00:00.60 James Welcome back everyone to Merge Conflict, your weekly developer podcast talking about all things in the world of software development. I'm one of your hosts, James Montemagno, and with me as always, the glowing Frank Kruger. How's it going, crew Kruger? 00:11.36 Frank Hi, I wish my name is Frank Kruger. Hi, everyone. I wish I was glowing like that. The weather's been kind of trashy today, so I'm not getting my normal lighting. The light that I like to have in this room is just not happening. I hope you're all watching on the YouTube. Otherwise, hi, everyone. Just listening on the podcast. 00:29.50 James Normally, it's a we we're at like one of the peak amounts of sunlight. you know It doesn't get dark until 9 p.m. know Normally, it is dark. And normally, you have a light in the back. So it is a little bit more that like glowiness in there. So yeah, we'll report back in maybe five months where it got dark at 2 p.m. 00:47.06 James and then see how glowing you are in general. 00:50.07 Frank Yeah. 00:50.45 James Yeah. but Yeah. 00:52.50 Frank Are you ah a short day of the year kind of person or a long day of the year kind of person? 00:57.24 James I like long days and I like that because um one, Millie needs her insulin shots in the morning at like 7.30 and 7.30. 01:05.29 Frank Right. 01:06.87 James So if we do 7.30, 7.30, I could take her for a walk ahead of time. It's light outside. I can take her for a walk. We can go afterwards. We can go in during the day. Those things. Additionally, if we do like road trips, I hate going over the mountains at night. 01:21.08 James There are 01:21.78 Frank Yeah. No one likes that. 01:22.73 James bears and deers and Elks and snow. Nobody likes that. Nobody wants that. So that is I prefer. And that's nice because like, let's say we want to drive to the coast or we want to go somewhere. 01:34.23 James Then what we're able to do is even leave work at four or five o'clock and get there with still daylight, which feels fantastic. 01:40.28 Frank Yeah. 01:41.40 James So 01:41.91 Frank Except now that when I go to bed at 10 p.m., it's still light out and I feel like I'm turning into an old man. So I'm more of a middle of the road. I'm a fall, spring kind of guy. I'm not a summer or winter person. 01:52.57 James yeah 01:54.46 Frank But yeah, I'm a little sad that we're actually past the summer solstice. Somehow, somehow time progressed to that point. It's kind of weird. 02:03.46 James Yeah, it's kind of wild. um But that just means you have more time to code because there's more light outside. You can be like, oh, I can just like code, code, code. And then, oh, I can code until 9 PM. I guess I can go out now. 02:15.10 James um I was thinking that we talk a lot about recently um a lot of customizations. like We're talking about you know our developer setup, we talk about our desk setup, we talk about our house setup, we talk about our agent setup, we talk about our you know local model usage, cloud usage, all these things. 02:33.08 Frank yeah 02:33.21 James I was thinking we would break away from the world of AI for one podcast, Frank. 02:38.04 Frank what okay can we i'm not even sure if i can anymore 02:38.87 James Yeah. 02:43.10 James I want to talk about vehicles. 02:46.52 Frank oh boy Oh, my fourth favorite subject. 02:47.96 James And 02:51.51 James I specifically want to talk about electric vehicle vehicles. 02:57.50 Frank Oh, the best kind of vehicle. Just saying. 02:59.48 James did Did that move up? 03:00.21 Frank i'm um I'm slightly biased in my opinions here. I'm an electrical engineer. I think everything should be electronic. um Burning, burning petrol dinosaurs to make boom boom go inside giant metal box seems like a really weird way to make wheels spin. 03:18.72 James Uh, it is wild, isn't it Not only do we do that, uh, how do we get natural gas? That's got it. That's also, it's not natural by the way. It's and just gas. 03:27.81 Frank It's natural. It's down there somewhere. 03:29.02 James Is it? 03:29.73 Frank Yeah. 03:30.04 James Yeah. yeah 03:31.29 Frank Well, you know, okay. 03:32.47 James We've got to get it out. 03:32.49 Frank Well, okay. it doesn The kind of gas we use isn't so natural. So we got to get it out and then we got to filter out the junk we don't want. And then we make plastics out of that junk, the ethane, and then we we burn the methane, you know? 03:47.09 Frank So there's all the things out there for us to consume and enjoy. 03:52.41 James Yes. ah Well, ah we currently have two a dinosaur, yeah, ethanol. 03:56.92 Frank I don't know. Whatever. 03:59.12 James They put the ethanol, they put it in. ah We have two ah dinosaur burning vehicles. 04:01.44 Frank Not today. 04:06.54 James We have a Subaru that's behind me somewhere. don't if you can see it in here. 04:09.17 Frank Yeah. 04:10.13 James There's a, no, it's behind me this way, not this way. 04:11.96 Frank not today yeah you 04:13.28 James It's so it's right there. And i also have a smart car, which is fantastic. That one burns less dinosaur per mile. 04:19.51 Frank Yeah. It's probably only done one dinosaur in its whole life. 04:24.34 James um At most, at most. And like a tiny dinosaur, like a really like baby T-Rex, no raptor, baby raptor. 04:28.28 Frank Yeah. Oh, raptor. Yeah. 04:30.89 James Yeah. The ones that are like, oh, i'm done fine. ah So about maybe a year ago, ah you when did you get your EV? You have a Chevy Bolt, is that correct? 04:42.81 Frank Yeah, Bolt EUV. Yeah, I got that in 2023, I want to say. I'm bad at years, James, but it's been a little bit of time. 04:53.05 Frank Yeah, we'll go with 2023. 04:54.00 James Well, that's pretty good. 04:54.24 Frank Yeah. The 04:57.46 James ah 04:57.82 Frank yeah 04:58.77 James And they had credits and things back then. That was pretty cool. They don't have credits anymore. But I always thought that i i always thought that we would get, you know, when the smart car be became like the dinosaurs and perished, it would be time to get an EV. 05:03.46 Frank Halcyon days. Yeah. 05:14.83 James and and this And the smart car is doing just fine, by the way. It's it's still... 05:17.79 Frank That's funny. Great. Yep. 05:19.89 James two thousand and nine It's 2009. It's kicking. It's going on year 17 into year 18. It's doing just fine. 05:24.50 Frank Fantastic. 05:25.94 James um But I've been great. 05:27.00 Frank You know, I used to work, sorry, I'm just interjecting. 05:29.26 James Go ahead. 05:29.90 Frank I used to work at an automotive manufacturer and i got to tell you, cars are designed to last 10 years. Like as engineers, that's all we're aiming for. The warranty is for three. We actually want the parts to last for 10. 05:41.82 Frank So if you make it past 10, honestly, you're doing fine. You are doing fine. 05:45.46 James That's pretty good. The Subies on, you know, we bought them both used off of Craigslist. The Subie is on year, ah it's 2017. 05:55.98 James So year nine. So it's getting into year 10. This puppy is, it's a Subaru. 05:58.32 Frank Uh-oh. Watch out. 06:01.18 James They last forever. It's got 130 on it. ah 06:03.74 Frank ah 06:04.50 James And we we do drive that one the most because obviously the smart car is a smart car. And we don't drive it as much more for like in town stuff. But, you know, when you buy a car, Frank, 06:15.93 James you know, in your EV, how much customization did you get to do? 06:20.55 Frank Oh, golly. You know, it kind of breaks my heart um because, as I said, I did work in a manufacturer. So I would want to do so much customization. But dealing with dealerships is the absolute worst, most annoying thing on the planet. 06:34.80 Frank So like what you want to do is walk in with every single little optional part selected. 06:35.38 James Terrible. 06:40.73 Frank Yes, no, yes, no. Hand them a checklist. They'll say, okay we'll have that car in a week. And then you come back and you get your car. It's not how it works at all. If you want to do like a perfectly customized car to your very particular, you got to put in a factory order and it's going to take three to nine months for that factory to actually get that car over to you. And even then, the dealer is probably going to mess with you somehow because they love to mess with you. 07:06.83 Frank So how much customization did I do? 07:07.18 James Yeah. 07:08.70 Frank Zero. I came in with a list of the options I wanted and I got the options I wanted. But guess what, James? I got options I didn't want because it was either that or wait three to six to nine months and not have a car. 07:21.30 James Yeah. 07:22.01 Frank So that that's how they get you. um If, you know, I wanted the self-driving capability on the car. And that puts you into a certain tier. And then that tier comes with a bunch of like Bose stereo systems and junk like that. I don't really care about leather seats. Don't care about speedometer. Don't need one. um But forced me to take it. 07:45.88 James You got it now. You got all the the gizmos and widgets and wing bats and goober gops in there. 07:50.10 Frank Yeah, it's the worst. Cars like base price, if you can just get the base price of a car, that's all you need. You don't need the you don't need the leather seats. They're uncomfortable in the summer. You don't need the speedometer. You just go to the speed everyone else is going. That's safety. 08:09.46 James I mean, there's probably like some level of ah required stuff that they got to put in, like a speedometer. 08:15.99 Frank Very few things. 08:17.46 James Very few things. 08:17.46 Frank a Headlights, some windshield wipers, and a little, rice to hang up on a mirror. 08:21.37 James Like one one bag that inflates. Yeah. 08:24.76 Frank Yeah. 08:24.92 James Yeah. one One little thing if you get in an accident, it inflates and it's boom, little safety bag. um Well, what if I told you that, you know, just like you can customize your PC and you could build your own PC and you can customize, run your models where you want, you can set up your desk how you want. 08:42.10 James What if I told you could do that with a vehicle? What if you had a blank slate, if you will, that you are going to... 08:47.46 Frank notify They've tried this in the past. It would take a billionaire, maybe a trillionaire with a very large consumer facing company to pull off such a thing because Toyota's tried it. 08:59.49 Frank GM tried it with the Saturn line. Every car company has tried. 09:02.53 James Yeah. 09:04.13 Frank It just turns out logistics, and I'm going to sound like Tim Apple now, logistics is hard. ah So actually getting like custom orders to the customer on time. I mean, there's reasons there are dealerships to be blunt. 09:17.53 Frank um So like selling direct to the consumer and taking customized stuff from the factory is difficult. Now I know um ah money solves all problems. 09:27.87 Frank So if you're willing to blow a lot of money, you can solve this problem. But can you solve it for 10 years? Can you create a sustainable business for 10 years with that? 09:35.93 James Well, what if I told you that a few things, like one, what if you had the ability not just to customize, you have this blank slate in front of you that you could customize anything, but what if you could customize it later? 09:48.10 James Like, let's say you wanted to add your own suspension or add a roll cage or add um fenders or add a a bar rack in the back. 09:56.62 Frank Yeah. 09:57.14 James Or what if you wanted to convert, let's say, a a small pickup truck into an SUV? What if you could do that 10:03.19 Frank Oh, yeah. 10:03.90 James five years from now. 10:04.62 Frank It's actually real easy. 10:04.70 James What if you could buy that and DIY it? 10:05.76 Frank Yeah. m Look up, ah go to amazon.com, look up what's called a TIG or MIG welder. And I'm telling you, you can turn literally anything into anything else. With a little bit of practice, going want to practice with your welder. But I'm telling you you, you can turn a car into a truck, a truck into a mini car, a mini car into a big truck. 10:28.57 Frank With welding, of the world is your oyster. 10:31.70 James Well, Frank, what if I told you 10:32.34 Frank Are you saying without welding? Yeah. 10:34.71 James what you What if you didn't have to do any of that? Because what if there was a vehicle that was just modular that had plug and play parts into it? And what if this company was backed by a billionaire from one of the largest e-commerce websites in the entire... 10:41.48 Frank Oh, 10:46.19 Frank I know what you're talking about now. General Motors in 2004, they developed a new EV platform where a four wheel independent drive. There were four little motors for each wheel. I'm sorry, each wheel only we got one motor. 11:00.47 Frank And there was a flat body and a little motors for each wheel. And then you could design the rest. You could design where the seats go in it. You could design what frame went on top of it. You could even choose your color. That's how advanced they were back then. 11:14.94 Frank And you know how far that idea made it? Nowheresville. We worked on it for 10 years, and that stupid car never got released. But you could change anything about it. It was a unified platform, unified body, unified platform. 11:29.21 Frank So ah who's crazy enough to try this technique again? 11:33.17 James Okay. This a company, ah Frank, that is called slate 11:38.94 Frank Yeah. 11:39.96 James so you can go to slate.auto. This is a company that is backed by many, many, many different people, including Jeff Bezos, who put in about a billion dollars into the company. 11:42.46 Frank Yeah. 11:49.94 James And their whole concept, if you know, they announced this many moons ago and I put in my $50 pre-order there, but they just they just put in the official, official pre-order, um like re reservation guarantee for shipping at the end of this year, early next year. 11:55.70 Frank Yep. yeah 12:09.40 James And this little puppy is a small pickup truck. So it's smaller than a Maverick, a very small. um And they make one model. 12:17.66 Frank Best size for a pickup truck, by the way. 12:19.42 James Yeah, it kind of... 12:19.92 Frank Pickup trucks should come in two sizes, tiny and huge. There should be no in-betweens. 12:23.10 James Yeah. 12:24.20 Frank that The quarter ton and half ton, those are abominations. You need tiny or huge. Those are the two sizes trucks should come in. 12:32.06 James Correct. Yes, it is very tiny, like somewhere on the website. I think if you scroll somewhere down, there's like a side by side comparison. Yeah. If you go down, there's the what is it compared to the Ford Maverick, the Chevy Silverado and the 1985 Toyota SR5 pickup truck. 12:50.80 James It's just a tiny bit bigger than that. 12:51.38 Frank Nice. 12:52.20 James So we're going back. 12:52.63 Frank that Good for them. 12:53.66 James Okay, so this company is unique. They make one base model. So every single one of this slate, they're going for the most approachable, affordable truck that's also an EV and extremely highly customizable. 13:00.50 Frank Yeah. 13:11.06 James So every blank slate is a, um by default, a pickup truck that we see. And the core size of two seater has a five foot bed in the back. 13:24.71 James ah You can feel like plywood or whatever you want in there. ah 13:27.54 Frank No, you can't. 13:28.79 James ah Standard five. 13:29.94 Frank Plywoods 8x4. 13:31.67 James well Well, I mean, it's not going to, it's going to hang over the back. 13:35.74 Frank Yes, it will hang out the back. 13:35.83 James You know what I mean? It's going to fit inside. 13:37.26 Frank Yes. 13:38.65 James Yes. Eight by four. And yes, it's cocky. Well, obviously with the thing back down or whatever, which you can't, you know, a lot of these big trucks actually have a tiny bed. and have you seen those? 13:47.96 Frank Oh, no, that's a joke. You you can get like a 350 and it has like a five foot bed. So yeah, no, pickup trucks are weird animals these days. 13:52.43 James Yeah. 13:54.68 James Yeah. um It has a frunk. So it has a front trunk, which is, you know, which is essential. do You have, you have a frunk. I just heard that terminology for the first time. 14:04.63 Frank I do not. I was a little bit sad about that too, because as a Frank, I was hoping to have a frunk, but i I didn't get one. 14:10.18 James Frunk. 14:12.47 Frank So I was kind of sad. Now it turns out these motors don't actually run very hot. 14:15.56 James Yeah. 14:16.71 Frank So I just throw a bunch of trash into the engine compartment anyway. 14:20.22 James Yeah. 14:20.28 Frank um It's my own kind of um trashy frunk. Yeah. 14:27.67 Frank oh 14:27.77 James I like that. 14:28.47 Frank You know, that's the real problem with a pickup truck. I used to own a pickup truck. The real problem with pickup trucks, James, is that everyone uses it as a trash can. 14:33.95 James Yes. 14:36.86 Frank Wherever you go, you will collect cans and other debris that people no longer want. And they see your truck and they're like, ooh, that's a giant garbage can. I shall put it in there. 14:46.97 Frank So beware of of that small pickup truck problem. 14:47.32 James Yep. Yes, that makes sense. Yeah. ah So beyond that, the it kind of has like standard set of features. 14:57.43 James So it has lights. It has safety bags. It has windows. 15:02.08 Frank Dice off the mirror? OK. 15:04.25 James ah it has... so 15:06.71 Frank I hope I roll up. That's the best way to do it. 15:08.18 James they They are roll up, yeah. so what So what this company did is they said, we're gonna try to hit a base price and then the EV credit went away. So they said, we're gonna try to hit a new base price. And they said, what if we strip ah um ah strip away all the the crap basically that really isn't standard and could be upgraded either later on, installed later, upgraded XYZ. 15:25.66 Frank Yeah. 15:29.39 James So this thing has, yeah, seven 10 inch wheels um that are just like blank. Every slate is the same color gray. So you can't pick a color. 15:37.75 Frank How funny. 15:38.38 James You can get a wrap later if you want to wrap it for 500 bucks. 15:40.57 Frank I made that joke earlier that you could choose a color, at least on the GM. 15:44.19 James Nope, no, no color. So no, they're all, so from the manufacturing, so from the factory, one vehicle, one set of features comes out. 15:45.27 Frank Funny. Hilarious. Yeah. 15:52.26 James Everything else is an add-on later. So roll down win... 15:54.94 Frank It's fine. You're going to want to buy and a vinyl wrap that makes it look like a big Denali 350 or something anyway. Okay. 16:02.87 James you You absolutely could. And they sell all the wraps online. So you got standard standard stuff, right? Tailgate, you have um some USB ports, you have roll down windows, you have AC, standard AC. 16:14.66 Frank That's cool. 16:16.97 James You have a simple dash, just one little tiny little window. 16:17.48 Frank That's nice. Yep. 16:21.17 James It's maybe like, I wanna say five by five inches that just gives you the odometer, your EV capacity. 16:25.16 Frank Pretty much. 16:27.51 James That's it required required by law. 16:27.75 Frank Don't need any of that. There should be nothing on the dash. 16:30.49 James ah require So it's only in front of you ah there. And then it has a cell phone station that you can put your cell phone in. No speakers, no audio. 16:38.43 Frank Yeah. 16:40.09 James um 16:40.77 Frank Oh, that is funny. Okay. 16:42.73 James Yep. 16:42.74 Frank I was making fun of the Bose system, but I would want at least a little speaker, but you can buy cheap speakers. That's fine. 16:48.02 James It doesn't have any center thing, but it does have cup holders. that's good. um You know, armrests. 16:54.17 Frank So given what you're saying, what is this? It sounds like maybe $8,000. I think that's what I'd spend on it. 16:59.38 James Yeah, correct. So it's going to give you, by default, out of the box, 205 miles, and it's using the newer... What's the battery that's newer? The L something, the one that you can charge up to 100%? 17:15.96 Frank Yeah, I'm sorry. i don't i can't keep up with battery technologies. It's going to be a lithium variant. Who knows? 17:22.43 James Yep. 17:23.13 Frank there so many There's so many chemistries for lithium these days. 17:23.19 James It's some... 17:26.05 Frank You can't keep up. 17:26.57 James There's some some new one. So the starting price that's made in the US, it's gonna 24,950. So just under 25,000, which is the absolute cheapest truck and cheapest EV on the market. The Chevy Bolt starts at about 30,000. 17:45.72 James Now, of course, you can add on anything. So here's the cool part about it When you go to slate.auto, you have the little thing. You can turn it into SUV. You can add additional seats in the back. You can add a roll cage. It can be open. It can be closed. it can you know You can put on bigger wheels. You can lift the and lift it. You can you know add little step holders on it. You can add wraps to it. You can add the speakers. You can do everything. 18:08.77 James So, um, and you can do that anytime. So there's basically a modular bolting system and all of the components are all just add on later and they have different difficulties. 18:17.79 Frank That is clever. 18:18.12 James Like, yeah. So, and my assumption is that you'll be able to make your own parts too, because you could. 18:25.27 Frank Sure. The aftermarket should be huge. If it's all easy installation for the OEM junk, then I imagine the aftermarket's going be pretty hot if they can manage to sell a bunch of these things. 18:30.61 James Yep. 18:35.90 Frank Then the aftermarket will catch up. 18:37.91 James Yeah. So, and they have tons of designs like decals and body styles and wraps and all this stuff. And obviously if you go up to like an SUV, you're at like 30,000 if you just add that onto it and, you know, which is still pretty good. 18:50.19 Frank Oh, 18:51.96 James um But it's only real world we ah realw worldl drive, only two hundred and five miles which is up from their default previously. they were going to have two models, one lower, one higher, one 160 and one 250. 19:04.02 Frank oh really? OK. Yeah. 19:06.17 James But they used to only have to do that because for the EV credit, the battery components also had to come from the states or whatever and blah, blah, Now they could use this other battery technology. 19:06.61 Frank and 19:16.02 James And the bonus there is that you can charge up to 100% like all the time, basically, compared to most that are only like the 80% charge. 19:21.13 Frank Yeah. 19:22.68 James So it's a really interesting concept. 19:22.68 Frank Yeah. 19:24.83 James And, you know, for me, when I bought, this is probably cheaper than when I bought my Honda Element and got screwed over by the auto dealer in Phoenix, Arizona. 19:32.73 Frank know 19:35.03 James Um, But it's a really interesting concept, obviously a brand new company from scratch. And 25,000, I was listening to MKBHD, a lot of people are saying it's too expensive, but also other people are saying it's too cheap. 19:50.36 James You know what I mean? like And their their original target was twenty k for it. um But yeah, want to kind of get thoughts, impressions of obviously this, but also the concept, right? 20:01.50 James Because even in the Subaru that I have here, there's a bunch of junk that I don't ever use ever. 20:02.04 Frank Yeah. Right. Yep. 20:08.33 James The whole infotainment center, I don't need any of that. Turn that off. Just give me like a Bluetooth. I'm good to go. You know, I'll put ah i'll put the AirPlay display in there. I'm good, you know? 20:16.56 Frank Yeah. It's funny because I've been into motorcycles lately and I was never an accessorize your anything person before. But boy, James, let me tell you, I've been accessorizing the heck out of my latest vehicle. 20:25.51 James Mm-hmm. 20:30.51 Frank So I actually really appreciate um this system. Buy a base thing and then customize it at the factory or over time as you want. That sounds like a good system. 20:44.84 Frank I'm personally on the side of that price is a little bit high, but all prices are high right now. Like inflation is the most terrible thing on the whole planet. But if you were to, if we actually allowed like Chinese imports or something like that, then this price would be too high for what you're getting. You should get power windows. You should get a few more things at $25,000. 21:06.30 Frank But in the current market, i think it's actually a good price. 21:07.49 James Thank 21:10.46 Frank You know, um it's been 20 years since you could buy a car for under $10,000. It's just not doable anymore. I wonder what the last time was that you could even get a car under $20,000. 21:20.34 James you. 21:23.29 Frank So I think what i already said was um this idea has been tried before. It's been tried by everyone. Every new company even seems like they start with this idea. So it's all in the execution. I look forward to it. I know my friend has been looking at one of these actually for quite a while. So I know a lot about them, to be honest. Yeah. 21:43.09 Frank Um, because it's, if you want a truck, an electric truck, there aren't too many options out there right now. There's Ford's got one, the Rivian's out there, obviously the cyber trucks out there, this puppy's out there. 21:56.41 Frank Most EVs are sedans, you know, everyone, literally everyone is driving a Tesla sedan right now. 21:57.94 James All right. 22:02.94 Frank It's the only car I see on the road. And it's nice to see other EV form factors coming out there. And I'm a huge fan of the small truck. 22:13.58 Frank Like I said, I used to drive one. It's one of my most favorite vehicles. Mine even has cruise control. I do recommend you get cruise control. and Life's too short to be playing with that gas pedal the entire time. 22:24.12 James it does It does have cruise control. true shoot Cruise control a standard. 22:25.56 Frank That's good. 22:27.28 James It's standard. Yeah, yeah. It's standard, yeah. 22:29.43 Frank um But, you know, a utilitarian truck um that's good for the environment that please, please table all the battery manufacturing issues. Yes. But it's good for the environment while you're driving it um it. gives you a lot of peace of mind because you didn't spend $20,000 on fake leather seats that have little blowers in them that can make your butt warm. 22:55.26 Frank So that is nice sometimes. 22:56.90 James It was nice. 22:57.18 Frank Yeah. I do recommend the heated steering wheel if they have that option. Spend whatever it takes, get the heated steering wheel. Even in the summer, it's nice. it's It's a good thing. I... 23:09.98 Frank ah we are going to have the auto manufacturers need to up their game a bit. We can't all just be buying five series BMWs and just paying crazy amounts of money for a vehicle and getting a bunch of junk that you're never going to need. um In this economy, that's not going to fly. What we need is nice, cheap EVs that are customizable. And this hits, this hits everything for me. I think it's a fantastic truck. I can't wait to actually get to play with one. I hope you buy one and I can play with yours. 23:41.46 James Yeah, I'm i debating right now. i do have, I did lock in the actual $300, like no non-refundable 23:50.65 Frank Oh boy. 23:50.71 James ah pre-order yeah 23:52.02 Frank In for a penny, in for a pound. 23:53.59 James Well, what I also want to talk about here is like, I think that the customization is really cool because it's kind of like a Lego truck, right? You're building and customizing your Lego and doing these things. 23:59.78 Frank Yeah. 24:02.33 James And I think there's going to be two directions. People like me that would be like, I'm just going to get the base slate. I customized mine. I added a front speaker that has like Bluetooth and it's like built into the dash. Just one. You could do left and right and all this stuff. I don't need that. 24:14.90 James I added little cubbies on the on the bottom right, a trunk lock because it'd be nice. 24:19.23 Frank Right. 24:20.14 James The front the front locks the back, debatable, but might be nice. 24:23.27 Frank Sure. and Are you going to do a Tahoe cover or would you do like an SUV cover? 24:28.60 James So they have a tile, the flat cover. That's what you mean 24:31.09 Frank Yeah. 24:31.80 James So I was gonna, they have one, it's a thousand dollars. 24:31.81 Frank Mm-hmm. 24:34.84 James I'm going to wait for third party because I've seen them for other ones that are like four or 500 bucks. 24:36.96 Frank Mm-hmm. You go to Walmart and you get yourself a $30 tarp. It's a, it's a pickup truck. 24:42.13 James Okay, there you go 24:43.18 Frank You know, if you can't make it look too nice. 24:43.45 James Yeah. Yeah. 24:45.74 Frank Otherwise people will steal it. 24:48.12 James There you go Yeah. ah And I think beyond that, I think that's all I had. So like I was only adding maybe $700 to the base price, which is kind of good. 24:53.46 Frank Yeah. 24:59.32 James And it has stuff included, like all the charging cables and all the things like that are included too. 24:59.42 Frank yeah i 25:04.18 James Like if you went all out, you could easily trick it out to 40K if you wanted. But I would debate Then are you making this vehicle perfect for you? And then is it worth that price compared to saying, going to go get this vehicle that I have no customization over at all? 25:21.34 James Hard to say. 25:22.81 Frank Yeah. Plus there's the fun of just spending a ton of money and being surprised by what features you get. That's always a fun one too. 25:29.30 James yeah 25:30.26 Frank I would say, i um Part of the engineer in me just doesn't believe this whole you can do anything afterwards. Like it's going to come down to whatever dealer you're buying this from. What are the dealership fees? You know, if they're charging $150 an hour to put in four bolts to add something and you're not going to want to do that all the time. So part of me just doesn't believe that. 25:55.19 Frank Everything can be added on later, but maybe they did their job. Maybe it really truly can. And I'll eat my own words. And if so, that's fantastic engineering, honestly, because it's so hard to make things take a partable and edible because you know what happens? 26:09.07 James you 26:11.36 Frank You get rattles. There's reasons things are built at the factory because it goes through a QA process at the factory. They shake it. They wiggle it. They make sure it doesn't make any rattle rattle noises or anything like that. They make sure that if you touch anything on the window seal that the door shuts correctly because guess what? You can mess that up very easily, um especially if you're changing manual windows into power windows and things like that. 26:36.95 Frank So part of me just doesn't believe that every option is available later on. But then even if it is, you still got to take into account the actual service fees and all that kind of stuff for adding that junk. 26:49.74 James That's true. Yeah, that that is the the great debate that is like unknown, right? Which is, okay, can I do it or does someone else need to do it? 26:57.33 Frank right. 26:58.46 James Like the wrap is $500, but how do I install said wrap? You know, obviously I could DIY it, but is it going to be as good as? 27:03.99 Frank you can You can do it, but you're going to get seams. You're going to get bubbles. If you've never done a rap before, buy one to practice with and then buy the one that you actually want because you're going to mess up that first one. 27:12.75 James Yeah. 27:15.93 James ah Yeah, that's a good point. Yeah. 27:19.16 Frank But at the same time, it's fun. you know If you mess up your first rep, who cares? like you'll You'll see that seam and you're like, yeah, but I put that on. like I think there's a real sense of accomplishment of um customizing things like this. 27:27.25 James I put that on. Yeah. 27:33.01 Frank if you have If you're one of those people that has no time to enjoy the process of tinkering and building, I totally understand going out and just buying a Beamer. But it sounds like if you have any interest at all in customizing your own vehicle, this thing's going to be right up your alley because there's going to ton of little cheap things you can buy for it and you'll be able to just play around. 27:57.60 James 3D print your own little attachments. um Well, a few questions for you on the EV front, um because, you know, obviously not all EVs are created equal. 27:59.29 Frank Exactly. Yeah. 28:06.81 James So you know a lot about EVs and charging and electric things. 28:07.24 Frank Yeah. 28:10.57 James So this puppy has level one, level two, and level three charging. Is that good? 28:15.96 Frank Yeah. 28:16.22 James Is that enough? Is that standard today? 28:19.21 Frank level two is basically your home charging. So you're plugging it into the wall using, in the United States, 120 volt system. 28:22.55 James yeah 28:28.38 Frank And that's fine. It's truly fine. Because most people drive maximum 30, 40 miles a day. You're probably going to drive maximum 30, 40 miles a month or a week or something like that. 28:41.37 James Yeah. 28:42.39 Frank So you plugging into your house power is absolutely fine. The times it's not fine is when you're trying to do a road trip or something like that, where you want like a half hour, 15 minute half hour, a one hour layover between charges and things like that. 28:57.71 Frank That's where the charging level really matters to you. But to give a perspective, um that sounds like it's a slightly smaller battery than mine. I get about 240 miles to a battery. And at level two charging, if I'm going from zero, that's like four days, I think, to get myself up to 240 miles. 29:16.47 Frank It's been a long time. 29:16.86 James You mean like a 120 or 240? 29:17.36 Frank 240 29:18.69 James Well, 29:20.74 Frank is level three. So level two is your 120. 29:22.46 James more okay. 29:24.66 Frank So... 29:24.70 James Oh, here they have level one as a wall plug, level two as a 240, and a level three as a 29:27.92 Frank OK. Oh, I'm sorry. I'm sorry. maybe i'm Maybe I'm getting my levels wrong. OK, let's just go by voltage then. 120 plugging into a normal circuit. 29:38.31 Frank Stupid market marketing hype. 29:39.44 James multiplies by two. 29:40.91 Frank It's the most annoying. 29:41.06 James boom, boom. 29:42.07 Frank So um ah that's like four days to get your battery charged. If you have a 240 system and you're able to push all 50 amps through it, which you better build a separate circuit for just for safety and all that kind of stuff, then you can charge that car up in less than 12 hours, most likely. 30:00.68 Frank So you'll be able to, you know, if if you somehow burn an entire battery in a day, you'll be ready to go tomorrow if you leave it charging all night. So that's the nice benefit of a 240-volt system. 30:12.25 Frank But the truth is, like I went through the effort of installing a 240-volt system just to charge my car. I just added a circuit to the house for it. 30:17.98 James and 30:20.09 Frank um It's great. It's great when I forget to charge the car and I need to get a full charge on it quickly. But the truth is, it's it's just... yeah you don't need it. 30:31.13 Frank If you're just doing normal driving, you could plug into the wall and you'll trickle charge. 30:31.34 James How interesting. 30:35.33 Frank I just call trickle charging. um you'll You'll slowly charge that battery nice and i think calmly, very gentlemanly, like no rush. 30:36.78 James Trickle charge. 30:40.82 James Yeah. 30:43.68 Frank If you're good at planning your life, you're going to be fine with a 120 volt system. The 240 volt system is for people like me who forgot to charge their car and need it to be fully charged in the morning. 30:54.92 Frank And we're plugging it in at 9 If you want to go fully crazy, though, you spend five grand and you install a DC charging system at your house. 31:06.65 Frank It's really not that hard. It's just dangerous. And you can charge the car much faster than all that. Right. 31:13.29 James That's what I was thinking is like you you could really just get away, you know, if you're just driving around town and you're just at home most of the time Like the smart car doesn't leave the garage that often. So you just plug it in, you're good to go. 31:23.35 Frank Right. 31:25.26 James All right, I'm interested. 31:25.30 Frank Yeah, if you remember to plug it in. 31:26.26 James Yeah. 31:26.74 Frank So I do recommend having a dedicated plug for it or just a because it's so easy to just treat it like a gas car. 31:27.80 James Yeah. 31:36.28 Frank Like you forget to charge it. And then all of a sudden you're like, oh, but it takes time to charge, I think. But that gets baked into your head pretty quickly. I don't think it's that big a deal. All the people who talk about the 15 minute and 30 minute charges, those are the wackos doing road trips and everything. And these EVs, these EVs are meant to stay in town, at least for right now, unless you get those 15 minute charges and things like that. But your day to day life, you just don't need it. 32:03.86 James Well, and I was thinking, too, they have a whole thing about fleets, right? If you're buying a fleet of vehicles, like you are a contractor or electrician company or whatever, you know, that needs to haul some stuff on occasion and... 32:17.56 James and you just buy a bunch of them because they're just zipping around town. They're not going 200 miles a day around town. They're just in town zipping around. They plug it in at night. 32:24.66 Frank No. Hmm. 32:25.54 James You're good to go. It makes complete sense. You don't need 400 mile range on it. I think the interesting part about this, and Heather and I were talking about it, is I don't actually need a truck truck or really need a truck at all or want a truck at all. 32:37.21 Frank no 32:37.46 James So it's very American. big We want trucks, right? But i I understand like why it's modular to add on things in the truck form, but I'm curious like if they're going to be able to get normal sedans down even cheaper and modular and something like that. 32:54.71 Frank Yeah. 32:57.16 James I think that would be fascinating, but it does require more. The nice thing on a ah pickup truck is the whole back is completely open. You don't need to put any components or anything on that, right? It's like a whole part of the truck is missing. 33:09.37 Frank Yeah, and the problem with sedans is there's a whole different, it's a whole different lifestyle. Sedan is all about quality, fit and finish and safety for the rear passengers. 33:14.46 James Yeah. 33:18.38 Frank A pickup truck is all about utility. um I am here to move half sheets of plywood around with the other half hanging out the back. And I'm here to move my garbage to the dump. You know, when I lived in the city, I had zero use for a truck. 33:34.84 Frank ah But living on an island, I have tons of use for a truck. Now, I did the pro move of I just put a trailer hitch on my car and bought a trailer. And so now I have a proper eight foot bed on my little EV and life is good. 33:49.98 Frank I went from 240 miles to 150 miles because the car really hates towing, but it has all the torque in the world and it can handle all that kind of stuff. So yeah, for for your case, if you don't need a truck, I get where you're coming from. But you know there's plenty of sedans out there to choose from. You can just pick one of the sedans. But it doesn't have the customization all that. I get that. 34:13.50 Frank I just think it's good for them to fill this market um because the small truck market is quite big in the US. And for good reason. we We're a very rural country. 34:23.43 James Yeah. 34:24.86 Frank There's a lot of rural needs for a truck that size. 34:28.77 James Yeah. All right. That's all i got to talk about trucks. 34:33.08 Frank It's fun. I love talking cars. I can talk cars all day. I never get to talk cars anymore. spent half of my early career just working on cars and I miss it sometimes. it's It's fun, the practical challenges. It's a real mishmash of engineering and consumerism and keeping the price down, but building something awesome. It's hectic and crazy. So yeah. It's fun to see new companies out there and I'm glad you're at least looking at it. So between you and my other friend, hopefully one of you will buy one so I can go play with it. 35:05.26 James We'll see. Well, the the the hope is that there's actually not that much to playlists play with because there's not that much inside. And to me, I prefer that. So by the way, like the reason I'm so interested in it is because I don't necessarily want all these gizmos and gadgets and all these things. 35:20.34 James um I do like... Like my favorite part probably of the Subaru is the automatic speed control that goes up and down. It's got cameras and things like that. 35:30.75 James But I don't even use that that often, like wherever I'm going. 35:30.85 Frank Yeah. 35:34.13 James And and obviously it doesn't have full self-driving and nor will this, nor will I like necessarily want to because I'd have to pay a lot more for it, obviously. 35:41.62 Frank Yeah. 35:41.95 James But I like that my smart car has basically no gizmos and gadgets in it. I literally have the CarPlay wireless thing attached to it, plugged into the speakers via 3.5 millimeter jack, and it works great. 35:54.74 James um So I like the simplicity of getting in and not doing that. 35:54.90 Frank yeah 35:58.06 James I've rented the Ioniq 5 or whatever when we were doing our car rental in California. 36:00.86 Frank Yeah. 36:02.38 James And it's just like, it's a great car, but it's just like a bajillion things going on. 36:03.52 Frank Great product. 36:07.05 James I'm just like, it's it's a lot happening. 36:07.13 Frank Yeah. 36:08.49 James And I'm like, I don't know if I need to... to to 36:11.29 Frank I love the contrast I've set up in my life. I have my EV with way too many features on it. That's a very comfortable sedan that can drive itself. And then I have a motorcycle that is like held together with duct tape and oil and anger. 36:26.58 Frank And those combined and everything on its manual, everything on it has broken and I've repaired it And it's probably broken again, and I probably repaired it again. So I love that I get to play in both worlds. 36:37.31 Frank When I'm tired of the one, I can switch to the other. one i'm You know, you you you want to play around in both worlds, to be honest. But everything easy is just too easy. 36:44.35 James Yeah. 36:47.22 James Too easy. Yeah. All right. That's all i got, Frank. 36:52.79 Frank Love it. i can't wait till we get into hacking it. So we'll get it and we'll start tearing it apart. 36:59.77 James Oh gosh. all right. Well, that's going to do for this week's Merge Conflict, people. Let me know if you're buying an EV or have one and how often you drive it and or pick up stuff in your pickup truck. um But yeah, next time we'll talk about not cars or maybe we'll talk about cars. We'll see. That's do for this week's Merge Conflict. So until next time, I'm James Martin Magno. 37:15.16 Frank And I'm Frank Krueger. Thanks for watching and listening. 37:18.52 James Peace.