We Drove A VinFast VF8 So You Don’t Have To — Carmudgeon w/ Jason Cammisa & Derek Tam-Scott — Ep 216

All right, you're winning.

Welcome to this episode of The Car Margin Show.

That is Jason Camisa.

Jason.

Camisa.

You are Derek.

Derek.

Tam.

Scott.

We are your hosts.

Man, if you have that misophonia disorder where you hate the sound of throat clearing,

then I really apologize for all that.

Oh, is that a thing?

There's people who get triggered by that sound.

Oh, well, how about chomping?

Can we like...

Noisy chewing?

Yeah.

The Car Margin Show is driven by Hagerty, which is an insurance for enthusiast, by enthusiast,

and there'll be...

Of enthusiast.

It's made of real, live...

No, ground up.

Ground up.

Ground up enthusiast.

Fresh, but not from concentrate.

Man, we should probably talk about what this episode is about.

Hi.

It's about...

It's of the endering...

No.

It's about EVs from...

No, no, no, no.

Don't tell them now.

They're going to tune out.

Yeah.

This is a fun conversation about...

There is a shit fest.

There's definitely a robust shit fest in the second half of this episode, which...

But there's also really great stuff in this episode because there's a lot of knowledge

about the future of cars and technology, and right now, I think the automotive industry

is in a really amazing place in that it makes cars that are like the one behind

us are not amazing, and cars that are amazing at different things that you maybe

wouldn't expect...

We would value as...

Yes.

The...

If we had the opportunity to buy them.

Fuck.

I'm sorry.

Yeah.

Right.

Anyway, that's what this episode...

I think we get on to that.

Derek will clap, and we'll be right back after the jingle.

No bad.

He's getting better.

All right.

So we, as purveyors of information about amazing cars and drivers of amazing cars and collectors

of amazing cars, have an amazing car behind us.

It's a car.

It's Pininfarina designed, Derek.

I'm amazed.

It's got...

At what?

I'm amazed.

I'm amazed that...

By its qualities.

Wow.

We're off to a good start.

Way to just, you know, give away your feelings on the vintage past.

Oh, let's talk about other topics first.

Or do you want to start here?

No, we can start with one of those topics.

I don't want to bury the lead.

Okay.

We won't bury the lead.

So there are two other things I want to talk about.

First is, not Vietnamese car or country even, China passed an interesting regulation

or is in part of...

We're considering evaluating...

So basically, I think the process works something like, you know, they're accepting people arguing

and if no one argues this successfully, this goes into law.

But somebody hath proposed that in reaction to all of the access to an increased number

of accidents involving very fast electric vehicles, that all vehicles sold in China

must accelerate to 62 miles an hour slower than five seconds.

No faster than five seconds.

In their default startup mode.

So you can have a Veyron fast speed, you can have, you know, a Pininfarina Batista that

does 0-60.

It applies to gas vehicles, too, from what I was able to tell by reading about it.

I didn't read it that closely, but the way the article I read said it applies to cars

generally and then it said for EVs, there are these also additional and these safety

concerns things about like mechanical door handles inside and outside in case of, for

example, a battery.

Right.

So you have to mechanical door handles inside and outside, et cetera, et cetera.

So they said, the article said like for EVs, there are these additional regulations that

are being considered and I don't think those should be for EVs.

I think that mechanical door latch should be for all cars.

Yeah.

I mean, there was a whole raft of them that I, you know, stuff that I've sort of glossed

over because you know what I love about this is China was always the market that

didn't care about safety.

Right.

It was the market that was just get, mobilize the people and we'll deal with the safety

later.

And I love that.

It's now later.

Yeah.

I love that where it's later.

Like, you know, China is now leading the charge on, on some safety regs that I've

not seen anywhere else.

And I think.

Right.

And their products are apparently very compelling and of course neither of us

have ever experienced any Chinese vehicles that other than I guess like Volvo makes

cars in China.

But no homegrown Chinese manufacturers.

Yeah.

No.

Yeah.

And the amount of Chinese brands on the road that I didn't even know how to

pronounce the names really upset me because I'm an automotive expert.

I am too, but not that stuff.

Yeah.

You know, I was thinking about this and I was whether to feel guilty and I

concluded that I don't feel guilty because I don't give a shit about new

cars from legacy manufacturers either by and large, 95% maybe higher.

And so this is sort of consistent with my brand, but you're not in the same

boat because you're an automotive journalist and it's your job to know

what's going on to some extent.

Certainly more than me.

Yeah.

And it's been three years since I stopped getting press cars, three years

this month actually since I stopped getting press cars, the cars turned

itself off.

It's bored of our shit.

Same bitch.

No, we'll get back to the fast later, but you know, it's been three

years and I'm going to start going and doing commissive verdicts again

because I'm just, I'm losing touch with what's new in the market

and people are asking me for buyers advice and I just haven't

experienced a lot of stuff and that's a problem.

That all came from a lack of interest, if I'm totally honest, personally,

and I just wanted to spend more time with my own cars.

And I still do, but I think-

Or other people's cars that were old and interesting, such as the nature

of the cars that you come across with for revelations, for example.

Yeah, for sure.

Like the LLV.

Like the Grumman LLV.

Yeah.

God, that was so much fun.

Anyway, yeah, I think some of the safety regulations are needed.

You know, we need to slow these cars down.

Number one, I agree with that.

Number two, there need to be mechanical door latches.

And I am really uncomfortable, for example, in the back of certain,

like Teslas, for example, like a Model 3 does not have a mechanical

door release in the back.

That makes me very uncomfortable knowing that if there's an

electrical malfunction or even a software glitch, I can't get out.

I don't see them-

They don't have a mechanical?

In the front they do.

I don't believe there is in the back.

And I don't like these mechanical releases.

Remember, one of the first cars-

You mean electrical?

I'm sorry, electrical releases.

When the C7 Corvette first came out, it had electric door releases.

And very quickly thereafter, an old man died in his car in his garage

slowly over three days because he couldn't get out.

The battery was dead, or something happened, and he couldn't

figure out-

He didn't know there was a release and died in his car.

And what I said right at the time, I was at automobile at the

time when we were talking about this, I'm like,

I don't want to be on a road track.

Either way, this is not okay.

The benefits do not outweigh the risks here.

What are the benefits?

Is it cheaper?

No, there are none.

It's actually more expensive.

When I've talked to interior engineers and interior designers,

they say their product planners want them because that's the new thing.

But no one has been able to spout a single benefit to that.

And if you're not going to have a real potential benefit,

you shouldn't be accepting the safety risks.

And the other drawbacks of, you know, you need mechanical actuators

and all this other shit.

So sorry, I think that's a really great idea that China is stepping in.

I did as a great segue into the next small thing I want to talk about.

Drive a new Tesla Model Y performance.

Wait, do we want to discuss the merits of limiting performance?

Sure.

Whether we think that that's a good idea?

Sure.

Sounds like you already did.

You said it was a good idea.

I mean, the cars are too fucking fast.

You've seen Ultimas.

Ultimas do zero to 60 in, you know, seven seconds

and people crash them all the time.

That's an internet trope.

But it's true.

That's for you to decide.

It comes from somewhere.

I've certainly seen firsthand evidence of it.

I wouldn't exactly put the operators of rear wheel drive

Stalantis products that are hemi powered into a sort of position

of great honor either when it comes to operating skills.

F80, F3 drivers.

Yes.

High horsepower rear wheel drive cars of most types,

especially the ones that offer a lot of horsepower per dollar.

I actually don't think that those people are any worse drivers.

It's easier for large numbers of those to be sold.

I think people get into trouble in expensive rear wheel drive,

high horsepower cars too.

It's just that they're more expensive, so there are fewer of them.

So it's become less of a stereotype.

That's not to say that I think people with more money

are any more competent at operating.

No, but they also may have invested more

and respect their investment more.

Yeah, but it's a proportion of your net worth.

Fair point.

I wouldn't be surprised if some of these lower dollar cars

have negative equity or worth associated with them.

But also it also falls into younger hands.

F80s at this point, I think those are my biggest example.

One of my friends just asked me.

VQ cars.

They were perfect.

They're slow now by comparison.

Yes, that's true.

But fast enough to get into trouble.

His neighbor wanted to buy his kid an F80 M3.

And I said, just buy him a casket.

The kid's going to fucking die in that car.

First of all, it was a terrible rear suspension design.

The car couldn't handle its own power.

They were uncontrollable by professionals.

So what are you going to put an 18-year-old kid in this car?

The first thing he's going to do is tune it

up to 1,000 horsepower and die.

So at that point, just buy him a casket.

I got into trouble with 180 horsepower

in a 3,300-pound car when I was a teenager.

Right.

Now imagine what you do a three, four times that horsepower.

And a car that can't handle it.

Anyway, no, I think there's a huge benefit.

I think these cars are getting so much faster

than people are willing to drive them or traffic allows them.

Yes.

It's not.

That's something I think about every so often

is the fact that the speed limits were 65, I think,

at some point and then they were dropped to 55

in response to the oil crisis in 1970.

I don't know if it was the first or second crisis,

but one of them probably it was Nixon.

I think so.

That would be the 73 oil crisis, the speed limit,

national blanket speed limit reduction to 55 miles an hour

in the United States, which lasted until 1998

from memory before it went back to 65.

So the speed limits have not 65.

75, 80, I mean, it's now up to the States.

I'm speaking, yeah, in terms of California

on the roads that we normally drive on.

Like you would never like interstate 80

going through largely light, sparsely populated

portions of California went from 55 to 65.

Yeah, there was a federally mandated 55 limit.

That dropped out.

And then what they did for a while there

was the federal government said,

oh, you no longer have to have a 55 mile an hour speed limit.

However, if you don't, you lose your funding for the roads.

So most states stuck with 55 and 65.

And then now I think it's been reduced to 80

or 85, I think is the highest speed limit in America.

I've seen that in Texas.

But yeah, anyway.

So the speed limits have not changed

materially in 50 years,

notwithstanding that little fuel saving side quest.

And modern cars are a lot more capable.

And I wonder like, should speed limits be higher

because cars are more capable?

I mean, that's more an intellectual question.

I don't actually believe that that's true.

Well, I think what's happened is the opposite.

So if we look at, yes,

speed limits on open road interstates have gone up a bit.

Where cars are the most capable is at the lower speed,

the lower portion of that.

And the cities have consistently dropped their speed limits.

And so between traffic and that,

your traffic is going slower and slower

as the cars are getting much faster at those speeds.

And I think those are the speeds most people drive.

I mean, 80 miles an hour in interstate is far safer.

If you look at the empirical accident and death data,

then 35 miles an hour through,

or even worse, 45 miles an hour through a city.

Yeah.

And that's the magic of limited access.

Every car, you don't have a lot of cross traffic

unless somebody's losing it.

And they're crossing traffic.

But no intersections, right?

Intersections of the killers.

It's the interface between cars and other vehicles

and pedestrians and creatures.

And you typically don't have cars parked

along the side of the freeway

where if you drift out of your lane,

you're hitting a parked car or a kid runs out and, you know, anyway.

So, yeah, I think these, especially EVs are just

deadly fast in the circumstances where we're slowing down.

And I think it's probably the right thing to do to say,

all right, you're gonna have a fast car,

but you're gonna have to try a little bit.

Yeah.

And that was one of the things in this sort of Chinese regulation

under consideration that they are evaluating

is like trying to identify pedal misapplication

because the consequences of pedal misapplication

are so dire now because cars are so performant.

And like if the car changes speed

by more than 25 kilometers an hour in X seconds

or portions, I think it was less than a second, actually.

Like it's basically trying to identify intent

and sort of develop a bunch of, I don't know,

protocols or responses to figure out

whether this is an intentional maneuver or not

or whether it's an emergency or not.

Years ago, I almost had a crash in a Tesla,

it was a Model Y, I think.

I don't remember exactly what it was,

but it was a, I pulled out in traffic

and I was behind another car

and we were both making a left onto a sort of divided highway,

non-divided like two lane, 55 mile an hour highway.

And I floored it and the thing didn't move.

It moved very slowly and I was quite upset about this.

And I realized afterwards, digging through the settings,

there was something called obstacle aware acceleration

that was in just an option that someone had checked.

And what that was doing was using the cameras

and possibly back then a radar sensor,

although then it wouldn't have been a Y.

Either way, I was using its ADAS system

to determine that there was indeed an obstacle in front of me

and it would not give me full power.

And now in that case, it was poorly done

because the car in front of me was also accelerating

so I was just trying to keep up with him.

But everyone I know with a Tesla

where that's available, I've had them turn it on

because it's just so easy.

If you look at the human brain's reaction time

to understanding what's happening,

sensing it, understanding it and then reacting to it,

you have a finite, a non-zero.

Yeah, a window of time that must elapse

before and result as achieved.

And if you can put on 25 kilometers an hour

or whatever it is within that split second,

that half second or one second it would take to react to it,

then you don't have the ability.

And the car is too fast for the human mind, basically.

Yes, this is a concept that my dad introduced to me

in the context of his mirror,

which he called over-driving your headlights,

which is basically you shouldn't drive faster

than your headlights are allowed to see,

but it's basically the exact same thing

that you will not be able to perceive a threat

in enough time to react to it to avoid a situation.

It's amazing if you watch silly weird YouTube videos

or Instagram reels or TikTok reels of dogs

when they attack someone

or if they eat something really quickly,

it's almost like a sci-fi movie where they react

and they move so quickly, we can't even comprehend.

So if you're being attacked by a dog

and fortunately I have been once,

you can't defend yourself because they're like

fucking kung fu warriors where they're so fast.

Yeah, it's like trying to slap a fly.

Right, although you can make that.

Yes, but you have to sort of develop

or get lucky also.

They're faster than we are

and the cars are now getting to the point

where they're faster than the operators.

So I think it's a huge merit to slow these people down

or just do smart obstacle aware stuff.

Yeah, the general public also is,

I think doesn't need that level of performance.

I sort of, because I drive old cars,

I lament the fact that my cars are not fast

compared to the general public anymore

because in the 80s, the average person

is driving around in 100 horsepower car

and so if you have 200 horsepower like my cars,

then you have an advantage, a performance advantage

and that is not true anymore

and having the ability for people

who are just sort of dicking around

to have performance like that is, in my opinion,

well, it's frustrating for me as a driver of an old car.

Is it? I find that people have all this performance

but they don't use it.

Yes, people don't use it,

but if someone suddenly does decide to use it,

then it's quite frustrating.

I love that my cars are slow

because I get to enjoy the sounds of revs

and red line shifts and I'm racing them there,

not even aware that I'm there

and I find a joy in that, right?

Slow car fast, right?

Sure.

But I have lost a couple of drag races in the city

in the last couple of years in my old cars

and it's always to EVs.

No one in our favorite Subaru

is gonna ever floor it

because they don't wanna hear that fucking thing.

And so I will absolutely be able to outrun them

in whatever old thing I have

because they're just not willing to use the power

that they have.

Yeah, no, I'm really, I'm really happy

that China's sort of coming online

with like a safety consciousness conscience.

I guess the next step would be

to interact with the products

because I've heard they're very good.

I heard the CEO of Ford took one home

and wouldn't give it back.

Yeah, wouldn't give it back

and said this is so far and away ahead

and I've watched the sales of Ford have cratered

in China in the last 10 years

from over a million units to like a 10th or something

within the last 10 years.

Yeah, because the Chinese cars are so much more compelling

and we're completely missing out on that

because of, oh, let's talk about tariffs.

Yeah.

Well, so car and driver just did an article

and I actually picked up my print,

I get the print magazine of car and driver

and this past month I opened it up

and wound up sitting and reading and cover to cover

and it was a pleasure that I haven't had in a while.

I've sort of allowed myself

and I think it was John Folka wrote it for,

it was a piece on the China market

and what's happened with all of the domestic Chinese brands

versus the sort of imports

and the Chinese government set everything up for success

for China, which was to allow collaborations

between Western sort of traditional established car companies

and Chinese startups.

So that they could then study everything

the Westerners were doing

and then do a better job of it.

Technology transfer.

That's exactly what's happened.

So they're like, okay, we're done with you.

Now we don't need your inferior imported products.

And the products are superior and far cheaper

and we are exempt from that in the US right now

and we've talked about this before.

I think there's only one,

you can't stop the water coming from a river.

You can dam it for a while

and then it breaches the dam

and you're in even worse trouble

and I feel like that's exactly what's happening right now

with us.

Our car market will have a X amount of years.

Reckoning.

Well from now we'll have a reckoning

and it will be swift and brutal

and it will be the end of the traditional car companies.

Not unlike the one that happened

when the Japanese and later Koreans

started bringing cars to the United States market

in the 70s and 80s.

I think it'll be more seismic.

I think so.

I think it's over for the traditionals.

If we allow China to keep iterating

and getting as it is right now

by those whom I trust

they're already making in many ways

a superior product.

Not all, but many ways

at a vastly cheaper price

give them 10 more years of lead time

to make an even better product

that's even more valuable price wise

or adds more value price wise.

We're fucked.

The Western car companies will not be able to compete.

So I think either, especially the U.S.

Will the Vietnamese ones?

We'll talk about that in a minute.

Yeah, we'll get there in a second

but I just think we're setting ourselves up

for guaranteed sudden death

because it's not like when, you know,

when Honda's came to the U.S.

and Toyota's came to the U.S.

Yeah, it was a different category of car.

Different category.

It was a better product

but it wasn't seismically better

and it wasn't seismically cheaper.

I think it kind of was

but they weren't making the types of cars

that Americans wanted

and there was a more reliable sentiment

of American patriotism

and now it's so clear that whatever,

the best mousetrap will win.

But if they had tried to compete on American terms

and there wasn't such a strong sense of patriotism,

especially I think the memory of World War II

was much fresher then.

So there was this sort of impetus

to not choose a Japanese manufacturer at that time.

So anyway, speaking of American car companies,

we can discuss,

you drove a new Tesla product of some kind.

Yeah, so I went,

Tesla invited me on a sort of local launch

for the Model Y performance.

Hadn't spent any time with Model Y.

The new refreshed car that, you know,

I still get shit about Cybertruck.

I still get shit about, you know,

the Model 3 review.

Sorry, you know,

Model 3 is the best consumer product that we can buy

in terms of an automobile.

And Model Y I was a bit disappointed in,

in one sense,

because it's not better than the 3.

There's some compromises built into the rear suspension,

especially design that causes a little bit of ride harshness.

And I expect a 3 to ride better than a Y.

It's taller, you know.

You mean the Y?

I'm sorry, a Y to...

I got mostly the last time.

Let me explain.

I was up until 2 o'clock in the morning

and I'm normally,

that's like two or three hours,

three hours past my bedtime,

because I was ordering car parts for a VR6 swap.

And then I woke up at 7 o'clock in the morning,

like it was Christmas morning,

because I had to go through and make sure

I didn't fuck up those orders at 2 o'clock in the morning.

And I was on the phone with suppliers ordering

even more shit.

And I'm just, you know, so like I'm sleep deprived.

Merry Christmas.

Thank you.

It is Christmas came early this year.

It's about to come early

when the FedEx guy shows up at my door

and it's like piling VR6 parts.

Anyway, I expect an SUV

to fly better than the sedan it's based on

because it has more, can, could, should,

have more suspension travel and bigger sidewalls

and other sort of little benefits.

It's the opposite with Model Y

and talking to Tesla's engineers

who are just off the charts fucking brilliant

and there's no way of saying this.

Basically, one of the problems is that

you have an elevated H point.

So any motion you do get is...

H point is where the occupants hips are.

Yeah.

This is where your ass is.

And so the higher you are away from the ground

the more you're gonna feel.

The more emotion will occur.

Plus the Y has a slightly longer wheelbase

than the Model 3

and it's all done with the control arms.

So they sort of increase the wheelbase

and that changes the geometry

enough of the rear suspension

that it actually, they can't decouple

some of the longitudinal forces.

So some of the bumps as well.

And then you have bigger wheels.

And so all of these were therefore smaller sidewalls.

And so all of these sort of conspired to make the Model Y...

Is the OD, is the outer diet rolling down there?

I didn't.

I didn't think that much into it.

Interesting.

But given that the rest of the car is,

I suspect it probably is.

And so Model Y performance doesn't ride

as well as Model 3 performance.

Model 3 performance is a really hardcore sports sedan

and Model Y isn't.

It's a softer thing.

No track mode.

They realize that no one's ever fucking tracking these cars.

And they're right.

First of all, they have real world information.

So the last Model Y performance had a track mode.

They know no one ever used it.

You could turn off stability control

and they know that the only place anyone ever did that

and use the track mode functions of moving power around

was in low mu grip.

So parking lots in the snow.

And they're like, okay, so we'll put a mode in there.

They'll let you do donuts.

But we don't need a track mode.

That's idiotic.

And I'm like, thank you.

Thank you for being fucking realistic.

But it's fast as shit.

And all of the great changes

that made the Model 3 performance go

be an actual M3 beater in my mind.

BMW M3 beater are here.

So the steering is now natural and it's not gainy.

It's just the car is just really, really good.

That said, it's not as good as the Model 3.

And then I went back into Model 3

and I experienced something that blew my mind.

In my little insta review of the Model Y, in the lows,

you know, highs and lows,

the lows I said that is,

I think I use the word untrustworthy ADAS system.

I don't believe Elon's musings

that we don't need radar sensors or LiDAR sensors.

I think it's a cop out.

I think it's bullshit.

And I have seen too many videos

of Tesla's doing really scary shit.

I mean, did you see the one where they did the Wiley Coyote thing

where they painted a picture of a tunnel

and the thing just fucking drove into it?

Well, tell it, would you tell the voice?

Yeah.

I mean, it literally was like a freaking Wiley Coyote thing

where the car just drives into the wall.

And every other car they tested

came to a screeching automatic stop

before it hit the fucking painting

because it realized it was a fucking painting.

I'm, again, in the same way that we talk about the door latches,

you have to, if you're going to provide a benefit,

you have to then minimize the drawbacks.

You always have to look at minimizing the drawbacks.

There is a net benefit to society for self-driving

and ADAS systems, but the cars can't then crash more than,

especially when they're self-driven,

they can't crash more than human-driven cars

or we haven't, we're killing people for no benefit, right?

When you look at real-world crash data and death data

from Model 3 for Tesla stuff, it's off the charts high.

And it's, I've read somewhere, at least one or two places

that have decided that the Model 3

is the deadliest vehicle on the road,

even though it's the safest vehicle ever crashed,

ever crashed tested.

And that's telling us there's a human factor involved, right?

And what that is, I suspect is over-reliance

on the ADAS systems.

And if you're going to give a car-

Has anyone analyzed this

or is this just sort of like the data has been presented?

I'm sure someone has and I'm a bad journalist

because I haven't done my job.

I'm curious to know.

Yeah.

I would love IIHS or any of the other organizations

to really look into that and dive deep into it.

But I mean, I've driven these cars

and I've spent a lot of time in Model 3.

So there's a Model 3 in my inner circle.

I've probably driven more miles in the Model 3 this year

than any other car.

I don't really track how many miles I've driven it,

but I spend a lot of time in that car.

And the ADAS system falses constantly.

It beep, beep, beep, beep, beep,

and slams on the brakes for when nothing's there.

When we did the actually that head-to-head episode

that we did or tread-to-tread episode that we did,

Anthony Esposito was driving the Model 3 performance

and it came to a screeching ABS halt

in the middle of a highway over a shadow.

Scared the shit out of him

and everyone behind him.

Perhaps literally.

Driving the Model 3 around San Francisco

it often will see on the diagram

you can see it's identifying all of these parked cars.

One of them will turn red and start flashing

and the car will slam on the brakes for no reason.

Like it's identified that as a risk.

Cars fucking parked.

Like it's not going anywhere.

There are a lot of problems with that ADAS system

and I don't trust my life with it.

So I got a lot of shit, not a lot of shit,

but a bunch of comments like,

bro have you even tried autopilot?

I have not tried full self-driving recently

because I've tried it a year ago and it was terrible

and it was jerky and I got into a Waymo

and we've talked about Waymo extensively

and that is how you do self-driving.

Like wow.

So I thought, all right,

I had an hour long trip at eight o'clock in the morning

that I was going to do in this Tesla

and I plugged in the address of a bakery

because I went to go buy donuts for a friend of ours.

It was an eye doctor who was seeing a friend of mine

who owns the Tesla at eight o'clock in the morning

before his shop opened up and I'm like,

oh, we'll show up with like, you know,

donuts for the whole crew.

So I programmed the address and it took over.

This fucking car drove us the entire way

expertly making lane changes whenever it wanted

with nothing dangerous, no jerks,

no side to side, anything beautifully smoothly

including constantly 15 miles an hour above the speed limit.

So there is-

Pre-request.

Well, there's chill, there's normal, there's hurry

and there's mad max is the other four settings.

It was just in hurry and it was not fucking around.

I mean like in a 55 zone was doing 71 in the right lane

and got off the exit and stayed at 70 miles an hour

and I'm like hovering over the brake pedal going,

oh my God, I didn't know, I don't know this exit,

I don't know the road goes,

but it's doing fucking 70 down an exit ramp

where I know there's a red light at the bottom

and there are cars waiting and I'm like,

we're gonna be one of those videos where everyone dies

and there's a fireball and whatever.

Nope, right when it was sort of at the last conceivable

setting was on hurry.

The last conceivable safe time to come to a controlled stop

it started to bleed off speed and went right down

to a stop at the light with its signal on,

looked both ways and went through the, you know,

stopped and went made it right on red

and here's the thing,

pulled into the fucking parking lot

and then backed itself into a parking spot.

I shit, I mean I actually shit

and I had to eat my shit and my words and whatever

and then when we got out of the thing

I plugged in the address of the eye doctor's office

and it took us out of that parking lot

onto the main road, made a couple of turns

into the parking lot of the dentist's office

or the eye doctor's office which is super narrow

and like uncomfortable for I think, you know, for an-

The average operator?

Well it would be not a challenge for the operator

but a Waymo would never have been able to get in there

and it fucking pulled right into a parking spot.

It was a handicap spot so it wasn't looking at that

but I just drove us all the way back to San Francisco

like and it's not a Waymo.

It doesn't understand the subtleties of body language

of like start to move over first

and then put your turn signal on.

Like there's somebody right next to you, it's pacing in

it's like hey everyone get out of my way

and it'll have it's right hand turn signal on

for fucking 12 miles until it finally like slows down

and little shit like that like amateur stuff

that I'm like I want a sign on the outside of this car

that I'm not driving because I'm now a poor driver.

Like, you know, I'm not financially poor

like a poor quality like-

Low quality driver.

And I'm like, I just have a blue light

that says self driving on numbers but don't hunk at me.

I genuinely kept, all that kept going through my mind is

my mom is 75 years old.

I've always thought like her golf is probably going to be

her last gas powered car.

And now I'm like, oh shit.

If we make it 10 more years while she's still driving

safely and that golf makes it 10 more years

that's not going to be your last gas powered car.

That's going to be your last human driven car

because tomorrow if she needed it I would just buy her

and I'm going to get crucified for saying this.

I would buy her a Model 3 and say mom

if there are times where you're not, if she needed it, right?

If you're not okay to drive, just have it drive you.

You need to be in control.

You need to be watching.

But like it was that good.

And now I have this dissonance

because I know it doesn't have fucking radar

and I know it's not going to work in the dark as well

as it should.

And I know it's not going to work in rain and whatever.

So what happened in the last year?

I don't fucking...

Well, I mean a software constant updates

but this is one year.

Like, oh my God, if we get 10 more years

like where the hell are these cars going to be

especially the ones with LiDAR and radar sensors?

Oh my God.

Wow.

Did anything happen in your experience

that you felt like it would have handled better

had it had LiDAR or radar?

Fuck you.

What?

Well, can you repeat the question?

No.

There was no situation that you encountered?

Not on that one.

Not on that drive.

On a sunny morning.

But again, this is a car that I have driven.

I've probably been in this car 3,000 miles,

4,000 miles this year

and have had many instances

of it doing something that scared me

without full self-driving on.

I mean just like thinking something's there

breaking for it or warning me about,

it's mostly warning me about stuff that's not there

but even if I have it set when I'm driving it

on my profile to not give me full self-driving

to give me adaptive cruise

and it's fucking stupid.

I mean it speeds up when it shouldn't, it's just not.

Yeah, it doesn't detect the person

who's starting a lane change

and waits till the car's fully in front of you

before it decides to adjust its speed

or it does the opposite when somebody gets out of your way

and then you're like, please just accelerate

and it's like waits till the lane is completely clear.

Or you'd go to put the turn signal on which by the way

the fucking Model Y has a turn signal stalk.

This is, I was gonna say earlier,

the EU is in the process of contemplating

outlawing turn signal buttons and forcing a stalk.

What's Ferrari gonna do?

Put the fucking things back on the stalk where they belong.

I think the exemption might be the way Ferrari does it

which is physical button on the left

and a physical button on the right

versus Tesla's capacitive up and down on the left spoke

which was doubly, triply stupid.

Yeah, the Ferrari mechanism once you get used to it

doesn't bother me that much.

Not much.

I can adapt to it.

Is it better?

I think that the Tesla system, I don't know.

I mean, it depends on if you need to signal

while you're doing opposite lock.

Pulling out of a parking spot or making a lane change.

Yes, yes, yes.

So that's where all of these systems fall apart

is when you have to cross up or shuffle.

And now I don't know which way the left turn signal is

and I just, in a split second,

I need to make a lane change

and I just therefore don't signal.

This happens to me all the time in that fucking Tesla.

In fact, it happened all the time in the Tesla

where the turn signal didn't work at all.

And so it went into the shop three times over this

and they replaced steering wheels, sensors,

wiring harnesses and whatever.

And then finally did a software update pushed to all cars

which I'm now referring to as the Jason software update

because of course I escalated it to the chief engineer.

I'm like, dude, what the fuck?

My hand, my bare paws are big enough

where I hold the wheel

that it's activating the capacitive touch sensor.

And so it sees a human body part there.

It could be my dick, we'll never know.

You drive like a dick.

Exactly, you drive with my dick.

It sees a human thing there and it doesn't know where it is.

And when you go to put the,

it loses sort of its mapping of where this thing is.

And so when you go to press the turn signal,

it doesn't know where you're asking.

It doesn't know which direction to put the turn signal on.

So it doesn't do anything.

Now it's, they've done a software update

that says bitch, get your fucking hand off the wheel.

It says remove your hand from the turn signal

or remove your finger or whatever or long press detected.

And there are two different messages.

One that's permanent.

Once it goes on,

it stays on for the whole time you're driving the car.

But mostly it's a fleeting message of like,

you have no turn signals right now until you remove your hand.

That's like the one where it tells you

to put your hands on the steering wheel.

Yeah, exactly.

But this is like, hey, you're warning Jason,

you have no turn signals because you need to move your hand.

So it's forcing me to drive in a different position

which I don't particularly care for.

But they put a turn signal stock.

Head in two.

No, never gonna happen.

So yeah, anyway, the.

Okay.

So you now like full self-driving.

I can't believe how good it is.

Again, I know it's going to be good until it crashes.

That's the problem.

And the car's owner has said like.

You could say that about humans.

True.

But the car's owner is like,

there are a lot of times where it's looking at lane markings

and it will see a tram track or a wet,

especially in the wet, it has problems where it'll start to follow

curbs or pavement lines and stuff that don't exist.

And there's one spot where we mentioned

that it will drive off the road every single time.

Like it's on 280, it's in one of the interstates around.

And it just, it will go off the road.

So this is the problem.

It's not quite there yet.

And I understand there's a lot of political charging,

whatever.

I'm not getting involved in that discussion.

I will just say this is to the fucking parking spot

like door to door, amazing.

Couldn't believe it.

Do you think that, are these things,

forgive my ignorance, are these things talking to each other?

Or is this doing what Waymo does where they collect data?

Or is it reacting in real time?

For example, like if this,

would this be as good if it were from a place

that fewer Teslas had been?

I don't know.

I don't know how much.

Because this is obviously very heavy,

Tesla heavy country.

It is very, very heavy.

And like if you took it to, you know,

I doubt very much Montana or somewhere.

But the, but the thing is when you're in a Waymo,

there are, you and I experienced this

of two very discreet modes.

There is the mode where I've been here before

and I have no idea where I am.

And I don't know how to do this.

And it's obvious, right?

I've been here before as smooth and fluid

and fluent and beautiful.

And it recognizes where it is

and knows the intricacies of the landscape.

Right.

And then you have it make a U-turn like we did

at the end of a cul-de-sac.

A cul-de-sac that Waymo's don't go down.

And it was turn signals left, right, left, right, right, right.

And the wheels jiggling, you know, jiggling back and forth.

And it was just completely...

It looked like it was having a seizure.

Yeah.

That the Tesla was as fluent as the Waymo is

when it knows where it was in parking lots.

And I can't help but think it's,

so it's using real time stuff.

It's relying on real time stuff.

I'm sure it feeds back.

Tesla's always done that.

It feeds back.

I just don't think it's feeding back

and using a real time sort of connection.

The core question is, is this as good in places

where there are fewer Teslas as it is here?

I would love to know.

Again, I'm scared of this.

And it's not because I'm scared of new technology.

I understand the limitations inherent

in not having that sensor.

And I don't...

You cannot trust it.

If it doesn't have a radar

and it can't see things you can't,

why would you trust technology that's not as good as you?

And it's not as good as,

it's certainly not as fluent as an expert driver like me.

But it's not as fluent in traffic.

It's not quite as good as a human driver yet,

but the one year, what a difference a year makes.

Wow.

So gotta say,

can't wait till other automakers

with full sensor suites catch up.

And now in San Francisco,

we have Zoos is now opening up for human rides

and Waymo is opening up to highways

of the entire corridor between San Jose

and I think Santa Rosa is going to open up.

So basically the whole Bay Area.

The whole left side of the Bay Area.

Yeah.

Shit's about to get really interesting in the...

Waymo's don't want to be going to the hood for some reason.

There are hoods on the west side of San Francisco?

Yeah.

On the left side, there are some probably...

A hood run in a Waymo for a...

It doesn't exist yet.

No, I'm kidding.

I'm sure we can find what...

Well, I think in times of civil unrest,

they become targets.

I also did see a video recently

where there were a bunch of police cars

that were stops behind a car that had a man in it

that was being removed at gunpoint

and the Waymo just drove right behind them

in a position that would have put it in the...

If they had needed to open fire on the person

who they had getting out of the car

and lying face down on the ground,

the Waymo would have taken bullets.

So, I mean, they are not great in emergency situations.

They stop on fire hoses and stuff like that.

It's just, we are...

And everyone who gets upset about EVs

and upset about autonomous vehicles

and all this other stuff,

I have to always remind,

we are at the infancy of this technology.

It's all in its infancy.

It will get...

But the speed at which it's getting better is just...

Yeah, we're on the steep part of the curve.

It's fascinating.

And I love being in San Francisco right now

because I feel like San Francisco and Austin and Phoenix

and there are a bunch of metro areas around.

We're just...

What do you say,

8% of the cars on the road in San Francisco

half the time are Waymos?

Yes.

Because they're fucking everywhere.

The other thing,

I don't know,

have we talked about this before?

They're really great for lane changes

because they will stop and let you in

if you need to make lane change in front of them.

I tend to not bully Waymos

because I tend to not need to.

I just honked at one the other day

and I was very upset with myself.

I'm like, you're a fucking moron.

But it was pacing me and I needed to get over

and I sped up and it sped up

and then I slowed down and it slowed down

and I don't know why

and there was kind of no one around

and I finally just lane changed into it.

I'm like, are you fucking stupid?

I floored it and lane changed into it

and it slowed down and it didn't honk back.

But there was one of the few times,

any time that I've been irritated at a Waymo,

it's because it can't speed

and we've talked about that.

Yes.

I understand that.

Going up and down Market Street

and when you pass the train islands

and the limit goes down temporarily,

they do speed through there

because the limit through the little train islands

for the trolleys is 10 miles an hour

and they go 25 through there.

So at least they do that.

I think they concluded that it would be dangerous

for them to slam on the brakes

as it's passing the little train island

when there's no trains around.

But yeah, they are frustratingly slow.

I mean, they're at least consistent.

Yes.

You can predict what's going to happen

and you treat it as a fixed object

in the environment and plan...

It's a moving traffic cone.

But it's a predictable cone.

Yes.

Which is tremendous.

I think people don't really understand,

like you had a very negative reaction early on.

People don't understand

that we're used to interacting with them

and they're not.

I mean, are they...

If the, you know,

what percentile of irritability

of like irritation are they?

Are they like,

they're more irritating than an average driver

or they're less or they're better?

Less for sure.

Especially, you know,

the thing that I think that...

I have two stories, I guess.

Now, one of them is a story.

The other is just an observation is

they're somewhat poor at choosing where to pull over

and sometimes they really throw up the block

and cause like gridlock

because the thing just fricking stops

in a really inopportune place

that admittedly Uber drivers do the same thing.

But they stop in some very poorly judged locations

in a way that really snarls

the environments around them.

The other story,

which is an isolated incident,

but I had one where I,

it arrived to pick me up

and I couldn't open it, the door.

Like it really opened the door

when I, like the door handle wouldn't pop out

so there's nothing to pull on to get it to open.

So I like called support

and had them open the door.

You couldn't do it right in the out there.

There's usually...

No, no, no.

It didn't respond to it.

No matter what I did,

it wouldn't present me the door handle.

For the record,

typically it uses your location plus Bluetooth LTE

and it knows as you're approaching the car.

Yes.

And it gives you a button.

And the door handles just pop out.

Pop out.

And you can force it though in the app.

There's a button that says unlock.

It was unresponsive to that.

Interesting.

So then I got in the damn thing

and you have to push start ride

and I pushed the start ride button

either didn't appear

or when I pushed it nothing happened.

But I'm just sitting in there

unable to get the thing to start its ride

and in five minutes

it gives up on waiting for you.

It didn't know I was there.

It gives up

and then it started driving away

to pick up the next person

and I'm stuck inside of the car.

So then thank God it has a mechanical door really

so I open it

and then it stops

because now it's like oh the door's open

and I can't drive anywhere.

And then it drives

and then it charged me a cancellation fee

and then drove away.

And then like I waited for the thing

for like seven minutes

and spent five minutes

sticking around with it trying to get me.

And they obviously refunded that

when you called screaming.

Yes.

Okay, great.

So you know,

things that don't happen with Ubers is that.

Well, right.

But the Waymo isn't ever drunk.

So I mean,

I am now a 100%

Uber rider unless you mean Waymo.

Oh, I'm sorry.

Waymo.

Yes.

I don't,

I will not take a human driven taxi

unless I have no other choice.

The Waymo's have been very slow

to arrive lately.

Like it's like 10 minutes

instead of like three minutes.

And so that's the thing

that will drive me to take an Uber

in lieu of a Waymo.

I will only now do Uber black

because I want TCP.

So California has

TCP delivery laws.

I want an actual

licensed Limo driver,

not a cracked out Ultima driver

or worse, any EV.

Yes.

Because they have that sinusoidal gas region,

gas region.

I took a video the other day

of an Uber driver

where you can see his leg pulsing

and you're just like,

why are you doing this?

We're on the highway.

Like.

That's it.

That would be a nice mandate

for like all Ubers,

like the government should mandate

that all livery drivers

have an OBD2 connected pedal sensor.

And if they see acceleration D cell,

it just tases them in the fucking balls

and stops them from...

It's so nauseating.

I would support that legislation.

It's nauseating.

It is nauseating.

Genuinely nauseating.

And I don't know what causes people

to become spastic pulsing motorists,

but like I've seen...

I've seen it in an off-bed.

Like where you can,

like at nighttime

you can see the reflection

of the brakes

when you get into regen.

Come on.

You see the brake lights come on

as they go in and out of their phase

and it's pulsing brake lights

because they're...

We had an art director years ago

at...

I think it was when we were at Road and Track.

I worked with him a couple of places.

And a great guy,

car guy, whatever,

but he did this when he drove normally.

And I was in the back of a Subaru something

and it had the center gauge pod

that had a boost gauge.

And I have a video of...

God, I can't even...

I don't know how I'd find this,

but I took a video

of him going from full vacuum

to full boost

to full vacuum to full boost.

And it was just this perfect like

half a Hertz back and forth.

And then when we got to our destination

I sent it to him.

And I'm like,

check your phone.

This is what you do.

And he was like,

I don't do that.

I'm like,

we're all going to throw up

and we're all going to kill you.

And he's like,

why don't you say something?

I'm like,

you do this every time.

So just some people just don't...

They're not conscious of it.

Yeah, clearly.

And it has to be

my friend's significant other

does this so bad

that in A,

I think it was a four

or five-speed automatic Corolla.

He was able to get it downshifed

on the highway.

Oh, you...

Oh my God.

My uncle...

With four or five speeds

it's much more difficult

to get downshift than an A.

Ten speed.

No, my uncle years ago.

In his camera.

I'm like,

literally going...

It was a four speed.

It was like a 93 camera.

This is 100 years ago.

So it unlocked the torque converter,

downshift into third

and he'd lift.

And he'd go back into fourth,

lock the torque converter,

unlock the torque converter

back to third.

And I'm like,

you know you'd get a lot better gas mileage

if you just set the fucking cruise

and also your transmissions

wouldn't wear out at 22,000 miles.

Yeah.

People just...

It's something about human nature.

We just cyclically on off, on off.

Drives me absolutely up the wall.

Yep.

Same.

You know,

that wouldn't be a problem in this car.

Here's our perfect segue

to the VinFast.

And it wouldn't be in a problem

for this car.

I have a suspicion

we have not spoken yet

about what we did.

No.

About our independent separate drives

in the VinFast.

VinFast VF8.

So it wouldn't be a problem in this car

because on one word answer

on the count of three

you're going to tell me one.

One, two, three.

Delay.

Latency.

Yes.

Yep.

You can,

in this,

this 405,

402,

400 horsepower electric SUV

get to the pedal

to the floor and back

repeatedly

without ever having

any forward progress at all.

And I don't mean

from a standing start.

Yes.

I mean,

full throttle off.

Full throttle off.

Yeah.

It has what a full second and a half.

It is infuriating.

It is absolutely miserable.

I wanted to throttle the people

who were involved in calibrating that.

There were no people involved.

Yes.

They were dead.

They had died six months earlier.

It was done by a fricking

carcass.

Turtle.

Or something.

Speaking of,

so we've gone from cars

that are too fast for humans

to humans that are too fast

for the cars.

I mean,

it's unreal.

This is a 60,

5700 pound SUV

that is capable in theory

of a five seconds zero to 60.

And yet two and a half of that

is waiting for the fucking.

So I drove this thing.

I'm at a red light with its owner

next to me in another friend of ours,

C400 coupe.

Some Mercedes ugly coupe thing

with a twin turbo v6 in it.

And he pulls up next to me at the light

and he's like, we're going to race.

And I'm like, okay, fine.

And now I know this thing

has throttle lag from hell.

And so about a second

before the light turned green,

I nail it.

The light turns green.

At the exact moment the light turns green,

we have not moved.

The exact moment the light turns green,

I hear the Mercedes starter motor.

So that fucking Mercedes,

that laggy v6

has turned itself off.

And he still fucking beat us off the line.

I mean, we started to move a little bit

and then he rocketed right past us.

And it was like hilarious

because in the time that it took electrons

to go at the actual speed of light

through the wire a foot long,

that thing had engaged the starter,

got to idle,

engaged the transmission,

went, got turbo boost and moved away.

It's absolutely infuriating

and unforgivable.

And I think it's the world's first EV with turbo lag.

Which is a remarkable achievement.

The brakes kind of do it sometimes too.

Did you notice this?

I had several terrifying moments

with the brakes

where you would be coming to a stop

and you're,

maybe this is a,

no, because it would happen

on an initial application also.

I was thinking maybe it was a limo stop technique

where you start to release brake pressure.

It does that.

And it runs away

when you do that.

And it will also sometimes,

I'll keep adding brake pressure

and the thing is not stopping or decelerating

and you're like,

we're going to hit something.

We're going to roll into something

at three miles an hour

because I'm adding brake

and it does exactly the same thing the throttle does.

Which is this weird unnerving delay

where it does not do what you ask.

It also, like the throttle,

has a delay in removing pedal force.

So you come off the gas

and that thing continues to accelerate

for half a second

and it also does the same with the brakes.

It continues to slow down.

You're like, I'm already on the gas.

Yes.

So to me,

the most terrifying thing about the brakes is

our friends who own this,

which we'll talk about live on,

what, a 25% grade?

Yeah.

It's one of the steepest streets in San Francisco

which is famous for steep streets.

Right.

So I am,

I get in this thing

a foot behind my cabriolet,

my bitch basket.

And he's like,

you're driving and I'm like,

okay.

So first things first,

I get the key.

It's upside down.

It's upside down door.

So the key,

we'll put an insert of this,

but the key,

if you,

however you hold it,

which is, you know,

this way,

all of the buttons are upside down.

They're also unintelligible and small

and, you know,

the markings.

So you can actually.

But critically upside down.

And the V,

the Vinfast logo is also,

the V for Vinfast is also upside down.

I mean, the key is genuinely upside down.

They put the,

they just,

they shaped it wrong

and put the key,

the little hole for the key to tag

in the wrong corner.

Yep.

I have a little key built in.

All right.

So, so I get in this thing

and there is no on button,

there's no off button,

whatever.

So it turns on and does its whole thing.

And they're like, well,

it does have a 360 degree

around view camera,

but that will take minutes to boot up.

So don't,

don't rely on any sort of cameras.

I'm like, okay.

And there's lag on the,

on the camera.

So you can't really use the backup camera

because you will hit something

before it appears that you're hitting

something.

So I'm a little bit nervous about that.

The 360 cam did appear

because I was adjusting the settings,

which are all the fucking steering wheel

and everything else is on the screen,

Tesla style,

but worse.

And the thing did boot up

and I did find it fun

that it has a 360 degree,

like

surround

surround camera,

but the car you're looking at

is a different color with different wheels on it.

And the wheels don't turn or move.

So it's like,

you just start to float their space.

Anyway.

So he's like,

put it in reverse

and start giving gas.

And I'm like, okay.

And he's like,

and just keep giving gas

until the thing starts to move.

So I'm backing up the hill.

Right.

But I'm aimed right away

from my precious little

2,399 pound Cabriolet

that I really don't want to hit.

And so I put it in reverse

and I'm giving gas

and he's like, keep going,

keep going, keep going, keep going.

And I got to three quarters throttle,

three quarters throttle

in a 400 pound horsepower vehicle.

And it finally started to move

initially slowly

and then took the fuck off.

Yes.

And it was probably six seconds

of like a little bit more,

a little bit more,

what the fuck is going to happen?

What the fuck is going to happen?

That scared the shit out of me.

Then he made me turn around

and go up the hill

and stop on the hill

and go to move.

Did he do this to you?

Yes.

It's a hilarious feature.

So all right.

What it does is

it knows that an automatic

transmission car

when you lift off the brake

will creep forward.

Yes.

And so it tries to emulate

this behavior,

but it does this in,

it's sort of,

and I mean this

in the literal dictionary sense,

retarded way,

like literally it is in retard.

And so

It's also retarded

in that sort of offensive way.

And you lift off the brake

and it kind of just sits there

for a while.

And then it's like,

oh yes, creeping.

Let's do that.

And then it starts creeping away

up the hill.

Up a 25% grade.

Yeah.

An extremely steep hill

in a way that's very artificial

for the gradient.

I mean an automatic car

would roll backwards

down the hill

in this situation.

And this thing

starts kind of running away

from you

and like sort of driving

itself off

when you lift off the brake

what is this thing going to stop

slowing down its acceleration

of creepage?

It will hit

four miles an hour

in creep mode.

So by the way,

creep mode turns itself

on every time you start the car.

You have to go into a menu

and disable it.

And it says

due to your country's

local regulations,

this will turn back on

every time,

like a little thing.

So you can turn it off

in which case

you're at the mercy

of the fucking

auto-breakable system

and the throttle to let it.

Like no chance.

But so,

but I mean,

I'm,

you're aiming up this hill

and it's just fucking terrifying.

Let go of the brakes

and it's

what five seconds?

Six, seven.

Yeah.

It's a comedianly long time.

You forget what you're doing

and like you're at a stop

stoplight near,

you know,

having a conversation

and cruising off into

another universe

and then the car starts

driving away.

And then it,

well it made it up

a whole hill

at four miles an hour

and you're thinking

this has gotta be

120 horsepower

to get this thing

to four miles an hour

up a hill

and it's like,

it doesn't matter.

fucking kid, hit a tree, I'm doing four.

What we're doing is testing out the creep function

to see just how much power it will use

to get to that four miles an hour.

So we have a trash bin to evenly distribute the force

and then an actual full dumpster.

And we're gonna see if we just get in

and take our foot off the brake,

if the vin fast will push the dumpster

down the parking lot.

I'm in drive and I'm, oh.

There is no end to the amount of power

this thing will deploy to do four miles an hour.

Who, somebody misunderstood what creep is and how it works.

I believe, this was the conclusion I came to

with this car.

I believe that it was designed by engineers

who had never driven or seen a car before.

And they're like, here's what a car does.

And they're like, oh, okay.

We'll emulate that.

Yes.

That's exactly what I said.

We'll follow the description.

So we were in a car with everyone.

And so I drove this car last year in Tahoe.

We raced it against Vangina up the,

you know, up the Donner Pass and whatever.

And we were just playing around.

I drove it.

I'm like, it's not that bad.

The more time I spent with it, the worse it got.

And so.

In urban environments where you're getting in

and out of the throttle and in and out of the brakes

is it really highlights it.

It's tolerable on the highway.

Although it still has the delay

but there's sort of margin.

Yeah.

The ride quality we've not touched on.

Oh, we'll get to all this.

The noise from the back right corner

we've also not touched on.

Oh.

Yes.

10,000 miles, hold on.

Front left corner of the front right corner

of the suspension pops or all,

like there's so much other shit.

But yeah, I said, listen, many, many years ago,

I was asking, I was with Subaru

and I was asking a bunch of questions to the engineers

about chassis tuning on something was one of the cars.

And they introduced me to the guy who was,

whose job it was to do final chassis tuning.

He does not have a driver's license

and does not own a car.

It's all theoretical.

It was done at a computer at a desk.

Subaru.

Really?

This is the reason.

I'm shocking.

Right?

This is the reason some of the cars drive

the way they do.

It was all theoretical.

And this is why like at Lotus

they have like a guy who's a former race car driver

doing this shit.

Steering, done in a lab.

Suspension tuning, done in a lab.

Stereo, done in a lab.

Subaru's have been known for the longest time

to have the worst fucking stereos in the world.

And you listen to them stopped

and you're like, okay, it's not good.

And then as soon as you start moving

you can't hear anything

because they EQ'd it for fucking parked car.

The guy doesn't have a fucking driver's license

or drive, right?

And what I said to our friends is this,

all of the powertrain tuning was done

by copying theoretical data

by someone who is never driven, ever.

So we came to the same conclusion.

Yeah, I felt like that about the whole car though.

Not just the powertrain calibration.

Well the steering thing you get,

if you turn this wheel slowly at like

when you're parked at like a red light

or like stopped at a red light,

you feel like it's got artifacts

and errors and measuring torque and whatever.

But the one that got me, all right.

So one of the cars in right rear seat

for people in the car, I'm driving,

we're pulling into a parking spot

that's about nine inches longer than the car is

but we've been looking around for parking spot for a while.

So I'm shoving that parallel parking.

I am getting this fucking thing into that spot

if I have to total it.

Like that's my mentality at this point.

And we'll talk about what they pay for the car.

So they'd probably be happy to let it go.

And I go to back up and the cameras are delayed

and you just can't trust it.

And so our friend, the owner drops out

and he's like, let me jump out

and I will do the sealed fashion way.

And I'll guide you.

We're still moving.

He opens the door.

The fucking thing throws it, didn't slam on the brakes,

threw itself in park and shut off.

Okay.

I am in the driver's seat.

With the key.

No, he's got the key in his pocket.

And it's a no key detected, but shut off.

I'm in the driver's seat.

It's got a passenger or a driver's seat weight sensor

and a seatbelt fastened and I'm on the brake.

It knows there is a driver.

Someone got that algorithm wrong.

Like no key detected.

Now imagine you're driving on the highway

and somebody, it loses contact with the key

or something else happened

was going to do shut itself the fuck off.

Have you seen this video where it's like a bunch of youths

in like a fairly modern GM pickup truck

and they're driving down some country road

and the passenger in one motion simultaneously

puts it in park and turns the key off

and it just blocks up the rear wheels

and the thing fucking doesn't appear on it.

Everybody's laughing.

I imagine that's what happens.

Well, this is probably got a parking pole

on all four wheels.

So it's, who knows what's gonna lock all four

and you're gonna die.

And you're gonna die.

It's gonna be multiple revolutions.

That is so unsafe.

It scared the shit out of all of us

because a sudden park of a boom boom

and you just stop.

I'm like, oh my God.

And the residual lurching.

Oh my God, I was very, very cross.

At that point, I wanted to slam it into a wall.

Like this thing is not safe.

And so my determination was,

I have driven a lot of prototype vehicles

in 20 years of doing this.

None of them are as poorly tuned as this

in terms of power train calibration, not one.

Not one.

An impressive achievement for the VinFast VF-8.

I mean, okay, let's talk about what it is

and what it.

Well, we have to talk about ride quality

and the various noises as well.

10,000 miles on this car.

They have replaced 10,127.

Who's counting?

They have replaced, is it the spring pads?

Yes.

Twice now or three times?

Yeah, in the back.

It is on its third set.

So they have been replaced twice.

Because they basically fall apart

and then you have spring on.

I think they move out of position.

So you get this really glorious noise

from the back that's just like,

it sounds like there's a terror in the chassis

or something like that.

So that, yeah, it has that.

So yeah, in 10,000 miles.

The front suspension, it sounds like ball joints

that pop every time you turn the wheel left or right.

I identified it pretty quickly as a strut

because you also get a creak of the upper strut bearing.

10,000 miles.

No.

And there's the ride tuning also,

which is simultaneously, I don't,

I'm not that bothered by it.

I think it's at a speed,

I find it to be underdamped and at high speed.

And at low speed,

I find it to be intolerably crashy.

Windy and crashy.

Yeah, it's this wonderful mixture of poor,

like it's too harsh and too soft,

depending on the circumstances.

Yeah, I mean, there are plenty of cars

like that at the moment.

Yes, I think it's a modern car thing

because of wheel size.

At least sidewalls aren't outrageously slow.

But this is just,

I think it's got a geometry issue in it

because to get that harsh of impacts at low speeds,

it sounds more like a geometry issue to me

than a tuning issue, but I could be wrong.

It's pretty bad.

Especially if the spring rates are pretty,

it feels like a car with very stiff springs

at low speeds.

But yeah, but then you are clearly not enough

damper control at high speeds.

And they're not adaptive.

It's a fixed setup.

The ride's not good.

It's not something where I,

it's not last generation Tesla Model Y,

for example, which was an ox cart.

This is like, it's okay.

I think it's okay looking.

It's over styled for sure.

You know, that front end is just,

it got an extra set of headlights on it

and a bit too much shit.

Most modern cars are like that.

I think the rest of the car

is pretty plain and clean.

I mean, it almost has a Maserati.

Yeah, I was gonna say the doors kind of remind me

of a Stelvio.

Yeah, I mean, it's Stelvio slash Levante slash

even Cayenne in its hip line.

Again, Pininfarina.

I mean, it's not a terrible looking thing.

The interior is actually quite nice material-wise.

Seating position is okay,

but it's amazing to me how obvious this is

that the devil's in the details.

And that I could be, I could have almost,

I'm not, no way,

but you could spend a couple minutes with this car

and think, oh, I could buy this thing.

And after over the first time playing around

and sliding it around and doing stupid shit,

I'm like, yeah, it's fine.

But after, I mean, it took all of-

Yeah, when you try to do normal stuff in it,

it's so furiating because it,

infuriating because it doesn't do what you ask

when you ask for it.

Or does things you don't ask for it?

Like for example, there's a bug in the software

that if you have the key in your pocket

and you walk past the left rear backup sonar sensors,

it pops the hatchback open.

Yeah, I don't know if you know.

That's, you can just sort of like a little trick

that for whatever reason does that.

The interior lights flicker at some sort of rhythmic

sort of like thing occasionally.

I mean, it's just got a lot of bugs.

And the touchscreen is not intuitive at all.

Yeah, it is-

Incomplete, unfinished.

Unfinished, but a really great.

If you guys ever want to understand

where the chassis tuning magic is

that separates Porsche from everyone else

or some of those unattainable cars,

drive something like this and you realize,

okay, at first glance, it's fine.

It's a car.

It actually motivates.

It's quick enough.

Yeah, and then what does it range at?

It's 300 miles or something?

So this is the plus trim.

There's an eco trim,

243 on this plus trim,

264 on the eco trim,

which has 348 horsepower.

This is a 402.

It's an 87.7 kilowatt hour battery.

I mean, it's-

Okay, so for all of this amazing product,

what do we pay?

Oh, we looked this up and now I don't even remember.

Okay, it was 2200 down.

Right.

And 149 a month plus tax.

So their full payment,

I always do this,

total outlay divided by total number of months.

That's for a 24 month lease and 20,000 miles total.

They paid $240 and 66 cents plus tax per month, per month,

which is admittedly three times what I paid for the Eagle

for what you could get a Fiat 500E for the originally,

but this is also three times the range.

So I guess you get, and twice the mass and,

you know, for their,

they bought this to throw on Turro.

So you can Turro this car right now if you'd like.

In fact, maybe we should have Turroed it from them

and therefore, you know-

I mean, there might be a line after our endorsement for it.

If people, like it would be like an amusement park.

It's an interesting thing for a car guy to experience, I think.

I mean, it's, you know,

while we're sitting here talking about how, you know,

the Chinese car industry is surpassing us

and we're not able to test it,

now we can look at, you know,

and some insight into the Vietnamese car industry,

which I don't think is as far along as the Chinese one.

And there was-

It would appear not.

They partnered with BMW for some of the stuff.

Yes, I recognize the stocks.

Yeah, so some BMW parts in there

and previous VinFast before they went electric

used BMW power trains.

And apparently we're quite good

according to the owner of this car.

Who has no affinity to it.

I mean, you know, he's just like, it is a piece of shit,

but you know, it was a cheap piece of shit

and thanks to Turro, it's now paid for itself.

So they've, you know, they rented out and-

They did it for their amusement.

Yeah, it was because it was cheap enough.

And, you know, IE it will become a profit center.

Why not?

But yeah, man, this, I will say, as bad as this is,

is nothing in comparison to the Twingo,

the Twingo that I rented.

In Greece.

In Greece, yeah, it was Twingo, right?

I don't know.

It was the rear engine three cylinder, Twingo.

That could be, yeah.

Why am I not?

Twingo could be, yeah.

That's a real product that Renault makes.

That was truly horrendous.

And by an established car maker,

like that with the steering was so bad,

I couldn't believe it was in a production car.

The suspension tuning was so awful.

You know, the NVH from that three cylinder was,

every part of it was terrible.

And then the car, I think had 40,000 kilometers on it

and threw its drive belt while I was driving it.

So, you know, we know it's-

How many RPM?

Oh, it's sitting at idle.

And all of a sudden it was,

and I was like, what is that?

I mean, I had previously redlined it every shift,

but it was 29 seconds to 69, I'm exaggerating.

It was very fast in an alternate universe.

What a steaming pile of absolute horseshit

is what my notes say.

I guess-

What did the rest of them say?

You're not gonna give us the rest?

You may as well-

I mean, we could do the random number.

No, no, no.

This isn't random, this is specific.

Oh my God, the zoom function doesn't work

and this font-

Okay, we're not gonna get it all.

You want me to read it?

Can you see?

Well, I can try to find it again.

No, no, no, no stress.

We've shot on enough cars this episode.

You think so?

We'll do what we should do.

You actually suggested our best drives of the year episode

coming up maybe next week

or at some point before the end of the year.

Let's do best and worst

because that Twingo is all elaborated on that.

That was so cute though.

I was thinking 10 best and one worst was my-

10 best and one worst.

That's a lot in one year.

I mean, we'll see.

We'll see how many I can come up with.

My 10 might all just be my own cars,

which I might be driving the rover again soon.

The rover's running.

That works.

All right, well, that lies ahead

sometime between now and the end of the year.

Yes, so join us again next week

for another episode of us bitching about

the Carmudgeon show.

Yes.

Where you'll learn about shitty EVs,

great EVs, shitty ADAS systems,

great ADAS systems.

Or something altogether great

or an unattainable or old or new or-

Or Chinese regulations.

Or we just don't know.

You just never know.

We could say.

That's what the Carmudgeon show is.

It's like Mad Libs.

Choose country and decade and insert.

Soco reference.

Yeah, all right.

And you have your own,

very own homemade Carmudgeon show.

All right, we'll see you next week.

We Drove A VinFast VF8 So You Don’t Have To — Carmudgeon w/ Jason Cammisa & Derek Tam-Scott — Ep 216

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