Paul's back...Donna calls; We talk driverless Teslas and the Kia Tasman towing fail

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This is going to look so good on my Tinder.

The Driver's Show with Paul Marek and Gordy Waters.

So everyone's been wondering where Paul is and the Melbourne Gangland Wars have got him.

He's been machetied up.

Yeah, all I did was try to open a tobacco store and here we are.

Yeah, and you got a couple of firebombs, a couple of cocktail bombs thrown in.

Do you know that happens regularly at a place right up the road from me?

You can tell if this guy is called a Victoria.

This guy, this guy is clearly not playing ball with the with the cigarette mafia.

And he's like, you know, no, no, I'm just going to I'm going to do by the real deal.

And the bikeies and whatever are just like, see, we don't think so.

Yeah, like once a month, this poor bastard shop windows get smashed in.

You know, we we actually, I know there's nothing to do with cars,

but where we used to live in South Melbourne, they popped up a tobacco store.

I'm like, oh, you're you're fucked.

Which whereabouts was that one?

There was one that had a car driven through it and then set on fire.

This was a different one.

But straight after it opened, was that the Claredon?

That was the one on Claredon Street in New York Street.

Yeah, but this is a different one.

Oh, because that building.

Yeah, my dad. Oh, there you go.

Yes, he was coming back to collect some debt.

Yeah, it's all linked in with the Mercedes Benz here.

So straight after these guys opened, they installed like military grade

bollards, bars on all the windows, shutters.

Oh, just to sell a pack of smokes.

Lovely. So anyway, yeah.

But yeah, how good is Victoria?

Victoria is it is it has gone downhill like you wouldn't believe.

There's taxes on everything.

Crime is completely out of control.

Yeah. If the police aren't busy doing a protest,

they're searching for a guy in the forest.

They just do not have time to actually do any actual police work anymore.

It feels weird as an outsider looking in and someone who grew up in Melbourne,

someone who still kind of considers it home.

It's so weird to watch.

Yeah, just the decline from from Covid with all made Dan Andrews to what?

I mean, what a fucking debacle that was.

How is he in and this is now completely off cars.

But in case you've just joined us, this is what really grinds your gears

with Gordon Pavley.

How was he in the picture with Kim Jong-un?

So fitting, she and Putin.

I'm like, you, mate, you do not care.

You just have he's just lost the plot, isn't he?

He is. He is a piece of fucking work.

Yeah. Yeah.

Is he a member of the Portier Golf Club yet?

Not anymore. Not my mate, Steve Price.

Fix that up. Good pricey.

Good on him. Have you been in the words of Mr. G?

Where have you been, bitch? Where have you bloody been?

Yeah, here, there and everywhere.

And we're going to be talking about one particular thing today,

which is a Tesla drove me around on its own.

I only had to intervene a couple of times, but it drove me around on its own.

So we'll talk about that.

That was on the streets of Melbourne, Brisbane.

I was going to say you could have run into a couple of gangs or something.

Just set the lights, the jacks pull it up, the gypsies.

But, yeah, so I've been there.

I went to China, did, I've just been everywhere a lot

and just haven't had time to do a podcast with you.

But I thought Steph did a great job, Trevor.

Not so much. Yeah, look, it is what it is.

But can I just tell you something Trevor didn't do, actually?

When he was on the episode, just give it a second.

Yeah, yeah, that's silence.

Fucking couldn't do it.

Just couldn't stop fucking talking.

You know what?

There was there's actually a moment you can hear in that episode

where I just gave up and it's about two minutes in.

But I actually thought it was a really good episode.

So I know you didn't think that, but I thought it was great.

So by the way, Trev, the problem is

Trev is looking really thin now and he's looking good.

Like I don't have much to tease him about

because I'm now the fattest shit in the room.

How that chair is buckling.

Yeah, you know who I reckon is in danger?

Eddie McGuire's neck because it looks like it's hiding under my chin.

I just think any of those, you know,

mums with eight kids who win a cherry on the Today Show.

If if Trev just he will he will ravish them.

Come and see the real fucking key of carnival.

Oh, look at the carnival in my pants.

Fucking there's room for eight.

Oh, God, Trevor, Trevor fucking long.

What a what a debacle that was.

But yeah, look, he's he's trimmed up.

He's looking good.

He won't shut up and yeah, he's sort of he.

Yeah, yeah, he's definitely like like

king of the Hollywood mums now.

Like he can just tell he'd go down to the soccer practice

and like and trawl for pus.

Like he just totally would near the tuck shop, no doubt.

No.

Anyway.

So what else has been happening?

Oh, the bloody couple of cars that I've been driving.

Let's let's do a bit of back and forth.

So I got my hands on a kid, Tasman.

Oh, yeah.

Hmm.

It's something.

It's a it's a big girl.

It's a big girl.

Yeah, I mean, yeah.

Donna could sleep in the back.

Oh, yeah. That's how big it is.

It looks like Donna.

That's right. Yeah.

Jesus, like the where the headlights are.

It looks like that looks like Donna's side under tip.

Just that real whoopie Goldberg style tip.

Just kind of going like you go and give her a nipple cripple.

But you sort of somewhere near the side.

Nicole, nipple cripple at a back scratch.

They both have it at the same time.

Yeah. Don't get me excited, Pavley.

Look at the design.

Look, I said this in my video and people went, Oh, you just on the tank from Kia.

The design, I don't personally like it.

But the styling is subjective.

People will either love it or hate it.

And in our comments on the video, it's genuinely 50 50.

There are 50 percent of people who love the design and 50 percent who hate it.

And to me, it's like, I don't care where you buy.

If you I'm telling you what it's like to from a, you know, analytical

point of view, what it's like to drive and operate as a dual cab.

You the designer can really give a shit about the only comment

I had on the design was the position of the headlights will make it tricky

for anyone that does proper off-roading because you're going to smash

the shit out of those things on air and branches and stuff like that.

But outside of that, the cars cars fine.

We actually just it's going live tomorrow as we record this,

but we'll be live by the time you hear it.

We published a towing video and it's not great at towing.

We had a lot of issues with the stability control just randomly

coming on when it was driving.

The brake controller causes the brake lights to flash on a million miles

an hour randomly.

So it's just a couple of things that they really should have ironed out

during the engineering process that they clearly have just totally missed.

Especially when this car, like there's a lot of eyes on this car

and there's a lot of critical noise about it as well.

They really kind of should have dived into that.

The towing is bad news.

But yeah, look, I mean, this is day two.

I can barely really talk about much.

But the interior is nice.

Interior is fine.

It's it's fine.

It's fine. Do you know what I found weird was in the interior?

There's several reminders to tell you how big the car is.

Yeah, like if you look at like there's this weird sort of tray in the center

console, then you lift the lid up of the center console.

And it's under that as well.

So they've kind of copied Ram.

Ram does that with the 1500 and other models.

Problem with all of that is that it doesn't take into account

like if you get the tow kit, you've a tow bar sticks out,

which extends the length of the vehicle.

If you get a bull bar, it changes the length of the vehicle.

If you get different tires, it's no longer the same height.

That's right.

It's no like so it's kind of a weird thing to have.

I feel like it's more of an aesthetic, to be honest.

I honestly do.

I think the insides like nice.

It's good.

I mean, it's you're looking at, say, the interior of the BYD shark,

which I think is better.

Well, which variant are you driving?

Tasman X Pro.

Yeah, that's a top spec.

So yes, because it's got the little tray,

the little hidey hole above the wheel arch.

Yeah.

The other thing as well is that that also from just from a technical standpoint,

everything but the X Pro has a manually locking rear diff.

Everything else has an auto locking rear diff,

which I think is just the worst creation ever to exist on a dual cab you

that you want to go off-roading because it will wait for a delta

in wheel speed on the rear axle and then it will just lock the rear diff

just out of nowhere and it can become really problematic

if it snaps sideways on you and you're expecting it.

Why there isn't just a button is just so strange.

It must be a cost saving thing,

because I cannot think of any positive reason

you would not have a button to lock the rear diff.

And it's pretty like commonplace too.

Yeah.

And that one also, the top spec also has the speed variable

sort of hill descent and ascent.

The rest of them just have a standard hill descent control

from an off-road perspective,

the Tasman is excellent based on the testing we've done.

But only in the X-Pro because you step down to the X line.

It does weird stuff like you've got the rear diff

that can't be manually locked.

It will change up gears on its own.

So if you're doing a hill climb in low range and first gear,

it'll it'll just go up his second for you.

And I'm like, no,

because it will just stop your movement entirely

and like send you backwards.

It is stuff like that.

I just find so strange why they've they've engineered these things.

It's it's really weird if they sort of thought to themselves,

we're just going to classify the X-Pro

as the only four-wheel drive going car.

Maybe.

It's just a weird thing on a 70 something thousand dollar car.

It is quite expensive.

It's actually the same or slightly more expensive

than a V6 Ford range of wild track.

So you're getting and you're getting more.

You're getting more in that world.

It's getting a much better engine for towing

and doing all the other stuff you need to do.

But in saying that the engine is actually far punchier

than the numbers would suggest

because it's on paper.

It should be not that great.

But I found it to be to be pretty good

with the only real downside being the gearbox.

It hunts a lot.

And the reason they've done that is because it's down on torque

and if they basically have a hyperactive gearbox,

it feels more responsive to the driver

because it's always in the right gear.

Had they not have had that,

you'd be constantly trying to lean on the torque band

to get it to move or slipping back through gears

which would become, you know,

problematic if you're trying to move fast.

So yeah, I don't know.

It'll be interesting to see how this sells

and I know they obviously want to move units.

I found it interesting when Steph Coombs came in here

and she was at the launch,

they were aiming somewhere about being number four

in the market, which I find a weird place to be.

They reckon their main competition is the BYD Shark.

I'm like, well, okay,

you're looking at a car that's probably

obviously not gonna tow with the Shark.

Yeah, they're completely different.

I don't know why they would have done that.

Yeah, it was a weird one.

But the Shark is far cheaper.

Yeah, like it's...

Yeah, I don't know, I don't know.

It'll be interesting to see how it goes over the next few years.

What they've done too is they've put a lot of money

in this car.

And marketing.

Yeah, that's what I mean.

Not just into the actual car,

but into the marketing of the car.

Like the launchers were nuts.

Steph was saying she went to the launch

where they did like Tasman Town or something.

And I think...

They took over a town.

Yeah, yeah.

I think a football player cupped on the tit, I'm not sure.

He was paid to do that.

I'm just throwing around no ligation,

she's gonna kill me.

I'm kidding.

But yeah, they've put a lot of money into this thing

and it'll be interesting to see where it goes.

Yeah, so it's just a random other thing as well.

Because we had nothing to do on a Saturday.

That sounds like it.

It sounds like a pretty normal weekend for you.

Melbourne 4x4 show was on.

And I said to my brother,

should we take the kids?

And my daughter's four.

His kids are four and six.

Nice.

They thought it was like a show,

like the circus where things happen.

So the first mistake is we took kids.

Because when we got there,

they were like, oh, when's the show on?

And I'm like, we're at the show.

It's all these stationary things here

and all the old people.

You're such an arsehole.

So that was a bit grim.

But it was...

No problem.

Where are the monster tracks, dad?

Oh no, no, this is like,

it's just a big four-wheel drive and it stands there.

And we just look at it

and we talk about me and your uncle get together

and we bitch about your mum.

Sorry.

I was...

And thank you to everyone that said hello to me.

It was...

Oh, right there.

I don't know if any of you was...

Little celebrity in the 4x4 show.

But it was incredible.

It was jam-packed.

I didn't expect it to be this busy.

It was completely chockers.

But the amount of interest and activity in this space

is on another planet.

And you can see why ARB is making so much money.

They had the ARB stand,

they literally had like 10 tables

where they were doing quoting

and every single seat was full with a line.

So you would sit down,

get a quote for your four-wheel drive

based on stuff you'd seen at their stand

and schedule in to pay for it and get it fitted.

And every stand had different types of equipment

they were doing.

They had a 4x4 show with Lucas

who runs the Springs 4x4 Park

and Mad Matt who also does a whole bunch of off-roading as well.

They were doing some cool stuff at the Maxis Mountain

or whatever it was called.

So it was really cool to see

and highly recommend going next year if it's...

And take your kids.

Man, what's going on?

I can't believe you did that.

Yeah, it's a rookie era.

Yeah.

Like maybe just fed them chips.

Did you take them out from Maxis or something afterwards?

Bought them chips and stuff.

Yeah.

Anyway.

You're a dead ass.

Hey, you know what was interesting?

I had an MX-5 and I want to do a quick shout-out

to Sutter and Mazda for this.

Bloody hell.

You know, it's funny because quite often

we'll get together and we'll bitch about car dealerships

and how the service is going down.

They were actually really good.

So shout-out and props to where that is due.

They were really nice.

But it did get me thinking.

It's a...

How much is a new MX-5 these days?

About 60, roughly?

Yeah, good question.

They used to be like a $30,000 car.

Yeah, not anymore.

Not anymore.

How much does the MX-5...

It's an X-Chat GPT car expert, guys.

That's lost.

I'll do the same.

Hang on.

$43,000.

It starts with for the Roadster manual.

So that used to be a $30,000 car

and it goes up to $52,000.

Not for that hard top.

No, I think that's for the soft top.

That's the 35th anniversary.

This is riveting radio.

OK, so the RF goes up to $57,000 to $20,000

for the top speed.

And then once you get that on the road, that's about 60.

Yeah.

This was a soft top, but I know it was some sort of special edition

had the extra brakes and some tuning done in the engine.

Fun car.

Don't get me wrong, right?

2025, if they're still using the little dial for the...

It's a deep connection.

That thing is gross.

Yeah, for the Apple CarPlay.

And it was actually really difficult to do.

You can't...

It's stupid because it's like once you're parked,

you can use it as a touchscreen.

But once you're going and you're on the go,

you've got to use the stupid toggle, which makes things way more...

No sense.

Yeah.

And I sort of thought, why would anyone buy a brand new one?

Yeah.

Buy one that's two years old or something like that.

Absolutely.

The one that's got 5,000, 10,000 K's on it,

you're saving an absolute lot of coin

and you're getting the exact same car.

I mean, driving wise, there's no doubt about it.

They're an iconic car for a reason.

But it still drives like a car that was driving like that.

15 years ago.

Yeah.

I'd probably get one without all the bullshit

because I didn't need it.

Yeah.

You know what I mean?

I don't disagree at all.

I saw heaps of people buy them.

I said that and the Mustang.

I saw a graphic that this dude that follows the car market does.

For Mustang, we're like in the top five.

I think markets globally, which is crazy.

Yeah.

So people love those sort of midlife crisis sports car

style things in Australia.

That's me.

Gordon, that is me.

Yeah.

The new Mustang looks good.

Looks good.

It's expensive, a guzzle fuel.

Fucking who cares?

Sounds good.

Sounds fucking good.

And I'm going to like, this is going to look so good on my tinder.

I'm going to fucking fight it with me and my Mustang

and I'm drinking some great northern

and I've got my fucking monster energy drink flat cap on.

And like, I've just fucking finished sheet metal at TAFE.

And I've got my life together.

Paid well.

$70,000 car.

You know what I loved?

I had a mini Cooper S.

Oh, cute.

Yeah, two, two.

Here comes Gordon.

Loved it.

This one had the JCW fit out.

It's neat.

I used to have a Cooper S.

And it's amazing how much they've

changed in the last couple of years

because when I had mine, mine was like back when

they were very, you could really customize them.

Like you could put whatever dash you wanted,

whatever seats.

So I had these really great British lounge green leather

seats and like a wood grain dash.

And it was, you know, it was a gay car.

Because with your genesis.

You guys have my genesis.

Stop it, Steven.

Yeah, what were we talking about?

Yeah, so I had the Cooper S. And you know,

that's such a fun car.

It is.

Look, before you say anything, it's interesting to see

they've done a bit of a different approach nowadays

where you don't really get as much choice as you used to.

And I get why.

But this had the JCW interior, which you can choose as an option.

I do like that interior that Mini does.

The circular OLED display is cool.

It is a horrifically bad infotainment system.

It's laggy and just shit in a lot of ways.

I didn't find that at all.

But the thing that disappoints me

is that they've taken all the JCW out of it.

The JCW used to have crackles and pops.

And when it was supercharged,

you could hear everything that was going on.

This one, if you turn off the interior sounds,

it does not make any noise.

The new JCW.

Yeah, it's like, what is this thing on?

Like, I just wish they would bring that back.

Why can't I just tick a box that says sports exhaust

that is raucous and just angry?

Because the rest of the cars are really cool.

I just think that they've just missed a trick there.

Yeah, I haven't driven the JCW one yet.

I'm really keen to, especially the countrymen.

That's based on the X1, right?

X1, yeah.

What have they, they've just bought out

like a version of the X1, which is kind of like an M.

Yeah, I think it's the 35i is the X1, the hot one.

That basically is the countryman JCW.

But it's a fun car.

It goes really quick.

Like it's from all of that sort of stuff.

It's good big brakes, all that.

But yeah, just, I just wish it could just

have a bit more personality.

Yeah, I wonder if they,

I wonder if you could change that with an exhaust.

Yeah, if you go after market.

The thing is with cars these days,

I just have so many emissions control devices

that I just take the life out of them.

And I just wish that if I'm paying for a JCW,

just, you know, just let me tick a box.

I'll sign a waiver.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, whatever.

Well, yeah.

Look, I liked it.

It was fun.

It was still throw around.

This was the air switch.

I thought it was still plenty quick

for like the bloody air.

So I'm like, ah, this is,

this has got some, some throw to it.

It's good fun.

It's still a little car in a way.

It's still, it's getting bigger.

Oh yeah.

You know, it's definitely not the little car it used to be,

but I guess it's a little by today's standards.

Yeah, that's true.

It's a beautiful, I had this beautiful color.

I don't want to know what the color was.

It was like a blue.

It almost looked like a Tiffany blue.

Yeah, right.

Mm-hmm.

I wouldn't know what that looks like.

Really?

No.

No, you definitely wouldn't know.

It was good.

What have you driven lately?

What have I been doing?

Did the, the Tasman,

I spent some time in the Ranger plug-in hybrid.

Oh, you know, it was snooze.

It was good,

but not the one I drove,

StormTrack or whatever it was called.

It was obscenely overpriced.

Never listened to the noise it was making.

I put this up on my Instagram and

And it's a hybrid as well?

Yeah, instantly got a call from Ford

because they were panicking about the noise

that it was making.

But basically I went out to the driveway,

had it charging overnight,

went out to the driveway,

turned it on so that it would run the heater,

but it was in AV mode,

so the engine was not on.

So have a listen to this.

I'm just gonna put it up to the speaker.

No, it's making some rough sounds when it's started.

So this is a cold start on full electric

with the battery full.

It sounds like something's rattling in that fan.

So my theory,

and they haven't confirmed this,

but my theory is when you get into a car like that,

manufacturers, depending on how they do it,

they operate these in two different ways.

They either let you run it on electric

and just leave the internal combustion engine dormant

and just never even think about it.

Well, what Ford appears to do is

even if you're running in full electric,

it will circulate like some sort of heated liquid

through the internal combustion engine

so that when it does have to fire up,

you could be doing 100Ks now.

You don't want it to go straight to 2,000 RPM

and just be sitting there under heavy load.

Yeah, when we used to do my engineering job,

this is in a LinkedIn account that the Smartie has.

Yeah, I'm so proud of my team

because here's why I did well.

No, so when I did my engineering job,

we worked at data centers

and data centers all have these enormous generators

that run if the electricity goes out.

So if the electricity goes out,

data centers have battery packs that take over immediately,

then generators start

and then generators run the site for potentially weeks on end

because they've got huge fuel tanks.

And what they would do is

when they were running generator tests,

they would start them in anger,

which is where you basically turn it on

and load it up immediately.

But those generators all had like heat jackets

that would run warm oil through them

so that when it started,

you weren't starting a cold engine.

And so that's what Ford's doing.

But the problem is that it sounds like

whatever was running on that car

was like a pump of some sort circulating fluid potentially.

I was parked on a hill

and it sounds like perhaps the pump wasn't able

to access the liquid that it was meant to be circulating.

So yeah, I don't know whether they actually

tested a cold start on a hill

as part of the engineering program,

but yeah, a bit of a concerning one.

And outside of that, the car's fine.

I just don't know why you'd bother buying it.

It's a lot of money too.

Yeah, the range is woeful.

It's like realistic 30 kilometers of driving range,

which is appalling.

You're better off just buying like a BYD shark or a cannon.

Like if you need to do off-road and tow,

you get the cannon.

If you just want something quick and electric

and get around town, you get the BYD.

The Ford, I just don't know why anyone would buy it.

So that's a bit of a weird one.

Hey, we should talk about Tesla self-driving.

FSD, they call it.

FSD, brackets supervised.

Yes, I love that.

Which I wouldn't know what considers supervised.

Or what do they call it?

It's there's a word, like you've kind of got

to be overlooking the car.

Like supervising.

Yeah, not supervising.

Jesus Christ.

I wish Trevor was here.

Yeah, shout out.

We'd be able to talk lingo.

Yeah, probably.

Just industry chat.

Industry chat, oh, fuck.

While you're looking at it.

Yeah, I think, do you know what?

The word I think I probably was looking for is supervised.

Supervision, there you go.

It's in the name.

Yes, I want to know what constitutes supervised.

So you're letting the car go, drive, but you've got to supervise it.

Let me paint a picture first.

So I get a cryptic, like, phone call from tip.

Gordy, guess who this is?

I'm just going to answer it all.

I've ordered up to this.

Hello.

Currently, is that you, darling?

It's Donna.

How are you doing?

How are you, darling?

I fucking missed you a little.

Hopefully I've been listening to that stupid podcast.

You do with the the lesbian woman there.

What's her name?

Gordon.

So I've been having a little bit of a listen to that.

And you haven't been on, darling.

You've been in China or I got bloody.

The life fucking scared out of me.

I thought he said you're in a vagina.

I thought that clues he took.

You would have, you would have.

You would have loved the episode with Trevor, right?

He's a star.

Don't care for that hairy bastard.

I don't care for him.

I looked at his back and it looks like one of me flaps.

I've got a blow.

I've just been, I've been visiting his sister there in Casino.

And I've got a new, I've got a new occupation, darling.

Yeah, what is it?

I want everyone to check it out now.

My new thing.

My new occupation, darling, is Donna, the mattress actress.

Mattress, actress.

I've got a web shot and everything.

What does that entail?

Well, if you ever fucking had a steam dim sum,

I can fucking turn it fried in three seconds.

I can do it four at once.

Listen, I heard you bloody talking about them self-driving cars.

I'll tell you something.

When I'm in the, uh, bits of shitty sigma

and I'm telling McCaravan, I can do a bit of self-driving.

I fucking put the bloody steering wheel on my gut.

And then I just little, if I do need to fucking shift left,

I'll just leave out a little.

And then just caught me leg and goes to the left.

Well, thank you.

Thank you for the call, Donna.

Don't forget about Donna's air fresheners and stubby holders.

Don't forget to check out my website, Donna's Hot Dimmy.

Dimmy's and Titty's.

Find out.

So you're down in the lobby by the time we.

That was weird that your phone just would start going in the middle of this

professional podcast.

I really shouldn't be taking phone calls while we're doing this.

No, no, no.

That's, um, she's got a mouth on it, hasn't she?

Who's that Donna?

What's a Donna?

Yeah, I tune out.

I can't stand her.

She's a language that's disclosed.

She's got, um, she's just very unclassy.

She sounds very unkept.

Well, that's, that's true.

Yeah, well, you would know.

Yeah, I couldn't be in there.

Anyway, so what I was saying was I got a cryptic phone call from Tesla

and they said at a breath, mate, it's like, yeah, run out, run out of the room.

So I've literally done four steps and I sound like fucking Christopher

skates defending himself like Trevor six months ago.

Oh, Jesus, I think I'm going to get on the Trevor juice.

Oh, yeah.

So I got a cryptic phone call and like, I'll come up to Brisbane.

We're doing an event and, you know, we want you to experience something.

And I thought they were going to give us the Model Y performance to drive.

And I'm like, all right, can I bring the videographer and like, yes,

but you need to pay for him to come.

And I'm like, OK, they are the world's tightest car company.

So I'm like, right, we'll cover the cost of that.

So I flew up there with a videographer and we went into this room

and they're like, we're about to roll out full self-driving bracket,

supervised bracket for Australia and New Zealand.

I was like, oh, this is exciting.

And we flew up to Mount Cotton, which is like a driver training facility

outside of Brisbane.

And I thought they were just going to drive us around Mount Cotton.

I thought, oh, this is going to be stupid.

It's like a curated road that you've got here.

It's not that special.

And they go, all right, so we've got some cars out the front.

You can go on a drive loop through to Brisbane and back.

And I was like, whoa, OK.

So we set up all the cameras on the car,

activated full self-driving, which requires you to answer

about 30 different disclaimers, none of which I've properly read.

It then drove me to the city, like on its own.

I literally just had my hands behind the wheel

and my feet near the brakes.

So did you have to put your hands on the wheel?

You don't have to.

It's not like autopilot where you have to interact with it

every 20 seconds.

You do not have to touch anything for the entirety of the drive.

And it will do everything from indicating, braking, stopping,

changing lanes, stopping at roundabouts, going through it.

Like it does everything.

And like it was weird.

I was do you keep your hands on your lap?

Well, technically, you need to still be in control, right?

And this is one of the things like you can't.

You've got to be.

What's the word I'm looking for?

Supervising it.

Right, that's the word.

Supervise. I have a question.

Yeah, if I am supervising, right, and having a way.

Yeah, well, because that would be the first thing.

You know, I remember when I remember when mobile phones

first got cameras.

Yeah. The first thing I did was

was film a willy and two of those eight pixels were.

Yeah, Jesus couldn't fit it.

Yeah, but according to a cop that I spoke to in Queensland,

he said that you don't have to have your hands on the wheel

as long as you have control of the vehicle.

So I think that's open to interpretation.

And just as a really quick side note,

Tesla has been sued by that many people in the States over

alleged auto pilot crashes.

They actually had to pay some

do 200 and something million dollars to the family.

He was involved in a crash.

And the crazy thing was that he allegedly wasn't even using autopilot.

So they said that no car would ever have been able to stop the crash

that he was in, because he was just not.

He dropped his phone or something, went looking for it.

So the judge awarded the family

33 percent of damages, which equated to be like 200 million.

So Tesla's appealing that.

I don't know that they've had any successful convictions

based on it running on autopilot,

because Tesla is a little tricky with the way they do things.

Every instance so far,

they say that autopilot was disabled and based on some testing

that the people have done on the Internet,

it disables just before an impact or a crash.

So I was like, yeah, it was disabled.

Yeah, one third of a second before it crashed into the thing.

So yes, technically, that's true.

But but anyway, look, what an interesting kind of

what an interesting kind of get out of jail for free card.

Yeah, like, yeah.

If you'll say, well, we disable it,

like they've got every chance to correct it.

Yeah, no. Yeah.

So yeah, for the most part, it worked well.

There was a couple of instances

and we've got a video up on YouTube

that you can sort of watch all of this on

a couple of instances in the city in Brisbane.

So what I did was they had a curated drive route

and I'm like, I'm immediately going to change that

because I want to go to Bunnings.

I want to see what it's like not on a drive route.

It's obviously a Saturday morning.

You wanted a sausage and bread.

And yeah, immediately as I sort of deviated

from their drive route, it made a couple of pretty serious

errors, one of which was like driving

across oncoming traffic, basically.

And I had to take control of the car.

And then the other was at Bunnings

where it just failed to give way to another car

that had right of way.

So it was interesting to me as well.

So I always understood that this system

takes all the data from customers that drive Teslas

and then creates like an AI model of how to operate.

Well, there's your first mistake.

No, but it's, that's what people think.

But the way that it actually works

based on the discussion I had with one of their engineers

that we weren't allowed to quote or include

in any of the content was that

they globally have what they call safe drivers.

And these will be people that are paid by Tesla

to drive around in Teslas in learning mode.

And it will teach the car rules.

So things like if you're on a freeway

and you need to change lanes,

how much space do you safely need to do that?

So is it two meters?

Is it five, 10?

The car then knows that next time

it recognizes that it's on a freeway

through its camera system that it can change lanes

because it says that there is five meters

between those cars.

It knows how to respond to a speed hump.

It knows how to respond to a human in front of it,

a school crossing zone.

So it learns all of these things

because Teslas don't have radars or lightars.

They just use camera vision.

And that to me is a bit concerning

because the only other experience I've had

in an autonomous car was in Los Angeles in Waymo

where that was unreal.

That was a really cool experience

but there was no one else in the car.

It's just my wife and I,

no one driving, it's just the car doing it.

But that has all sorts of sensors

on top of it, front side.

That's got LiDAR or something on the top.

LiDAR radar, it's got ultrasonic sensors.

Like it is fully loaded.

So the next obvious question you're going to ask.

Can I bat one out in a Tesla?

That's correct.

Yes.

You can?

There's quite a few porn videos of people doing it

while they're on self-driving mode.

So I question whether these Teslas can pick up the,

what do we call it?

What's the word?

Supervision.

Supervision, yeah.

Well, actually it's funny, they have,

so when you're running just normal autopilot

which comes standard in all Teslas,

it requires you to like bump the wheel

every certain interval, like 20 seconds or something.

These cars, because you don't need to touch the wheel,

they still need to monitor you.

So there's actually a camera inside the car

that looks at your face

and it's able to use AI

to determine whether you're concentrating.

So it's not like one of those shitty systems

you find in a lot of Chinese cars today

where you look out the window to literally do a head check

and it's like, you're distracted.

It's like, no, I'm just fucking driving the car.

So it does a really good job with that.

Then what it'll do is if you are distracted

such as having intercourse with someone

in the passenger seat,

what it will do is start prompting you to intervene

and if you ignore it,

it will basically shut full self-driving down

for that whole session

so you won't be able to reactivate it.

And it logs that as well.

So it almost gives you a warning.

Pretty much, and it logs the amount of strikeouts

you've had, so that if you are in an accident

like this guy as part of that court case,

they actually mentioned how many strikeouts

he'd previously had.

So he had a history of being distracted while driving

which you obviously shouldn't have

because it takes a lot of fucking effort

to get this thing to do a strikeout due to distraction.

Like it is a lot of work.

So did you test that a little bit?

No. Did you try kind of like close your eyes?

I tested it previously in a standard Tesla

and it actually came to a full stop

and put its hazard lights on from memory.

So it managed that whole process

but because we're on public roads,

I didn't want to faff too much with it.

But there were a couple of other sort of interesting things

like we went through a roadwork zone on the freeway,

it dropped to 80 and the roadwork zone finished

and we'd passed like two sets of hundred signs

but it was still just doing 80

and it wasn't until the third one that it sped up again

and it's like, that's annoying.

And then another one where it entered around about

like just didn't even slow down for it

which would be fine to do if you could see everything

but there was a motorbike coming.

Oh God.

So I was like, oh, I don't know.

I've got a bad feeling about this self-drive shit.

I've really just...

This is supervised.

So their ambition for this is the RoboTaxi

which is basically where your car,

while you're here at work,

your car will drive off and do Uber for you

and generate you an income.

That's amazing.

But it's a great idea.

It's, well, I thought so as well

until I looked at the practicality of it.

If I look at my wife's car,

it is as if there was like a small nuclear reactor

that exploded.

It's like a mini Chernobyl inside her car

because there is shit everywhere.

Can you imagine her just parking that at work

and it going to pick up someone

and just having to get like...

She's got IBS2, does she?

My wife's got a bit of that too.

But you just imagine all the...

You'd have to clean your car.

I just don't like that concept.

But just imagine that though,

like you get your car returned or whatever

and there's just like a fucking grogan

on the passenger seat and just someone's bloody chicken

karma sitting under the seat.

Oops, oops.

So yeah, I think it's an interesting concept

and I am excited for the technology eventually working.

I just don't know that it's quite there just yet

and I'm glad it's still supervised.

We're still a long way away from...

And that's the other thing.

This is still technically a level two autonomous system

and a level two autonomous system

is no different to radar cruise control in a Mazda 2.

So they're technically classed as the same system

even though with a Mazda 2,

the car will prompt you a thousand times

and it won't let you let go of the wheel

whereas this will allow you to have like nothing on the car.

So yeah, how much do you think this costs?

I think it costs $10,000 per play.

That is a lot of money.

Yeah, it's a lot of money for an upgrade, isn't it?

Yeah, I think they're doing a monthly subscription

in the States.

I'm pretty sure it's like $99 a month

sort of probably be about 150 bucks here a month

which is a lot of money.

People where I think this might actually come in handy

both dad and my brother do night shift work

and have to drive about 80Ks to get to their job.

There's a lot of times where they will come home

feeling very tired

or they'll have to pull over on the side of the road

to have a power nap.

It could be good for people like that

where if you are on a longer distance drive

obviously you can't sleep while you're driving in the car

but to prevent the type of accidents

we see a lot with micro-sleeps and really drowsy drivers.

This could be a good stop gap.

Obviously you should always be stopping

and having a power nap

but it could come in handy as a backup

for people like that.

It could actually be handy for people

who are incapable of driving a car as well.

Well, you look at older people, the amount of times

and it's funny, it's actually not funny

but the amount of times they try and make it

like a whimsical thing

where they go they can views the break for the throttle.

It's gonna be one time where someone does that

and you're gonna kill someone

and so far it's been quite minor accidents

but like old people, this is great.

They still have their freedom behind the wheel.

They're not confined to getting taxis

and all this other stuff.

You can still in theory be sitting in the car

and they probably have sufficient control

to take over if something goes wrong

but they're not required to be fully in charge

which at the moment some older people struggle with.

I wonder if someone with no arms

could drive one of these.

Technically no because you have to be able

to press buttons on the screen.

Maybe if you could press the button on the screen somehow.

You can press it with your nose.

Yeah.

Press it with your tongue.

Right there.

I'm not laughing.

Okay, sorry, me neither.

I'm not laughing either.

That was just...

Clean the screen at the same time.

Speed a long night.

It's that time.

Anyway.

Is that finger smudges on the screen there?

Nah, it's my tongue.

Jesus Christ.

Oh, Jesus.

You wouldn't have it to cause a neck hour

and then just this fucking lick the screen.

Oh.

Anyway.

Anyway, driverless cars.

Oh, hey, I think that's it.

Yeah, I think that's it.

I think we're done.

I should mention that next week

we've got a pretty exciting guest on,

Rosso, where he had his other half.

Tim Rosso.

Yeah.

Merrick Watts a little while back

which was an interesting interview.

But this time Rosso is going to join us.

So we're going to chat with him.

We'll try and give away some copies

of his book as well.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

We'll sort that out.

Have a listen to that.

But yeah, if you've got any feedback,

contact at thedrivershow.com.au.

Make sure you get in touch.

Let us know what you like and don't like.

Actually, that's probably not a bad idea.

I think we've ever asked for feedback.

Yeah, we have.

Oh, OK.

And a lot of people say they don't like this show.

Oh, no, that was just mainly you.

And just mainly they don't like me.

Yeah.

Paul and Trevor.

Oh, we didn't get that.

That's probably not a bad idea.

The drivers show with Paul and Trevor.

With Paul and Trevor.

Oh, that's got a good ring to it.

Really?

With Paul and Steph.

Stop it.

What are you laughing at?

No, I don't know.

I was just thinking about you putting that car

in an automatic drive.

Let's go for a car review, Steph.

I don't even get that.

Don't worry.

Hey, you know what?

We didn't talk about the new prelude.

Yeah, we can just leave that to another episode.

I'll actually be driving it in Tokyo.

So we made this chat.

Let me know how powerless that car is.

What a hybrid piece of wow.

Oh, I had the Yunday Ionic 9 too.

That's the Kia EV9.

Interesting looking thing, isn't it?

Yeah.

Yeah, it's got quite the ass on it, doesn't it?

It's kind of like the front of the car

was like the people who designed the front of the car

didn't really speak to the people who designed the back.

And we're like, hey, we've got this bold future in mind.

We're going to do Ford thinking, Avant Garde.

And the people who did the back went,

we're going for a fucking 1980s Volvo station wagon.

It's also very expensive.

It's very expensive, $120,000.

I tell you what, it does do well.

It does do the interior quite well.

It is quite a nice plush interior.

And it is quick.

I mean, for a big ass car, it's like a five second car.

But also, it's soulless.

You know, these EVs, I'm starting to get a bit meh.

Well, the interesting thing is the Santa Fe

is such a good car.

I just don't know why you wouldn't just buy that

and save yourself like 50, 60, 70, however many thousand dollars.

Yeah, I think that's just a better thing.

Oh, you know what I saw the other day?

The Hyundai Palisade, the new Palisade.

Oh, yeah. Yeah, it's a nice looking car.

Again, going to be expensive, though, I reckon.

Yeah, it's kitted out.

I mean, Hyundai doing really cool interiors.

But anyway, we went off track.

Yeah. Oh, yeah.

Feedback, let us know what you like and don't like.

And if you think we should review next.

Yeah, let us leave us a rating if you haven't done so,

because that definitely helps us as long as it's five stars.

Yeah, I think you've done all the housekeeping.

Yeah, all and Trevor.

Mm, good ring to it.

Gordy and three guys in an EV.

Oh, yeah, three guys in an EV, you, Trevor and fucking Fennec.

Right, I don't know anything.

I know let me think of my own scenario.

Gordon and Tom Baker.

That could be fun.

Oh, no, no, wait, wait, wait.

The dirty Sanchez, you could call it that.

The show.

Don't be a brand-noser.

What about?

What about Gordon and the car source guy?

What's that kid?

What's that guy's name?

That brand.

Ah, Matt, what do you call him?

Matt Brown.

Do you call him Fat Brand?

Jesus Christ.

Don't say that.

Actually, I reckon if I had a competition

with that guy, I reckon I could probably out drink him.

Because I reckon I've got a better set of tits than him.

Anyway, this is this is definitely gone downhill.

Chuny next week, hopefully for a much better show.

But what about Gordon and Nadine?

What's her face?

Who's who's who's?

No, no, I'm going to say, don't you?

Oh, no, with that person.

Four balls in a car, four balls and a pair of tits.

We're out.

See you.

Bye. I love you.

The Driver's Show podcast is looking for a sponsor.

The proceeds will be used to fulfil

Paul and Gordy's lifelong dream of bringing back the go-go mobile.

But this time it's an EV.

Is that the best idea ever or what?

King, drop us a line at contact at the drivershowpodcast.com.au

or send us a DM on our Instagram page.

We'd love to work with you.

Paul's back...Donna calls; We talk driverless Teslas and the Kia Tasman towing fail

Byd Shark 6

Ford Mustang

Mini Countryman

Ford Ranger

Tesla Model Y

Mazda 2

Kia EV9

Hyundai Palisade

About this episode

Original notes