News: Solid States, Bad News, and Kill Switches

If you don't pay your tabs and you're driving around,

they pull you over and tow your vehicle.

What is to stop them?

What is the difference between them having the right

to tow your car and having the right to just shut it off

in the driveway?

What's the difference?

Hey guys, welcome to Overcrest.

I'm Chris and I'm Shake.

How are you today, Jacob Solberg?

Are you ready for winter to be over?

I am.

Is it when is Groundhog Day situation?

Today.

Today's Groundhog Day.

So today is actually Groundhog Day.

I think so.

I saw a meme about it and I was like,

well, that has to be some time around now.

Monday, February 2nd.

Okay.

On February 2nd, 2026,

Huxatani Philly merged at the Gobblers Nump.

No, wait, really?

In Pennsylvania and saw his shadow predicting six more weeks

of winter.

If you would have been like,

is winter going to keep going?

Yes or no?

I mean, the obvious answer is yes.

So I don't think it does anything.

Yes.

So we've got six more weeks of winter.

Wonderful.

That is just great.

But the good thing is, in addition to six more months

of winter, six more months, six weeks,

God, six more weeks of winter,

we've got some pretty good news for you.

Pretty good news for you today.

We've got a great guest that goes with this first topic,

which is, I feel like this topic keeps coming up

when it comes to EVs, right?

Like I was driving by Target the other day

and it was negative 20 degrees outside

and every single little spot was filled

and then there was a snake of cars.

You didn't say of what?

Spot of what?

The charging stations.

There was the charging stations.

They're all lined up there and then there's

a snake of Tesla's lined up around the corner

and I don't even know where the other EV people go.

I mean, they go somewhere.

They go south for the winter.

Migratory EVs.

They probably go to like a charge point station

or something like that.

They go to another place.

So I mean, is it just that the batteries

can't sustain in that cold?

So they just have to be hooked up to the charger.

Okay.

They cannot do it.

As a result, everybody wants solid state batteries

because they're fine in the cold.

They charge up in five minutes.

They can discharge faster.

They're theoretically more economical.

They're more thermally efficient.

They're just, it's kind of like the holy grail of EVs.

If we could just get to solid state batteries.

I'll admit, I don't even really understand.

I know it's a buzzword.

It is a buzzword.

It's a state bad word.

I never really understood what a solid state battery is.

Like, what's the difference?

Is this just some?

Yes. So I'm going to read you this article,

which got me excited.

And then I go, okay, I don't know that much about this.

So we, we're having a guest on.

We're going to introduce him in a minute.

Let me get through this article.

And then, and then we'll talk about it a little bit more

because I like you admittedly don't, don't know very much.

And this, I'm reading this because this is very representative

of pretty much every solid state news release

or press release I've seen over the last five, six, seven years.

Yes.

A finished start up called revolutionary doughnut lab.

Donut lab has just announced that they claim as the world's,

I think it's because they're, they're EV motors are in their wheel.

So it's in the hub.

So it's like a doughnut.

Yeah. So it's doughnut lab.

It's kind of what's a doughnut lab, like a doughnut media.

You're thinking of doughnut media.

Yeah, but I'm pretty sure they had a lab too,

which was just like a burnout pit or something.

Yeah. I wonder if doughnut media is suing doughnut lab.

I hear they're here.

They're all over suing people for using the word doughnut.

Kind of my, yeah, curiosity as well.

All right, continue.

Anyway, all right, finished start up called doughnut lab

was just announced that they claim as the world's first

production ready solid state battery.

And it's ready to go into vehicles.

These are a doughnut labs claim specs,

energy density of 400 watt hours per kilogram.

It's great. It's normal.

Current lithium ion runs are around 200 to 300.

Okay.

Full charge, five minutes.

So that's the big.

That's the big one.

Full charge, five minutes.

Cause that's go to the gas station, right?

That's about five minutes, three to five minutes

unless you've got your truck,

which probably has a 28 gallon tank.

36 Holy shit.

You know what?

You remember back in the day when you could have dual tanks?

Yeah.

Remember that?

And you had a little switch and you'd switch over.

That's still an option.

That's still a lot of trucks.

Yeah.

I thought it was gone because of evap requirements.

Like you couldn't have the dual tank.

It's all sealed.

It's all like one system.

It's just you have two of them and then you can like switch

transfer, maybe it's automated.

I was like that.

My grandpa's F-150 had that.

It's like the saddle tank, right?

You had one on one side, one on the other side.

You switch over.

I always be like, oh, we're out of gas.

And then you'd fool your buddies and then you'd hit the button.

And the, yeah, it was always great.

I just love, it's the two like gas fill up doors, right?

So you have one and then two.

And it's always just like, wait, what?

Why?

Why are there two?

I remember one time trying to park in between both sides of the thing.

And you'd go from both sides with the things.

Would that be a thing?

I don't even remember what side they're on.

Pretty sure they're on the same side.

Like, are they?

Yeah, I don't even remember.

All right.

I just hit back.

I have no idea what.

Okay.

On safety, they're not, they don't blow up temperature.

They're better in the temperatures.

The first vehicle using the technology from Donut Labs is Verge Motorcycles.

And it says it's TS Pro will be the first production vehicle

with all solid state batteries.

I think that's a really good case for this.

Yeah.

But at the same time, it's like, we have the first vehicle and it's a scooter.

I feel like that's cheating by saying it's a vehicle.

But yeah.

Donut Lab CEO Marco Letmaki at Donut Lab.

Our answer on solid state batteries is being ready to use

an OEM production vehicles is now today, not later.

It's now that's the announcement.

But solid state batteries have been here for almost,

almost here for a long time.

The question isn't whether the technology works in a lab, which it does.

It's whether it can scale.

So this was over my head a little bit.

And so I wanted to educate myself so I can, you know, actively add to my various opinions.

We sat down with Dr. Eric Walksman, professor at the University of Maryland,

one of the leading researchers in solid state battery technology.

He's been working on this for decades, spun off his own company to manufacture them.

And he's got to take on what it actually takes to get from working prototype to mass production.

This Jake, this is the guy.

Yeah, this is awesome.

Thank you so much for coming to spend time with us on the podcast.

I really appreciate you.

Happy to do it.

Well, first of all, I want to find out kind of what got you into energy.

You know, it's a very, it's a very special field these days, as we know.

But you know, back in the day, maybe it was a little bit different

when we all just had 12 volt batteries in our cars and AA batteries in our remote control cars.

Well, let's actually go further back in that.

Okay.

Got me into energy.

What started my whole career in LSD is my interest in love of cars.

So going back in high school had my 68 Dodge Charger, the 440 Magnum.

There we go.

The poly double pump, double pumper headers, Craig recess mags.

And that was it.

I was just living for the car, worked on all the time, BNM racing automatic.

And then there was one of the first oil crises.

And I had to wait in line every other day, you could fill up the tanks, right?

Of course, back then gas was cheap, but you had to wait to be able, your turn to fill up.

And so that made me think, well, you know, there's got to be something we can do better.

And I worked on a lot of different things from alternative fuels to solar to ultimately fuel cells

and batteries.

But along the way, my love of cars and my focus kind of shifted to more and more efficiency.

And so I went from there to a last year, the Datsun 240Z, which I put your triple

Weber's on and a header and lower Tony shocks.

And then from there to BMW M3 convertible, which actually I didn't do anything with that.

Because at that point, you can't modify cars at that point that much.

Yeah.

Once you get into it, yeah.

Yeah.

And then my first Tesla model as performance.

But now I'm finally, I think I've settled in.

I've got my Porsche take in, which is all electric.

That thing handles like a dream as a Porsche does, accelerates like crazy.

And it's just a beautiful car.

So it really is cars that got me an energy and driving more towards more and more efficient vehicles.

I don't want to give up on the performance to get the range and efficiency.

And so that's where I've worked on make cars better, make batteries better,

make the technology better so you can get both.

You don't have to give up one for the other.

Well, it's really interesting that you come from that history,

because I think a lot of our listeners will relate with that.

I guess the question that popped up in my mind is, what's harder getting a side-draft DCUE

carburetor to run right or developing a solid state battery?

Because I mean, I've got books here, right here.

I've read this book probably about 50 times.

I'm still trying to figure out how to master the side-draft carburetor.

They are tough.

There's a lot of tweaking.

There's a lot of tweaking on the batteries.

That was sort of that transition going from the carbureted cars to the fuel injection to all electric.

As you progress, there's actually less and less you can do yourself.

It has to be pretty much done.

With an electric vehicle, there really is nothing.

There's no maintenance.

There's nothing to do to it.

You just buy the car in the form that you want, with the options you want, and you're good to go.

There's no oil changes.

There's no radiators.

There's nothing like that, right?

So, I apologize.

My headphone keeps buzzing out on me.

No, I knew you were just fine.

Okay.

But yeah, at that point, and also, later in life, career took off.

I really don't have time to work on cars like I did in high school.

So, I'm happy to have it.

Have you missed it yet?

There's so many other things I want to do in life.

They're working on cars themselves.

No, driving them, yes.

So, I can hop in the car and have a great time driving it.

There's a winding road by my house.

I love taking that in the Porsche.

It's awesome.

But getting under the hood, you can't get under the hood because there's no engine.

There's nothing there.

There's a motor.

It does make me sad.

It does make me sad because an engine is a beautiful thing.

It's a beautiful piece of engineering.

It's a marvel what human beings were able to develop over the course of 100 years.

Oh, yeah.

Okay.

So, I think about this stuff when I drive by the Tesla chargers every day.

I know I'm in Minnesota.

Okay.

So, we've had negative 20, negative 30, and there's a line out the door.

And we've been knocking at the door of solid state batteries for a long time,

a very long time.

And that's kind of what made me think about this.

I'm like, yeah, these were solid state batteries.

This wouldn't be such a problem.

And it seems like kind of this thing where it's like we've always overlapped.

As long as I've been doing the podcast, which is about seven years,

there's always in the news solid state batteries.

They're coming.

They're right around the corner.

It's right here.

Are we finally getting close?

Or is this like fusion or something where we're just never going to get there?

No, we're getting close.

We have solid state batteries that work and they will achieve the desired performance.

The issue now is scaling manufacturing.

And this is sort of an issue for the US in general.

We've lost manufacturing.

And so, where are the batteries coming from?

They're coming from Asia.

They're not coming from the United States.

And so, we have to be able to compete with next generation technology.

We're never going to compete with conventional battery that you may have for your phone or

your computer and stuff like that.

That technology is gone.

The cost of manufacturing is so low in Asia that we just can't compete.

Solid state is the opportunity where as a new technology, it's manufacturing.

The US can compete if it's want to put the investment in to do it.

And there's a big difference between the investment in solid state batteries in the

United States versus investment solid state batteries, let's say in China, right?

So, I'm a professor at the University of Maryland.

I've been working on batteries for a long time.

We've developed very, very high performance solid state batteries,

twice the energy density, three times the energy density of your conventional lithium-ion batteries.

We have to scale the manufacturing.

I spun off a company, Iron Storage Systems, which is in the process of doing that.

But the first market has got to be consumer electronics.

It can't be the EV because it's the scale of manufacturing, right?

The battery that you're going to put in a cell phone is a lot smaller

than the battery you're going to put in a car.

And so, for one 100 kilowatt hour battery that goes into Tesla,

I can make thousands and thousands of batteries that will go in this product.

I can start making revenue with consumer electronics,

where I'm still trying to build that first battery for the EV.

Is there anybody that's leading the charge on this in terms of development

and getting the manufacturing going in the United States?

Is that from a private perspective, private companies,

maybe from educational institutions like yours?

And then, of course, we have governments that want to be part of this too

and dump money in and subsidize.

Is any of this happening?

All of that's happening.

But again, competing, let's say, with China as a prime example.

So a few years back, I was invited speaker to a battery conference in China.

And went there and all the invite speakers were invited to this separate private reception.

And we sat there, great meal, all the food and drink and everything else.

And then the local government gets up and makes a pitch.

Bring your battery company to China.

We'll give you the building.

We'll hire the people for you.

We'll give you billions of wands of funding for your company.

We have nothing to compare with that in the United States.

So spinning off my battery company in the United States,

yeah, we have federal grants and contracts to develop the technology.

But we don't have the funding unless we go to VCs to scale up the manufacturing.

And so you're starting a new company.

You don't have this huge amount of money that the large battery companies do in China

that's just going to invest because it's just a bottomless pit.

They can just put money in like crazy.

You've got to go to venture capitalists and you've got to go sell your soul to get whatever,

you know, a few million to get, but to get to the scale of automotive.

We're not talking millions.

You're talking billions, tens of billions of dollars.

So it's difficult to raise that amount of capital to set up the manufacturing line

that can then produce batteries that go into EVs.

So I think about this phone and I think about what it does.

Would I care if there was a solid-state battery in this phone as a consumer?

When I look at the lithium ion one, you know, it charges in on a fast charger,

what, 20 minutes, 30 minutes or whatever, and it's fully charged.

You know, I just plug it into a very, very low watt charger overnight to try and help the battery out.

But do I care as a consumer that I would have a solid-state battery in my phone?

Does it matter to me?

You would if you had one, right?

So the issue is, one, it's got greater energy density and that means it'll last longer before

charges. The charge time on your battery or the lifetime of the charge is kind of longer.

You might have noticed that.

They used to have to be charged all the time.

But you do it a smaller volume and a lighter battery.

So now the battery, the phone is thinner and lighter, okay?

It also allows it to charge faster.

So rather than charging it overnight or a few hours, it's minutes.

And the other aspect of it is the solid-state batteries are non-flammable.

So, you know, you've seen all the things about battery fires, getting rid of that safety concern.

When you get on an airplane and they say, oh, well,

but make sure you didn't leave your battery in a check-in luggage, right?

That concern goes away.

So those are all major advantages of a solid-state battery.

Lighter, smaller, and ultimately less expensive.

What kind of energy density are we talking about here in this form factor, in this size?

In the ones there, and I might have to give you metrics.

But, you know, they're typically on the order of 200 watt-hours per kilogram.

Okay.

If you want to convert that to something else, whereas a solid-state can be twice that.

So basically, one half the mass, one half the volume type thing.

So I'm definitely going to care.

That's a lot.

Okay, so when I think of a solid-state battery, my brain is like a guy who's built like a tube radio,

a tube amp, and Nixie clocks and things like that.

So that's kind of like, I understand this in a way that I feel like a solid-state battery

seems like it's just a capacitor.

You know, it seems like it's like able to charge and discharge.

I know that's wrong.

I'm hoping you can kind of explain to me what a solid-state battery works

and what's going on inside it that makes all this possible.

Sure.

So the difference between a capacitor and a battery has to do with the way the

charge goes in and out of that structure.

Okay.

A capacitor works by surface charge on the surface of your electrodes.

The charge doesn't actually go into the electrodes.

Okay.

So the battery, you have the two electrodes.

You have an anode and a cathode, your negative and positive electrode.

And the ions, in this case lithium, go back and forth between those electrodes.

And they literally go into that solid-state inside of it.

And the capacitor, they don't go inside the solid, they're just on the surface.

So a capacitor has to have lots and lots of surface because it's only the,

you know, the absorption of an ion on the surface instead of going inside of it.

And so it has to be much larger volume to get the same amount of energy.

And because it's more volume of material, the energy density is not very good because

now you've got all that material which isn't active.

It's just a surface for the ions to absorb onto.

Is a solid-state battery able to discharge faster than a lithium ion battery as well?

Is it able to deliver its power since it can charge so much faster?

It can deliver so much faster as well, I imagine?

It has the potential of discharging much, much faster.

Okay.

And what is limiting the charge rate on most conventional lithium ion batteries.

So again, I don't know how much chemistry it may go into, but you have your positive

electrode, the cathode, which is typically metal oxide.

The lithium goes in and out of that oxide within that solid-state structure.

It crosses through what's called the electrolyte in commercial batteries.

It's a liquid.

And then it goes into the anode, which right now for all commercial batteries is carbon.

And the lithium forms a complex with the carbon.

There's six carbon atoms for every one lithium.

So if you think about it, right, you're getting one lithium.

For that one lithium, you have to have six carbons.

So that's more mass volume.

It's not very useful.

With a solid state, you can go to a lithium metal anode.

So you got rid of the carbon.

You just got rid of all that mass and volume of the anode and it's just lithium metal.

Okay.

Is lithium less dense than the carbon as well?

Is it lighter?

It's not that it's lighter.

It's just that there's six carbons for one lithium.

So much less of it.

Or if there's no carbon, there's no carbon, just lithium, right?

So you still have to have the same amount of lithium regardless,

but you get rid of the six carbons for a lithium.

Okay.

So why has this been so hard?

Like why is this taking so long to develop?

So again, one of the aspects that I mentioned is just scaling for manufacturing.

The other is the choice of solid state battery technologies.

There's a lot of them out there.

You may not be familiar with that.

People tend to lump solid state in this one.

Yep, they're all solid state.

They're not.

So the lithium ion battery we have today uses a liquid electrolyte, as I mentioned,

and the ions move through the liquid.

You can think about your lead acid battery in your car, right?

If the ions move through the liquid, people are familiar with that, right?

The solid state, we've developed solid state materials where the conductivity,

the ability for ions to move is just as good as it is in the liquid, except it's in the solid.

Okay.

People have a hard time accepting that, but that's just the fact that...

That's because usually like the resistance of a solid or something,

like a copper wire is always going to be more than a liquid, right?

In the past, that's my brain.

The resistance of a copper wire, I believe, is less, but that's for electrons, not ions.

Okay, okay.

Ions are a chemical species, electrons or electrons and holes.

Electrons can go through copper wire really very, very fast,

but getting the ions to move through a solid, you have to have the right structure.

And so people have developed as alternatives to the liquid electrolyte,

all electrolytes, all electrolytes based on sulfide materials, based on halide materials,

and based on oxide materials, okay?

Each of them has a different chemical composition, a different structure,

and each of them has the ability to transport lithium ions through them,

but there are differences, right?

Well, it turns out the sulfide ones have the highest conductivity going to that aspect,

or they can be very, very low resistance.

The oxides have high conductivity, but not as high as the sulfide.

Most of the companies, for example, Toyota is making a big investment in

sulfide batteries, you might have seen some of their press releases,

they're always going to have a sulfide battery coming out.

But with the solids, in that case, they have a lot of particles of that sulfide electrolyte

in the week pressed together, and they got to put tens of megapascals,

hundreds of megapascals to squeeze that thing and maintain in contact.

With the oxides, if you think of, you can go to your kitchen, you got a plate, right?

That's a ceramic, and the oxides are like the ceramic where you make the shape,

you put in a furnace, and you have now that solid ceramic.

It doesn't fall apart if you don't press it, whereas if you had a bowl full of rights,

if you didn't squeeze it together, you know, release it, all the particles will fall out.

It's kind of like that.

So most of the battery companies thought that the particle one was more in lines of the processing

of conventional batteries, so they put all their eggs in that basket.

There's very few who've gone to the oxide ones.

Most company iron storage systems is one of them, so we then center that ceramic,

and therefore we don't have to put any pressure on it.

So again, if the first market is your cell phone, and you've got to put 100 megapascals

of pressure on it, you have to make big metal plates and springs.

And all of a sudden, the advantage it had of having the higher density goes away,

not because the battery isn't as good, but the packaging to maintain it.

It's kind of like you go and you buy the best bicycle with a really lightweight,

you know, titanium alloy, and you have the heavy chain because you don't want anybody to steal it.

Right?

It's that type of analogy for a lot of the cell cell batteries are coming out.

They're being developed right now.

It's like, well, how do you get rid of this pressure requirement to maintain contact?

And the oxides avoid that issue because they are just a centered structure

that doesn't move.

You don't have to apply the pressure to it.

And so when they are, they are a later generation.

I think they're the ultimate winner in my opinion.

So what milestone should I be watching for that tells me this is happening?

Like I see a headline.

I'm like, okay, you know, I don't, you know, I kind of pay attention to the stock market

and different things.

I haven't seen anything come up like, oh, I should invest in this company.

This seems like this is the one that finally got it.

What milestone is that that I'm looking for that tells me that solid state batteries are coming?

Get ready.

I think when you see them in consumer electronics, and I don't mean that you're going to go

to a grocery store and buy them, you know, the cylindrical ones off of the rack,

but that they made it into products like phones and things of that nature, right?

I mean, where did lithium ion batteries come from today?

It's because Sony wanted a battery for their camcorder.

It didn't start in electric vehicles.

It started in consumer electronics.

And then as they got the experience making these things and mass producing them,

they got them bigger and bigger and bigger.

And now they're in cars.

And I think that's just the normal way of evolving that technology to ultimately get into cars.

But starting with a smaller size product, where you can make lots of them start,

company can start making revenue and therefore make an impact.

And then as they have the experience, they can scale up the size of the manufacturing facility

to make EV size batteries, right?

So people are going to be lined up at the charger for a little bit longer yet.

Maybe a little bit longer.

We're not quite there.

I mean, there are companies that say, oh, yeah, we've got the EV battery.

And it's working.

And I'm not going to pick on any of the companies because I hope to be my customer someday.

But the thing is that to scale that manufacturing, again, what they call the gigascale factory,

it's just tens of billions of dollars.

And where's that money going to come from?

If it's all going from VCs, you just basically gave away the company to get the first product out.

You want a huge amount of debt.

And now you've got the interest on the debt versus if you go to a smaller battery as a first product

and you start selling them at some consumer product where they have a niche capability

that makes them more advantageous.

And now you generate revenue.

And then it's easier to start scaling manufacturing once you actually have revenue.

And so that scaling manufacturing will just have debt.

Yeah.

I always thought it was going to be this cycle I predicted of once you have government regulation

comes in and they say, OK, this is the way things are going to be.

It was going to force far more investment than what actually happened.

And now it seems like things have pulled back a little bit as with the Trump administration

and some of the even the European companies like Porsche and Mercedes, for example,

have pulled back a little bit.

Everybody's kind of like, whoa, there's a little bit of whiplash going on in the EV world right now,

which I did not think that was going to happen.

I thought the government regulations would kind of force it down.

Everybody's thrown and we'd be seeing this stuff advancing at a much faster pace than we are.

But it seems like it's going to be kind of this yo-yo effect as we go into the future.

And it's tough to see when things are going to be on the horizon.

That's the aspect of US politics.

I wouldn't say forcing it down the throat, but making the investments in the battery industry

in the United States so that we have that industry in the United States was something

was being done at the Biden administration.

And there were battery plants that were planned all over the United States

and the Trump administration just wiped them all out.

They're all gone.

They're going away.

So the only place that's going to make them is China.

And so we're losing that market, that that manufacturing capability that we would have had

in the United States under the Biden administration policies that it's going away.

It's going to go to China and we'll end up being consumers buying them from China

like we are for the current batteries instead of trying to add-

Those cars are crazy.

Those cars, I've seen some reviews of them.

They look absolutely incredible, honestly.

Right.

And so is the way to advance the US EV market to basically put such high tariffs

and not allow them into our country?

Or is it to make us competitive because you invested in our manufacturing?

I think the latter is better.

Right now, because of the trade deals, they're going into Canada.

So how long is it going to be before people start driving them across the border?

It's a great question if they're allowed to even, if the DOT will allow that.

We'll see.

I mean, it starts to get into this protectionism thing, which I never think is a good idea.

No.

I'm generally an open market kind of guy.

And we saw what the chicken tax did, right?

And I mean, that was never, that was nothing that was any good for anybody.

And at least not the consumer.

It's good for somebody's ideology, but it's never good for the consumer.

No, it's not.

The best way to do it is to invest in the manufacturing and the research

and develop technology here and commercialize it here.

Not to try and put tariffs on something to prevent something from coming in.

All you're doing is you're taking away those options from the American consumer.

As you said, those Chinese cars, they look awesome.

I haven't been in one, but from what I've seen on the web,

I'd love to give it a try and maybe buy one one day.

Yeah.

What's interesting is that you have these companies that normally make phones

making cars.

So they have this fresh perspective that's new, plus they don't have the burden of heritage.

So many major manufacturing.

I'll have the burden of heritage and marketing and all this other.

That's a whole other conversation.

Dr. Waxman, thank you for coming to hang out with me today.

I appreciate your expertise.

And I look forward to the solid state battery of my phone.

All right.

I look forward to giving you or selling you one.

That sounds good, man.

Take care of yourself.

Thank you.

Bye.

So that's interesting, right?

You think of phone.

You know, you thought of Scooter.

You laughed.

You laughed at Scooter.

I laughed at Scooter, but it makes sense that,

yeah, of course, you need to put it in small scale electronics first to make it viable, right?

Small scale so that you can scale up.

So it seems like we're a ways away.

So those lines aren't going anywhere anytime soon.

I guess what is interesting or illuminating to me is like,

this isn't some revolutionary, crazy, different, like you said,

like some crazy capacitor, magical capacitor.

It's literally the same battery chemistry.

It's just or it's same technology, I should say, with different chemistry, right?

So it's just literally it's solids, not liquids is the only differentiator.

So it kind of demystified it a lot for me, which was good.

The other thing I found like a little scary was the fact that

they're just in China, symposiums, actively recruiting companies be like,

yeah, just come over here.

We'll give you all the funding you want.

Yeah, just build them here.

It's crazy or how do you come?

It's tough.

How do you compete with that?

Like, oh, you need money.

Yeah, just come over here.

We'll give you all the money.

The thing is, is though, every time this gets in,

I don't want to get into politics.

I know, and I don't know every time this happens,

China is just print money to do it.

Their economy is not doing well.

It's not doing well.

But in the short term, it's not failing fast enough.

Exactly.

I was going to say, you know, a million won or whatever it is,

you can still transfer it over to US dollars and be pretty set.

If that's your or by gold.

That's what China is doing right now.

All right, California.

It's always California, isn't it?

Or Florida.

Well, yes, California or Florida.

California's assembly has just passed AB 1421.

This is a bill that extends the state's road usage charge

technical advisory committee until 2035.

This is the committee that is,

hey, how do we make money on roads?

Okay.

This is how do we how do we tax our citizens on road?

Isn't that okay?

Well, this is committee.

Here's what's interesting.

So before I even read anything in here.

Yeah.

Generally, and historically, this is done just by gas tax.

Yeah, gas tax or toll.

On top of, yeah.

It's a usage tax.

Toil is less, right.

It's less common tolls, but you have toll roads.

But generally, it's okay.

There's a state tax on gasoline and people use the gasoline.

Therefore, it is proportionate to the amount of usage on roads.

The problem is California had pushed EVs so hard that now,

oops, that doesn't work.

So now what do they do?

Because we can't just tax electricity.

You remember talking about this years ago?

I do.

It's like, I remember saying, there's no way.

Because everybody's like, look, I don't have to pay gas.

The gas is so expensive and blah, blah, blah.

I don't have to pay the taxes.

And it's great.

It's so economical.

And then they're going to go, oops.

Now how do we pay for infrastructure?

Yeah.

Just wait until everybody's.

I just wanted to note that, yeah, they kind of dug themselves.

They just asked deep in the situation now.

Everybody's in.

So now they'll raise the taxes.

They're not going to do it right away.

So what are they doing?

How do they?

All right.

The California Transportation Commission

protects the state.

We'll collect $31 billion less in fuel excise tax revenue due to increased fuel efficiency

in the proliferation of Z EVs over the next decade.

That's a $31 billion hole in road funding.

You know what I find interesting too?

Is what are all these EVs compared to regular cars?

Oh, super heavy.

So ironically, they're doing more for the road deterioration than a gas car would.

That is very interesting and funny.

So what's a road charge from Caltrans directly?

By the way, this committee is for the research on the infrastructure to build a tax system.

That's what I skipped over that part.

That's what this committee is.

It's just how to tax the infrastructure.

So there is literally a committee for how to tax.

The infrastructure for driving.

There's a committee getting paid by taxpayer money on figuring out how to get more tax

payer money.

That is correct.

A road charge is, quote, what do we got here?

California EV adoption versus state ZV maintenance growing policy reality.

Yeah, there it is.

The adoption plateau.

Look at the tax revenue.

It's plenty.

This producer's got a chart up here if you're watching.

You can see this chart or pause it and look at it.

It's very telling.

A road charge is a system where all drivers pay to maintain the roads

based on how much they drive rather than how much gas they consume.

Think of it like a utility bill for driving.

I remember saying this and going, how are they going to know how much you drive?

Jake, how are they going to know?

Because obviously they can't just put trackers on us all, Chris.

That would be wrong.

Well, they certainly could on your Tesla, but they're certainly not going to do it

on your 95 Golf K3 that you inherited from your grandma.

So, Jake, how would they track your miles?

I know the K2 was the ski model because it's K2 skis.

I don't think a K3 exists.

No, that doesn't exist.

I'm not a skier.

I just remember it was K something.

I was like, what?

You know what was cool was the Pink Floyd edition.

You ever seen that?

No.

The Golf Pink Floyd.

Like the interior, like the seats and the radio and stuff are all like Pink Floyd themed.

Really?

It's pretty cool.

Yeah, it's really cool.

So many cool.

I know, like just one off.

All right.

Anyways, we get into that.

Me and Brian Scott, I interviewed him.

It's coming up next week.

We did this quite a bit.

It was a really good interview.

So definitely hang out for that one.

I was going to tease you that you were just old guys talking about how cool things used

to be back in your day, but I agree with everything you said.

Yeah, unfortunately, Volkswagen is not cool anymore.

And I'm going to give you another reason for that later on in this episode.

Okay, how, Jake, would they track your miles?

The 2024 pilot ran August through January and tested three methods, three.

And the drivers get to choose first, a plug-in device,

plugs in your OBD port on the dash.

It can use your GPI location or not.

So basically it's using, it's pulling it off the ECU.

How many miles are you driving?

It's just an actual mile.

So that's going to be OBD2 and newer.

I would think like 98, 99 and newer.

Second option, vehicle telematics.

Uses your car's built-in connected vehicle account from the automaker.

Third option.

Odometer photo.

Hey, Grock, generate me a photo.

You can just send Grock a photo of an odometer and just be like,

advance this odometer by only 600 miles.

These people are so stupid, man.

You snap a picture of your odometer each month and submit it from Caltrick.

God, California is so stupid, dude.

But then you know there's going to be some type of look back

where like you go to sell your car at the DMV

and you have to like register the mileage when you sold it.

And they're like, wait a minute, how did you drive 100,000 miles

in the last month since your last odometer photo?

Or the person that buys it's going to get stuck with like

leftover taxes or something.

Account managers then provided the state with only the number of miles

and the road charge.

No other information was provided to the state.

The pilot rate was 2.5 cents per mile for passenger vehicles.

At full implementation, critics say rates could hit 6 to 9 cents per mile.

What is that average per tank of fuel?

Well, that's what I was going to say.

So is this a perfect...

It's $4 a tank.

So obviously that's not right.

Well, think about per tank.

Hold on.

What I want to know is, does this equate to current like gas taxes right now?

Is that so that's...

Kind of what I was thinking is like if you...

Let's say you have...

Did the backwards do it?

Well, 30% of a tank in California is tax, right?

So that's like a dollar on it is tax.

And if you have a $20 tank or a 20 gallon tank...

You have to go gallon.

20 gallon tank is 20...

No, don't look at gallons.

Look at gallons per mile.

Okay, you're better at math than me.

You just do it.

Okay.

Let's say you have...

What do we...

30 miles a gallon, 20 miles a gallon?

What do you want to do?

Let's go with 30.

That's moderate.

30 miles per gallon, right?

And a dollar worth of that gallon is taxed.

So that means it's 30...

30...

What did we see?

Good lord.

A third of a dollar.

Someone get this guy a wheelchair.

Damn it.

Well, you can't just be like,

I don't know, you do it and then put me on the spot.

No, I think it's a little under from what my quick brain

math does.

It's a little under what you pay now at two and a half cents.

But if they go to nine, it's going to be about 20 to 30% more.

But it depends on how much you drive, right?

It depends on how much.

If you don't drive very much, which is...

It's three cents.

Which was great about what a gas pass was.

Quick math is three cents.

Yeah.

So it's three cents.

Three cents a mile.

Our listeners are going to murder you, Jake.

Why?

Because I'm trying to move past us because we look stupid

and we can't figure it out.

That's fine.

I'm going to make you look stupid.

It's literally $30 of tax divided into 30 miles, right?

So it's about three cents.

Three cents per mile.

Yeah.

Right here, it says 2.5 cents per mile.

But it could go up to six to nine.

Yeah.

So it could triple or double.

Yeah.

Which is would be...

All right.

So now we spent the last hour on that.

Good Lord.

Good thing there's...

Okay.

On privacy, Caltran notes, any participant location

or personal identical data collected in their pilot

is protected and then destroyed.

That's nice.

But we know that they're not going to do that in the rollout.

You don't get to anonymously report your taxes.

It's not going to happen.

How are they going to enforce this?

What are they going to do?

You know what they're going to do?

We're going to talk about this later.

Oh my God.

They are going to...

We're going to get into the kill switch mandate.

I know we're getting into the kill switch.

From section of the 2021 infrastructure blah, blah, blah act.

What if they say you didn't submit your mileage last month.

You have 30 days to submit your mileage

or your car is going to get locked out.

There will just be...

I don't know.

It's all Tom.

Why wouldn't they do that?

Are you telling me if you thought that they...

If you couldn't pay your tabs on time

and your tabs were 60 days late,

that rather than you be driving around

and they pull you over?

Better thought.

It's the same.

If you don't pay your tabs and you're driving around,

they pull you over and tow your vehicle.

What is the difference between that and they tow your...

They have the right to tow your vehicle.

They can...

Maybe after a couple of times.

Jacob, I've had my vehicle towed for expired tax.

Jesus Christ, of course you have.

Of course you have.

This is like 20 years ago.

They can tow it.

What is to stop them?

What is the difference between them having the right

to tow your car

and having the right to just shut it off in the driveway?

What's the difference?

Prove that I was using it to drive.

Well, it doesn't matter.

I just love doing laps in my backyard.

I'm not on a public roadway there for you to tax me for it

and I don't need tabs either, so there.

It's my property's cloud truck, Chris.

It doesn't leave my property,

so I'm not going to renew the tabs,

but I'm still driving it.

So it's like a farm truck.

It's a farm truck.

Or maybe it's my Farm 924.

It doesn't have to be a farm anything.

Just ripping around on my 924.

Don't turn it off.

Yeah, but you wouldn't even register that.

That wouldn't even be a registered vehicle then.

Well, then they wouldn't need this.

I'm talking about the car that you drive every day

that you need to register.

I'm going to buy a brand new Tesla that's tracked,

but then I'm not going to register it

and I'm just going to drive it around on my property.

Okay, on your brand new Tesla that you just purchased,

what is the difference that you actually have to use

to take your kid to daycare or kindergarten or whatever?

What is the difference between them turning it off

so you can't leave your driveway

and towing it away when you get caught?

I don't know, Chris.

There isn't one.

There is no difference.

It's the same thing.

Why are we arguing about that?

I'm just trying to make a point.

So you're saying this is what could happen.

This is the ultimate doom and gloom.

No, no, it's likely to happen.

It's likely to happen.

Okay, more realistically, here's the thing.

Realistically, would you be better that you have some?

Dude, they will put you in prison if you don't pay your taxes.

You're telling me that they won't turn your car off

in the driveway?

They will come and get you, drag you away

and throw you in prison if you don't pay your taxes.

Yeah, unless you answer the door,

or your wife answers the door with a shotgun

when the police officer comes up to tell you to pay your taxes.

Yeah, and then your whole family dies.

Yeah, that's what happened to the previous owner of my house.

Oh, I thought you were talking about the thing in Montana or whatever.

Oh, no.

No, that happened right here.

Oh, geez.

Well, yeah, you can't, they will come

and they will, if you have a gun.

But it's a small town, so they're like,

Martha, put down the gun.

You know, the FBI will shoot you for not paying your taxes.

All right.

Okay.

No, what I was going to...

You know who buys the most ammunition, Jake?

The government.

The IRS.

I have heard that, which is like, I don't understand that.

On the double tax concern, this is a concern.

Here's what I was going to say.

Would you rather there be some system like this

for a usage tax, or would you rather

that there is just a flat fee when you register your vehicle?

And it's like, okay, it is a passenger vehicle.

So on top of your registration fee, your tabs,

we're just going to charge you for the annual average road tax.

Would that make it better?

No, I think it's the enforcement mechanism that I don't like.

I like the gas tax because you can choose

to not participate in the system.

You could just stay home.

How?

This way, you are still going to...

If you drove zero miles, you still have to prove it to the government.

You have to take a picture of your odometer.

You have to participate in the regulation and send them.

I don't like that.

You still have to pay your tabs even if you drive zero dollars.

Why can't they just...

Why can't they just see what you plugged into your vehicle

when you charged it up and just go, oh, well, he charged,

you know, 400 kilowatts.

Just charge him tax on that.

Because...

They don't want to do that.

They want to track what you're doing.

Because you can plug in at home.

Okay, so what?

So charge the tax on that.

You already pay tax on your electricity.

You're already paying a tax.

Well, yeah, because they're trying to differentiate

between electricity for like your stove.

So you can...

Well, they can differentiate between my...

They can read my water bill and they can read my electric bill.

Why don't they just read my car charger bill?

Because that's water usage versus electricity.

I'm just saying that they're able to differentiate

between the two utilities.

So when you have a charger installed on your house,

you just have a meter on it.

What's the problem?

That way, it's a usage tax.

A charger that doesn't use the government meter.

And it's just going to tap in.

Okay, mountain man.

Well, I'm just saying.

Most people are...

You're talking about...

I'm living in the real world here.

I don't know.

No, you're not.

You're never living in the real world.

All right, let's keep going.

By point is, this just seems to be another piggyback thing

to be able to track where you're going

and what you're doing.

I don't like it.

Do you know what the problem with our podcast is now,

Chris?

We've turned into the same person.

Used to be that I'd be like,

no, we need this.

We need this.

And why are you all so negative?

And now I'm like,

yeah, well, I'm going to make my own damn charger

so that I'm going to pay the government.

And this has been the downfall of Overcrest.

This is it right here is, damn it.

You have, yeah, brought me into the budget fold.

You know who has not gone on a downfall, Jake?

Nokia and Tyre.

That's right.

Nokia and they still have traction with the original.

The original.

I don't know where I was going with that.

I got nothing.

Okay.

Nokia and Tyres has officially launched their newest tire,

of course, which is.

Wait, Jake, wait, wait, wait, what?

Mrs. Producer has sent a message to the chat.

Okay.

Do you want?

In most jurisdictions, including many Minnesota cities,

I forgot about this.

This is correct.

You cannot legally park a car with expired or missing tabs

in a driveway as they must be currently registered and operable.

Visible, unregistered vehicles and driveways are often subject to fines,

ticketing and towing, especially if they appear in-op.

Well, good thing you can't see anything up my driveway.

Good luck.

You'd have to hide it all.

Like you'd have to be, you have to hide it in shame,

like the tax dodging citizen that you are.

Again, the problem here is I don't want to disagree with you.

I just want to reinforce how upset that makes me.

Damn it.

Okay.

Nokia and tires, there's nothing to argue about there

because they are the foremost producer of the winter tire,

the actual inventor of the winter tire itself with their Haka Polita line.

They also have the Surpass AS01, their newest model of tire,

which is a high performance all season tire specifically for drivers

want the most out of their cars without having to sacrifice capability

when the roads get slick.

It offers grip of a dedicated performance tire,

but won't leave you stranded if the road or weather gets rough.

It has a 55,000 mile warranty,

offers Nokia and the tires pothole protection,

whereas if you happen to damage your tire or unprepared,

Nokia will replace it for free.

And they are great people and we have worked with them for a long time.

It's, there's something to be said about not only,

okay, it's a great product, but I really do like Nokia.

They do believe in this community.

Exactly.

Yeah, we have a lot of love for that.

I can sell you on features and benefits,

but let me instead say that we just very much really like Nokia

as well as a brand and a company.

Check them out at nokiantires.com

and check out the Surpass as well at slash surpass.

All right, so BMW has updated its logo

and hold your, hold your fire here.

Is this a meme or what is this?

No, this is true.

It's true.

The new round L debuted on the new 2027 IX3,

which I do, I don't even know what that is.

An IX3, I don't.

Yeah, because you're an old curmudgeon.

And the problem is I can't make fun of you because so am I.

No, no.

I am not a curmudgeon.

Yes, you are.

BMW keeps changing their, their numerical nomenclature because

constantly.

Why are they trying to keep us confused?

What is the benefit of that?

The IX3 is their electric X being the crossover.

Yeah, I'm sure it is.

The small one.

So it's electric, small crossover.

I think that's how you can read that.

Oh, it looks awful.

It looks terrible.

Is it electric?

I think it's electric.

I don't know, is it?

No obvious weaknesses.

A quantum leap for EVs proves what's possible

when you start from scratch with today's tech.

Okay.

Okay, so yes, EV.

IX3 actually made sense to me.

Unless you go way back and I stood for injection.

Or I stand for, you know, it's been, it's really funny that

if you talk about branding ubiquity, what Apple did with I,

it's unbelievable.

Good point, because you thought I immediately was, yeah.

I didn't think that in this case, but it is, it is unbelievable

how ubiquitous I means when it means something is techie

and future looking.

If it says I something, that's that instantly means that.

And shame on BMW for doing that.

Because now if you go on Amazon, everything's like I case,

I don't know, I don't know, it's, it's, it's everywhere.

It's on everything because it is the, it is the baseline word

for future looking tech and BMW has put it on their IX3.

Why can't they just call it an EX3?

I feel like the I like precursor to anything has to actually be

trademarked by Apple.

I don't think you can just do that.

I don't think, well, this, that's different.

The I whatever, it's like the 325, 325 I, right?

They've always had the I, it just stands for something different now.

Maybe that's what allows them to do it.

That's what I would say.

Okay, well maybe.

That's what I was getting at is they always had I,

but it used to mean injection instead of whatever this means,

electric.

Yeah, yeah.

It doesn't mean anything.

Intelligent.

Oh, it's intelligent, Chris.

Yes, there we are.

The changes are subtle.

The inner chrome ring is gone.

The black surround is now matte instead of glossy.

The blue and white quadrants of BMW lettering remain the same.

The roundel dates back to the early 1920s,

when two aircraft companies merged.

The blue and white come from the Bavarian flag,

not a spinning propeller,

despite that old advertisement suggested it.

The design has largely stayed the same since 1953.

I was pretty quite a bit of changes actually.

BMW says the update signals the start of its new class area,

a new design language that the company hopes will be a return to form

after the polarizing or return to form.

Did you just see the car that Mrs. Producer put up on screen?

Yeah.

Is this trying to get away from the China big outlook?

I will give it that.

Yes, it is.

It's a polarizing.

We see it again.

Recent models.

Let's bring that IX3 thing up again for Jake, would you?

The M badge is also being updated,

though BMW says that change will be just as subtle.

Well, I don't think that logo has changed in quite some time.

Did we ever reduce the episode

that we did for the BMW Club annual dinner?

The EMW, remember this?

It was the Eastern German BMW line.

Do you not remember this?

I vaguely remember this.

This is a render.

This is not a real car.

Is it not?

This is not even a real this.

Yeah, probably not.

I mean, most product photos these days are renders.

Published December 3rd, 2025.

Yeah. Well, all right.

Well, it looks fine.

Is there, I want to see the logo.

That's all I want to see.

Okay. Yeah, we got the logo.

Pull up the, pull up the, we've got the old logo

and then we got the new logo and we'll see how you do here.

We'll see which one you think is which.

Okay.

Well, that one is the old one because it's in an eBay ad

and that one's the new one because it's on a render.

I guess I should have picked better photos.

But I just legitimately, I can't tell the difference.

Okay.

It's the chrome ring is gone.

If you go back, it's the chrome ring.

The internal chrome ring because there's still a chrome ring, Chris.

It's just the inside chrome ring and the chrome dividers

on the blue and white.

And it's matte finish instead of glossy black.

Ooh, yes. Okay.

This is going to, people are going to make a killing on eBay

selling these new style badges forever to put on their old

shipbox.

No, they aren't.

No one's going to notice.

No one cares.

Everybody's going to do it.

How dare you even include this story?

No one cares, Chris.

I think it's, I like it when there's little subtle things

that brands do and I find it fascinating.

All right. Tell me a little bit about it.

Do you find it fascinating like the details with vehicles

and like maybe the history about how you can look back

at things in vehicles?

I do. I find it fascinating.

I do too. And that's where the common year comes in

because every receipt, every late night fix,

every roundel badge that you update,

that tells a story of your car's identity.

Most of us have it scattered.

Well done, Jake.

Or maybe nowhere at all.

Thank you. That was much better than Nokia's transition.

Appreciate that.

The common gear is an online platform built by real car

people and allows you to digitize everything in relation

to your car, your maintenance records, your build photos,

your travel log, your provenance.

It's all organized, all searchable, all in one place.

Maybe we've got decades of paperwork like Chris showed

last week, White Club Service at the Opera.

I meant to go through that and find like the most

ridiculous crap in there because there's some really

insane, just weird like air pressure was increased one PSI

on January the 4th, 1978.

So if you have records that detailed,

they do also have a White Club Service.

You can literally just bring like ship them everything,

your entire folder, or maybe it's the white legal box

of paperwork, and they will digitize it all.

They can do that on site too if you're really,

maybe you have a collection of these ship boxes

that all have a ton of records.

And by doing this, do you know what you do?

You make it less of a ship box, Chris,

because now all of a sudden you have credibility

that's been added to your vehicle.

You've got a well-documented ship box.

Yes, that is a ton of documentation under your ship box.

Okay, no, it does add value.

If you're going to go sell your car, you can show,

look, these are all the records, it's all digitized,

it's all verified.

You can go to thecommongear.com, make your free account,

and start building your car's digital legacy today.

Okay.

All right.

Now let's get on to some really, yeah, happy news.

Yeah.

I do have, it was kind of an unhappy week in car news, Jake.

I know.

I was being facetious by looking at the next 10.

Yeah.

We have, January 22nd, the United States House of Representatives

voted 268 to 164 to reject an amendment

that would have defunded the federal car kill switch mandate.

You know, I did go through and I,

and I usually, I have a bunch of different sources

that I used to go find news.

It was so bleak this week that I even went to AI and went,

please find me some positive news.

It's a bleak week.

The episode title is, this week is bleak.

This week is bleak.

57 Republicans joined Democrats to defeat it.

Most Republicans voted against this.

You know what, I dislike about a lot of these laws

and how they're presented.

The language about how this is read tells me exactly what happened.

So they, they voted to reject an amendment

that it would have defunded that,

which means this was like a package bill

that had a bunch of the crap in it.

This was just one little line.

Yeah.

Well, look at all these people that voted not to track your car.

It's like, no, I'm sure they just put it with everything else

that was like, and also we're not going to vote to poison water.

This was an amendment for this particular mandate.

It was actually.

So this wasn't a vote on the whole bill.

This was a vote on the, this particular thing.

This was in the mandate comes from section two, four,

two, two, zero of the 2021 infrastructure investment

and jobs act by an era infrastructure bill.

So this was like a shovel ready, build bridges, build roads,

build this, that or the other thing to help the economy,

whatever it is, government spending, blah, blah, blah.

And in it was this thing where you have to have

a car switch, kill switch in your car.

That's what bugs me because it's just,

and I bugs every American.

I know everyone hates this.

It's just, it's just how they do it.

It requires that by 2026, all new passenger vehicles,

including what the law cause calls

advanced drunk and repair impaired driving prevention technology.

The law directs the national highway traffic and HTSA

to develop standards for systems that passively monitor

the performance of a driver.

Really passively.

This is all the time.

It's always watching you, always.

And prevent or limit motor vehicle operation

if an impairment is detected.

Yeah.

If the NHTSA missed its November 24 deadline

for finalizing the rules,

but says it's working towards 2026 implementation,

the agency reports ongoing challenges

distinguishing between different types of impairment,

intoxication versus fatigue versus distraction

versus medical conditions.

Oh, who would have thought that a simple idea like this

would extrapolate in spider web

into a miasma of regulatory pain?

Who would have ever thought?

What if you just, what if your baseline,

you just act drunk all the time

so that when you are, you can just fake it?

That was a joke.

Some comedian was like, yeah, I went to the DMV drunk.

So then when they take my photo and I look at it,

you know, I just look drunk.

So then they look and pull me over and it's normal.

They can't tell.

Blah, blah, blah.

What's the baseline then?

Yeah, that's what I'm saying.

Like, do they baseline you?

And so it's like, right, this is the person.

The amendment to be fun was introduced by Republican

Thomas Massey of Kentucky on X.

He wrote, federal law says new cars of 2026 must monitor

drivers and shut down if the car disapproves.

Disapproves.

Your dashboard should not be the judge, jury, and executioner.

Interesting.

I don't think it's going to be an executioner.

Well, yeah, that's a little like, yeah, or just,

I don't approve.

We're going off the side rail.

The seatbelt just cinches tight and just like you can't breathe.

It just suffocates you in your car and you're just dead.

Like that's a little hyperbolic, sir.

Yeah, you were just tired on your way to work this morning.

Sorry, sir.

And it has like this nice voice.

You've been deemed.

You know what I'm picturing is,

let's see if you get this reference.

Hello, welcome to Robot Johnny.

I'm sorry, we disapprove of your total recall.

That's total recall.

And so it's going to be just Robo Johnny.

Republican, Republican.

That's Republican.

Yes.

Republicans.

You're doing really well at the baseline drunk level.

See, no one will know otherwise.

Yep.

Scott Perry of Pennsylvania backed the amendment,

arguing that that a car can shut itself down

because it thinks you're impaired.

It's no technological leap to give the government

the ability to shut it down remotely.

Well, I think I thought that was the whole point.

When you say kill switch, that is, I mean,

obviously that name isn't their official name of it, I'm assuming.

I, the kill switch.

Kill switch makes it seem like, yeah,

the whole point is that they can shut it off remotely.

Yes.

On the other side, mothers against drunk driving,

backs the mandate, projecting, could save over 10,000 lives.

You could do so much to save people's lives.

What, I have an idea.

Okay, let's do it.

What if, what if you wake up in the morning

and you walk over your mirror and there's a,

there's a psych, like an AI psychiatrist in your mirror

that detects whether you should be able to go out in a public

day because you're going to have to interact with other people.

And if you are deemed to be too depressed or too angry that day,

there is a kill switch on your front door

and you are not allowed to go outside.

I know.

In fact, in fact, what about this?

What about just, you've seen Minority Report, right?

Yeah.

Whatever, just don't, just everybody stay at home.

Nobody interact with anybody.

Nobody go anywhere.

Nobody have.

That wasn't Minority Report.

That was the other one where they all have robots that go out for them.

No, no, Minority Report.

You know that movie with the balls that come down the thing?

Yeah, with the pre-cogs.

The pre-cogs, where they just, they somehow know

that you're just going to break the law and there they are.

And the system cannot be abused because it's absolutely perfect.

Can you imagine being, let's say, can you imagine being in a state?

Okay, you're in a state.

You know what being in a state means?

Like a state of happiness or the state of Minnesota.

I would love to be in a state of eternal happiness.

I'm saying, what if you are in a state where, let's say, for example,

your kid falls down and has a compound fracture?

Okay.

So you and Nikki, bandage the kid up, you throw him in the back seat,

and you are distressed.

You are in a state and the car goes,

sorry, you're not able to drive.

I don't like what I'm seeing here.

Sorry, the car is not going to start.

Well, Chris, it's a good thing.

Well, then you should have just be patting it on the car.

Yeah, we pay good government taxes to have ambulatory services.

I hate this so much.

See, this is what I should be arguing for, but I don't.

Okay, so how does this actually work, this technology?

Well, it doesn't until you have all the tracking apps and everything else.

It works like this.

A camera watches your eyes and your eyelids in real time,

analyzing subtle changes in blink patterns, pupil dilation, gaze stability,

and micro movements that indicate intoxication.

No glasses, sunglasses, sunglasses.

That's all I have to say, mirrored sunglasses.

How wear my sunglasses at night?

So I can defeat my motor vehicle camera.

Okay, yeah.

This is purely behavioral.

The company behind it is called Smart Eye.

This is finished from, yeah, we've come to dominant play

and driving monitoring systems.

Yeah, we make it, we watch, we watch, we win your drive.

Their AI one unit runs the entire system under two watts of power

in a single self-contained package.

They won the CES 2026 Innovation Award for it, blah, blah, blah.

Oh, I'm sure they did.

Wow, what, can I buy stock in that company?

Could I have just, hey, everybody check to see if Nancy Pelosi has stock in Smart Eye one.

What's his face, the freaking zombie Republican guy from Kentucky?

As for cost, industry estimates put full driver monitoring systems at $50 to $200 per car.

Yeah.

The expensive part is the DMS infrastructure itself,

an infrared camera typically mounted on the steering column or dashboard,

infrared LEDs to illuminate your face,

and a dedicated processor to run the AI in real time.

And the software stack that interprets the data and communicates with the vehicle's other system.

And something has to interface with the government to report that you, naughty boy,

are attempting to drive your car.

I was going to say, oh, is this just like a totally self-contained system?

What's wrong with the breathalyzer interlock?

Because that's an after-the-fact thing, Chris.

That's only if you get in trouble several times.

So why don't we just ban alcohol?

There you go.

I like it.

Why not?

Yep.

Can I kill people?

Actually, I'm all for that because I'm going to start a still up in my hill.

So this is not a new thing, Jake.

If you think government-connected kill switch sounds far-fetched,

the architecture already exists, just not from the government.

And I did not know this.

Since the early 2010s, subprime auto lenders have been installing starter

interrupt devices in cars as a conditions of the loan.

Misappayment, sometimes by just a few days,

and the lender remotely disables your ignition.

By 2014, roughly 2 million vehicles had them.

One woman in Las Vegas testified to the state legislature that her car shut off

while she was driving on Interstate 15.

The steering wheel locked.

The engine was dead, and she barely made it to the shoulder.

Others have been stranded in dangerous neighborhoods at night,

unable to get their kids from the doctor.

The industry's defense?

Well, without all these devices,

these people wouldn't qualify for a loan at all.

Oh, sure.

So it's predatory, just like this other shit.

Only a handful of states regulate the practice.

Wisconsin is the only one that banned it outright.

And you know what else this reminds me of, Jake?

Is when I had a Volkswagen.

Does my truck have this?

It would if it was a diesel.

What do you mean?

When I had my Volkswagen TDI, you have to put something in it called

DEF, Diesel Exhaust Fluid.

Diesel Exhaust Fluid.

It's P. It's urea.

It's synthetic urea.

And what it does is it helps eliminate the nitrous, the NOX that comes out of the exhaust.

Makes it pollute a lot less.

Great, whatever.

It's an additional system on the car.

But because the vehicles need to be able to have this system working on the car,

when it fails, you get a countdown.

It's DEF system inoperable 500 miles till the car will not start.

Car will not start in 500 miles.

400, 300, 200, 150.

And you don't believe it's going to happen.

It happens.

Your car will start.

I remember this because you tested it.

I tested it.

I went down to zero.

Nope, I had to have it towed to the dealership.

You couldn't even just fill it up and it'd be good to go?

No, it didn't work.

It was broken.

The system was inoperable.

It was broken.

That's what the problem was.

I didn't mind putting the fluid in.

I don't care.

Oh, I thought you were saying you were like just like you wanted to prove a point.

You're like, they're not going to shut that off.

I wasn't trying to rebel.

I don't like this stuff anyways.

No, it shuts off.

Now imagine if they could just shut it off with a little button by some

smarmy looking skinny dude with no hair and glasses at a cubicle.

Why is he skinny?

I'm just thinking about this guy that I was at the IRS when I went there when I was trying to do it.

I was like, who are you personifying right now?

I remember that story on the podcast.

I don't know why you had to go to the IRS, but I vaguely remember this story.

I had to go to the IRS because to get my mortgage, I needed to refile my taxes because I did it wrong.

And I went to an office and because I had already digitally filed, I was not allowed to file again.

This is producer just typed no, which I don't know if that means no,

like don't tell the story or know that you haven't told it.

She doesn't want the IRS to come after us.

So I'm not allowed to tell the story.

No, like don't tell the story.

Okay, that's what I thought.

You're welcome.

I did end up in a federal IRS building.

Yes, being threatened by force of violence.

I love the IRS.

You guys are great.

You guys are really, really great.

Tell me a little bit about on that, Jake.

When the alcohol ban happens again, I don't know where I was going with this.

If you need a way through the woods with your moonshine,

we had the software for you.

Exactly what I was getting at.

Yes, looking for the best app for navigating your next moonshine run.

Look no further than on Exhoff Road.

I mean, it's kind of a clever ad.

I'm going to run with it.

All right, they have over center and 50,000 miles of trails,

comprehensive offline maps.

You're going to explore without worrying about cell service,

the app features trail ratings, detailed information,

a discover tool to help you find trails and routes near you.

It also includes public and private land boundaries,

you know, where you are traversing or are able to traverse,

where you can legally off-road camp, explore.

And if you want to stay connected,

the app features a cell service layer

so you can plan your route with service in mind.

Great for emergencies or staying in touch.

Mrs. Producer said she has the video.

I don't know if that's the video of me running moonshine.

No, it's not, okay.

I thought she made an AI video again of me doing something

like Jake running moonshine.

No, no, she's talking ahead.

She's talking on Ex.

Keep going, keep going.

App features.

You have a piece of mind.

There's wildfire layers.

There's also active fire and smoky area layers.

So you can always know where you were going,

where to be safe and be aware of current conditions.

You have tools like the route builder,

waypoint marking, real-time updates,

route sharing.

You're fully equipped for any adventure.

Try it for seven days.

Hit the trails with confidence.

Download on Ex off-road today.

So we announced that-

I used it this weekend, Chris.

I used it this weekend.

Yes, I did.

Beautiful, beautiful.

Last time I used it was up at my buddy Jason's land

that he has.

We were trying to like walk around and plot out

and we got lost in the woods and used on Ex

to save our butts and get us out

because there was no way to see the trees were so thick.

It was a cloudy winter day.

You're screwed.

So we opened up the on Ex

and I didn't have any internet, but it didn't matter.

So it was wonderful.

It worked really, really well.

You can do measurements between points on there.

And I was trying to see, I was like,

I wonder if I can see my buddy's house from here,

from my hill, because he lives in Hudson.

And I was like, that's a ways away from me.

And so I pointed mine and his and drew the line

and it was like 5.2 miles as the crow flies.

And then I did that and put it in 3D mode and zoomed it

and overlaid what I was looking at.

And then to get out my own house.

How many trees did you realize you had to cut down?

Maybe only one.

Maybe one.

I'll share it with you later.

Maybe only one.

Other stories that cannot be held on the record.

News: Solid States, Bad News, and Kill Switches

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