Navigating the Future: Autonomous Cars, Safety Regulations, and Consumer Trust

[00:00:00] Anthony: You’re listening to There Auto Be A Law, the center for auto safety podcast with executive director, Michael Brooks, chief engineer, Fred Perkins, and hosted by me, Anthony Cimino for over 50 years, the center for auto safety has worked to make cars safer.

Hey, hi. Hello. Hey. Good morning, greetings earthlings. Okay, I don’t know, are these intros okay, people? Listeners, let us know. You let us know other things. But I guess, hey, hello, that’s, sure, that’s how we’re starting.

[00:00:41] Discussion on Volkswagen’s Capacitive Controls

[00:00:41] Anthony: Now, how we’re gonna start is, we’re gonna do a little minor continuation from last week.

Last week we had The guest Jonathan Gitlin from Ars Technica, and we’re gonna start off this week with an article from Ars Technica written by Jonathan Gitlin. It is an article about capacitive controls [00:01:00] on VW ID4s and causing crashes. Volkswagen has these buttons on steering wheels and every car since, I don’t know, since, Probably has some sort of buttons on their steering wheels.

And you control your volume of your radio, you can There’s buttons that take you four years to figure out what the hell it does. Volkswagen, the bean counter is there, like I got an idea. Let’s get rid of buttons. What? How will we control our radios and listen to our FM? AM. Okay. Passive buttons.

So what happens is, your skin’s capacitive. Ha. Anyway, you brush up against these things and they automatically start turning on things like cruise control. So you’re just in a parking lot and then, oh, you accidentally touched this and now your car went from 5 miles per hour to 50 miles per hour.

And that’s horrible. So This is not the greatest thing, but I think Dr. Gitlin describes it well that basically this is what happens when bean counters are [00:02:00] like, I bet we can save a dollar. And, maybe some people will cause some crashes. So have either of you read this article?

[00:02:08] Fred: Yeah, it’s very interesting.

So what is a capacitive control for those who don’t have electrical engineering backgrounds? If you have an iPhone, there are certain icons that appear on your iPhone, and if you’ve ever hovered your finger over one of those without actually touching it, all of a sudden it just pops into whatever that link is.

That’s how capacitive controls work. When a massive object gets near a capacitive control, some electrons jump from the control to your body or vice versa. And it senses that your body is now attached to it, even if you haven’t physically touched it. And it says, okay. Time to move, and then it activates the virtual switch.

You can inadvertently do that. I’ve often done that on my iPhone, and it’s okay on the [00:03:00] iPhone, because what the hell you end up with, on the wrong website. But if you’re using that to control the vehicle it’s got a lot of consequences.

[00:03:10] Anthony: Yeah. The audio industry has no history of Hey, we can save a dollar and people will love the Ford Penta.

[00:03:17] Michael: So there’s these controls they’re putting in while they’re cheaper. They’re, they don’t appear to be favored by consumers. And in this case, they may be contributing to an inadvertent acceleration because a button’s being hit without the knowledge of the driver.

[00:03:35] Anthony: Sudden button acceleration. Consumers, you have a choice now.

Don’t buy a Volkswagen with a capacitive button thing.

[00:03:43] Michael: Yeah, and there’s, this is a, this, I think, I believe 13 complaints were cited in the article. And that is, that, that’s something that NHTSA should be looking at right now. In fact, I would Just ask them if anyone at NITS is listening.

Let’s go ahead and open a defect investigation on this [00:04:00] issue and see if we can’t figure it out because we’ve. And maybe beyond that, let’s do some studies on the safety of some of these buttons and switches that are coming into cars. We’ve seen that says already done an investigation on some of the interesting new designs for transmission shifters, where there’s dials and possibly buttons used to shift gears or shift from drive to park and reverse in the vehicle.

And it’s. There’s a point at which, all, we’d like to all be able to jump from one car to another, in an airport rental parking lot, for instance, and know where everything is and be comfortable with the vehicle environment so that we don’t have to reeducate ourselves every time we get in a new vehicle.

People who don’t reeducate themselves when they’re surrounded by a lot of new features and buttons and don’t know where their turn signals or windshield wipers Are a safety risk on the road. And so I think it’s pretty important. And this is an area we’ve talked about [00:05:00] in a lot of ways, human factors, where you’re putting things in vehicles really matters when there have been, some buttons have been in the same place in vehicles now for decades, 60 years or more.

And people are used to those. And when you add new buttons and or capacitive technology in certain areas, then people are going to be confused. They’re going to hit the wrong button and, they might have adverse safety outcomes.

[00:05:27] Anthony: I agree. My steering wheel is a bunch of buttons and am convinced only one button.

The only thing it does is it removes the coffee cup icon when it says, Hey, you need a break. It’s like a return key thing. Other than that, I have no idea what the hell the thing’s used for. Doesn’t matter.

[00:05:40] Seatback Safety Standards and NHTSA’s Role

[00:05:40] Anthony: But let’s go on to something more important. I know it’s more important because Michael’s mentioned it a couple times in notes.

And I don’t fully understand what it means. This is from NHTSA. And I don’t understand what it means because of the language they use. So this is directly from this NHTSA press release. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration today took an important [00:06:00] step toward identifying opportunities to improve the safety of people inside vehicles by Issuing an advance notice of proposed rulemaking to update seat back safety standards.

That’s a reason that people don’t like lawyers. That entire sentence.

[00:06:20] Michael: They’re probably being a little careful with their wording because this is a, it’s a really sensitive issue for people who have experienced some of the problems that we’ve seen in this area. What is the area? Essentially, the main problem we’re trying to address here is in rear collisions when you’re hit from behind, you’re, the force of the crash is going to mean that there’s a lot of pressure going rearward onto the seat.

And we see a lot of seat failures, the driver’s seat failures and passenger seat failures in the front seats, where. The seat back essentially breaks, collapses. There’s a lot [00:07:00] of words that could be used to describe here. Every crash is slightly different. But the seat is not restraining the front seat passenger in a way that prevents them from, From colliding with the rear seat passengers, which are often children, often buckled up and in car seats.

And often, just the heartbreaking way for your child to die or be injured is by contact with you, who, you’ve been through. thrown backwards into the child in the rear seat. And there’s a lot of issues here. That we think that this problem is caused because the seats simply aren’t strong enough to restrain the front seat passenger, prevent them from contacting the rear seat passenger.

And, the NHTSA standard for seatback strength is Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standard 207. It was basically adopted from, a recommended practice that was published by the SAE in 1963. So this [00:08:00] is a 61 year old engineering standard. That, you would think in 60 years enough research and other things would come forward that we would have upgraded this standard by now to fix this problem.

But the auto industry has continually claimed and, it’s not an outright lie. Like a lot of things we talk about on this podcast, that changing seat back strengths. on its own could, enhance other injuries that occur. And a big part of the, what NHTSA has done here is an advanced notice of proposed rulemaking.

This is something that was required in the 2021 Infrastructure Act, but it was also pursuant to a couple of petitions for rulemaking that were filed. That were filed by Kenneth Saksowski and Alan Cantor, who are both engineers who have previously, and for many years now, I believe for over 30 years, Ken and Alan have been, bombarding NHTSA with [00:09:00] petitions to try to change the standard because in their field, they are working with Clients who have children who have been killed or disabled permanently by these types of crashes and it’s you know, we see a number of these crashes every year there have been hundreds that we’ve seen in the years that we’ve been covering this issue and we think it’s time that the auto industry figures this out, that they’re the seat back standard 207, you could literally strap a lawn chair into a vehicle and conduct the test and it would pass.

So it’s not a very effective standard in terms of seat strength. It’s very problematic. The real problem for NHTSA here is that there are a lot of injuries due to whiplash and other spinal injuries that occur in America every year, over 100, 000. And, what NHTSA is having to do is something that has to do in a lot of its [00:10:00] rulemakings, which is a balancing act here.

What I think we’re hoping for as a result of, this rulemaking, basically we’re in the research process right now. This is an advanced notice of proposed rulemaking. That does not mean that a rule is imminent. It means that NHTSA is going to be conducting a lot of research, asking a lot of questions of the public, which they’re doing this notice and trying to establish a path towards hopefully a standard that both protects people from whiplash and spinal injuries, but at the same time protects children sitting in the backseat behind their parents.

And we’re really hopeful that something’s going to come out of this. And, it’s obviously something we’ve worked on for decades and that other folks who we respect highly have worked on for decades, just it’s just, the, we don’t talk about it a lot on the show because frankly, it is a heartbreaking phenomenon when you when you talk to parents who have experienced this and who, who either have lost their children or who are [00:11:00] now, permanently committed to taking care of Children who have suffered traumatic brain injuries by contact with the parents head.

So it’s a terrible area that we hope Nitsa can make disappear.

[00:11:13] Fred: Further to what Michael said, the current standard is based on resistance. Of the basically the weight of the seat itself. It’s not based on the weight of the passenger of this in the seat of the massive passenger that’s on the seat and it is based also upon ballistic information that was generated.

Way back when in the dark ages and since then, car designs have changed a lot, seat designs have changed a lot, and the mass of the cars on the highways has also changed a lot. Particularly with these coming, they’re just a lot more massive than they used to be. And that makes the impact. From a rear collision that much more [00:12:00] consequential.

So the, hopefully this a NPRM will lead to regulations. Excuse me. It will lead to regulations that based upon a realistic mass of both the crash cars and also of the people who are occupying the seats. None of that’s true now, and it really needs to be done.

[00:12:21] Anthony: Wow, so I’m not gonna post links to these videos, but I think IHS has these, and this is just to help illustrate people what the problem is.

A car gets hit from behind, and your front seat, you’re in the driver’s seat, it will collapse backwards, crushing whatever’s behind it. And typically, as Michael said, that’s typically Unfortunately, a lot of times that is a child in an infant car seat and it’s not something you ever think about because it’s not the common video that you see, but so I imagine that, groups like IHS, the Center for Auto Safety, but there’s been research done on this, as you said, for decades.

Will the research moving forward with this, is this going to take decades for [00:13:00] NHTSA to quote unquote conduct research, or can they just use what’s already been done?

[00:13:04] Michael: That’s the sad part is this is already, they granted a petition for rulemaking in 1989 on this, did the research and then 15 years later, just withdrew the rulemaking without doing anything in 2004.

I hope this time is different than I guess all of the other times where NHTSA started to take this issue up and then dropped it typically because automakers were saying, we can’t do this. We can’t make the seat stronger without injuring causing other types of injuries. There are some manufacturers who you know, some that we might look upon more fondly who do have stronger seats.

Mercedes is one. And in fact the European standard requires stronger seats than the American standard, I think by around a factor of three. But even the European standard is probably not sufficiently, um, not appropriately written to prevent [00:14:00] these. These types of crashes. So we really need to see some change in this area.

There’s got to be a way to design a seat that prevents whiplash while preventing also preventing rear seat passengers from being struck by front seat passengers.

[00:14:16] Fred: We’ve seen designs that solve this problem that cost the manufacturers approximately two or three dollars. Per car to implement.

So yes, if you multiply that by a million cars, it adds up to be a lot of money. But in terms of the incremental cost per car, it’s trivial really should be done. And it’s not a burden on anybody’s pocket book.

[00:14:42] Anthony: I think after watching F1 this weekend, everyone should be wearing three point harnesses and helmets.

Cause there was a crash where a guy like hit the wall at 50 G’s just walked away. Fine. No injuries.

[00:14:54] Michael: How do you think, how do you think consumers would feel about tethering the back of their neck to their seat [00:15:00] or their head? Oh, that’s right. They do that thing. Yeah.

[00:15:03] Anthony: Okay. May. Okay. Okay. But I like the three point harness.

Cause that just seems fun.

[00:15:09] Michael: There, there are definitely better, better seatbelt systems that we could be using. I always wanted the one that, that the one that kids have that buckles, you just pull a thing down and buckle it right in front of you. Oh, yes. That’s a three point, the three point harness where it seems to be a pretty good thing.

There’s also, and some vehicles have this, seatbelts that have. Airbags embedded in them to prevent, injuries that occur because of the force generated against the seatbelt. So inside

[00:15:36] Anthony: the seatbelt, there’s an airbag? Yeah. Oh, that’s fun.

[00:15:41] Fred: Yeah, that’s because people can be bruised by the concentrated force from a seatbelt.

But if you have an airbag embedded in the seatbelt, instead of hitting the seatbelt, you hit this nice cushion. So that’s, that’s already available in some cars.

[00:15:56] Anthony: But I imagine that’s a little more expensive. But okay. [00:16:00]

[00:16:00] Rear Automatic Braking in Small SUVs

[00:16:00] Anthony: So let’s I mentioned our friends at IHS and they have a fun little video out from a page titled Most small SUVs perform well in rear auto brake evaluation.

Now, auto braking rear auto braking is very expensive. Something that most people will probably not come across. I only experienced it this past February in a rental car, where I’m trying to back out of a parking spot and the car’s just Nope, you can’t go anymore. And so as a good American, I went, God damn it, and I slammed on the gas!

And I, the car, no, the car wouldn’t go, and I looked, I could see, oh, it was a very tight parking lot, and it’s hey, I think this other car is in your way. It was a great little feature. IHS, they evaluated small SUVs, and the superior ratings, I’m gonna mention the superiors, were the 2023 to 2024 Ford Escape.

Holy shit! Whoever thought Ford would make a list of something great. Is that too much? No, come on. There,

[00:16:52] Michael: You clearly don’t like Ford.

[00:16:54] Anthony: No, I have no problem. I’m rooting for Ford, generally they’re. The top entry in our recall [00:17:00] roundup. Then Honda CR V, Mitsubishi Outlander, and Subaru Forester.

I think this is great, but this rear ca I already know the answer. The rear camera, this rear auto braking, this is separate from NHTSA’s push for automatic emergency braking?

[00:17:16] Michael: Yeah it’s a completely separate thing. Basically this is going to only work in reverse. And if you look at the IHS test they’re running tests at four miles per hour.

Rear automatic emergency braking while it will, will and could prevent some relatively minor injuries. I think it is primarily going to prevent. A lot of low speed crashes in parking lots and people pulling out of driveways more than anything, which is great. But it’s going to save the insurance industry a good bit of money paying out claims for damages or damage to vehicles.

But it’s probably, it’s not a. life saving technology. [00:18:00] Probably not something that, that NHTSA would get involved in requiring or regulating, you never know. I think we would love to see, low speed crashes, front and rear address. by NHTSA because that’s typically the mode that happens that, that hurts children, front overs and back over crashes that occur in driveways when we have these massive SUVs and poor visibility.

So I would like to see NHTSA say, Hey, we’re going to require. So we’re going to require front AEB, frontal AEB, which is what they’re doing now that requires the pedestrian detection. We’re also going to do the same thing for rear AEB, just because it’s easy. Manufacturers are already doing this.

It’s low speeds. It doesn’t have any of the complications or the, the research that’s going to be required to fully implement automatic emergency braking. And it’s, but at the same time, it’s, should be relatively cheap for manufacturers to implement. And it looks like, a wide range of [00:19:00] manufacturers are already doing so.

And the systems, according to IHS are pretty good. They’re effective. So it should probably be a technology that is put into every car.

[00:19:11] Anthony: I like this. Cause as far as I can tell the most dangerous place to drive. Is the Trader Joe’s parking lot on Scarsdale Road in New York. Cause some son of a bitch, they dinged my car.

They didn’t leave me a note or nothing. And that’s just my complaint. I know, right? It’s not like a piggly wiggly parking lot where everyone just hugs you and gives you bacon. Or bacon, or veggie bacon, whatever. Hey, let’s I don’t know how I want to do this next transition.

[00:19:37] Vehicle-to-Everything (V2X) Technology and FCC Issues

[00:19:37] Anthony: Let’s, it’s time for gaslight illumination. That’s what we’re gonna do, okay? And I’m gonna kick off Fred’s, cause this is an issue we’ve talked about in the past. And this is what, it’s called CB2X. And this is, I think, early days of the show. You guys were like, wait, what’s gonna happen?

The roads are gonna talk to my car and let me know things. This is awesome. And then Fred’s there’s a thing called the [00:20:00] FCC. Have a nice day.

[00:20:03] Michael: And this is also where we talked about big phone and how Verizon and the other cell providers, they know they have a huge stake here. If their technology and their, their communication structure is what is running the vehicle to everything that, networks, then.

They’re going to keep making a lot of money and the vehicle to everything networks conveniently for them have to run through the federal regulatory process at the FCC to so that they can acquire spectrum to communicate. And as I think some of us recognize Verizon, AT& T and others have. It’s outsized influence over at the federal communications commission.

And that goes for no matter who’s in office. They have a lot of muscle over there and they basically have more muscle than the auto [00:21:00] industry. They, the auto industry, GM and Toyota, I believe are already moving forward with the dedicated short range communications. Using wireless technology instead of cellular technology.

We still have concerns about using cellular technology. You, I think everyone listening has had issues with cell service at times. And if your vehicle is in an area that doesn’t have cell service, you won’t be benefiting from the safety benefits of vehicle to everything technology. Michael,

[00:21:31] Fred: Michael.

Yes. Poaching my gaslight. Ah!

[00:21:35] Anthony: I’m

[00:21:36] Michael: sorry! It’s your own damn gaslight! Yeah, I wanted to give the listeners kind of an overview of how we got here and what’s

[00:21:43] Fred: left for me to tell you out here.

[00:21:45] Michael: I don’t

[00:21:45] Fred: have Fred here. That’s right. Why do we have for you here? Alright, so to elaborate on what Michael said as though there’s any more to say there once was a time Back when dinosaurs were on the [00:22:00] earth when the US Congress Had specified that a certain amount of bandwidth had to be reserved for Vehicle safety and vehicle safety communications and without getting into too many details about what that is, bandwidth is like a slice of the spectrum.

The more bandwidth you have, the more information you can send across that. Particular channel. Okay. So when you have a channel on your TV, right? Channel 1, 2, 3, that really refers to a particular slice of bandwidth that’s been dedicated to television for a particular broadcaster. Okay, so we’re talking about a channel and what the previous administration did is they said, we are going to give away that spectrum regardless of how valuable it is. So what they did is they refused to license use of that spectrum for the intended use, which was fast, anonymous. And ubiquitous and no [00:23:00] cost communications between vehicles. It’s called DSRC technology that Michael just referred to but by refusing to license its use, the FCC could then say nobody’s using it.

So we’re going to give it away. Yeah, circular logic and tautological and a great example of bullshit, which we will have a link to a treatise on bullshit by Harry Frankfurt on our website which I highly recommend to everybody. But anyway, I digress. That was in the 5. 9 gigahertz band. So they gave away a significant fraction of that reservation of bandwidth to the cellular industry and to the oh, and the wifi industry.

Okay. Cause as though there wasn’t enough wifi already, they gave more spectrum. So what they’re doing now is they’re saying, okay, because we have so little spectrum left, this DSRC technology that the government has promoted for a long time [00:24:00] really is old fashioned and doesn’t fit into that small amount of spectrum that we have left.

So we’re just going to open that up and throw that whole mess over to the cellular industry. So instead of having anonymous, fast, ubiquitous, free communications, All on the channel that everybody can share the industry will now say, okay, we’re going to have it all on cellular phones, which are neither ubiquitous, nor free, nor anonymous, nor available everywhere.

And certainly they’re not very fast either in a lot of cases. So that’s why the nomination for the gas light this week that I’ve got goes to the FCC. For the tautological reasoning and the consequence of the tautological reasoning being they’re giving everybody’s vehicle safety over to the tender mercies of the cellular phone companies [00:25:00] for no good reason, except the phone companies want to make more money.

End of rant.

[00:25:05] Anthony: Well said. Michael, you seem really fired up about Fred’s Gaslight. Will you be as enthused when it comes to your own Gaslight nominee?

[00:25:15] Gaslight Illumination: Critique of GM Cruise and Tesla

[00:25:15] Michael: And that’s mainly because I’m just so sick of talking about all the stupid things that come out of Elon Musk’s mouth yesterday. However, it was just, another great example of it, where he’s claiming that his robo taxi business, which is going to be announced in October now, I believe is going to generate or.

Help the company’s valuation go up 5 trillion, about six times what Tesla is currently worth. And saying that, that’s coming from self driving vehicles and robo taxis. Now, if you’ve listened to us, that we don’t think that what Tesla has on the road right now is. Taking any steps towards actual full self [00:26:00] driving the unsupervised level four, level five type of self driving that robo taxi monetization is going to require, if that ever comes about, right?

There’s still a question in our mind at the center if, Consumers are really ever going to accept robo taxis to the extent that, for instance, they accept Ubers and taxis now whether they’re going to be able to be manufactured and maintained in a manner that makes sense financially.

So there’s a lot of, there’s still a lot of complications in this area and these bold pronouncements from Tesla and others like GM Cruise, as well as folks in the investor space. Stay in your lane. Are they are, they come out all the time. And, if you’re listening to us, I think, to take them with a grain of salt that, these are, these things are not coming on the schedule that Musk thinks they are.

And if I had to predict, I would say that they’re not coming in a Tesla. Tesla’s [00:27:00] technology is not at a level right now, with their camera based systems. We don’t think that’s that the camera only systems are ever going to be able to achieve level four or level five autonomy. And this is all just fluff and more gas lighting from one of the kings of gas lighting.

And That’s it. That’s all. I’m done. I’m done talking about Elon Musk for

[00:27:26] Fred: the week. Do you hear that sound? That’s the sound of the air going out of the Tesla bubble, I think.

[00:27:34] Anthony: Yeah. Yeah, that made all the difference right now. All the fanboys have just seen the light. Wait a second. He’s not being honest with us.

Yeah, Elon also went on to say that Tesla in within a decade will be worth 30 trillion dollars because we’re making humanoid robots. And it’ll be awesome. And then girl lady robots and it’ll be great. Ha. He’s an idiot. Yeah. I my nominee this [00:28:00] week is everybody. It’s, Elon, came out of the park swing and the FCC really trying to do a Charlie Brown and Lucy with the football again with us.

Kathy Wood and her ARK Investments, who I’ve reached out to, these are the people who are huge Tesla fanboys, and we mentioned this a couple weeks ago in one of their financial reports about how great Tesla’s gonna be. They said, hey, contact us and we’ll provide you the data we use for this. Hey, ARK Investments, I contacted you two weeks ago.

Whereas the data doesn’t exist. You’re making up shit. But, I gotta

[00:28:33] Michael: Maybe they’re using data sourced from Tesla, which, is the same thing.

[00:28:38] Anthony: They’re using it from an ketamine party at Elon’s house. But my nominee is, I’m sticking to it, GM Cruise. GM Cruise has decided this week to finally cancel their Cruise Origin.

What was that? That was their minivan that looked like a pod that had no steering wheel, no brakes, no accelerator pedal. And it would drive around [00:29:00] town and pick you up and then you’d have to sit across from somebody else who you don’t know and just be a few feet away from them and smell their breakfast.

It was a dumb idea, so many levels, and let’s see, they’ve already GM took a 605 million dollar impairment charge against this it’s unbelievable, they’ve, Cruz has lost since 2018 well over 5 billion dollars. GM, Cruz, they’re not really gaslighting us so much as they’re gaslighting General Motors and Mary Barra.

It’s, why, Mary Barrett is a smart woman. She’s very smart. Why does she keep falling for this nonsense? They should just, Ford walked away from their autonomous thing. Volkswagen walked away. Everyone’s this is stupid, let’s not burn all this money. But GM’s heh, see me burn 5 billion?

Why don’t we burn another 5 billion?

[00:29:58] Fred: Because

[00:29:58] Anthony: may I

[00:29:59] Fred: whisper [00:30:00] something into Mary’s ear? Oh maybe. Mary. You are not in the taxi business. You are in the car manufacturing business. Thank you.

[00:30:12] Anthony: That’s an excellent point. Unless General Motors wants to, Anyway, still, at the end of the day, the math does not work for the crazy valuations they have.

They’re all ridiculous. They could be spending, I would cost much less than five billion dollars to put in strong seat backs. Much less than 5 billion to get rear AEB testing to get AEB perfect up front. They could spend all this money to do really cool things that save lives. Ha, but hey, look, some kid named Kyle said, ha when I was a little kid, I had a remote control car, and I convinced my parents it drove itself.

Ha! Can I have a billion dollars? Yeah, I’m jealous. I want to be. No, I couldn’t do that. It’s not for me. But hey let’s talk more silly Americans, shall we? [00:31:00]

[00:31:00] The Oscar Mayer Wienermobile Incident

[00:31:00] Anthony: Everybody, your favorite vehicle, it’s it crashed. That’s right, the Oscar Mayer Wienermobile. The Oscar Mayer Wienermobile crashed in Cook County, Illinois.

It it struck a Hyundai and it rolled the, it rolled onto the side of the Hyundai, it looks like. What they don’t, no one was hurt. The Wieners are okay. Everything’s good. But what it doesn’t say in this article that we’re linking to is Who makes the Wienermobile? And how does the Wienermobile, like how do you get a, like, how do you get a vehicle like that on the road?

Can I just go ahead and put some weird phallic shaped object on top of my car and be like, heh, cool.

[00:31:44] Fred: Yeah,

[00:31:44] Michael: why

[00:31:44] Anthony: not?

[00:31:45] Michael: There are a lot of modifications that are allowed after the vehicle is manufactured. This would, the Wienermobile would probably, be a vehicle manufactured in two stages under the NHTSA regs and that second stage [00:32:00] is not very regulated.

The second stage is the second stage is mustard relish and a toasted poppy seed bun. But there’s a state laws might come into play here. Look, Oscar Meyer has been. Putting out wiener mobiles for 88 years. The first one came out in 1936, which was something I had no, I didn’t know they were such a a long standing.

And I didn’t know that wiener was so old. But it’s. Maybe they know what they’re doing and, I’m just glad no one was injured. It’s it looks like they’re moving towards smaller Wienermobiles, too. The one that crashed in this incident is like a, a two door sedan.

Looks like an old Subaru Justy or something with a giant hot dog on top. They used to have more longer trucks, maybe a foot long size.

[00:32:51] Fred: Maybe these went into a pool

[00:32:53] Anthony: first.

[00:32:54] Fred: Yeah. I thought they might be auditioning for those rolling hot dog racks that are at 7 Eleven. [00:33:00] Oh, my God. You’ve seen those, right?

[00:33:02] Anthony: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

[00:33:03] Expanding Markets and Tuk Tuks

[00:33:03] Anthony: I haven’t worked in a 7 Eleven for a long time. They’re trying

[00:33:05] Fred: to expand their market. Ha,

[00:33:07] Anthony: Ha. Did anyone put truck nuts on a Wienermobile? Hey, moving on U. S. Customs and Border Protection they seized 14 non compliant tuk tuks, food buggies, and golf carts and campers since October.

Now, tuk tuks, I was in I don’t know, Thailand, maybe? Yeah. And they had tuks is it’s a little death trap. That’s what it is. It’s a lawnmower engine, a guy sitting pretty much right on top of the lawnmower engine, and you sitting right behind him in a tin can with no doors. They’re awesome.

If you want to die. Cause they just go flying through traffic.

[00:33:45] The Risks of Importing Non-Compliant Vehicles

[00:33:45] Anthony: And so who’s, Michael, who’s importing tuk tuks into the U. S.?

[00:33:49] Michael: Individuals are. This is a a market that sprung up, I think, in the last decade where Americans will order all sorts of things online in [00:34:00] terms of transportation.

Boats are one thing that I’ve seen a lot of people ordering from China. Boats are probably easier to get certified by the Coast Guard and, or your state than some of these vehicles that are coming over. Essentially, there are companies offering you, the opportunity to buy a food truck.

I think a lot of these are food trucks, food trucks are very expensive. So if you’d rather pay, 50, 000 and have one shipped over on a boat from China. To you and take the risk that you’re going to get through, get it through customs that happens. I’m pretty sure there are probably folks, the 14 vehicles that were captured here and seized are probably just a small part of what is actually making it through.

And if you’re incentivized as a business owner to try to save some money this way, you’re taking a, you’re taking a massive risk because, I don’t know if the folks Who you ordered from in China are going to be [00:35:00] taking a return on that when it requires shipment back across the world.

And so you may be stuck holding a vehicle that you can’t operate on public roads, which really defeats the purpose of your food truck or your camper. So we would advise, if you’re thinking about doing this, don’t, these vehicles don’t meet federal safety standards. You’re not going to have, you’re probably not going to have airbags in a tuk.

You won’t have your seats won’t even meet the crappy seat standard that we discussed earlier in the podcast. And there could be any number of other issues that occur that could put your life in danger as well as risking, your food trucks, financial future.

[00:35:42] Anthony: My wife ruined food trucks for me.

There’s a food truck right down the street from us and I’m like, Oh, I want to go try that out. That looks good. And then she said to me, Where do they go to the bathroom? And I was like, Ah! Can’t go to food trucks anymore. Sorry. It’s just the trauma I’ve [00:36:00] had. Alright, it’s that time of the show. Fred’s looking at me like he’s a prisoner.

And so let’s go into the tau of Fred.

[00:36:08] Software Failures and Common Cause Issues

[00:36:08] Anthony: Let’s talk about the thing that drove me nuts for the past week. You’ve now entered the Tao of Threat.

[00:36:15] Fred: Ground strike? Everybody know what that is? That was a massive failure. That was caused by an update that didn’t work that was spread out to the world. Now, why are we talking

[00:36:26] Anthony: about this?

Can I correct you? No, it was caused by some jackass CTOs who allowed a third party to update software on their production softwares, completely bypassing their development process. CTO of Delta and some other companies should be fired. End of rant.

[00:36:44] Fred: Thank you. I appreciate the rant. However, The purpose of discussing this is because there are many common cause failures that software can suffer.

The one of them is the failure management that my friend Anthony [00:37:00] just discussed. But our friend, Phil Koopman, Actually put out a publication on what’s that called? LinkedIn? No. The sub stack,

[00:37:10] Anthony: sub stack,

[00:37:11] Fred: block. Yeah. And we’ll put this link on the. On our website as well. So you can get that yourself.

It’s freely available, but what he does is he lists a lot of common source faults that could be applicable to your car, particularly when you have a software driven car. Now, this is mostly a danger when you have An autonomous car or one that you’re using as though it was an autonomous car, like your Tesla full self driving, for example, but I’m just going to run through those several items that are listed by Phil that are applicable to the self driving cars.

1 is a 3rd party software component installed in every car. That’s [00:38:00] the subject of a botched update. This is like CrowdStrike. And there are many ways that an update can be botched. One of them is a failure of phased deployment and others are management just pushing something out. And another is just fat finger on the part of a technician who is trying to put something out that shouldn’t be put out.

So a lot of ways that can happen. Another one is that essential service goes down. For example, quoting Phil, what if nobody can start their cars? Because the driver monitoring system to screen for impaired drivers depends on the failed cloud service. That can happen. It’s a consequence of the dependence and the architecture that you’ve got built into your computer program.

[00:38:44] Anthony: So I’m not drunk, the cloud’s

[00:38:46] Fred: clouded.

Or somebody coughs and the machine mistakes it for a a gesture that would be from an impaired driver. There’s just a lot of things that can happen. These driver management [00:39:00] systems are very difficult to build and hard to make reliable. And there’s no standard for which ones are acceptable and which are not.

Another one is a requirements gap revealed by a novel, but broadly experienced situation. And I’m quoting from Phil’s sub stack notice here. For example, a citywide power outage. Disables the traffic lights and a whole fleet of self driving cars cannot handle the intersections with dark traffic lights, right?

So cars are being designed to interpret traffic lights and interpret police emergency lights, for example, and all kinds of lights and light sequences. What if the whole city goes dark? Yet another one that Phil brings up that are commonly talked about is a natural disaster that invalidates the operational scenario used by the designers.

Again, quoting, for example, riders who have given up their cars and dependent robo taxis for [00:40:00] transportation need to evacuate a town surrounded by wildfires. But the robo taxis have been programmed not to drive on a road surrounded by flames. If there’s no override capability, everybody living in that town is going to be.

S. O. L. which is a technical term. I don’t need to describe here. So there are a lot of common source failures that are applicable to not only software systems that are not mission critical or life critical, but are also applicable to systems that are, in fact, life critical and mission critical.

So that is what this is all about. And that’s why CrowdStrike. Failure that came up last week should be of a lot of interest to everybody who is thinking of getting into or using a self driving vehicle or is using a self driving vehicle that has. automated driving assistance features that mimic what would happen in a truly self driving [00:41:00] vehicle.

I will leave it there. Any questions, gentlemen?

[00:41:04] Anthony: None

[00:41:04] Michael: would be. What is, what’s the CrowdStrike seems to be used by a lot of people in, in all sorts of industries. Is there a principle for instance, in, in cybersecurity that suggests that in order to make sure that Achieve some relative safety.

It would seem like the auto industry would want to diversify the types of cyber security it was using. So that if one problem happens in one version of software, you don’t see a failure, of every car on the road all at once, or you don’t see a failure of all the traffic controls or future V2X and other things all at the same time, is there.

A need for diversification is we’re too many people using CrowdStrike and that kind of expose a large portion of the American economy.

[00:41:54] Fred: This kind of bleeds over into the software design, but also into the management of [00:42:00] software by their chief technology officers, 1 of the key defenses against.

Stupid attacks and stupido. Didn’t we talk about that last week? Yeah. If so, facto stupido. Yeah. It was a couple of weeks ago. Yeah. It is phased deployment. And Phil talks about this in another one of his Substack offerings, but phased deployment means you start small and you make sure that the thing doesn’t screw up your system and then you expand it out to a larger portion of the system.

You have a. If you have Windows and your entire business operation relies upon Windows to work properly, what a reasonable person would do, a reasonable manager would do, is to migrate a small portion of their capability over to a new Windows operating system, or a new version, and let them try it for a while to see if any bad things happen.

And to [00:43:00] encapsulate that particular group, so that if something bad happens to that group, it can’t propagate out to the whole business.

[00:43:08] The Dangers of Over-the-Air Updates

[00:43:08] Fred: This is a particular problem with the over the air updates. Now, people think that over the air updates for cars, Are a wonderful thing, and it lets our friends at Cruise, for example, put out a adaptive software change when they discover that their cruise vehicle, for example, runs into buses spontaneously.

So they’ll make a quick, they’ll make a quick software change. And in a day and a half, they’ll say, oh, it’s good to go. And they roll it out to the entire cruise fleet. Happily, that’s not too large yet. But imagine that there are millions of cars out there. And somebody has to make a, an update. A good example would be Tesla.

When they were dinged by Consumer Reports a few years ago for having a lousy braking system, Tesla rolled out an update [00:44:00] to their software, which fixed the problem. And came out a couple of days later, they rolled it out to their entire fleet of Tesla’s without insulating it, without doing the testing and without doing a phase deployment to say we’re, to do phase deployment and say, we’ll do it with 10 cars, 100 cars, something like that.

We’ll make sure that it works well. And then once we have assurance based upon empirical evidence that it’s doing what it’s supposed to do, we will then roll it out to the entire world. But that’s not what they’re doing. They are coming out with quick fixes, hitting a few buttons, rolling out to the entire world.

So all these over the air updates are actually quite dangerous because they don’t have the kind of checks and balances that any reasonable chief technology officer would put into a rollout of critical software for their own system. Anthony you’re a software geek. Is that mirror your understanding?[00:45:00]

[00:45:00] Anthony: Yes ish. So it’s the problem is we don’t even know what sort of testing they’re doing. It seems in the case of CrowdStrike, they bypassed this entirely. So I’ll give you an example. Let’s say the Center for Auto Safety online. Things are not just magically updated on the site. There’s not like some new software update, and I’m like, Hey, let’s just throw this out there and see what happens.

Oh, your donations stopped working for a month? Tough. Deal with it. No, there’s, with modern software, you can do automated testing. And so all this happens on development sandbox environments, canaries, you can say. And it runs a series of tests, and hey, great, all this stuff’s passed.

We can put it out there. If there’s a horrible situation, something goes bad. I it’s set up so you can easily roll back and undo that change. It seems in this case with CrowdStrike is a lot of software development teams. They have this say, okay, someone writes some code, they commit it. To a repository, basically saying, other people say, this is what I did, this is what I changed to it, it should go through a testing environment there, [00:46:00] which consists of automated tests saying, hey, did this, does A plus B equal C, type things.

And then also, humans should have some sort of quality check on it, did this change things, what not. And so maybe all of these companies, maybe Delta Airlines and all that, They did this, and they pushed it out to production, but then what they said is, Hey, we’re gonna let this third party bypass all of our testing, bypass all of our security procedures, and then you just update things on the site.

It’d be akin if, the Center for Autosafety website, I run all this testing that it’s happening right now on the website. There’s a whole bunch of automated testing happening constantly, and I’ll get notices if something fails. But then I said, Okay, let’s put all this out there, and then for whatever reason, let’s do the credit card processing company.

I’ll let them. Bypass all of that stuff. And just change things on the site. There’s no way we can test it. Because we don’t even know what changed. We don’t know when this happened. It’s insane. They really, so you don’t, you can reduce the need for phased [00:47:00] deployment with having really good testing environments.

And yes, that takes time to write scripts and come up with all scenarios. Eventually those things become more and more robust. And then you can reduce your need for phased deployment.

[00:47:13] CrowdStrike and Software Management

[00:47:13] Fred: So why should our listeners care about the CrowdStrike? The answer is that your car has thousands or hundreds of thousands of line of software, including many mission critical features that are not inspectable, that you cannot monitor.

You don’t know if any of those are working properly because there’s no indication of whether or not they’re working properly. So you just have to trust the manufacturers. It’s incumbent on the manufacturers to do. A very careful job of phase deployment of managing their update before it comes to you because your life depends on it.

And a related question, Anthony, does our website allow people to make donations? Hey, it does indeed. If you go to

[00:47:55] Anthony: autosafety. org, click on the donate donate button, donate us, [00:48:00] no, donate button, you can go ahead and donate to your heart’s content. It is secure, it is provided by a third party, but they don’t get the change code on our website, no.

Yeah yes, please donate cause apparently our software release process is more robust than multi billion dollar corporations.

[00:48:18] Fred: Oh, thank you. I wanted to clarify that.

[00:48:20] Anthony: Yes. Yeah. Yeah. For people, I think NHTSA, somebody needs to put in some regulations that say, Hey, this, you need to document your software release and testing process because this problem will happen in the future.

I guarantee it. And when these guys are brought in front of Congress to be like you guys never told us we needed some sort of regulation around software. And that’s also a problem with software. There’s no real regulations around it. Just do whatever you want, bro. My name’s Kyle.

[00:48:50] Fred: All right.

[00:48:52] EV Battery Advancements and Safety Concerns

[00:48:52] Fred: Hey, I wanted to talk about something else.

If I can wedge it in here there’s been a lot of talk about Evie batteries getting better. And when [00:49:00] people talk about Evie batteries getting better, that generally means that they can hold more charge and they can charge more quickly. So I looked at the niobium battery that we talked about a few weeks ago in France, which is supposed to charge in 5 minutes.

And that’s a great thing. It was 35 kilowatt hours. It charges in five minutes, 10 minutes, something like that. But I wanted to point out that the amount of current. That you’d have to use if you charge it at 400 volts is about 1050 amps. So that’s not a number most people can really personalize very well.

So I did a little bit of research and I found out that a portable welder, which weighs about 300 pounds that somebody would use to, we’ll say, fix a bridge or something like that has a peak output. Amperage of about 250 amps. What you’re talking about in that car is 4 [00:50:00] to 5 times the amount that a welding machine, an arc welding machine would put out if somebody were fixing a bridge, for example.

Let’s say that they have to weld a ship together. I looked at truck mounted welders. And the truck mounted welders, Put out of the order of 210 amps. So again, we’re looking at these fast charge of multiples many times the current and power that a volt, that a very large arc welding system would put out for your reference, your house.

Probably has either 100 amp service or 200 amp services. So the amount of power we’re talking about putting into these cars has current. That’s about five to 10 times the amount of current that’s running your entire house. This is really hazardous stuff, folks. So when people talk about how great it’s going to be to [00:51:00] charge your batteries in 10 minutes, five minutes, 30 seconds, whatever, you got to think that you’re actually attaching lightning to your car.

And boy, you better be damn careful on how you do that, because you don’t want to be close to it if something bad happens. 1.

[00:51:15] Michael: 21 gigawatts! Can you imagine? All the infrastructure required to set up that system just sounds impossible.

[00:51:23] Anthony: I think we have to put a disclaimer on this, because, Fred, your real problem with this is that would take power away from your Bitcoin mining farm.

[00:51:31] Fred: It would,

[00:51:32] Anthony: yeah. Alright, with that, it’s time for recalls. Yay, recalls! Oh, we’re gonna start off with Chrysler. Potentially 3, 606 vehicles. This is the 2019 2021 Chrysler Pacifica. The Chrysler Pacifica plug in hybrid electric. A folded or torn anode tab may result in a generation of lithium byproduct over time.

Which could result in fire.

[00:51:58] Michael: Not good.

[00:51:59] Chrysler Pacifica Recall Saga

[00:51:59] Michael: And [00:52:00] this is a saga or becoming a saga here. And two years ago in, I think, February of 2022, Chrysler recalled these vehicles for the first time but only the 2017 to 2018 models. And that’s the

[00:52:14] Anthony: next recall I have.

[00:52:16] Michael: That’s it, same one.

These are all related. They did that initially in 2022. And that one was on our radar because at the time of the recall they had not determined what the root cause of the failure was, which to us suggested, Oh my gosh, owners are going to be waiting a while on this one. And to complicate that matter, it was a.

Park outside recall. So you’re, you’re telling people who live in apartment buildings or have garages that, that they can’t park their car where they need to park their car. For an indeterminate period of time, I think it turned out to be about nine months or a little more of a wait for the owners of those vehicles to get the recall remedy [00:53:00] performed, which was they go into their Chrysler dealership.

They update the vehicles battery pack control module software that was supposed to detect potential fire conditions. In that 2017, 2018 model set now flash forward to, I believe it was earlier this year, one of those vehicles that had that update performed and was serviced under the recall catches fire.

And, they essentially they’re going back to the drawing board, they take a look at the batteries and they find, Folded anodes, which is something I think we saw in some of the Hyundai LG related maybe even the GM bolt recalls a couple of years ago folded anode tabs in the batteries that lead to overheating and fires.

They found those in the battery, and so now they’re going back to both the 2017 and 18 model owners, as well as a new set of vehicles, the 2019 to 21 Pacifica [00:54:00] plug in hybrid owners, and saying, okay, bring your cars back in. We’re going to put in a new software update that this time we hope will detect any Potential folded anodes.

Stay tuned, Chrysler owners. I think this recall, I’m hoping this recall doesn’t take long as the last version of it. It looks like you’ll be getting notification sometime in early September. And it looks like they’ve already got, or they’re already in the process of finishing up the new software that we hope will pick up these battery problems and do a better job than they did on the last recall.

[00:54:41] Anthony: Alright, our next recall, also Chrysler.

[00:54:44] Fiat and BMW Recall Notices

[00:54:44] Anthony: This is the 2024 Fix It Again Tony 500E. That’s right, the Fiat 500e. Some of them may have been built with suspect con connector on the buckle switch hall effect sensor. Wait, what? What’s a [00:55:00] buckle switch hall effect sensor? Hall effect

[00:55:04] Fred: sensor is basically an electronic device that can tell when one thing is next to another.

So for example, Hall effect device would be used if you wanted to determine whether or not. An electronic box had ever been opened. So you would put some metal on one side of the box and the Hall effect sensor on the other side, if the box were ever opened, you could send an electronic signal to a computer that would say, okay, the box was opened at such and such a time.

So that’s what Hall effect sensors are for.

[00:55:34] Anthony: Okay. And so this seems like it can’t tell if the seat belt is buckled in or not. And so it won’t deploy the airbag.

[00:55:40] Fred: Right.

[00:55:41] Anthony: Yeah.

[00:55:42] Fred: So Hall effect sensor, fits because you put the metal into the slot and then the Hall effect sensor says, Oh, okay, the metal’s in the slot properly.

[00:55:52] Anthony: All right. Anything to add to that, Michael?

[00:55:56] Michael: Yeah, that’s this base. Basically the concern here is that the airbag [00:56:00] is not going to deploy it. It looks like. All right. Owners should be getting a airbag light warning on, or the seat belt reminder should go off because the the vehicles not is unable to detect that the seat belt is buckled.

That’s noted as well. It looks like there’ll be doing this one in about a month, August 22nd. Owners should start looking in their mail for notification and the opportunity to schedule a repair with your dealer.

[00:56:28] Anthony: So would you recommend for consumers in the meantime, if they’re getting these incorrect air lights, they should jam a paperclip inside their seat buckle?

[00:56:36] Michael: I would not suggest that. I would make sure they’re buckled and understand that your airbag may not deploy if you’re in a collision during that period. And if you, if that’s not acceptable to you, then don’t drive the vehicle. And also, see if you can work something out with your dealer.

The recall repair here is. Doesn’t appear to be overly complicated. They’re [00:57:00] simply, connecting the connector in a better manner for lack of a better way to describe it.

[00:57:06] Fred: Your Fiat doesn’t have any resale value anyway, so you might as well get rid of it, get a better car.

[00:57:12] Anthony: Ah, the best place to park your Fiat is anywhere with the doors open and the keys.

Right on the driver’s seat. Anyway I still think Fiat’s kind of look cool. BMW is our next one. 394, 000 plus vehicles. The 20 2006 to 2011 BMW 3 Series. And there’s a whole bunch of 3 Series because the people at BMW have no imagination when it comes to naming vehicles. Oh, this is an M may contain a sport or M sport steering wheel equipped with Takata’s driver’s side airbag.

No, this is a Takata thing? Yeah, it’s the kind of thing, it’s essentially,

[00:57:47] Michael: BMW has recalled all the vehicles where they installed Takata bags there, but it looks like there’s a supplier who is selling replacement steering wheels that might be installed, after a crash [00:58:00] or after some type of problem with your steering wheel and those steering wheels came equipped with a Takata airbag in them.

It looks uh, they aren’t sure just how many of those are out there. Obviously not every one of the 394, 000 vehicles here is going to have that new steering wheel equipped. So essentially what they’re doing is saying, Hey, everybody who’s got a three series needs to come in and we need to make sure that you don’t have a replacement steering wheel with a bad to airbag in it.

Because they are at the point, these vehicles involved are 2006. It, which is, 18 year old Takata airbags are right in that area or getting near that area where NHTSA says they’ve got a 50 percent chance of exploding when triggered. And so it’s critical that BMW find these vehicles before that happens.

[00:58:54] Anthony: Oh boy. We got a bunch of recalls this week.

[00:58:57] Hyundai and Porsche Recall Updates

[00:58:57] Anthony: Okay, Hyundai, potentially [00:59:00] 54, 000 plus vehicles, the 2019 to 2023 Genesis G70, the Hyundai Velostar N. Oh, I don’t even know what that is. Veloster. Veloster. Oh, that’s a dumber name than I pronounced it. The Elantra N, the Kona N the fuel control valve and high fuel Pressure fuel pump assemblies equipped in the subject vehicles can allow excess fuel to enter the fuel pump due to gradual wear of the FCB plunger.

Okay, now, so this is this going back to the standard issue that Honda has where It just keeps leaking gas. Like it was leaking gas on some part, causing the cars to go on fire. Is this all related to their whole,

[00:59:37] Michael: I don’t think so. This one doesn’t really, it doesn’t appear at least to have a fire risk.

This is more of, a loss of pressure in the fuel pump, and you’re stalling out. So this is a recall that’s ultimately that the concern is. It’s folks losing power in the middle of a major roadway and that resulting in a safety [01:00:00] issue.

[01:00:00] Anthony: If you have one of these vehicles, see if your friend has a Fiat and swap.

Next one again, Hyundai 12, 000 plus vehicles, the 2024 Hyundai Santa Fe, the dual clutch transmission could become damaged during normal operation due to transmission control unit software logic. Oh, that could inadvertently engage the clutches and damage the transmission case and or parking, all.

So This is somebody in listen to Fred Perkins and test their software. Is that what’s happening here?

[01:00:30] Michael: Yeah, I mean that essentially the software is physically damaging your vehicle by misbehaving What this means is that you’re gonna pull up To your house park on a slope and with, the vehicle’s going to say it’s in part, you’re going to get out.

Hopefully you get all the way out and the vehicle’s going to roll away. And it looks like they figured out what the problem is. Owners are going to probably receive notice around early September 9th. [01:01:00] And Essentially, I don’t see the Hyundai’s recommending that owners use your elect park, electronic parking break between now and the recall remedy.

Anyone who owns 1 of these vehicles, please note that.

[01:01:16] Fred: Yeah, just a reminder to folks that when you put your car in park. You’re locking the transmission, you’re not locking the wheels. So in this case the transmission has a clutch on both sides of it, the engine side and the drive shaft side. And so if both of those are open, when you lock the transmission, it doesn’t do anything because it’s freewheeling.

So when you use the emergency brake or the parking brake, it actually physically locks the wheels rather than the transmission. So it’s a simple fix, at least until they fix the transmission error. So use your emergency brake. That’ll eliminate this problem.

[01:01:55] Anthony: Yeah, but modern cars don’t have that cool handle.

You can crank up and go click. No, just like a [01:02:00] little switch. It’s not as fun.

[01:02:02] Fred: I had a Volkswagen used to have water splash up into my face going through the emergency brake handle. That was fun too.

[01:02:10] Anthony: Alright. Okay. Last recall. Porsche 2475 vehicles, the 2024 Porsche Cayenne.

That’s not my vehicle. There’s a possibility that not more than nine other vehicles Out of the specification drivers, side, front axle, upper left control arms may have been installed in Cayenne vehicles within a population identified through production. Yeah,

[01:02:34] Michael: they’re breaking because, there’s 2, 475 vehicles involved, but only nine of them. So Porsche’s looking for these, they’re not sure exactly where those control arms went. Nine of them went into these Cayenne vehicles. Their issue is that the raw materials that were used in forging those nine control arms was damaged.

It was cracked, apparently [01:03:00] whatever metal or material they’re using in those. Control arms was cracked at the time they built them. And then they went ahead and installed them in 2, 400 vehicles. And they’re basically going to be inspecting 2, 500 vehicles to find nine bad upper left control arms.

And that’s important because if those control arms do break, you’re looking at a very high likelihood of a loss of control and a crash.

[01:03:27] Final Thoughts and Farewell

[01:03:27] Anthony: So that’s the show folks. Buckle your seatbelt, donate to the center for auto safety. Make sure your airbag plugged in, uh, get your Porsche fixed or only drive Ferrari.

That’s my advice for the week until next time. Hi everybody. Fred, you’re muted. He said goodbye in a very luxurious. Thank you for listening. I

[01:03:49] Fred: was not muted.

[01:03:49] Anthony: You weren’t muted. He was totally mute anyway. Bye bye.

[01:03:56] Fred: For more information visit www. [01:04:00] autosafety. org