, it was really quick. It was attainable now it became less attainable

as time went on, just like a lot of supercars.

So that formula I believe will always work so attractive, cool, fundamentally exhilarating, but attainable. So I would say, we're working

very hard on something to crack that particular code.

Speaker 3: Maybe it will be a Chrysler.

Speaker 4: So we're not going to get it on what wasn't the attainability because you guys went to the parts bin and used a lot of.

Speaker 5: It was there exactly. So now we have imagined the

parts bin we have is Stilentis we have one of the biggest parts in the world. Yes, So I'm rummaging

around in this part spin and finding some really marinella yeah.

Speaker 4: Places, So what about you know, I mean when you guys do the the Jeep Easter Safari, there's always amazing vehicles that are developed there. And you know, and in

my sense of those things is that these are these are machines, these are these are more mechanical things.

Speaker 2: I mean, does that have a future?

Speaker 5: Yes, And we are going to never stop doing that as far as like as long as I'm around, and our new head of Jeep loves it, so it's here to stay. And that's our our dreaming out loud part

of our business. You know, we put those out there,

their passion projects, internal passion projects, but they have a lot of relevance. Sometimes in plain sight, we're hiding our

future intent, we're hiding colors, we're hiding details, but we're also showing off our passion, right, so we're going to double down on that going forward.

Speaker 3: We're good.

Speaker 2: That's probably a great note to end the show.

Speaker 5: One.

Speaker 2: We're wrapping it up here at the top of the hour.

But Ralph, awesome to have you back on the show, really to be here, so yeah, thanks and Joe, great having you here to be back and with Ralph. Yeah,

and then we'll do another show with doing next week.

Speaker 5: Yeah.

Speaker 3: Yeah.

Speaker 2: I want to thank all of you for having tuned in.

Speaker 1: I'll don't line. After Hours is brought to you by

bridge Stone Tires Solutions for your Journey

AAH #717 - Designing for the Future w/ Ralph Gilles Stellantis' Chief Design Officer

Delorean DMC-12

Dodge Viper

Dodge Magnum

Chrysler Pacifica

Chrysler PT Cruiser

Plymouth Prowler

Dodge Ram

Jeep Cherokee

Jeep Recon

Jeep Wagoneer

Jeep Grand Cherokee

Dodge Charger

Dodge Challenger

Honda Element

Lucid Air

Jeep Wrangler

About this episode

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