Gadgetory

hey we're at the 2018 Detroit Auto Show I'm Tamra Warren from the verge I'm with Andrew Hawkins and Sean O'Kane our transportation team and we're going to tell you about all the news at the Detroit Auto Show so I think we should start with probably the biggest news of the show what kicked off the show which was four decided to dramatically increase its promise for how much it's investing in electric cars how many electric cars it wants to build it's sort of bridge the gap between CES last week and Las Vegas to Detroit this week and you're at the story why don't you give us a little bit more information about what it was before we talked about it sure so I think it was in 2015 that Ford said that they were gonna spend around four and a half billion dollars on electric cars and they were gonna have around two dozen of them and they were going to be rolling out sometime in the 2020s now they say that they're gonna spend eleven billion dollars more than doubling the amount that they said that they were originally gonna spend we're gonna start seeing some of those battery electric cars rolling out a little bit sooner maybe 2019 so I think it's it's a big deal that Ford says they want to spend this much money whether or not they get that you know this produces vehicles that people actually want to buy and drive and can drive like there's an infrastructure in place that people can charge these cars I think is gonna be the real big question that I think facing forward and all companies that are making electric cars well I was gonna say they showed up they did this and they showed up with a diesel f-150 so I mean like there you go no what does it mean in the short term it feels like it doesn't mean much in the short term right and it's also even the charging network to that I'm wondering a part of this investment is investment in the infrastructure I mean they talked a lot at CES which was just a few days ago seems like a year ago but where Ford talked about really wanting to be involved in smart cities and so I'm curious if these two strategies meet or if they're just separate ideas fishing in the pond I mean they almost have to have some sort of infrastructure investment because I mean that's what makes Tesla such an exciting company yeah sure they miss all their deadlines and sometimes their cars are a little janky but they also have sort of this like complete picture of electric vehicles right they they have the cars they have the charging network with the superchargers they have the the solar panels in terms of in the battery power the the home chargers for people's homes so they sort of present this clear picture where it's like a welder wheel type of investment so let's talk about some of the other big news of the show Mercedes came out with the new g wagon that was that was for sure the craziest event we saw all week hands down you should go watch the video if you haven't already it involves fire shooting up from a mountain on the stage and an old theater and also on the neck are doing shots of schnapps why did Mercedes go so far pulling out all the stops to announce this new G Wagon I mean the G Wagon is it is a ridiculous car like it's a huge it's it's expensive as the s-class it's this massive wagon that are a massive SUV that dates back to the 60s as well another another move in that play but it's a lunchbox on wheels yeah it's boxy it's square lots of power it's not particularly comfortable to ride in so it doesn't have like what Range Rover has which is that it's evolved over time but it's also completely like look at me I'm ostentatious and it's all about the body of it which is why they brought a former bodybuilder and the former governor of California to introduce this car along with Dieter Zetsche who is the CEO of Doppler and so it's it was all about spectacle and if you're gonna do it do it big and that's what they did by having this event at the Michigan Theater an iconic theater that's decaying and falling apart and I thought the buyer going off and I thought the most telling aspect of that announcement was when Schwarzenegger asked dieter whether or not there was going to be an electric version of the g-wagen coming out and he had apparently retrofitted his own g-wagen to be to run on a battery electric power deer kind of hemmed in hot he's like Oh our lineup is going to be electric at some point and he kind of press them a little bit but you know I think that that's sort of like it speaks to this sort of like this internal conflict that all these automakers are facing they want to you know sort of like you know speak to their audience people want to buy you know these cuts the types of cars that people buy are not electric cars but at the same time they feel like they have to sort of trudge their way into the future with electric let's talk about the Jetta well that's the type of car people buy right this is it this is an accessible car this isn't a car that's affordable it's a car that we see out on the road and it got a little bit of a refresh to see I think the most interesting thing about the Jetta is we've seen Volkswagen overcorrect maybe a little bit post dieselgate and and sort of try to make themselves seen like a better more clean company than hey obviously were well they're definitely trying to grab on to this like this this place that they hold in American history where they're this iconic brand and this is the microfiber normal thing I think we've seen them do since these okay right like it here it is here's the Jetta there's not really anything special about it it'll probably still sell pretty well it's not electric it's not hybrid it's just like here it like that was I think the the funniest thing about the Jetta announcement to me that that Volkswagen feels comfortable enough that they can just sort of get back into the groove now as opposed to making big claims about oh you know we want to electrify our entire lineup by 2020 whatever you know it was it was the first time that companies felt normal and a little wild like I don't know if consumers are ready to give them credit for that I don't know if the press isn't ready to give them credit for that but like they're trying but their sales are there which is totally crazy to me that dieselgate or not people kept buying their cars yeah so it was time for them to get back to you yes and also what does I mean they did a great job of marketing diesel as as clean technology it just wasn't true let's talk about some of the weird screens that we've seen especially in some of the concepts we've talked a lot about the cars that are actually going to be on sale but there were a couple of interesting concepts that came out at the show this week the the infinite EQ inspiration I think was a real noteworthy one who described it as a land yacht for movie villains Yeah right like for Bond villain specifically I was intrigued by it coming into this show because the the teaser image they released looked like a lot like the Lucid air or the Model S that had this sort of like stout rear end and it just had that sort of vibe that sort of curve in the ceiling of it and it looks totally different here on the show floor it actually impressed me more than I thought it would it is like the name suggests supposed to be an inspiration for infinity's design going forward and I've never particularly liked infinity's design and this one actually sort of strikes me as different and like a thoughtful reimagining of like what their cars look like and so I'm excited to see where that goes one thing I thought was interesting even though it sounds ridiculous in their press releases they talked about this whole concept of there's like a Zen mode that like before or after you drive the screen will enter the Zen mode to try and like calm you down and it's like that's a ridiculous idea and it's not something that's going to come to a production car but it I think at least I hope means that they're thinking about things like that and not using the screen to just horribly distract you while you're driving because this also isn't a concept where you know the seats turn and it's all about full autonomy it's like it's it's still very much a car you're gonna drive maybe with some assistance from Nissan's pro pilot but you're still going to drive this thing the seat you know it's built like a card which is a way that we no contrast to the Nissan cross-motion SUV concept that Nissan introduced Nissan obviously owns infinity but the cost motion SUV was not my favorite car of the show but I definitely think it was the most interesting in terms of like how they were sort of tackling this idea of the the how the car's interior is going to change there was also a sort of pillar to pillar screen on the on the in the front of the seventh screen on the center console one and there one in the roof two of the sides it was just like everybody else as far as the eye could see plus there was a a virtual personal assistant that was a koi fish that would swim across all the screens and tell you about some of the places that you were seeing as you were autonomously driving through whatever city you were driving through here's a McDonald's the koi fish would say or have some sort of advertising tie-in no doubt but so those concepts concepts are fun they're cool to look at they're cool to sort of pour over and and debate but it's still a show about trucks and suv's it is and I mean one thing I'm thinking about what you're saying being here the reason to still come to an Auto Show is to actually see everything in physical form because oftentimes what we see in pictures looks very different in person and so we're all here as media covering the new announcements but when the public day is open on Saturday this is where people will come to do their car shopping yeah and so what are they shopping for the best selling vehicles are trucks and SUVs and also something that we've we've seen since last year's that we saw some dips and sales numbers and the auto industry so this show is critical for them to to get to that place where they can have koi fish swimming on their screens right so so we saw a lot of big announcements from the big three who love to like make a splash in Detroit this is their hometown their front page news and the local papers it's important to them people who live here work for these companies on all levels and they get some get perks on driving these cars it makes it's a sense of pride and it's also sort of a insider competition and so what we saw here was those wars are still going on the first reveal was the Chevy Silverado pickup truck it's a big pickup truck with lots of features and you can have eight different trim levels it's just really going into the heart of what pickup truck drivers what in their in their vehicles which is power payload towing and all and increasingly what we saw in the other truck that we just mentioned which is the RAM 1500 and another big seller neck and neck with the Silverado for sales in the US market super important for the success of FCA's future is selling that truck this year and so that's what we're seeing here and then and the other the other side of that is this in the mid size range Ford had the Ford Ranger on display and Shawn I think you described the Ford Ranger really well yes it's a tumbler truck yeah it's like what you want if you're if you're a younger person in this country and you like maybe want to go camping but maybe not maybe you just want to appear like you're going camping like this is what Ford's going after it's like Toyota has owned this part of the market for the last decade probably with its smaller pickups and so this is for trying to get into that game I think what's really interesting to me about trucks and SUVs and all the stuff we've seen in the the larger vehicle space is that it's finally starting to really bleed over we see the Lexus LF one concept here is an SUV the Mach 1 electric car that Ford is teasing is like probably a crossover of some kind and so we are seeing a lot of concept sedans and coupes but like we're starting to get to a point where all just seeing bigger stuff and like they're imagining maybe they don't have to be electric maybe they can be hybrid and that way we can still make them real big right well part of the announcement from Ford it was the Ford f-150 that's coming that will also not be the traditional gas guzzler that we've known I mean they've gone increasingly lighter by the last generation using a low minimum frame but we're seeing that happen across the space so it's like all these worlds are starting to come together and maybe what is also is interesting too is that you're coming from CES where everything was kind of crazy and out there so it's hard to been at CES and seen the future to come here and really be impressed with the present so what do you think both CES and Detroit are telling us about where we see things heading with the car industry and the transportation industry in 2018 and 2019 my take was that this is gonna be sort of this is like the calm before the storm you see I mean like this is about the reality of the car business this is what they sell trucks SUVs let's make some money CES is more aspirational it's about the future it's about ride-sharing it's about autonomy it's about things like the Toyota concept of the e pallet where we're gonna have all these sort of like self-driving retail businesses the board's got its self-driving Domino's Pizza Delivery car here but at the same time it sort of shunted off to the side it's tucked in the corner it's not being given as much prominence as the Mustang or the Ranger so I feel like you know it's we're starting to see like an industry in transition but there's still like a lot of fundamental realities that they're dealing with maybe there's a little bit of denial mixed in with a little bit of it you know there's like a resistance they don't want to go whole hog on the autonomy and and and the ride sharing and the idea that they're gonna be losing money in the future because these are technologies that are going to come out and it's gonna rob them of like 40 percent of their profitability and that's like got them probably scared to death it's it's an interesting thing because you think about the idea of brands here like the brands are still the car companies we're at CES the car companies often sought to partner with earlier brands and then you think about the screens that are gonna be in all these cars and that's advertising space and so I think that's an interesting thing that we're all seeing is that these names that mean something in our consumer lives whether it's Amazon or something like Domino's or Pizza Hut it's it's things that we know creeping into our personal space in the cars as we move toward autonomous driving and another part of that is within the next 10 years they every executive you talk to tell us we're gonna see more change in the auto industry than we have since the Model T was produced right right I think these two shows back-to-back helped us see that there's some things they're actually starting to like coagulate like we're we're finally starting to see all these balls have been up in the air autonomy electric electrification all this stuff and and now we can actually sort of see where it's headed in the sense that everybody's been talking about the cars no one's been talking about the infrastructure to support electric cars and so we're probably gonna just see a whole bunch of hybrids up until we get to the point where electric cars are viable for everyone everywhere which is still a ways out and once we get to that point then we'll probably have these sort of other services creeping in at the edges in cities and hopefully outside of cities where you will be able to pale like a self-driving lift like I got to ride in in Vegas and we also seen that even before these two shows you know like all these companies talk about the electrification of their fleets not electric cars and they're trying to like Bank off the goodwill of electric cars by saying that but also talking about hybrids insight that that seems to be the clear path forward you know 2018 2019 2020 we're gonna get more electric motors in these cars but they don't exclusively be like on the way to eventually maybe getting there it's like the companies like Ford thinks that you're more likely to buy an electric car if it's an electric Mustang if it's a nameplate that you recognize maybe it's an easier transition for the public but you know it's like it's a crazy show every year yeah it's always a lot of fun to see the ideas that people are bouncing around we'll be back next year again talking about all this stuff probably and scolding the companies that aren't doing a good job and you know drooling over the cars that seem like they're gonna be badass to drive so thanks for 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