BMW’s Neue Klasse vs. Mercedes GLC at IAA Munich + AI Cars, VW x Rivian, Polestar 5 & 204-mph Lucid!

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Today's topic, IAA Munich.

It is a car show that happens in Germany.

I just got back.

You didn't go, but you went to the first one.

I went to the one at the height of COVID and our guest very humorously said, oh, you

went to the bicycle show because the year I went, I want to say there was seven

cars at a car show and about 1,500 alternate forms of transportation, which was so boring.

And then it was also Germany at the height of COVID.

Every single human being had a mask on.

They were so happy.

And it was, I haven't even thought about going back.

My favorite part was they had really nice lawn chairs in between the buildings and I

was just laid down, took a nap because after 10 minutes, there's nothing left to see.

Right.

Well, it's a slightly different show this year.

I haven't been to IAA since it was, I guess, the Frankfurt.

Frankfurt in Paris, yeah, they go back and forth.

Yeah.

So it was great for me to go.

And I ran into our guest on the show floor multiple times, also at one of the introduction

parties for Polestar.

So let's bring him on.

We're going to have real quick with Kyle Conner about his experience at IAA Munich

and then we'll go to a special segment that Frank Marcus, Motor Trends

Technical Editor, and I, that we recorded on the show floor at Munich after we

talked to Kyle.

But first up, let's get Kyle on.

First of all, great to see you as always.

Great to see you guys.

Second of all, I've watched about 700 of your IAA videos already.

Oh, damn, that's about how many we've published.

And you're wearing the same hoodie.

Oh, yeah, I mean, I'm still on the trip.

I haven't been home yet.

So it has been through the wash.

OK, I don't care.

Are you sponsored by a hoodie manufacturer?

No, but we need those just like the inevitable podcast needs a sponsor.

Kyle needs a hoodie sponsor.

You do.

I think there's a company called American Giant that makes really good hoodies.

You can also do something.

Aviator Nation would probably be a good one.

There may be Johnny needs a bourbon sponsor.

All right.

So yeah, let's go.

Sponsorship to Galore.

OK, I guess my big question would be and you seem to really get into this

would be GLC, Mercedes GLC versus the newy class of BMW IX3.

Is that my say?

Those were two IAA Munich did.

And they seem like to me like the real hot product.

Am I wrong in saying that was the whole show?

I thought from my perspective was IX3 versus GLC 400E, whatever they call it.

GLC. Yeah, GLC electric.

Those two head to head.

They launched a couple days away from each other.

BMW went first, then Mercedes and BMW kind of took the cake specs wise.

So tell us about that.

What in terms of the specs?

Like what did what did what did BMW do so much better than Mercedes?

Yeah, so I think more than just the IX3,

the new Noya class situation, that platform will underpin like the next 40 BMWs

between now and 27 or 28, like a huge amount.

And so it's a bit like when they had the E chassis cars, then the F chassis cars,

then G now it's like, you know, this new platform that will underpin everything.

So I was really excited about it because it's not just IX3.

It's also three series.

It's the next five series.

It's the so on so forth.

It's the brand. I mean, it's it.

But the specs on that IX3 alone,

like that platform can support a bunch of configurations insane.

So it's here.

It uses a from a construction standpoint, a really big can of 4695.

So they've gone to cylindrical cells now, which is new for BMW.

Cool. How are they cool?

Yes, they're all in a water jacket.

So they each have like it's like early Tesla's used to do this,

but this is probably better thermal management problem.

And so we'll have to test it.

But each cell has like its own little encasing,

which isn't great for energy density,

but is great for repeated performance,

which is what BMW has been needing in their electric cars.

And so you have a cell to pack,

which means there's no modules in the pack.

It's just a battery pack filled with cells

and they're sort of wire bounded together

and they have their own bus bars and stuff.

Is it is it? Let me start to interrupt.

Is it would like the IX3 have a different size pack

than the three series?

Well, that's the thing, you know, without modules.

The module approach was always we could arrange these modules,

however we want to fit the platform.

That's what General Motors did,

where you have like that old TM brick and then they can arrange it.

Lucid does that, right?

Lucid does it.

Pull out two and you got a big back seat,

put them back in, you got more range.

Absolutely. BMW no longer.

And so they're going cell to pack very similar to Cybertruck,

very similar to 4680 Model Y.

It's a really interesting construction.

And so I don't know how they're going to handle different pack sizes.

That pack might underpin like all of that class of vehicle

and then they might have a bigger pack for five and seven series.

But it's a huge battery pack.

It's a hundred and eight point seven kilowatt hour usable battery.

So in a small compact.

So SUV just to give people context,

like I believe Model S is about a hundred and a lucid air is about one hundred and twelve.

Yeah, exactly. It's almost lucid air.

So that and that means if you make an efficient thing,

you could be in the five hundred miles of range neighborhood.

Yeah. So depending on IX3 is five hundred miles of WLTP range.

And it's going to be around four hundred EPA, which is huge, huge for every.

I mean, everyone kind of like clustered around three hundred is like

that's acceptable for the next four years.

But now, you know, like jam's has blown through that.

Well, yeah.

You know, and they did in a very unsophisticated but effective way.

But that's great if you can get four and probably more than four hundred.

It's probably like four twenty five or something.

Yeah, I would think we'll have to see how it does.

BMWs have always been super efficient on the highway.

That's thanks to a specific type of externally excited synchronous motor

that they use on the rear axle.

They are actually now using an induction motor for the first time on the front axle.

So no flux related losses while cruising.

I'm excited for it. Back to pack construction really quick.

This is really cool.

They're doing cell to pack and then pack to body.

So the whole underside of the car comes up with the battery.

So it's a hole when you pull the battery out, essentially.

So the battery is the floor plan, a four pan,

which is, again, really cool from a construction standpoint.

And I'm just thrilled that they've done it.

It seems to me that's the advantage of that construction cost is cheaper.

Are they going to be?

Is it the idea that they're going to also mount the seats, the floor

and everything goes in?

This is this was this is Tesla's model for construction, right?

So essentially copying that whole setup.

That's my understanding is on the production line.

I'm pretty sure you can build up the battery pack with the interior needed

and it all just slides in.

OK, and then any other stats that stand out about the Neue Classic?

Yeah, I mean, the electrical architecture is all new.

It's similar to like we discussed, I think,

previously the Gen 1 versus Gen 2 Rivian back in the day.

This is using a zonal architecture.

So they've gone from domain controller to zonal controller.

They now have four main ECUs for the Neue Classic.

One of them is called the Heart of Joy.

It handles all driving topics.

Sorry, that's such a German name.

Sounds better in German.

And but this will handle like, you know, take driver assistance input,

ADAS stuff, take human desirability, what the vehicle is doing

and then spit out through AI what the output of the vehicle should be.

And I have no idea how it's going to work.

But knowing BMW, I hope they tuned it well.

To me, it just feels like BMW skipped a whole generation.

Yeah. Yeah.

Are they now, would you say they're now leading or now competitive?

I think they're leading all German automakers right now,

which they were trailing for the longest time.

I mean, they put them on globally, though.

Do you think that they're you think that they're now in

in direct competition with the Chinese and Tesla or?

Yeah, so I think I think they're directly in competition with them.

The worry that I have is they've developed this entire new architecture

and it's coming out now as maybe being matching or slightly ahead.

But BMW architectures last seven, 10, 12 years.

Do they have the headroom in that platform to keep up with the innovation?

Like it's great that it charges at 400 kilowatts.

That's awesome.

But Chinese cars are going way faster than that, for example.

And switching to Mercedes before we get to the GLC,

I saw with whatever the orange thing, XX AMG.

Oh, yeah. That thing is sick.

They, yeah, they charge it at like a megawatt for like a couple of minutes.

Yes. Explain that like a thousand twenty four kilowatts

for two and a half minutes straight.

And how much power does that on board in two minutes?

It's like just over 40 kilowatt hours in.

So it's basically you can go zero to 80 percent on a model three

in two minutes is the way to think about it. That's crazy.

Yeah, it's insane.

So this and that's that's production intent.

I mean, I saw them dancing around you in the video

and they wouldn't answer a question,

but it sounds like that's like a production intent battery pack back

on the North classic because one thing you told me on the show floor was

huge battery pack, small vehicle styling.

You were like me, like you're in today.

Yeah, I'm not a design guy.

I mean, I leave you on the design guy.

We've been arguing out in the parking lot over, you know,

Escalade IQ versus IQL and you're clearly wrong.

But the the Noia class looks better in person than photos.

It's very like monolithic.

It looks strong and it's seen in person.

The the the new class of three series,

I think it's actually pretty sharp design in the eye three.

It's just another weird look.

The three series is going to if they put that battery in a three series.

Yeah, it's going to have huge range.

That's like lucid air range right there. Yeah. Yeah.

In the three series. Yeah.

So thoughts on thoughts on GLC. Yeah.

So if GLC launched first, we would have all been super excited

because it's, you know, 94 kilowatt hours.

And again, that's a pretty big battery

and a smaller model wise 81, 82.

So bigger battery Mercedes again, very efficient.

Super efficient. You know, they use a new architecture.

I think it's MBEA for that one.

But regardless, it should be a very efficient platform.

Heat pump, heat scavenging, two speed on the rear axle,

I believe, which is weird.

So they're taking G wagon technology and putting it on the street.

But it's an active shifter.

It's a bit like Tycon.

So you don't actually hit low range like the electric.

Yeah. But it was just another two speed for.

I mean, the Germans love to solve their electrical problems

with mechanical engineering, but there's some of that there.

And as you got to experience, again, I watched I watched that video

like the low range on the G wagon is insane.

It's insane. It'll go up anything.

It'll go up anything.

It's mechanically advantage. Yes, it's so cool.

It's really wild.

So OK, but so are you so you're sounds like you're kind of like

the BMW is like kind of pants Mercedes a little bit.

Totally. Small SUV. Totally.

And well, and that's just a spec sheet compare.

The spec sheet compare is IX3 smokes the GLC.

I mean, GLC is 330 kilowatt charging with a 94 kilowatt hour pack.

Still impressive.

But then IX3 for the same money.

Yeah, that's 108 kilowatt hours and, you know, 400 kilowatt charging.

Mercedes gets rear steer and air suspension optional.

BMW does not.

Yeah, the other thing is allergic to air suspension.

It's very strange. Very strange.

But their interiors are where the biggest difference are.

So I sat in the new GLC and I think it might be the worst modern interior.

What? Really? It really do not like it.

Can you compare it to any other Mercedes that are on the market?

It's a bit odd.

So, you know, they took the approach of let's put a giant screen across the car.

Sure. And so I'm generally OK with big screens.

What I'm not OK with is in all the photos, I thought it looked pretty good on the inside

because they have this low angle looking at the screen.

But when you sit and I can send you a photo, maybe we can overlay it here.

When you sit from the POV of the driver, you're looking down on a screen

that's completely vertical.

It's not angled towards you at all.

And then the software that went in it, at least in the car I played around with,

super laggy.

It's like this little window that you're operating in this big screen.

I hate that.

And it is like not optimized.

If you're going to have a big screen, have big software.

Yeah. Yeah.

That's that's that's Lincoln did that with Lincoln Digital Experience.

No, with what was that thing that one SUV of the year last year?

Oh, Nautilus. Nautilus had that one screen that was like, I hate that.

It was it was all the other screens were fantastic.

Yeah, one screen that was like, could not see it.

It's like it's always reflectiony.

And so I thought the same from BMW.

Yeah. So from Mercedes.

Interesting that BMW had like a really cool infotainment.

Well, hang on real quick.

So if you haven't seen Google IX3 screen right now,

because it's like it's a Decahydra.

What is that shit?

I don't know.

It's like the looks terrible in photos.

Yeah, OK. It's cool in person.

Yeah, because the wheel perfectly fits with the curvature.

So I went on the thing you went on where we played around with the software early

and I was like, oh, this is fine, whatever.

The screen's ugly. OK.

But like sitting in the car, feeling the materials,

the seating position was great.

I'm like, damn, BMW is kind of back.

So what about because I know I saw you talking with

you talking with Wasim Benzai in front of the VW.

So let's talk about VW group in general.

So you said BMW just maybe pantsed or I said pantsed Mercedes,

but you said Leapfrog the Germans.

We were out here with some Audi's.

We had some Audi's their car of the year, the new e-tron, blah, blah, blah.

Like what's the what's the perspective on Audi and also broader VW group?

Yeah, good, good topics.

I don't know if the show can go that long.

But but in general opinion of Stalantis.

We need six hours.

Just at just a high level on VW group.

Yeah. And I'm going to talk a little about Polestar five.

And then this thing you did also in Germany, which was you had a sapphire.

Yeah, we'll get to that.

OK. And then. OK.

So let's let's talk software in Volkswagen group.

Yes. So to paint the picture

about four years ago, Volkswagen created a division called Kariad.

Yeah. And what they basically did was they took the software guys

from Skoda, from Volkswagen, from Audi, from Porsche, from Lamborghini,

Bentley, blah, blah, blah, and they stuffed them all in one building.

And culturally, this did not work.

Shockingly shocking.

And so I have some friends that work there

and that anecdotally were like, you know, the Porsche guys were like,

do I have to drive a golf company car?

And so it was a real.

It was like that was the biggest problem.

Right. And then you've got to get all of those guys to talk to each other.

The end goal, essentially, of Kariad was to create a uniform

user experience and electrical architecture for the entire group.

Clearly, that failed or could not happen

because they went to an American startup, Rivian,

to essentially purchase their newly developed

zonal architecture that they did for Gen two and future Rivian products.

That's for US and Western facing markets.

Correct. And they went to X-Pang for everything in China.

Yes. And that is an interesting conversation we should dig into.

So all of my comments will be geared towards the Western.

Yep, yep, yep.

And so with the Rivian Volkswagen collaboration,

the first I heard of it was, I don't think that's going to work

because you've got a scrappy, fast paced startup

dealing with the weight of the Volkswagen group organization,

slowing things down.

There's nothing more that Germans love than having meetings.

And that doesn't mean.

They really like it.

Sure. I mean, I was over there during COVID, too.

I agree. And, you know, it's just the culture clash

was the biggest thing I was worried about, because clearly,

technically, Rivian has and Waseem's team.

I have nothing but the most respect for Waseem.

It's incredible software.

They can do that.

The architecture and the software, they've proven it in their vehicles

and it's great.

Can they do that scaled up for the entire group,

which means all brands, all classes of cars.

The Gaudi, the Skoda. Yeah, it's crazy.

So the answer is they kind of have done it.

And the first cars launching, it's called the ID Everyone.

And it launches in 27.

So that uses one ECU for the entire car.

That's wild.

I heard you say that in the video with Waseem, like that.

So if a car, real quick, can use one ECU,

why does any other car need two?

I've asked this question before of some of these experts.

And some of it is while you it's a good idea

to have a lot of it centralized, there are certain things

you would want to have at the corners of the car

and you don't have to run a cable back and forth to.

So wiring length is one big one.

Then you can run like a high speed.

The ID Everyone is like polo size.

It's a small single motor.

It doesn't need torque vectoring.

It doesn't need air suspension control.

So there's just a lot less going on with that car.

But it's just car.

Cool looking car, isn't it?

Great. Really?

I mean, I was looking at that.

I'm like, what BMW should have been doing?

You know, they bought a towel design 15 years ago.

Where's that been?

And Andreas Mint is the lead designer.

And I talked to him about the ID One.

I actually talked to someone about design.

He said it's going to it's like 90 percent there.

That's a great idea.

It's already A minus right of the gate.

It sounds like the early success of the Rivian tie up

has really has led to more investment

by VW Group in Rivian.

Yeah, I think it's 5.8 billion total,

but they still have to hit certain benchmarks.

At what point did they just feed in?

Buy them.

Well, that's the thing.

What do they need Rivian for?

Yeah, that's also the thing.

I think the original partnership between Volkswagen

and Rivian is intention was just on the hardware.

It sounds like they're becoming a little bit more closely.

They're doing sourcing together now.

Well, that's what Rivian wanted out of the deal

was like instead of paying, I don't know,

$100 for a chip,

they'll pay the Volkswagen price, which is $7.

Sure, sure.

Scale.

But we're hanging on briefly.

Polestar 5.

Oh, okay.

Yeah.

What'd you think?

You were at the party, you did the sheet drop.

Cool party.

I mean, so like the whole theme, great alcohol.

Wow.

The theme of Polestar has been trying to push up market,

which I don't think actually works.

They're charging Porsche prices for cars

that don't warrant that much cost, I think.

I've been saying that since the two drop.

Like the one was neat.

The two is like, we're a luxury performance brand.

Oh, by the way, this car doesn't have luxury

or performance and it looks weird.

Yeah, so I mean, I love the one, I own a one.

It's one of my favorite cars.

One's great.

But it's a weird thing, which is cool.

The Polestar brand in general,

the whole theme of the party was like anti-everyone else.

So you walk up the staircase

and it's like no hybrids, no diesel gate,

no blah, blah, blah.

And so they're like pushing it back

against the whole industry.

Meanwhile, they're part of Geely Group.

I was gonna say,

they have range-extended vehicles.

Or they're human rights abuses.

Like on other issues, but they're just ignoring that.

It feels very Chinese or like this one's doing that.

But if you say no diesel gate, it's like, oh, hang on.

They had quotes from every like automaker CEO

that was like, we are going back into combustion cars.

You'll have a choice by 2030.

Walking back all their EV.

So they launched Polestar 5, which is there.

Think of it like electric Panamera type vehicle.

It's a GT.

Big Tycon, yeah.

Big Tycon should actually do okay in terms of specs.

Like it's gonna have 350 kilowatt charging.

It's 112-ish kilowatt hours somewhere around there.

How much power?

800 horsepower.

It's like, you know, it's all good

until you hear that it's 160,000 US.

And then you go, well, you could buy a plaid

for 70,000 less on that.

The US pricing now released,

but that's converted from Euro.

But also you get an Audi RS e-tron GT,

which at 160 is like one of the nicest things used for 40.

Well, yeah, sure.

There's a reason why I was like, new first.

Polestar sells in 28 markets

and they're launching in 24 of them first

and the remaining four US, Canada, Korea, and China.

And you think about it,

because I was on the Polestar trip.

It was a great trip.

The great people, the car looks really cool.

I also went to the X-Ping press conference

and I was looking at their new next-generation T7.

Looks amazing.

Which looks also similar-sized class.

Well, probably not be $160,000, right?

It's gonna be like 40 grand.

Right.

And I think that's Polestar's biggest problem

in the volume markets.

China, definitely.

And the US, because I don't know the US

is gonna pay that much money for it.

My big question is, why wasn't this an SUV?

And I know that was a long time ago

when they made this decision,

but you know, maybe a volume model.

Polestar's kind of like, okay,

ignore the numbers on paper.

It should drive well.

And so that's the thing though.

So if they're gonna make a driver's car,

$160,000 in whatever the number is,

say it's 150.

Enthusiast driver's car,

there's no way to fully defeat ESP.

There's no limited slip differential.

And so I'm going, my buddy Chris-

Wait, like brake?

Brake-based torque vectoring on $150,000

plus vehicle performance vehicle.

So they're like, the steering's gonna be amazing,

chassis's gonna be good.

They left some room.

They said they might have

the high performance version coming.

Like they had the Polestar-

That should be that number.

I don't think they can get to under grand for it.

And again, I mean, if you're gonna be a luxury performer,

they wanna be an electric Porsche competitor.

Like you gotta have the basics are

everything can be turned off

and some kind of differential taming or something.

And thermal management, it needs to be,

lap after lap, it needs to be consistent.

Do you know anything about the thermal management?

Yeah, I heard it's okay.

And when the engineers tell you it's okay,

you know we're gonna run into limits.

And I'm like, I really, I saw it.

I thought it was beautiful.

I thought it was gonna be 90 grand, 85 grand.

I'm like, that could be my next car.

I can do it.

But then I was like, oh, it's twice that price.

All right.

Last thing you did, or last thing,

last topic on Munich,

you somehow got your hands on Lucid Air Sapphire.

Yes.

And went and did some top speed run.

Did you hit 200 miles an hour?

Yeah, 204.

On the Autobahn.

Yeah, allegedly.

Remember when we used to do cool stuff like that?

Okay.

Okay, sorry.

Why?

What was the reason?

And did you run, what do you why?

Did you run with something else?

Did you outside something?

Yeah, I had an Aston DBX as well, 707.

That moved pretty good actually.

Something like that.

Probably top to, I'm gonna get top to like 190.

Yeah, it was on winter tires.

Oh, so.

I did like 180.

But you shouldn't do that on winter tires.

Well, winter tires are good to like 275 kmh.

It was like a buck of 75.

So you're right there.

I didn't check the rating intentionally.

So I played Ignite.

You know, tires have a lot of bandwidth.

Yeah, I figured, you know, if I did one run,

they wouldn't have been overheated.

We should be okay.

Yeah.

Check the pressures.

But no, the Lucid was cool.

I had never really spent time with a Sapphire.

And there was one there and I talked to Lucid and I'm like,

hey, one of my colleagues is with me

who's never been in Germany,

never like experienced 200 miles an hour.

Let's boogie.

And yeah, 204 and the thermal management

was way better than I expected.

I thought it was gonna overheat after one run

because they use the same battery

that's in the Grand Touring.

Which is like an energy dense cell, not a power cell.

They do the cooling on like the bottom, right?

I mean, I remember Peter Rawlinson

talked to me for hours about that.

He's like, that's the solution.

Whatever anyone else tells you for performance,

it's bottom cooling and it'll hold.

Whereas when the cells generate their heat.

So you want to cool that,

but they still get gradient temp up top.

And once the top of the cells get hot,

then there's nothing you can do.

Well, also, can I ask, what were you checking?

Like when you're checking the pack performance

after a 204 mile run,

you have like a, where are you looking for the?

For temperature data?

Well, you can tell by the way the vehicle derates

if it's battery or motor.

Motors tend to hold very little heat.

So they'll spike in heat and recover very quickly.

Very fast, yeah.

So inverter would be typically the weakest link.

Motor stayed nice and chill,

and I'll tell you how I know that.

And then the battery pack,

after, you know, on the Autobahn,

you never just can get on and go rip.

You have to find a space,

you get up to like 170,

then you got to back off, wait again.

Yeah, live search rate.

And so we were trying to be as gentle

on the car as possible.

Before we knew we could get it up to top speed.

Sapphire also comes with a track preconditioning mode

to cool down the battery pack for endurance driving.

We had it in that mode as well.

But after we hit 200 miles an hour, which was great,

we then put it in full power mode,

ripped it back up to 170, gave full power,

then launch controlled it back onto the Autobahn,

full power, and only after that,

and many attempts of high speed did it start to derate.

Once it derated, it was a slow recovery.

It recovered, but it was slow.

This is the pack cooling down, it was slow.

So my buddy pulled the logs off the car,

it works for Lucid.

He's like, motors were cold the whole time,

batteries, what got hot?

And I'm like, yeah, that's exactly what we experienced.

And then when you go in from 170 to 204,

was that, did it take a while,

or was that like pretty much like...

So if we had it in full power mode,

which we did later on, it rips right up there.

It's insane.

So it's so powerful.

Yeah, we had it in the smooth,

the standard key up setting,

because we wanted to, in case we couldn't hit it,

we were trying to limit the max output

of the motors to keep the battery cool.

Was 204 max?

No, I heard 205 is max.

But did you have to get out of it because,

or was there was an error?

I was traffic, okay.

But also it's like, the 204 was off the speedometer,

not off GPS.

Yeah, so it's probably like 200 GPS.

There's always a bit of sway.

It can go, it depends.

Sometimes it goes over under.

Lucids are at least at 70 miles an hour.

I think we go 71, GPS, 71 indicated go 70 GPS.

So it's pretty close, but there is some sway.

And so yeah, kids,

if you're ever trying to go 200 miles an hour,

you want more horsepower.

Like I did it in a Bentley Continental,

and I forget how much it made, six something,

but like rip up to 185, and then 185 to 200

was just like, dude, come on, come on.

Cause it's just, Lucid did not feel any of that.

It was just like...

1200 horsepower, yeah.

It was insane.

And the stability of the air chassis.

Like it, I was through a corner.

Yeah.

And things just locked in.

You through a corner?

Not like a hard corner, but you know.

On a one corner, yeah.

Yeah, no, no.

When I hit, when I was 201, yeah, it was.

And you're just like a little bit of steering angle

and you're just matted.

And the whole thing is just dead stable.

That's awesome.

It's the most stable experience I've ever had.

Don't try this at home.

Well, unless you live in Germany.

Right, then it's safe.

Just make sure no one's around.

Check tires, check brakes, make sure the car is happy.

We did a full thorough check,

put everything away in the car.

Not saying it's safe, but it's not illegal.

All right, so just to wrap on IA Munich.

Is it really now become CES for Europe?

Is that the fair?

Or what's the equivalent?

It's no longer like just a car show.

This year felt like a really nice show.

I think we're back from the days

of the weird mobility stuff, the bicycle show,

which I'm glad I skipped that one.

But I've been to IAA, this is probably my fourth IAA.

And this was the best one.

From actually having cars, launches.

Because it's a ton of other suppliers,

a lot of technology, I mean, Mobilizer, Qualcomm,

like all the big...

All the CES players.

All the CES players are there.

The booths are smaller.

They're not like whatever Frankfurt used to be

or Paris or Tokyo.

Remember Mercedes at Frankfurt?

Right, yeah.

Frankfurt shows were insane.

They had escalators and their stuff.

It was crazy.

I was gonna ask, did they do the thing

where there was tons of off-site stuff

or was everything still kind of in the...

Yeah, yeah.

Yeah, downtown to get to other stuff.

So that was cool.

A lot of it is open to the public.

And you could see you go and look at cars

and all that stuff.

But we're gonna transition now.

And we thank Kyle for coming on for this,

this special guest here,

because we're at the Motor Trends SUV

the year program rush yet,

on the approving grounds here,

recording in one of their conference rooms.

Shout out, Hyundai.

We're gonna go to a clip that I recorded

with Frank Marcus, Motor Trends technical editor,

from the halls of IA Munich.

Actually, we were right outside Qualcomm's booth

in a steel case little privacy pod

that we had hijacked for about 30 minutes.

For a chat on something Kyle talked about,

which was sort of a zonal architecture in vehicles

and basically what's happening

in software-defined vehicles,

especially as AI is now like the hot topic.

So let's go to Frank and I at IA Munich.

We are coming to you live and direct from Munich, Germany.

We're at IAA Munich 2025,

which is a big show devoted to mobility,

devoted to automotive, the industry, OEMs, suppliers.

I went with an OEM, our colleague Alisa

went with a different OEM.

You, however, were invited due to our coverage

of all things automotive tech, STVs, et cetera.

So that's what we're gonna talk about.

Right, I've been a frequent guest of theirs at CES.

I used the right forks and said the right things

so they invited me again.

Right, so big deal because quite expensive

to get all the way here from the US,

but this is a very interesting show.

I haven't been here in a long time.

I actually was trying to figure out the last,

what are these that call the show?

Is Frankfurt?

It was the Frankfurt Motor Show.

It was always the IAA,

but we always call it the Frankfurt Motor Show.

And then for a while then it switched back and forth.

I think this is maybe the second or third year here.

Okay, so I was telling my wife

that I'm going to basically the CES of Europe,

which is what IAA has become,

which is perfect because, as you all know,

we're really into covering the future of automobiles,

the future of mobility.

So let's dive in.

Obviously for our listeners who are interested in cars,

there were a couple of really big debuts here,

all of which you can go to MotorTrend.com and check it out.

I think the two stars of the show

were the Mercedes-Benz GLC and the BMW IX3.

We saw those make their stunning debuts.

Actually, we went to events prior to their debuts here.

So we got the down and dirty.

Yes, I drove it in Southern France

at their approving ground some months ago.

Drove what?

The IX3.

And I mean, it's a stunning car.

But it's also kind of a ground breaker in some other ways,

especially in the software-defined vehicle space.

And we're learning more about that at this show

where Qualcomm has made it public

that they have been a development partner

co-developing all of the ADAS and infotainment

and so forth systems with BMW.

Okay, that's great.

That's a great lead in.

So there were several other OEM launches,

not a lot here other than those two vehicles

we mentioned, the GLC and IX3 from a U.S. market perspective.

Several Chinese manufacturers.

I attended like all the Chinese-

On Europeans reductions of Chinese cars.

Yeah, so I went to Ito.

I went to X-Ping and I checked out BYD.

And they all covered.

I didn't do Leap, but Leap is here.

There's a couple others.

And they all kind of said the same thing.

Hey, we're coming to the European market

with these vehicles that you've all seen

and been super impressed with in the home market.

So that was kind of the shtick

and they gave their old business update.

So overall been a great show.

Super interesting, lots to learn.

But let's dive deep into some of the things

you have covered with Qualcomm

because I only saw their booth

and actually their booth is literally

about 20 steps that way.

And they're getting prepared

to have a very special visitor.

Chancellor Mertz is gonna stop by today.

I actually saw the police dogs going through the rooms.

I think sniffing for strange stuff.

Anyways, none of it was me.

Yes.

Frank, let's dive into what Qualcomm

showed off here at IAA Munich.

Yeah.

Well, one of the things that's kind of different here,

Qualcomm is essentially a chip manufacturer.

But with the BMW,

and so quite often they're not a tier one.

So in most cases,

their chips find their way into cars

by way of a Vallejo or a Magna

or one of these other companies.

Yeah, another supplier.

Right.

But BMW, because they're a full line manufacturer

and they've got a lot of experience

in ADAS tuning and infotainment tuning and all that,

they felt comfortable doing that development

directly with Qualcomm.

So this is kind of an unusual situation,

the way it worked out.

And it's especially interesting

because a lot of those systems,

the future of driver assistance systems

is machine learning and it's not rules.

When you come to this kind of intersection,

you do this, that and the other.

It's learning from doing and whatever.

So it's millions of miles of testing,

data going up to the Amazon web services,

cloud, flywheel, data flywheel they call it,

because it gets a lot of momentum from this data.

And so they have some,

an unusual data sharing situation.

So Qualcomm and BMW both own all of that data.

But, and Qualcomm has the ability to sell

the ride, a Snapdragon ride elite

to other manufacturers.

And it will benefit from the development data

that was developed with BMW.

So they don't have an exclusive ownership

of that ADAS data.

So that's very kind of unusual.

And it's the wave of the future going forward

as we, the IX3 is not a centralized compute.

They talk about having four brains.

And Qualcomm is in at least several of them.

The ride is doing all of that ADAS stuff,

the Snapdragon digital cockpit is working the,

you know, the cockpit, that cool screen they have

at the base of the windshield, the sound system,

all that stuff.

Okay.

So that seems like for the casual listener,

that's like, oh my God, what are you talking about?

You've been covering the industry for a long time.

But we've joked how you're a mechanical engineer

by training and a lot of this stuff is,

well, if it's flying over your head,

it's about 10 feet above mine.

So, you know, for the lay person,

and I feel like we're gonna be talking

to multiple different levels here.

At one end, hopefully it's a bunch of automotive,

you know, auto curious consumers who are super

into the state, the current state of the automobile

and where it's going.

But also I think we're starting to attract

another audience of more technical people,

hopefully within the industry.

How do you talk to that first layer?

Like, what's the best way?

Cause you just talked about, they're not central compute.

They have Ford, you know, systems.

And like, this is something we've,

we've been trying to talk about like domains and.

Right, and that's a huge step forward from,

you know, the anti-lock brakes had their own little brain

and the parking sensors had their own little brain

and the, you know, the power windows

had their own little brain, everything.

There was a zillion brains in the car.

And the more you get those centralized,

but more critically, and the BMW message here

at IAA is we developed all of this ourselves

with help from Qualcomm and some others.

But all of the things you feel when you drive that BMW

are BMW.

It's no supplier designed the way the ABS works.

No supplier designed the way the stability control

controls you in a corner.

BMW did that.

And for where the rubber reached the road,

there are some interesting things.

I've done a story on how a lot of their driver assist systems

are vastly less annoying, right?

I mean, so many ADAS systems,

we've paid for this stuff like automatic parking.

Do you ever parallel park with those things?

Never, because it seems to take too long.

If I pull up, now I've got to go in the screen

and I've got to do some things

and someone behind me is honking and you know,

I never do it.

I'm a good driver, I can do that.

Their system, since it always knows,

all those sensors are always looking,

it always knows when you slow down

and you're going kind of slow,

it'll say, do you want to park?

Do you want to park in that one when it's right behind there?

You just say yes, and boom, it just goes right in there.

Probably faster than I would do it myself

because it already knows where everything is.

It doesn't have to turn its head and look over its shoulder.

It just goes right back in there.

So it's stuff like that.

It's things like, okay,

I think we can make a lane change over there.

Are you okay with that?

All you have to do is look at the mirror.

When it sees that you've looked at the mirror,

it says, okay, we're going.

I know it's clear.

I don't want to do it until you say,

you know, you're happy with it.

Okay, let's go.

You know, things like that

that just make it so much more user friendly.

Symbiotic is the word they use.

Right.

And actually this brings to mind a story

you did recently with on the,

on some RoboTax evaluation that we did.

And I think the key line that from,

we compared two systems.

Can anyone with Tesla, the other was Waymo's.

And I think you and our colleague in the cars,

you noticed that the cars are actually surprisingly aggressive,

particularly in the vehicle,

the Waymo that had LiDAR plus camera because,

and this was a unique insight from the story.

You know, unlike a human, we got two eyes,

but you know, they're on our,

Always facing one direction.

And if you need to check a mirror,

check another mirror,

maybe if you're a good driver,

look over your shoulder before you make a lane change.

You know what doesn't have to do that?

The autonomous vehicle,

because it's got a spinning array that's seeing,

it has a point cloud for several,

like 100 meters, right, going all around.

So there's none of this half a second,

second and a half delay of checking

whether it's safe to go.

If it's clear to go, you can go.

Yeah, it whips out our parking lots,

you know, startlingly fast.

And this is kind of the future that we're all looking at

as we get more and more of these

software defined vehicle systems in the car,

but also more tailored to what we actually want.

Right.

And another thing on that one,

we've all felt like that the Tesla seemed to accelerate

and break more smoothly and more like a human.

And that's another thing that you get

when you have all this really good,

large language model learning,

all this redundant data on the flywheel

in the cloud or whatever.

You get all those little cases

and the car is never, it's a lot less jerky.

Now oddly enough, the Waymo seemed to be a little jerkier,

but there's probably other things involved.

They probably just didn't program it to try and do that.

Right.

You know, it's all a matter of priorities and whatever.

Right, right, right.

So back to this, the IX3 and with Qualcomm on board,

you mentioned the head up display,

which I went to BMW's reveal of that,

which was at CES.

And it was as big doctor,

if they have this whole theater, shtick.

Did you get to, did you sort of explore with Qualcomm,

how what their involvement is in the HUD?

Not a ton, because really all of that is,

BMW decides what they want that user interface

to be like and whatever, they just power that.

They make it all possible and they give you

the compute power to be able to move

a million different things up there

and tailor it the way you want it.

Right, so that's part of, again,

back to the layperson that's listening.

You know, when we talk about software-defined vehicles,

fundamentally we're talking about how,

and I've heard this analogy a lot,

and actually on this trip, somebody said,

it's not a great analogy to say the smartphone on wheels,

but it's the easiest thing to understand,

like the cars are becoming a lot more

like your mobile phones, you get over their updates,

you can add apps to them and all this functionality

based on the sensors that is equipped in the hardware.

When we talk about HUD, when we talk about

Qualcomm powering systems like the head-up display,

some of the other things you were mentioning,

that's one domain of digital cockpit, right?

And we were talking to the larger editorial group

about this, there's some elements now

that we're coming into, which we've been promised

for a long time, into digital cockpit,

augmented reality.

Like AR, right?

Which is, I just experienced

in another German manufacturer in Audi.

You know, we've had HUDs for, what,

I think Corvette, what's the first one?

C4?

Was it C4?

Maybe, it's like cheeseball, like blue light

shining up onto your windshield.

But now, I was actually surprised to find

in these newer vehicles, they're getting a lot better,

a little bit more useful, things like

showing you what the coming speed limit in,

what zone you're entering into,

so you can slow down and not get a ticket,

but in a very elegant kind of way,

like the Audi system will put,

like if you're in a 35 mile an hour zone,

it'll have a little white sign that says 35,

but when you head to a 30 or a 25 zone,

you will see it pop up sort of offset

and behind the 30 mile an hour sign,

then as you approach the 25 or the lower limit,

it comes forward and then it replaces it.

And it's quite, right.

And it's really useful on those places

where there's a couple of optional turns

and it puts the little arrows directly on the one

that you want, you know, in threat,

superimpose on exactly the one you want.

Lane to be.

And it shows you the buildings sometimes

that are right there, some kind of landmarks

and whatever, it's really useful

because a lot of times, regular navigation,

I'm like, which of these is it?

I don't know.

And that makes it clear.

My wife has a, we argue, I'm a big Waze user,

she likes Google Maps, but one of the things

I think Waze is better at is telling you

which exact lane to be in when you're gonna make a turn,

but that's eyes on the infotainment system.

The AR in the augmented reality

in the head up display,

what literally put it on the dashboard,

which is super useful.

And again, all of this requires

a lot of computing power.

It requires massive amounts of data

and then a lot of fine tuning

from very clever UX engineers

to make sure it actually works well

and not super annoying.

And some of that, the job of those people

is made a little easier by the qualcoms of the world,

which when they design this digital cockpit,

Snapdragon package or whatever,

it can come with Bose Centerpoint loaded on there.

What is that?

Bose Centerpoint is a branded audio DSP situation.

Did you signal?

Digital signal processor.

You don't have to use it,

but if you decide to use it, it's a lot easier.

If you don't do that, it comes with a thing,

I had to look it up, audio weaver.

Quite often that's built in,

which just makes programming a DSP simpler.

It's like a toolkit that's already in there

and now you just use the graphic interface

of the computer and you don't do it from scratch.

But I'm missing something.

What is the Bose Centerpoint?

What does that mean?

Is that for the audio?

Yeah, it's one of, if you've got a branded audio system,

that is their latest one.

Although the forthcoming one is Dolby Atmos.

Bose with Dolby Atmos.

They're working on that

in the next generation of these things.

So they somehow build that into the chip

so it's easier for a manufacturer to turn it on

or program the speakers that they have

and the amplifiers that they have

based on what's already in the silicon.

Okay, okay.

So what else, what else did you see with Quarkoff?

Well, we should also mention that some of these things

are in those Mercedes products also.

One of the things I really like too,

that I found on the BMW,

which I think we'll probably see in these other cars,

I hate nothing more than I've just started driving

and maybe I've had to look around

and I've strayed a little bit and it says,

are you ready for a coffee break or whatever?

You know, I am not ready for a coffee break.

I want that turned off for sure.

And a lot of that is because it's not paying attention

as well, but these systems,

and I use a thing called Toby,

I guess is a driver monitoring software system

that they build in,

that uses these driver monitoring cameras

quite often they're in a rearview mirror, whatever.

That's another set, a hardware set that's in there,

but the software or the chip integration looks for that.

And it tracks your eye focus.

What are you looking at?

Because you know what?

If I'm looking at the rearview mirror

because there's an ambulance coming up behind me,

that is not distraction, or it's not bad distraction.

That's useful, helpful distraction.

If I'm looking at the mirror

because a lane splitting motorcycle is coming along,

that is also not bad and it will allow you

that that BMW won't tell you

to put your eyes back on the road.

If you're looking at something,

a high value target, if we will.

Right, okay.

So this is for those who haven't been in a modern car

in a little bit of time.

Frank is talking about,

I think Mercedes pioneered it first,

which was the, they had some crazy German name for it,

attention, something, something, awareness thing.

Basically, a camera looking at the driver

and noticing when you got drowsy or sleepy.

And also I think was measuring the duration

of your journey.

And then it would give you a little coffee cup icon

and say, hey, why don't you pull over, take a break?

Well, you could take a load off.

These are now everywhere in modern vehicles

because of the advanced ADAS,

the advanced driver assistance systems,

the adaptive cruise control.

We're getting into like things like supercruise

and blue cruise where you can be hands off the wheel,

but they still want your attention on the road ahead.

So there's a camera, I just saw it in the Polestar,

there's a camera, the A-pillar,

but like Ford puts it just off the corner

of the giant multi-information display.

I think that's where most manufacturers have it.

Occasionally, I think, I think like Subaru iSight

might be a little bit higher in the rear view mirror array,

but it's always looking at your face,

it's always looking at your eyes,

it's always figuring out that you're not looking

at your phone, that you're not,

did you even close your eyes and go to sleep?

And then it will send you alerts and warnings

somewhere in the car.

It might sound an alarm, it might vibrate the seats,

it might threaten to pull you into the lane

and turn the car off,

because it thinks you fell asleep for a minute or two.

And on the even the eye-closing thing,

BMW is interesting there.

We'll see if it comes to the US, it's not confirmed,

but if you're in a traffic jam, stop and go situation,

and you come to a stop,

it will allow you to close your eyes

and rest for a moment.

When the car ahead of you goes,

it will not go until, and it may buzz the cedar,

it might do something to say,

we could go now, but only if your eyes are open.

But it won't turn off and it won't holler at you

while you're stopped, it's like, hey, take a moment.

This has been a long trip,

you'll be better if you've rested your eyes

for a few minutes.

It's that kind of neat.

Other things, like if you're on cruise control,

sometimes, okay, I can see there's a lane merge up there

and I need to slow down a little

to merge in behind this guy over here.

You can use the brake,

and it won't unset the cruise control.

Light brake, and then you pull over in there,

take your foot off the brake, it just goes again,

because it knows, okay, I see what you're doing,

I get it, let's keep going,

if you stab it or if you push cancel or whatever, okay.

So they don't have a resume button,

there's just an on-off button,

it hit the on-off button again,

it resumes if you're still driving.

So there's a lot of this smarter, more symbiotic,

less annoying.

Also, they have steering wheel sensors

that do not ever require you to put torque on the wheel.

We need to get away from that as soon as possible.

Either watch that my hands are on there with a camera

or sense them with a capacitive touch.

All of these systems support that,

so they know when your hands are on the wheel,

because the message at IAA this year

is still level four, level five for consumers,

way off in the future.

Level two, two plus, two plus plus,

we're gonna still need to know when your hands are on,

we're gonna need to know what your eyes are doing.

So here's all the neat stuff we're doing

in terms of hands and eye monitoring.

And just for the, again, for the layperson,

Frank is describing the SAE standards related to

ADAS systems all the way through,

autonomous where level five is fully autonomous,

no steering wheel needed in the car.

Robotaxi.

Robotaxi, essentially you could go to sleep

when I drive to San Francisco or turn the seat around

and talk to your mates,

because there's no steering wheel in the car.

That would be level five.

The current goal I think in the US is level four.

Level three plus four.

Four is only in certain conditions.

So you still have a steering wheel

because if the rain, there's certain times

and places where it won't do it.

So you have to, yeah.

It's funny because that's funny for you to say that

that was what the message here

from I think predominantly the German manufacturers,

because a lot of the Chinese manufacturers

like we got an L4 coming next year,

which is like maybe.

Okay, covered a lot of ground so far,

but we surprisingly have not talked about AI.

Was there anything AI related to IAA

or Qualcomm that you ran into

that was particularly interesting?

Well, the new word that I came to learn here

is agentic AI, right?

So this is artificial intelligence

that will do things on your behalf.

Now can act as an agent.

Yes, act as an agent, agentic AI.

So Qualcomm did announce a program

with Google Cloud and Google Gemini.

And it's an integrated system

to make it easier for companies to deploy this.

So Gemini is an agent,

an artificial intelligent agent that lives

generally in the cloud,

although with the Qualcomm,

they've got enough compute power

and enough large language model programming,

you know, storage space on the chip

to do a lot of that on the edge,

they said, which means in the car.

So if you have lost your connection to the cloud,

it'll still answer questions and so forth.

Only with whatever it was programmed with,

if you ask up to who's the mayor of Seoul,

you know, and you don't have a connection,

it's gonna give you whoever it was when it was programmed

or last updated or whatever.

So yes, that is an interesting,

Mercedes introduced that on the Google booth,

but their system was not done with Qualcomm.

It uses the Qualcomm chip,

so it's entirely in the cloud.

But that one, you know, they did some demos where,

you know, instead of saying, you know,

can you recommend a restaurant near such and such

where it will go and just do a Yelp look,

you know, for who's around there,

you can ask it more, you know, in-depth questions like,

I'm looking for a high-end restaurant to take a client

and one client is vegan

and another is an enophile wine snob.

And it will read all that conversational stuff

and figure out what it wants and say,

well, here are three recommendations

and then you could pick one.

You could ask it and this is where it'll really be handy

for people, you know, with modern cars.

A light might come up on your dash,

like the turtle light on an EV that's getting low on power.

And you could just say, hey Mercedes,

what's that turtle light on my dash?

And it will explain all of that

and it can also put up the owner's manual page

on your infotainment screen explaining that.

If you've got a malfunction indicator light,

it'll tell you it can query, you know,

the OBD2 sensors or figure out what it is and go,

you know, okay, yeah, it's this.

It's not mission critical.

I can make an appointment next week for you.

Do you want me to do that?

So it can do those kinds of things on your behalf.

Right.

So this is a gentic,

this is sort of the current state of a gentic AI.

And just again, if you're sort of new to AI, right?

The one that everybody knows

is the previous hot news in AI, which was generative AI.

Right, generative AI is like mid-journey.

It was the original chat GPT.

It was like, hey, write an email for me.

You know, I'm tired of do a drawing

if you're in mid-journey, like you explain a scenario,

draw a picture of me and Frank in a booth in Germany

recording a podcast and we had spit out

sort of a clunky image.

The next level of AI has been a gentic,

which is take the ability to generate,

look up and generate stuff and respond to your queries,

but then act as a virtual agent for you,

which is what like these assistants

that are coming to cars can do.

And then the next level after this appears to be,

I've heard it explained a bunch of different ways.

The most recent term I heard is embodied AI,

which is basically robots.

So you're putting the agent,

which is either on your phone or in your car

or on a computer on your desk.

You're putting it into a robot walking around,

which everybody has.

A lot of the Chinese guys are showing off

these really wicked robots.

So is Tesla.

But a gentic is the sort of the hot button phrase

right now within automotive

because the AI, I guess the power of AI

has been developing so rapidly

and a lot of it now is sort of filtering into the vehicles.

Have you though personally been impressed

with any AI assistants in the cars?

Cause I've been, I've had very, very mixed results.

Well, sort of they want to make cars your friend, right?

And so my China trip, driving around in that Neo ET9

with the, they've got a little round screen on the top

that turns and looks at you and blinks its eyes

and blushes and strums a guitar to the music

and all this stuff.

Those things are very endearing.

I mean, it's half exciting, half depressing.

Though I'm afraid there's like a generation here

that has grown up on a phone

and has not interacted with people

and has gonna be more comfortable

interacting with these avatars.

And the IX3 actually has one of those too.

I think it's just built into the screen,

but it looks at whoever's talking and it blinks also.

So it's trying to do some of that too.

Does that have a name?

I'm not sure, yeah.

Okay.

Maybe you can name it.

Yeah, same.

I played around with the Neo system.

It's pretty clever.

I think that some of the interesting the example you gave

about asking for a restaurant recommendation

and providing more depth.

I think some of the hardest challenges

with some of these AI assistants doing that

is actually the general one.

And you go the other way.

You say, like, hey Mercedes or I was in an Audi,

I'm hungry.

And then it starts listing.

And then you can have a conversation and say,

okay, what do you want?

No, no Mexican food.

I'm feeling kind of like a hamburger.

And then I can list them off and then you can pick one.

But it's, we're a long ways from the current

sort of mass market vehicles

having that level of ability or availability.

It seems to be coming out with a lot

of the luxury manufacturers first.

No doubt because it requires a lot of computing power

but also software designers,

UX designers to make sure that stuff works

because it's been very spotty.

And we've all heard that AI involves these server farms

that require all this power and so forth.

So even in the car, it takes a lot of computing power.

And of course, a lot of these that we're talking about

are EVs, so they've got a lot of onboard power.

And a lot of that happens in the cloud.

So we're offshoring that power consumption.

But yes, it is not dirt cheap

for affordable little light cars.

Right.

Anything else in the AI realm that caught your eye here?

Is it mostly authentic?

No, that's been the biggie.

Yeah, and it's multiple, you know,

I'm going to talk to a competitor later today

that's got a whole different system

based that uses the Microsoft world.

So Azure for the cloud instead of Google cloud, you know.

Gotcha.

Yeah, the cloud piece is something

that we're very curious to explore

because it is, I think it's something

that most consumers don't realize is it's, you know,

if you're at all connected, not just to your car,

but with your mobile phone, if you're buying things

on Amazon, if you're going to any retail spot,

if you're using common apps like Apple Maps

or Google Maps or even things like Yelp,

like you're sending vast amounts of data to the cloud

and it's enabling these great results

that you're getting back.

And to your point on edge compute, right?

If you think about, I mean, we might think

of it's just the stuff I am consciously doing in the car,

like inputting a destination or looking up a restaurant

or even tuning like some music or infotainment.

But there's actually a thousand,

I don't even know what the proper term is,

megabits or whatever, kilobytes, not kilobytes,

megabytes of information going back and forth

from all the systems within these vehicles, right?

People from the GPS, navigation,

anything related to keeping the car between the lines,

cruising down the road, it's just constantly

going back and forth.

And this is part of that, the edge computing

that you were talking about, which again,

I wanted to explain when you said it, right?

Like there's so much data going back and forth

and not all data is equal, right?

You don't need access to page 204

in the user manual that's now on three folders in

on your infotainment system.

That is not gonna be necessarily in the edge.

The edge is gonna be sort of mission critical stuff

that you want instantaneous access.

Although they did say may or soul

whenever it was trained on board, I mean, you know,

they did mention too, like if you're driving along

you can say if there's a prominent billionaire

that's obviously a landmark, you can just ask what it is

and the car has the camera view and it'll tell you.

And they said a lot of that stuff is on the edge.

It's on the car, you know, the large language

which was also photo libraries and whatever built in.

I mean, I just can't imagine how many ones and zeros

are stored on that car.

But that makes sense to me because having

and this is, I can't remember the manufacturer

that told me this, but like, you know,

I just looked at this Polestar, it's got 11 cameras

on the car just for the eight ass system

and then another two exterior

because there's no rear glass

and they have a virtual rear window

and then there's another one on the car looking at you.

So there's so many cameras, right?

And the cameras are all outward facing.

So in the future there's a,

you could be traveled to a new place,

like here I'm in Munich, I've been here a long time

and you could just ask the car to give you a tour.

And the car, based on the cameras, can point out,

oh, that building, that's the government building over there.

This is a famous, whatever used to be like,

whatever famous thing that's going on.

That makes sense to me,

that you would want that information on the edge

because it's gonna be anywhere you could actually go.

And that doesn't change.

Yes, exactly, exactly.

Okay.

Fascinating stuff.

You, we are recording this sort of midway

through your journey here at Munich.

I, Munich, you're gonna talk

to Qualcomm's president, Nikul Degal.

Yes.

And we'll have to catch up with you after that.

Right.

But what are you most curious to ask?

Well, one of the things I want to talk to him about,

you know, in Shanghai,

we saw Neo and Expan show off chips

of their own design and manufacture.

And so I have been curious about, you know,

is that a trend or, you know,

was that just based on, oh, there's a chip shortage

and whatever, you know, is that gonna kick in, you know?

And my sense of it is,

from talking to a few of the other people,

it's not really cost effective to do that.

To build your own.

No, it's easier if you're a Neo

and your car, your products are mostly all upper end

so you don't have a giant, you know, line of,

you know, long line of different car types

that you have to satisfy.

But if you're a Volkswagen with everything from polos

to, you know, Bentley's and whatever, very difficult.

Right.

The one thing I'll say,

I think Nikul may not be able to answer is

why the Chinese manufacturers are doing that

is the chips act, right?

Like we're supposed to,

US supposed to be only US hardware and software

within the car.

And the Chinese have sort of implemented their own plan.

So a lot of these companies

are putting their own systems in it.

I do think what's interesting about

the Chinese vehicles,

the manufacturers that we've talked about,

they love bragging about the number

of chips at top.

Yes.

1,200!

Terraflops per second,

floating point operations per second, right?

But also the number of chips and who make them

because that audience is very savvy

to the highest tech.

I got, we got this many LiDARs,

we got this many radars, this many cameras.

US consumer doesn't really see the care at all.

No.

Okay. Well, we're about to be kicked out

of this beautiful recording space.

So we'll have to catch up with you, Frank,

after you chat with the president of Qualcomm

and see how that goes.

So thank you so much for listening.

This has been Ed Lowe and-

Frank Marcus.

Frank Marcus and we've been at IAA Munich 2025

talking all about the latest

in the future of mobility.

Thank you very much.

BMW’s Neue Klasse vs. Mercedes GLC at IAA Munich + AI Cars, VW x Rivian, Polestar 5 & 204-mph Lucid!

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