Tesla’s big, epic, confusing future

Today on the flagship podcast of super helpful humanoid helper robots: 05:07 - The Verge’s David Pierce and Andy Hawkins discuss the latest at Tesla: new products, new initiatives, and a payday for Elon Musk. Tesla’s 2024 shareholder meeting: all the news about Elon Musk’s $50 billion payday Let’s speculate wildly about Tesla’s three mystery vehicles Tesla shareholders approve Elon Musk’s massive pay package — was there ever any doubt? Whatever Elon wants, Tesla gets 40:21 - Vee Song joins the show to discuss updates to the Apple Watch, a new Samsung Galaxy Watch, and more wearable news. Finally, the Apple Watch will let you rest - The Verge Samsung’s Galaxy Watch FE is its new entry-level smartwatch - The Verge The Pixel Watch 2 can now detect when you’ve been in a car crash Apple announces watchOS 11 with new training features and Live Activities Samsung sues Oura preemptively to block smart ring patent claims 1:02:54 - David and Liam James answer a question from the Vergecast Hotline about weather apps. Forecast Advisor Email us at [email protected] or call us at 866-VERGE11, we love hearing from you. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:02David Pierce?

  Welcome to The Vergecast, the flagship podcast of super helpful humanoid helper robots. I'm your friend David Pierce and I am sitting here buying bathroom vanities. So, my wife and I were having some work done in our house, partly to just like make our bathrooms nicer, but also because one of them is starting to leak. And if you're watching this on YouTube, just out of frame up there is just a growing stain. And those are the things that start to happen. And I just see all of the money that I have in the world start to disappear. So anyway, we've been starting to do some work on renovating our bathroom, making some changes. And I have discovered that shopping for bathroom vanities is everything that is wrong with online shopping.

• 0:46David Pierce?

  You go to the one of these websites, Wayfair, or Lowe's, or Home Depot, or Amazon, or Pottery Barn, or Crate and Barrel, and it's just all the same stuff with different prices. You have to become like a subject matter expertise. I now know the difference between solid wood and all the different types of manufactured wood, and MDF, which is bad, but only in humid spaces. Like, why do I know these things? This is not information I'm interested in knowing. But there isn't really just a place you can go online that's like, here are the good vanities. This is like, the endless challenge of shopping on the internet. You can't really trust the reviews, because everybody has these paid for review programs. Some of the pictures you see are helpful, some aren't. Some of the one star reviews are just about like weird things that

• 1:28David Pierce?

  were happening in their house the day that things got delivered. It's just a mess. And so, what I've ended up doing for these very expensive pieces of furniture, is basically just going online, finding one that looks good, and then Google lensing it. Because what you discover is actually, most of these places are just selling the same thing. Much of it comes from China, or other countries in Asia, where they're just being shipped out of factories. And all these companies sell the same thing, under different names, often for very different prices. So, I find one that I like, I Google lens it, and then I hope to God that there is a set of reviews, or helpful pictures, or an expert in the field who has talked about this, somewhere. And then you go on Reddit, to see, because Reddit is the best place to get actual information about

• 2:12David Pierce?

  things. And everyone on Reddit is just like, go to a local cabinet maker, get this stuff custom made, do not trust the internet. It's good advice, honestly. It's probably the correct advice for many things, not just bathroom vanities, but the people are coming tomorrow to start putting new things in my bathroom and I don't have time. So I am fully, fully at the mercy of the internet right now and it's terrifying. Anyway, that's not what we're talking about today. We have a super fun show coming up. We're gonna do two things. First, we're gonna talk about Tesla, because Tesla last week had this big shareholder meeting, approved a huge payday for Elon Musk, but also gave a hint to what the next phase of Tesla is gonna be like, some new products, some new initiatives at the company. We're gonna bring Andy Hawkins on and talk about

• 2:57David Pierce?

  all of it, and hopefully only a little about Elon Musk. After that, we're gonna talk about wearables. We have a new app that people are really excited about for tracking your steps and all that stuff. We have a new Apple Watch feature that people are excited about. We have a new Samsung Watch that people are excited about. It's just a bunch of interesting, cool kind of fitness and health stuff. And V Song from The Verge and I have been talking a lot about finding more relaxed, chill ways to do wearables and fitness. Instead of the like, hyper intense, capital F, fitness people, how can I just have a wearable that helps without yelling at me about it? So we're gonna do the first part of a little bit of that today and more to come this summer. We also have a hotline question about weather

• 3:40David Pierce?

  that I'm very excited to talk about and lots more besides. All that is coming up in just a sec, but first I have 65 Lowe's tabs open that all look essentially the same to me and I have to go figure out which one I'm supposed to buy. Wish me luck. This is The Verge Cast. We'll be right back.

• 4:27Speaker 01

  College football is back. So Hilton called to me, the superstition concierge, to make your fan rituals a reality. Need a room to match your lucky number? We got you. Want to make sure our team doesn't wash your lucky jersey? Oh, that smells lucky. Hilton's unmatched hospitality can keep up with any superstition. Even a marching band wake up call at 5:55 and 55 seconds. Hit it! When you need a team that will do whatever it takes on game day, it matters where you stay. Hilton, for the stay.

• 4:59David Pierce?

  Welcome back. All right, I bought two Vanities. Are they any good? Ah, who knows? Do they have good return policies? Yes, they do, because if there's one thing the internet is good for, it's that it made it relatively easy to return all the crappy stuff that you buy from the internet. Anyway, let's get to the show. First up, I want to talk about Tesla. And I say Tesla very specifically because what has happened over the last week has been a lot of news about Tesla and about Elon Musk. And I want to focus on the Tesla part. So last week was the end of this big road to a shareholder vote over a huge pay package for Elon Musk. We're going to mostly leave that to the side. But what happened after Elon Musk took the victory lap for getting the shareholder vote because he won it,

• 5:43David Pierce?

  was he kind of laid out what he sees as the future for Tesla. He talked about the Optimus Robots. He talked about wanting to be a data setter company. He talked about full self-driving. He talked about superchargers. They talked about new vehicles. And I just think Tesla is at a really interesting moment right now. And it felt like a good time to talk about it. This company has been so important for so long to the electric vehicle industry, to the whole tech industry, to the world. And this felt like a good moment to kind of check in on where Tesla, the company, is and where it's headed. And of course, Andy Hawkins is the person to do it with. Andy, welcome back to the show. Hey, hello. Thanks for having me. It's been a minute. There's like just an onslaught of car stuff. And I feel like someday we're going to have to catch up on all of the car stuff.

• 6:28David Pierce?

  But today, it's Tesla time. I'm here for it. Okay, so I have two rules for you upfront, and then we're going to dive in. Rule number one is I'm going to ask you a question about Elon Musk at the beginning, and I'm going to ask you a question about Elon Musk at the end. And in between, we are going to talk about Elon Musk as little as possible. Is that fair? That sounds more than fair, honestly. Good. And rule number two is lesser rule and more of a caveat. And I'm going to make the caveat that I have, and I want you to add or subtract to it as you would like to.

• 6:56Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 6:57David Pierce?

  We're about to talk a bunch about plans for Tesla and the company that Tesla plans to be Elon Musk in particular is known for hyperbole, makes a lot of promises that don't always come true or don't always come true in the timeline. He has what I would call acute shiny object syndrome. And yet I still think all of this is worth digging into and talking about. Is that a fair caveat? Anything you would add or subtract?

• 7:17Speaker 02

  No, I think that that all sounds more than accurate. I accept your caveat.

• 7:21David Pierce?

  Good, all right. Then beginning Elon Musk question. Really quick, there was this big shareholder vote last week. This has been really like in some ways like six years in the making. Just give me the very quick story as to why Tesla shareholders voted again to give Elon Musk many tens of billions of dollars.

• 7:38Speaker 02

  Yeah, so they voted the first time to give him this amount of money or to promise to give him this amount of money back in 2018 with, and I'll use again, the caveat being that he had to meet certain thresholds in order to actually see the full amount of the pay package that was approved for him. And he did, he met those conditions. Tesla's value exceeded wild leaps and bounds that everyone's possible imagine of what Tesla could actually be valid. It succeeded in that. It was the most valuable carmaker in the world by 2021, and he was able to meet these thresholds and his pay package was vested. Then at the beginning of this year, a lawsuit that had been winding its way through the

• 8:19Speaker 02

  courts from a Tesla shareholder, this guy, Richard Tornetto, who I believe is also a heavy metal drummer, and he only owns like a handful of shares, which is kind of a fascinating aspect of all of this, sued the company and Elon Musk saying that this process was flawed. He should not have been awarded this amount of money and it should get tossed out. A judge in Delaware, where Tesla is incorporated, agreed and voided his pay package in January of 2024. That made Elon Musk very upset. And when Elon Musk gets upset, his legion of fans, lots of them who are, whom are shareholders, also got very upset and they decided to just Do the process over again. So for the last several months, they've been Tesla has been

• 9:02Speaker 02

  engaged in a pretty aggressive lobbying effort to get its shareholders to once again approve this this massive pay package, which is upwards of $56 billion, it's been said to be worth, which would make him the most highly compensated chief executive in modern history. So they went to the shareholders again, said, let's, let's vote for this once more time. Let's show this judge that when we said that we wanted him to get this money, we actually meant it. And low and behold, Tesla shareholders voted overwhelmingly to award Elon Musk his pay package once again. And that's where we're at.

• 9:35David Pierce?

  Okay, this is why I think this is actually a good moment to talk about Tesla, because there was a moment in the speech that Elon Musk gave after the shareholder vote ended, where I think what he said was, this isn't a new page for Tesla, it's a new book, or something, something like that. I'm paraphrasing.

• 9:49Speaker 02

  Yeah, that's correct.

• 9:50David Pierce?

  Okay. And then I would say he proceeded to say, kind of lay out what he believes the future of Tesla to be. And I just want to kind of run through a handful of them and kind of take your temperature on what you think about all of these big ideas as they pertain to kind of where Tesla is going from here. And I feel like the first place we have to start is with the the optimist robots, right? I feel like if you were going to pick a thing.

• 10:12Speaker 02

  Oh, he would like you to start there. So I'm sure he'd be very glad that you're starting there.

• 10:15David Pierce?

  Okay, well, so that's actually one of the things I'm most curious about is it didn't, it didn't feel like cars were the big story. It didn't feel like energy was the big story. It felt like robots was the big story. Why, why robots? How did this become kind of the shiniest thing at Tesla?

• 10:29Speaker 02

  Yeah, so, you know, for years, Elon and Tesla have been interested in AI. They have been trying to produce a self driving car for many, many years now. And Musk has been making numerous grandiose promises about how Tesla's future is actually in autonomy and robotics. And, you know, it's become sort of, you know, kind of like a bit of a, an inside joke almost, that, you know, he makes these promises that there's going to be millions of self driving vehicles on the road. By certain dates, those dates come and go. Low and behold, there are no self driving Teslas that have taken over the road. But we do have, as a, you know, a series of driver assist products. First, there was autopilot, then there was full self driving. Drivers very much still need to take control, you know, pay attention to their to the driving task.

• 11:12Speaker 02

  They cannot fall asleep or allow the car to drive itself without their attention. So it seems like there's still a ways to go still before we actually get to this point where Tesla has achieved and solved for autonomy, like some other companies have made a lot more progress with. But that said, you know, I think the moment that we really saw this become sort of more than just kind of like a side project of Tesla, but become sort of the core purpose and ethos of the entire company and obviously of sort of the way that Musk markets the company was around the time that I think OpenAI emerged with ChatGPT. And then we started to see sort of the the spread of AI fever. This becomes sort of a very, very clear hype cycle that we're in the midst of at the moment.

• 11:56Speaker 02

  And it was clear that the things that investors and Wall Street formerly rewarded Tesla for, which was for it being on the vanguard of electrification and sort of changing the way that people think about personally owned vehicles. That was somehow not as exciting anymore. I mean, Tesla was still worth a lot of money, but it was suddenly people were starting to pay more attention to the robotics and the autonomy aspects of the company. And I think Tesla and Elon especially really leaned into that and are now trying to sort of shift the definition of what Tesla is away from being just a carmaker to one that is focused primarily on AI and robotics. And that really came out, I think, very strongly during the last earnings call, which Elon said, and I'm paraphrasing, that if you don't understand that this is what Tesla is all about, that we're

• 12:41Speaker 02

  an AI company and that we're going to solve for autonomy, then you just don't understand the Tesla story.

• 12:45David Pierce?

  Interesting. So the thesis somewhat makes sense to me there, right? That if you if you solve in the same way that energy inside of cars ultimately lets you solve much bigger, wider sorts of energy problems, solving autonomy inside of cars lets you solve other bigger, more interesting problems. And this is like, this is the version of the world and future that Tesla has always talked about. And again, execution is another thing, but like that version of how to think about what a car can then expand out into sort of makes sense to me, right? That like, again, leaving aside whether it is possible for Tesla or anyone else to build a self-driving car, if you can, it puts you way down the road of solving a bunch of other really interesting problems.

• 13:26Speaker 02

  This is sort of fundamentally, I think, what Tesla is trying to say and to how Musk is sort of trying to talk about the company. But I think what it belies is that, you know, kind of like something that he maybe would not admit to and what a lot of people inside the company or the fans of the company would not really admit to, which is that he's just fundamentally bored with running a car company.

• 13:46David Pierce?

  Yeah.

• 13:47Speaker 02

  That the car, the car company aspect of this has just become kind of, and you said it yourself, talking about his like shiny, shiny object syndrome. The car company is not a shiny object anymore. It's not, it doesn't hold his interest. And this was so much a part of the lobbying effort in the run up to the shareholder vote, coming from the chair of Tesla's board, Robin Denholm, on down, talking about how we needed to award Musk this enormous sum of money because we need to hold his attention. He has all of these projects. He's got his irons in multiple fires, whether it's obviously with X, formerly Twitter, Neuralink, The Boring Company, SpaceX obviously being the granddaddy of them all. And Tesla is just not like keeping his attention the same way that it used to.

• 14:32Speaker 02

  So in order for him to fully devote himself and usher Tesla into this next chapter, this next book, as he likes to put it, you know, we need to cut him this gigantic check because that's going to be the way that's going to keep him sort of locked down and focused on what's going to make Tesla the most successful company. So I think that there's an aspect of this, like they're trying to solve for, for certain problems that they think autonomy and robotics are going to help them solve, whether it's around labor or around sort of like the safety around AI. But I think fundamentally really just comes down to like this dude is spread way too thin and they needed to keep him more consolidated and focused on, on the task at hand.

• 15:10David Pierce?

  Right. And obviously what shinier, cooler thing to think about, both for investors who care a lot about the stock price and for Elon Musk as an executive and just for like the people who follow Tesla than humanoid robots that follow you around your house, right? Like, I can't imagine a thing in this moment of this crazy AI hype cycle that will get more attention from more people than we're going to build a robot. Like, screw your, her thing that's on your phone. Like, we're going to build a frickin' robot in your house. Like, Tesla's thing is to take these things to like the nth degree. Like, that feels very in keeping with how this company operates to me.

• 15:48Speaker 02

  Yeah, 100%. And it was like the Musk of the past was coming poking his head out a little bit during this shareholder meeting where he came out, he did his victory lap, he told everyone how much he loved them. And then he just started speaking incredibly hyperbolically about about how Optimus and the humanoid robots and how Tesla was going to have potentially hundreds of robots working in its factory by the end of next year, I think he said. And then he made some comment about how Tesla was ultimately, or the robotics industry, I can't remember if it's exactly Tesla or robotics, but I'm sure he was seeing them as sort of mutually the same, was going to be worth $25 trillion someday, which like you can say what you will about Musk's in his hyperbolic statements and how he hypes

• 16:30Speaker 02

  things too much and just sort of goes over the top and describing things, millions of electric cars, solving for autonomy, AI robots, a $25 trillion company is just nothing that we've ever seen, nor do I think we will see in the history of like a corporate America or just, you know, the history of capitalism. It's just not something that I think a lot of people even think is fundamentally possible. But that said, that's that was like fully like the vibe that he was trying to put out, I think, with with all of this.

• 16:58David Pierce?

  That makes sense. You have aggressively broken our no Elon Musk rule, which means we have to move on. It's very hard to do. And this is like, this is the strangest thing about this company right now. And this comes to my Elon Musk question at the end. But let's, let's get back to some car company stuff. Because Tesla is still a car company, no matter how it wants to talk about itself. There were three shrouded vehicles up from two shrouded vehicles that we've seen before. They put up the slide. Elon, I believe, said, we have some stuff in the pipeline. You speculated wildly about what these three vehicles might be. Give me the quick rundown. What do we, what do we think is is literally under the hood that we're going to see from Tesla in the near future?

• 17:35Speaker 02

  Yeah, so it was interesting to me because it was one more mystery vehicle than we got last year, which is when they had their Investor Day and they talked a lot about like the third master plan and about how they were going to use all the sustainable energy in order to shift the world over to a more sustainable energy future. And at that time, you know, the criticism against Tesla was that, oh, okay, they're talking high minded about all these things that they want to do. They're losing focus. There's no new car announcement. There was nothing for people to really sink their teeth into, except for a lot of these kind of like grandiose statements about what the future of energy was going to be.

• 18:07David Pierce?

  There really hasn't been anything since the Cybertruck, right? In terms of like concrete, and that's a long time.

• 18:12Speaker 02

  If anything, they've been all over the map. There's been reports about cancelling plans for a cheap Model 2-type, $25,000 EV, and then they are back on to it. It's unclear exactly where they stand on sort of like, what the lineup, the vehicle lineup of the future is going to be. Because I think because the Cybertruck kind of sucked all the oxygen out of the room. It was an enormously difficult task to build up a production sort of scheme around that truck because of how difficult it was to make. And that kind of just, and obviously too, the company that, you know, a couple of months ago, went through a huge layoff period where they laid off over 10%, maybe even up to 20% of the company was laid off. And now they're actually hiring a lot of those people back because they realize they fired too many of them,

• 18:56Speaker 02

  which is not the first time that that's happened with Tesla. But anyway, so yeah, there was an additional mystery vehicle under a shroud that they hinted at during this shareholder meeting, two of which looked like, had the shape of just regular Teslas. They looked kind of like Model 3s. You know, something that we can take from that, we could say, okay, is one of those, the Model 2, is one of those, the cheaper, smaller, more affordable electric car that they had said that they were going to make and then said that they weren't? And you know, sort of been flip-flopping and backtracking and going all over the place as to whether or not they actually have plans to make this vehicle? Is the other one of those, is that maybe the refreshed Roadster that we were first promised? I think back in like 2019, when they had the event announcing the Tesla Semi truck.

• 19:39Speaker 02

  And then the Roadster was sort of like brought out and saying, we're going to do the Roadster, the original vehicle that launched Tesla.

• 19:45David Pierce?

  I honestly forgot about that. Like if you had asked me just now, is there another Roadster? I would have said, no, that was like the first. I honestly forgot. And didn't they collect like huge deposits from people for that too?

• 19:56Speaker 02

  Yeah, they've taken a ton of deposits, definitely over, you know, several millions of dollars worth. But yeah, that doesn't appear to be any closer to production. We have not gotten many words. I think he's tweeted a few times about sort of what The progresses, there's been lots of claims about using like SpaceX style rockets to make this like a vehicle that can reach zero to 16 in under two seconds, or maybe even a second and a half. It's, you know, we're bending the laws of physics. It's, uh, it's gonna be a fun time. So one of those mystery vehicles could be that roadster. And then there was a third mystery vehicle, which was more boxy shaped, a little bit taller, higher riding, maybe even van shaped. So there was some speculation that this could be a van,

• 20:37Speaker 02

  or at least a more sort of high capacity vehicle. This could be the robotaxi that Tesla has been talking a lot about.

• 20:44David Pierce?

  I was just about to say, do you really think Tesla is gonna make a minivan?

• 20:47Speaker 02

  I think-

• 20:47David Pierce?

  But in the taxi version of the world, that makes more sense.

• 20:50Speaker 02

  If they're gonna make some sort of purpose-built autonomous vehicle, the conventional wisdom is that it needs to be something that is kind of van-shaped, that you can fit a lot of people into it. You could, it could maybe be something where there could be some carpooling aspect of it, or some ride-sharing. So it does seem to be that maybe Tesla is interested in that, or is interested in some sort of van-type format for its technology. So those were sort of the guesses that I've seen and others have talked about is in terms of like what Tesla's future vehicle lineup might look like.

• 21:19David Pierce?

  Okay, the robotaxi is supposed to come like this summer, right?

• 21:23Speaker 02

  Soon, yeah. August 8th, he said.

• 21:25David Pierce?

  Okay.

• 21:26Speaker 02

  It's gonna be the event for that.

• 21:27David Pierce?

  I feel like it's probably then a fairly safe bet to say, one of those three is gonna be the robotaxi.

• 21:34Speaker 02

  Yeah, I think that that's correct. And he's, you know, they've been hyping that a lot in a lot of their communications. There have been talks about how it's gonna be somewhat similar, design-wise, to the Cybertruck. So we were gonna see maybe a lot of angularity, something more triangular-shaped perhaps. Probably not stainless steel, but you know, you never know with this company. But yeah, it's, uh, this is gonna be sort of like what we've all been building towards, right? We've had these driver-assist products, uh, we've seen how they behaved out in public. You've got a lot of people, Tesla owners, who are big fans of full self-driving and autopilot. They think it's great. It takes a lot of the pressure off of driving, that it works fantastically. And then there's just a ton of evidence that shows that it's just not what it's built up to be.

• 22:15Speaker 02

  That it has serious gaps. There's been some studies to show that it can't execute certain maneuvers. There's been hundreds of crashes, dozens of fatalities involving drivers using autopilot. And then there's concerns about how people might be overusing these products, more reliant in them than they should. And obviously, due to the fact that Tesla markets it in a way that probably leaves a lot of confusion to people.

• 22:36David Pierce?

  It is called full self-driving, after all. That is, it's hard to not read that the way that it sounds.

• 22:43Speaker 02

  Yeah, I know. It's like, you know, why can't I take my eyes off the road? Why can't I fall asleep? Why can't I climb into the back, the backseat and allow the car to drive me from, from that way? Uh, well, because, you know, there are plenty of, of warnings that pop up on your screen to say to never do those things. So, yeah, it's the way that Tesla markets these products and the reality of them are constantly in conflict. Uh, and we're starting to see some court cases move their way through the system. Some regulators in California, the DMV, the Attorney General, uh, the Department of Justice are all investigating Tesla. It's maybe perhaps, uh, part of a, a criminal investigation to show that they have, uh, willfully, uh, misguided people in terms of how they've marketed these, um, uh, this technology.

• 23:22David Pierce?

  Got it. Okay. Which makes the robotaxi thing even higher stakes in a bunch of ways.

• 23:28Speaker 02

  I would say fraught. Fraught is the word.

• 23:29David Pierce?

  Fraught's a good word for it. There you go. Uh, well, and speaking of around that, I think if you assume the robotaxi thing is real and coming this summer, it makes a bunch of the other things that Tesla and Elon Musk are talking about all the more important, right? He mentioned the Tesla network, which is the, the, this idea that we've been hearing about for forever, that you can just get out of your car when you get to work and then your car can go be a robotaxi all day and then come back. The supercharger network, which I think we, we've heard a lot of conflicting things about in recent months. The whole theory of like AWS for AI that Tesla is trying to be.

• 24:02Speaker 02

  Oh, that's a good one.

• 24:03David Pierce?

  Idea of this like big, broad network of Teslas and what that can be in the world feels like it's about to get tested in a pretty real way after a lot of talk over the last few years. And obviously autopilot and self-driving is part of that because like the first part of robotaxi means there's not a person. This is not an Uber for Tesla thing. This is a very different thing Tesla is trying to go for. And like, it feels like that's coming to a head here pretty fast, no?

• 24:30Speaker 02

  Yeah, I mean, it just sort of goes back to this this idea that I put forward, which is that, you know, they're trying to explore many ways in which they can continue to hype Tesla and to justify the valuation that it's received over the years in ways that don't sort of expose kind of like the fundamental reality of what the company is, which is that it's a car company. But as soon as you put Tesla alongside of its fellow peers in the auto industry alongside, I don't know, Ford and GM, Chevy, Buick, Audi, Mercedes, it kind of loses its luster in a lot of ways because we know about car companies. We've seen them for decades and decades, you know, over a century now, we've had car companies and there's just nothing

• 25:14Speaker 02

  that that the story really doesn't lend itself so well to that kind of like excitement that has surrounded Tesla, but also Musk himself as someone who is like a futurist and is going to help usher in kind of like this more this better future that we have planned for us. But, you know, I think it just really kind of like this tension, and I think that that's why he's talking about things like robotics and AI, but even like the AWS stuff. I mean, that's just him spitballing. And I've spoken to a number of experts that have said, you know, that that's like the fact that Tesla vehicles are cars that they move around and are go from place to place and that don't have like a fixed location necessarily. It's kind of, you know, sort of undermines the idea of using it as some sort of like distributed

• 25:56Speaker 02

  network from which to, you know, get like, you know, more bang for your buck in terms of like what an actual electric car can be used for, which I think, you know, sort of ignores some of the the real potential behind EVs, which I think a lot of the other car makers have kind of seized upon, which is things like virtual power plants and sending energy back into the grid or using your EV as sort of like a mobile power generator that can help you out in the midst, you know, if there's a blackout, you know, we're having, there's a heat wave on the East Coast this week. There's going to be heat waves as part of our future fundamentally. Like, you know, we'd have to really kind of get get used to that. And EVs could be a real good way to help make sure that people don't who do lose power, don't use lose the things that they really need the most, you know, refrigeration

• 26:38Speaker 02

  and AC and things like that during these times. So, you know, there's a lot of things that EVs can be used for that that beyond just like driving from from A to B. And it doesn't seem like he really has or the company really has much interest in those things.

• 26:50David Pierce?

  Yeah, that makes sense. So to that point, actually, my impression of Tesla for years has been that it was very early to a lot of things and was right about a lot of where things were going beforehand. Even leaving all of the good and bad of Elon Musk aside, like Tesla was right about the future pretty early on and correctly bet on a bunch of things, including electric vehicles. The story around Tesla the last few years seems to be that it has given up a lot of that lead as a car company, right? And that it's the sort of moat that it built for itself has like withered and dried up, I guess, to just like destroy that metaphor. Is that fair? Like, is the, what is Tesla's moat as a car company at this point? And again, the answer is not allowed to be Elon Musk because we're going to come back to that.

• 27:35David Pierce?

  But as a, as a pure like technology and car company, does it have some of that moat in advantage still? Or has it, has the landscape around it just changed?

• 27:45Speaker 02

  Yeah, I think it's, it's kind of a complicated answer because I think in some aspects it does. Because I think we've seen, you know, the thing that was most often described as Tesla's moat was its supercharger network, right? That it made these cars that people wanted, you know, they were expensive and they were futuristic looking. But none of that would have worked if there was not the infrastructure, the charging infrastructure to support the ownership of those vehicles. And so Tesla very smartly realized that it needed to, to build that itself, that it was not going to get the help from the government or from maybe even like the supplier network and the, the third party aftermarket industry that exists. It needed to do it itself. And it did. It created what is still stands today as being the best and most reliable

• 28:28Speaker 02

  and most distributed EV charging network that exists on the planet. And they not only did that, but then they opened up that standard, the charging standard that they saw as being sort of more streamlined and cheaper and more sort of technologically proficient. And they opened it up to the rest of the industry and they said, okay, this is not just ours anymore. This is the North American charging standard, the NACS. You all can use this. And Ford was the first to jump on board and then GM followed and then all the dominoes soon followed afterwards. And now we have every single major Automaker in the world saying that not only will they give their own customers, their own EV owners access to Tesla's network, but they will also adopt the plug for themselves on their future EVs.

• 29:10Speaker 02

  So we're going to start seeing Ford vehicles and GM vehicles come out with Tesla's plug versus the one that exists today, which is the CCS plug. And so that is, in a lot of ways, Tesla's moat and still stands today as Tesla's moat in protection against the future. But it was always going to be the case that it was not going to be able to maintain the market share that it had. I mean, it had the advantage of being first. So therefore, you know, I think at the most it had over 75% of the EV sales as Teslas. Eventually, and if it was successful, if it could guarantee the fact that it was successful, other companies were going to inevitably follow its lead and make their own electric cars. And now you're starting to see that market share shrink. It's now around 50%. Its sales are down.

• 29:54Speaker 02

  Its revenue is down. Its profits have shrank. And so there's, you know, there's a lot of concern about, you know, sort of Tesla's future as a car company, which it's still, for all the bluster about AI and robotics, it still is fundamentally a car company.

• 30:08David Pierce?

  Right. And is that because Tesla has lost some of its swagger? Or because everybody else has finally caught up? Or a little bit of both?

• 30:16Speaker 02

  I think a little bit of both. I think you've got the fact that it's not just a Tesla anymore. You can go out and you can take a look at these really great electric Hyundai's and these great electric Kia's. The Ford Mustang Mach-E remains a very popular vehicle. Now you've got electric trucks. You've got the electric F-150 and the Silverado, and there's more to come. And then if you don't even like some of those old dusty, old legacy car companies, there's Rivian and there's Polestar. And there's all these other sort of newer Tesla light companies that have maybe as much of a sheen on them as Tesla did. And maybe you don't like the kind of things that Elon Musk stands for. You don't like the things he says on X. You don't like his positions, his political positions, which have obviously become more conservative and right wing over the last few years. And he's not shy about sharing those with the world.

• 31:01Speaker 02

  And so if you find that to be abhorrent, you can, you know, there's plenty of other places for you to go. And I think that as we've seen in this presidential election now with electric Vehicles becoming so politicized that if Republicans are railing against EVs and what you're left with is an entirely a progressive or democratic or left-leaning customer demographic, those people are not going to be willingly gobbling up Tesla's left and right. Maybe they begrudgingly will buy a Tesla because of how good the charging network is or the prices, which have come down significantly in the last few years. And now you can get a Tesla, especially a used one for around $20, $25,000 in a lot

• 31:40Speaker 02

  of ways. The $25,000 EV exists and it just happens to be a used Model 3. So I think in some ways that's become a lot more complicated, but then in a lot of other ways, this is the way that it was always going to go, especially if Tesla was as successful as it has proven to be.

• 31:57David Pierce?

  Right. So you've brought me to my last Elon Musk question and then I will let you go. I think a lot of this roadmap is really interesting to me and Tesla deserves credit over the years for pulling off a lot of what it said it was going to do. It's been much weirder than we expected, but Tesla did a lot of the stuff it said it was going to do. And so to the extent that I want to give the company the benefit of the doubt that it has been able to do this in the past and might be able to do it again, that's one thing. But we've talked about this so much over the years that Elon Musk is Tesla and Tesla is Elon Musk. And I feel like what that means has changed. So I'm curious for your read right now in 2024, even different from what it was in 2018, the first time shareholders voted to give him all this money. What is your read on what Elon Musk means

• 32:37David Pierce?

  to Tesla in sort of this next phase? Like is that that close association was undeniably good for Tesla for a really long time? Say what you will, it just it just was. Whether you were a person who liked electric vehicles or a person who owned Tesla stock, victories all around for a long time there. Do you think that's still the case in the next phase of this company? Or has it sort of inexorably changed since 2018?

• 33:01Speaker 02

  I think it's still the case because if you look at the vote totals, you look at the way that people voted their shares, which there were billions of shares that were that were voted during this this past shareholder vote. Over 70% voted in favor of awarding him this pay package, which is a pretty strong sign that people see Tesla and not only Tesla as it is today, but Tesla's future as some sort of undefined robotics company or whatever it is in the future as being inextricably linked to Elon Musk and his ability to be the one that sort of is guiding that ship. So I think that that was a pretty clear sign. If we had seen, and it was pretty much, I think, the same percent that first awarded him that pay package back in 2018.

• 33:43Speaker 02

  So there's been six years, right, between these two votes and we're seeing basically an unchanged vote total. That said, you know, and I talked to a couple of experts in the midst of this, if you're someone who bought Tesla shares back in 2011, you are really happy with Elon Musk and the way that he's been leading this company. If you're someone who bought shares in 2023, you have probably a lot of questions and you're and you're probably wondering about what the post Musk future is for Tesla. And he was asked that during the shareholder meeting, which he stood on stage and took a lot of questions. Many of them were not great questions. They left a lot to be desired. You know, as one can imagine at a Tesla event of this kind, you're going to get a lot of like, you know, these sort of overt displays of fealty and.

• 34:26David Pierce?

  I call them the how are you so terrific questions?

• 34:28Speaker 02

  Exactly. Yes, I call them sycophant, sycophant questions. But anyway, you got a lot of those types of questions, but somebody did ask him some something along the lines of like, you know, you're not going to live forever, which maybe Musk might disagree with.

• 34:41David Pierce?

  I know, right?

• 34:42Speaker 02

  He might. I know a lot of him and his friends are working on that problem right now. But that said, either they're like, how's your health or something along like the lines of that and what's going to be the future of Tesla? And he gave the vaguest answer. He's like, I'm very excited and confident in the future of Tesla. There's just no one lying, being lined up to take the reins of this company. In fact, most of the people that could have, I think, were fired in the last round of layoffs that they had. Most of the the C suite executives have departed. There's new people that have just. Come in, it just does not seem that they have any interest in grooming somebody. And that's it. I mean, Musk is not that old. He's still in his 50s and probably has, you know, long years ahead of them running this company.

• 35:24Speaker 02

  And it's very clear that that's what the shareholders want, which is why they voted in this way. So it just seems like, you know, yes, the people who have said that Musk is Tesla and Tesla is Musk, that is more accurate today than it ever has been. I think it's just a question of, does he still see himself leading this company? And if so, what is his vision of the future? Because that's the one clearly that most people are interested in following.

• 35:47David Pierce?

  Right. And it sounds like very much under that world in which Elon Musk and Tesla are more connected than ever. Tesla is going to look less and less like a car company as time goes on.

• 35:58Speaker 02

  Yeah, it's possible. It's very possible that it becomes, you know, that the car aspect of its like business shrinks. But if that's the case, they need to really start to think about how they're going to replace those revenues. Because right now, they're in a bit of a bind because the, you know, it's over 80% of their revenues are automotive. They still, you know, obviously pull in some revenue from, from the energy side of the business and from, from battery storage. You know, the, the solar aspect of their, of their business has remained pretty flat. It's not growing nearly as much as I'm sure a lot of analysts would like to see it grow. So there's just nothing really to replace the money yet. And obviously robotics and autonomy and the Tesla network and self-driving cars and the robo taxi and all these things

• 36:39Speaker 02

  remain just far too theoretical for anyone to sort of like hang anything solid on. So I just think that if it wants to be this company that it's, it's setting itself up for, it needs to start to demonstrate how it's actually going to make money. Otherwise, I think a lot of shareholders are going to feel very much like bag holders at the end of all of this.

• 37:00David Pierce?

  Yeah, at some point you got to start selling stuff.

• 37:02Speaker 02

  That's how it works. That's how I'm told.

• 37:04David Pierce?

  There's a lot of that going on with AI in general right now. It's, it's all very shiny. And at some point you got to start selling stuff. And I think I have a feeling we're headed for a couple of years of reckoning on what you can and can't sell when it comes to AI stuff.

• 37:16Speaker 02

  That sounds about right.

• 37:17David Pierce?

  All right, Andy, thank you as always.

• 37:19Speaker 02

  It's my pleasure. Thanks, David.

• 37:21David Pierce?

  All right, we got to take a break and then we're going to come back and talk about wearables.

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• 39:00David Pierce?

  All right, we're back. So it's now been a week since WWDC, Apple's annual developer conference. We've talked about it a lot on this show. I still think that the fact that they announced rest days for watchOS might be the single most exciting announcement to me.

• 39:17Speaker 06

  The personalization even extends to your activity rings, where you can now adjust your goals by the day of the week. Or if you have an injury that's making it harder to close your rings, or maybe you just need a day off, you can pause them for a rest day, week, or more, and keep your award streak going.

• 39:33David Pierce?

  The thing where I'm lying on the couch feeling sick... Or tired or just haven't had time that day to go exercise. And my watch is like yelling at me about not closing my rings. Is the thing that makes me want to take off my Apple watch. I've actually turned off a lot of the goals. I just try to not worry about that stuff anymore. But I like the idea of being able to care about it and then not care about it. But anyway, that is just one piece of a lot of wearable news in the last few weeks. We've gotten lawsuits from Samsung over Aura's smart rings. We've gotten Pixel Watch leaks. We've gotten a new Samsung Galaxy watch. We've gotten a bunch of FDA news. Vsong has been covering all of this and is deep in the wearable space. As anyone who listens to this show will know.

• 40:17David Pierce?

  So I figured I'd have her just come on and we're just going to plow through some news and talk about how big a deal any of this really is. And take a victory lap on rest days. Vsong, welcome back.

• 40:27Speaker 07

  Thanks for having me.

• 40:28David Pierce?

  You did it. This is the, this is the biggest news in the history of Vsong at WWDC this year. We're going to do, I have Apple stuff, Samsung stuff and Google stuff I want to talk about. But we got to start with Apple. I'm just, the floor is yours. If you can laugh, you can cry, you can be happy. It's rest days. We got rest days, V.

• 40:46Speaker 07

  I was screaming so loud in my house. And like, so I have this one cat who loves to like just annoy me in my room. He likes to sit with me in my office. And as soon as they're like, oh, and rest days, they're going to be a thing now. I was like, yes, so loud. And I was just like typing in the, in the Verge Slack with like so many typos just because I was going like, huh. And I saw that you mentioned in the live blog that somewhere I was like fist pumping. Yes, all of that was happening. And if it wasn't for the fact that I had to like get the WatchOS 11 blog out, I would have probably just like run around like a crazy person in my office just going like, huh, yes, finally, this is so great on so many levels.

• 41:29Speaker 07

  I could, it's just like, and I'm here to wax poetic on it, so I will. But like this has been. 10 years of the Apple Watch and it it has been like a feature that I have been wanting for at least eight of those years, just because it's, oh, my God, where do I start? There's just so many reasons why you need a rest day. And the big one is that we're not machines. And I actually think streaks are quite toxic for the average person because we all know that one Apple Watch person who's just like, oh, yeah, I was sick, but there's no way I'm breaking my streak. So I just lowered it and went for a walk. And I was like, I hear that story so many times and I'm just like, that is the opposite of improving your health.

• 42:12Speaker 07

  That is actively not doing the best thing for your health and your body in that point in time. And then there's for other people, those notifications are actually extremely demoralizing. So when I had COVID, I had it pretty bad. I couldn't really think properly. I don't actually remember a lot of having COVID because it was like a bad time. But one thing I really do remember was getting a buzz on my wrist, looking and it's like, you can still do it. You can take a 27 minute walk and close that ring.

• 42:43David Pierce?

  The thing where it's like, just go for an 11 mile walk. It's only 9:00 PM, you'll be fine. It's like, what? No.

• 42:49Speaker 07

  And it's like, um, no, actually, I am, I have COVID right now. And so I was just so annoyed and I took the watch off and I, and I put it on the charger because that's just how type A I am. I was just like, oh, I'm not going to throw it across the room. I'm going to put it very gently on the charger. But that, that kind of impulse. And I have also heard from several of my friends that on their wedding days, they either wore their Apple Watch on their ankles or gave it to their spouse to carry for them because they were not going to break that streak, even though it was their wedding day. And I was just like, I think. I think we've gotten to a point where the streak is no longer helpful.

• 43:30Speaker 07

  If you are at that point, I think we have lost sight of what the streak is supposed to be.

• 43:35David Pierce?

  Yep.

• 43:35Speaker 07

  It is a motivational tool and yeah, of course, like it is a great way to kind of visualize your consistency, but you know, you can have a weekly streak, you can have a monthly streak. It does not have to be a daily streak and after a certain point, it's actually counterintuitive. Like the, the more into training you go, you're supposed to have rest days. You're supposed to have days where you do absolutely nothing. And on days where you do absolutely nothing, let me tell you, if you have your move ring set at like a thousand calories, like some people do, you're not going to get a thousand calories of exercise, or you should not get a thousand calories of exercise on a rest day, especially when you're doing something like physically taxing, like any kind of race training, any kind of, especially if you're doing a marathon, those rest days are really

• 44:20Speaker 07

  important because some people are out here and they're, and they're pounding the pavement with four hour long runs, you're putting an incredible amount of stress on your body. Any athlete will tell you, rest is incredibly important and that's why so many athletes gravitate toward the whoop, they gravitate towards the o ring because those are prioritizing rest and everybody else in the industry for the past three, four years has been prioritizing rest in some form and capacity. So to have Apple lag so far behind on that, it was just, it's like the most glaring thing because the Apple watch is the leader in the smartwatch world.

• 44:56David Pierce?

  Right.

• 44:57Speaker 07

  It is like the one that everyone points to, it's the one that's popular, it's, you know, Apple does something with smartwatches, everybody follows, but the one thing that they really weren't doing for the longest time was sleep tracking and then on top of sleep tracking, rest and recovery was just like, close your rings or else.

• 45:13David Pierce?

  Yeah, it really, it gets like menacing. And then the, the notification that really did me in was the one the next morning where you wake up and it's like, ah. You only closed two rings yesterday. Like parentheses, you pathetic monster. Let's try and do better today. And I get those when I don't wear my watch for a day. And it's like, come on, watch. Like, I just wasn't, I didn't have this on. And then I get to the point where I'm like, I go for a walk and I'm not wearing the watch. And all of a sudden, you have that feeling of like, oh, it didn't count because I'm. And then, and then it's like, those are the moments where I'm like, oh, this is no longer serving the purpose that I got this to serve for me.

• 45:49Speaker 07

  Yeah, you know, I, I had that exact experience this weekend. I forgot my watch when we, my friend and I went out to a park and then we went for a hike at that park. And I was like, the entire time in my head, I was like, it's not going to count. It's not going to count. And I really hate that that's not going to count because this is a very steep hill.

• 46:08Speaker 07

  Like, I'm not getting credit for that, but that's actually, it's super counterintuitive because I still did the hike. I still did the thing that was very good for my body. It just because the Apple Watch didn't acknowledge it, you know? Like, and I think we have to really examine what streaks mean. So like before Apple introduced this ability to pause your, pause your rings, which I downloaded the beta and I've used it since. And I like really was just like, oh my God, this is, this is such a nice feeling that I'm not getting punished for that. But before that, I would just every once in a while, once I got a streak up to like 90 days, I would perfect, purposefully break it.

• 46:43David Pierce?

  Interesting, for your own sanity.

• 46:45Speaker 07

  Just for my own sanity and just to teach myself that like the streak is not, the streak is not how I define my consistency. Because like, I can tell you for the last six years, I haven't gone a week without running or some sort of physical exercise. So I would say that I am consistent in my fitness routine. But you know, life, and I'll get a little vulnerable with everybody. My life has not been super easy the last few years, just because I've had a lot of like circumstances, namely my entire immediate family died, like kind of one after another. And when you go through those life circumstances, the last thing you need is the Apple Watch going, you didn't close two of your rings yesterday. What happened? And you're like, well, well, Apple Watch, there was a funeral yesterday. That's what happened.

• 47:28Speaker 07

  I did not go and train my little. Legs out because I was not having a good day that day. So, you know, I think having that flexibility, allowing that to be within the Apple Watch and then to also have the other fitness features that they introduced, like training load, which, you know, that's not new. Garmin's had that for forever. All like the Polers have had that forever. But just like the acknowledgement that there are going to be times where you should not push it, where you should ease off the gas and that overall that will be good for you is is just like, I'm just like, yes.

• 48:03David Pierce?

  Well, yeah, that that context is a really interesting way to think about all of the watch stuff. And like you said, I think the the Apple Watch, we pay attention to it more than most smartwatches, but we should because it it is the one sort of driving this whole industry in a lot of ways. It really feels like a sort of vibe shift in the Apple Watch from like, how do we get you to do more? And turn everyone into super athletes and and put more and more and more data into here. And there's still some of that, right? And it's like, if you want to know all of the teeny tiny details of your body, like the watch is getting better and better at that. But at the same time, there is this recognition of like, okay, actually, maybe the watch's job as it starts to understand you better is to help you, not push you, and that those are not the same thing.

• 48:45Speaker 07

  The struggle that every single smartwatch or fitness tracker has that no other gadget device has is that it is trying to affect behavioral change. And behavioral change is very difficult. We are very ingrained in our habits and building a new habit doesn't actually take 21 days like some people say. It can take 21 days. It could take 66. It could take half a year. So like building change like that, especially when it's physical activity and exercise, which is notoriously, you know, we are not like, evolution has not made us crave exercise. If anything, evolution has made us crave the couch and a bag of potato chips because, you know, that's that's just how it is. And so even though you know it's good for you. You know, there are people who love streaks. There are people who love gamification.

• 49:30Speaker 07

  There are signs that gamification does work to an extent. There are also people like me who are just like bundles of anxiety and nerves and full of burnout. The world is full of things that will make you burn out. Streaks for me personally are a source of burnout. If I am chasing a streak, that is how I've gotten every single running injury in the past two, three years. That's how I've gotten my calf injuries. It's how I've gotten shin splints. It has been trying to keep streaks going. Counter to like my Achilles tendon or my calf or whatever saying like, um, we're a little ouchy right now. Could you take a, could you take a break? Could you walk instead of going on a six mile run? And I'd be like, no body, I will, I will, I have a streak to maintain.

• 50:13David Pierce?

  I wish they had just called it like, leave me alone. That's all I want from the activity thing is every time it sends a notification, one of the buttons should just be leave me alone. And then it's just, it's just like, my bad. Sorry. I'll, I'll leave you alone. And then it comes back the next day and it's like, are we cool now? Can we, can we hang out? Like that's, that's the relationship I want to have with my Apple Watch.

• 50:31Speaker 07

  I mean, same.

• 50:32David Pierce?

  Before we move on, anything else about watch OS 11 that got you particularly excited?

• 50:36Speaker 07

  Live activities. I think that's gonna be really fun and cool. I kind of want to see how well it does because it really depends on the intelligence being able to tell or suggest a really cool thing to you while the live activities are going. But I'm very curious to see how that plays out on, on the wrist.

• 50:53David Pierce?

  Yeah, that's a good one. So, okay, competitor time. Uh, all of these, I would say are the, the ones trying to do Android Apple Watches. There are going to be people who don't like that description, but that is what is going on.

• 51:05Speaker 07

  It's, it's what they're doing.

• 51:06David Pierce?

  It's just what it is. Uh, let's start with the Pixel Watch. So we got both some new stuff for the Pixel Watch 2 and some leaks for the Pixel Watch 3. Uh, anything exciting for you in, in Pixel Watch land right now?

• 51:18Speaker 07

  I think bigger Pixel Watch, like the rumor is that it's going to be called Pixel Watch XL. So just, I'm, I'm praying for my future self in a video going, the Pixel Watch 3 XL. If that's actually what they're calling it, because that's a mouthful. But just in terms of that is the biggest complaint that we had with the Pixel Watch 2 is that it was only one size. And ironically, it was the smaller size. And so people were like, we want a bigger one. When historically, smartwatch size complaints have been, this is too big. This is too bulky. Make one smaller. So this is like an ongoing conflict that we've had. But I think it just kind of shows that you really can't do one size fits all with

• 52:01Speaker 07

  smartwatches. So for them to have a bigger size, I'm stoked for people. I had a lot of readers just be like, but I have a bigger arm and the Pixel Watch looks stupid on it. And I was like, you know what? Fair.

• 52:12David Pierce?

  Purely anecdotally, I will say, I see Apple Watch Ultras everywhere, like in much higher volume than I expected. Because it's a, it's a big watch. But I see them everywhere on people of all sizes and all fashion senses. Like, the willingness to do the big watch, I guess, for extra battery and some extra features, like, way more of that than I expected when the Ultra came out. Are you wearing Ultra right now? Is that what I just saw?

• 52:36Speaker 07

  That is an Ultra tube.

• 52:38David Pierce?

  And you are not what I would call a large armed person.

• 52:40Speaker 07

  I am not a large armed person. I have very tiny bird wrists. But what I will say is that I have been acclimatized to really big watches over the years, wearing a lot of garments. So I'm kind of used to the weight at this point. But also, my eyesight is so notoriously bad that people keep asking me, like, why is your iPhone on the largest font possible? It's like, because I can't read well. And the Ultra has a gigantic screen. Eli has made fun of me many times. He's like, you know, I can read everything on your Apple Watch. It's like, yes, yes. And you know what? So can I. And that's the point.

• 53:13David Pierce?

  That's the dream. Yeah.

• 53:15Speaker 07

  That's the dream.

• 53:16David Pierce?

  No, I agree. I think, I think the bigger Pixel Watch will be a victory, if only, again, because it's just more options. And I feel like, for me, the Pixel Watch

• 53:25Speaker 07

  Yes.

• 53:25David Pierce?

  kind of landed in the right zone. It's like about the size I want a smartwatch to be. And I like the round. Like, I was very happy even with the first one. But you're absolutely right that the only way to do this is to have lots of them, because people are different. And it's like, it gets all the weirder when you get to glasses. And we'll talk about that another day. But like, this is just where we are now.

• 53:44Speaker 07

  The other thing with the Pixel Watch that it's like a very small thing, but for me, as a wearable reviewer, I went, huh. Is the fact that car crash detection is coming to the Pixel Watch too, because we don't have that on Android yet. And I was like, is this the first time that we're going to have car crash detection on a smartwatch on Android? And yes, yes, it is. So that I think is significant in the sense that like, you know, Google was starting so far behind Apple and so far behind Samsung when the Pixel Watch was launched, like soon to be three years ago. So a lot of the times when we get these new features, it's like, eh, it's been, it's been done already. And yes, that is true. This is still true here, but the gap is getting smaller. And for me, I'm like, yes, finally, the gap is getting smaller. I'm so excited about that. So like, that's just like a tiny thing.

• 54:30Speaker 07

  Because Samsung doesn't have car crash detection for its watches yet. So for Google to be like, hey, we got this.

• 54:37David Pierce?

  It's progress.

• 54:38Speaker 07

  Yeah, it's progress. And I'm excited to see, it's just like a very small thing that I'm excited to see.

• 54:43David Pierce?

  Yeah, no, it's a good one. And I think you're right that Google basically just systematically doing Apple Watch things is the correct thing to do, especially if then it can turn around and be like, oh, now it has all the Gemini stuff and we're going to finally figure out Fitbit, even though I've essentially given up on the possibility of the Fitbit integration ever making any sense. You can see the path. This is the thing about the Pixel Watch that drives me so crazy. You can see the path to it being great. And I'm hopeful at least that Google still seems to care about it. So that's something. But the Fitbit thing will never stop driving either of us crazy. I don't think.

• 55:14Speaker 07

  It's sad. One can pray, one can pray.

• 55:18David Pierce?

  Yeah, that's enough about Fitbit on this particular podcast. Let's talk about Samsung for a minute. You brought up Samsung. It's the one with the new watch. That was the news of, I think, last week now. The Galaxy Watch FE. Anything exciting there? It's cheaper. Yay for cheaper.

• 55:32Speaker 07

  It's cheaper, which, you know, that's notable because the last two years, we've seen price increases for the base Galaxy Watch 5 and the 6 because inflation. Samsung's not immune. And that was kind of sad at the time because, you know, the Galaxy Watch has historically been kind of. Competitively priced, underpriced for what it is. So it would just be like, oh yeah, you could get the base model for less than $300 and that's pretty, it's pretty solid. And that's like, not really the case anymore. It's, I believe it's about 300 now for the base model. So to get the FE, which is $199 for the Bluetooth only version, that's a solid $200 watch, which you know, the, the Apple Watch SE is 250. So, starting price.

• 56:16Speaker 07

  So you're looking at that and you're like, oh, okay, okay. But what it really is, is that it's a rebadged Galaxy Watch 4. So that's kind of interesting. Like spec wise, spec wise, you are getting the last gen chip. And I think, once you kind of look at the specs, you're like, oh, you're not really giving that much up. But at the same time, it's not that exciting because the, the design is very similar. So what are we actually looking here? And we are looking at Samsung once again, throwing spaghetti at the wall with its lineup and trying to figure out what the hell is going to work. And I think they're identifying very realistically that, you know, Apple does kind of have a winning combination by having a entry level watch for kids and for elderly relatives that people

• 57:01Speaker 07

  use it for, having the base model and then just having this massive Ultra for people who want the bestest and the greatest and are like imagining themselves to be hardcore elite athletes, or maybe they are hardcore elite athletes. And I think what we can tell from leaks so far is that Samsung is very much aligning itself to kind of have the same lineup. So we have the FE now. And I think it's very telling that that's coming ahead of Unpacked because, oh, we're going to have the ostensibly the Galaxy Watch 7. And then the Galaxy Watch Ultra is I think the rumored name for it. It's this squircle looking thing from the leaks and the renders that we've seen. I don't think it, like Galaxy Watch

• 57:45Speaker 07

  FE, Galaxy Watch Ultra. I think we can point to the other company that they're kind of taking, let's say, inspiration from.

• 57:53David Pierce?

  They're just leaning into it.

• 57:54Speaker 07

  They're just leaning into it. And I don't think it's a wrong move. I think it, I think it's actually quite smart to kind of position themselves as, like you say, the Android of the Apple Watch of Android is kind of what they're fashioning themselves as. They're just kind of leaning into that. Again, some people are going to be upset about that. I don't think they really should be.

• 58:13David Pierce?

  There are worse things to be at this, at this particular moment in time.

• 58:16Speaker 07

  I think they're just kind of going, I think this is what people want. We'll give them what they want. And then on top of that, we're expecting the Galaxy Ring. So that's one way that Samsung can go like, haha, suck it, Google, suck it, Apple. We got something that you don't. And it's a Galaxy Ring. And so I'm really, I'm really stoked and excited to see what that's going to look like, especially since they preemptively sued Aura.

• 58:39David Pierce?

  This was the next thing I wanted to talk about.

• 58:41Speaker 07

  Which to me was just like, ooh, okay, that's fun. I just got a new smart ring in the mail. I'm currently wearing three. Yes, I'm wearing three at the moment. So I'll be wearing four, just to get like, so I know all the competitors, whatever it is. I'm very excited to see how that goes down for Aura, because this is the, this is the first time, I think, that they've had a competitor that could really, you know, let's, let's be real, because really fuck up their, you know, the thing that they've had for a long time. They've been going out and, you know, this, the Samsung case, the patent case, they were just like, listen, you done sued RingCon, you done sued Ultrahuman,

• 59:21Speaker 07

  you done sued Circular, that's the other one. And Samsung just came out and they're like, yeah, we see what you're doing. You have this pattern of just suing people for doing what a smart ring ought to do. So we just want to preemptively say that we're not infringing on your patents, so you can't sue us.

• 59:39David Pierce?

  Which is an amazing lawsuit to file, by the way. Very good.

• 59:42Speaker 07

  I just can't wait to see what happens, because Samsung doing that, that's going to set a precedent for the other smaller companies. I would be a little stressed if I was Aura, and you can tell they are stressed, because they just keep dropping features. They keep coming out and being like, we got this new thing, and we got this other thing. You could, we could tell how old your heart is now. We can do this, and we have science. And so I'm just really interested to see how that drama is going to play out over the next few months.

• 1:00:09David Pierce?

  Yeah, I'm really excited about the Galaxy Ring in particular. I think it's shaping up to be a pretty fun year for watches in that I think to your point, we're going to have three pretty competitive lineups of smart watches if all of the leaks and stuff come true, which I think is very exciting. But I think the Galaxy Ring is going to be really the first like mainstream walk into an electronics store and it's going to be on a shelf in front of you from a company you've heard of, Smart Ring. And I think that's very exciting. And from what we've seen so far, it seems to look nice and it's not humongous. Like, I actually have pretty high hopes for this thing. And I think if it's good, we might start to see this market take off pretty fast.

• 1:00:49Speaker 07

  I think so. If it is, I want to say 50% as good as what the Aura Ring is bringing to the table with the convenience of just like integrating with your Samsung products already. If I was Aura, I would be scared.

• 1:01:02David Pierce?

  V, thank you as always.

• 1:01:04Speaker 07

  Thanks for having me.

• 1:01:06David Pierce?

  All right, we got to take one more break and then we're going to do a question from the Veritas hotline.

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• 1:02:49David Pierce?

  All right, we're back. Let's get to the hotline. As always, the number is 866 VERGE11. The email is [email protected]. We try to answer at least one on the show every week. I love hearing from you. It is my favorite thing. This week, we have a question about the weather.

• 1:03:04Speaker 08

  Hey, Verge. This is Steve, and I live in Dallas, Texas, where we've had a ton of weather this month. And once again, I'm looking outside at a thunderstorm, and my weather app says it's sunny. So the Apple Weather app is just terrible. And ever since Apple bought Blue Sky, I have just been struggling for a good app that doesn't sell my privacy. So I'm wondering if The Verge has a 2024 recommendation on a good, solid weather app on the iPhone that doesn't sell my privacy away. I hope to hear your answers on air. Thanks.

• 1:03:43David Pierce?

  Steve, you have come to the right place. I am here to tell you, you have come to the right place. Liam James is here. Liam, is it fair to say you are The Verge's preeminent weather nerd? Like, is that a fair accusation?

• 1:03:54Speaker 09

  I would say I am doing my best to fill the very large shoes of Dan Seifert, but I am very into the weather.

• 1:04:02David Pierce?

  How's the weather station, first of all?

• 1:04:04Speaker 09

  The weather station is doing great. It's still same batteries installed on the roof of my New York City apartment building, illegally, but still sending a signal down to my weather station. I love it.

• 1:04:15David Pierce?

  So part of the reason I brought you on here is that I wonder if we are going to get to a point where we tell people that the best thing you should do in order to get a good forecast is install a weather station on your roof like a maniac. Is this a reasonable recommendation you would give to people?

• 1:04:31Speaker 09

  No, it is a completely ridiculous situation, but what can I say? I love gadgets. It all started with our Father's Day gift guide. So really, I mean, we've created our own, our own problem to solve.

• 1:04:42David Pierce?

  This is what we do. Okay, so I have two things I want to talk about here. One is that, and I think you and I are going to agree on this, the single best and most important piece of advice that I can give you here is a website called Forecast Advisor.

• 1:04:55Speaker 09

  Yes.

• 1:04:56David Pierce?

  Which people don't know about and people should know about. You go and you plug in either your zip code or your city and your state and it will tell you which of the many data sources that exist is most accurate historically for where you are. Do you use this Liam? Have you ever, have you ever run this test on yourself?

• 1:05:13Speaker 09

  Oh, absolutely.

• 1:05:14David Pierce?

  Okay.

• 1:05:14Speaker 09

  I believe it was actually Dan Seifert who introduced me to this, but yeah, it's not the app so much as it is the source of data your app is pulling from.

• 1:05:23David Pierce?

  Yeah, so, okay, let's just, let's just do this live for our buddy Steve here. So we'll go to, we'll go to forecastadvisor.com. We type in Dallas, Texas, where it is currently, as we are recording this, 95 degrees. Steve, I'm so, so sorry. And what this says is that for the last month, so May 2024, the NWS, the National Weather Service digital forecast was the most accurate data source at 71.86% of forecast. A low number says a lot about forecasts that the best one is only 71% accurate. There are three here that are all basically identical. They're all 71 point something percent accurate. It's the National Weather Service, the Weather Channel and ARIS Weather.

• 1:06:06David Pierce?

  And then it goes all the way down to like, the reason this is good is let's see, there are one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, 10 other ones. And the one that all the way at the bottom, which is called Persistence, was only right 45.71% of the time. So this is like, you are looking at a weather forecast that is literally only half accurate.

• 1:06:24Speaker 09

  I believe the current Apple built-in weather app uses the Weather Channel? If I'm correct, what, what was the score for the Weather Channel in Dallas, Texas?

• 1:06:32David Pierce?

  So that's second on the list here at 71.51%.

• 1:06:38Speaker 09

  At 71%.

• 1:06:39David Pierce?

  Yeah, it's it's tough. Well, what's interesting about this, though, is one of the things that Forecast Advisor shows, I think, and I'm extrapolating a little bit here, but if you look at it over the last year, and again, we're still in Dallas, Texas, Microsoft, I don't know what it just says Microsoft, which is apparently a weather source, was accurate 84% of the time. So what it seems like is what we just had in May might have been like an extra volatile month of weather, especially in Dallas, Texas. But like, let's let's look where you are, Liam. You're in New York, New York. For you, it's the Weather Channel is number one, 83.6%. So yeah, Dallas just has some wonky weather going on. Everybody's struggling with Dallas.

• 1:07:18Speaker 09

  Yeah, it's usually, in my experience, because I've I've used this service in many cities, and the National Weather Service is not usually your top pick.

• 1:07:27David Pierce?

  For you, the National Weather Service is like, fully halfway down the list.

• 1:07:31Speaker 09

  Yeah, it's it's I was surprised to see that be the top pick for Dallas. But yeah, it's it's not the app you're using so much, it is the source. Some of the more nerdy weather apps will allow you to pick from a list of sources. I use the nerdiest of all iOS weather apps, which is Carrot Weather, and it has a list of, it looks like, almost a dozen sources here for me to choose from.

• 1:07:55David Pierce?

  So Carrot was one of the ones I was I was gonna bring up because it is a beloved app. And it's also, I would say, like you said, maybe the wonkiest of weather apps, just in terms of like, the amount of stuff that you can see if you want to. I don't use Carrot personally, but you, I would assume, as a giant weather nerd, love it very much.

• 1:08:15Speaker 09

  Yeah, I mean, I think a lot of people use Carrot Weather because it was the first out of the gate with Apple Watch support. But I've stuck with it because they add so many niche nerdy features, like being able to pick your sources, but also just like, you can completely customize the layout for what you want. Things that I'm constantly wanting to see are the humidity percentage, and also just like, the UV index, because it wildly swings in New York City. And so it's kind of good to know when you should probably put some sunscreen on, because you're gonna get burnt to a crisp when you go outside.

• 1:08:52David Pierce?

  Totally. And that's actually another good customization point that not only is the data source really important, but knowing which parts of the forecast you care about. Like, I remember when I was in California during all the wildfires, the air quality index became very important.

• 1:09:05Speaker 09

  Yeah.

• 1:09:05David Pierce?

  And so that was then like a thing that I paid a lot of attention to in the forecast. And having something where you can surface that into either like the home screen of your app or even like a widget on your home screen goes a really long way because glanceability is the whole thing, right? Like, you should not have to spend 45 seconds in your weather app to get a sense of what do I need to know before I go outside. So that's, that's a very good one. And Carrot does do that very well. Carrot, we should say, also just got a big update that people are very excited about. I honestly think that's a pretty good place to start. It's a, it's a really good weather app.

• 1:09:33Speaker 09

  Yeah, it's a great weather app. They just released a new update that, again, allows more customization of the, of that like main screen you see when, when it comes out. I think there's a few other odds and ends goodies that were in there. My backup weather app is just about the nerdiest one you can get. It, it is called Ambient Weather and it connects over the internet to that weather station you were asking me about earlier. So I have a weather station on my roof that reads all the weather information that you could possibly want. This app allows me to access that weather station from anywhere. So regardless of where I am, I can pull up the same information that's on the cute little LCD screen that's on my desk. So that's my backup weather app.

• 1:10:15David Pierce?

  That's pretty good. I did a big tour of weather apps maybe a year ago. There are a lot of good ones out there, honestly, like especially if, if you're somebody who really likes to see like weather news and you want to keep up on sort of weather more broadly. The Weather Channel app has actually gotten a lot better over time and is actually pretty good now. They did a big redesign, I think, earlier this year. It's still kind of too much for my taste, but it's a very good app. But what I landed on is an app called Hello Weather, which I would say is a lot like Carrot, but just kind of less. It's very designy. They have a bunch of really beautiful widgets, but my thing is it has this incredibly good kind of glanceable hour by hour forecast, which I discovered is the only thing I ever actually care about. It's just like I wake up in the morning and I'm like, when is it going to be hot? When is it going to rain?

• 1:11:00David Pierce?

  The end, like especially for Where we are, those are the only two questions that ever really matter. And HelloWeather, like carrot, lets you pick from a bunch of different sources. So I did the Forecast Advisor thing. I went through, I picked the most accurate source for me. And at that point, it's just about kind of aesthetics, right? Like, all the data is the same. And there's just something about the sort of cleanliness of HelloWeather that I have come to really like.

• 1:11:24Speaker 09

  So the biggest question I have about this app, the hour-by-hour weather data, is it the feels-like temperature? Or is it the actual temperature?

• 1:11:34David Pierce?

  Liam, that's such a good question. It's such a good question, and I'm so glad you asked. It is the actual temperature, which is the wrong answer. It should be the feels-like temperature. But what it gives you at the top is it'll show you the actual temperature in big letters, and then right underneath it, the feels-like temperature. So right now, as we're recording this, it is 87 degrees. It feels like 100. Cool. Love summer 2024. But it doesn't give you that hour-by-hour. And I would argue that it should. But what I like that it gives you is a sort of running change in what matters. So when it's not gonna rain, it'll show you the UV index in the bar graph. But when it's gonna rain, it'll show you the precipitation amounts per hour. So the hour-by-hour forecast actually shifts based on what is most likely to happen. So on a sunny day, like today, it tells me the UV index.

• 1:12:19David Pierce?

  So they've just done a bunch of very clever things. And again, all of this is dependent on the data source to be accurate. But I've gone in and figured out which data source is most accurate. And so now I have this thing. The one thing I hate about HelloWeather is that each data source spews different text. So they all have this structured data that just flows into the app. But then they all will also have a description of the forecast. And the data source that I picked is AccuWeather, which, at least the last time I checked, was most accurate for where I am, pumps out these really long, sort of unhelpful, stupid things. Like, this one just says, "Partly sunny and hot, semicolon. A thunderstorm in spots late this afternoon, semicolon. Hottest day so far this year, semicolon. Stay hydrated, semicolon. Storm can bring small hail and damaging winds."

• 1:13:02David Pierce?

  That all comes directly from AccuWeather and is just obnoxious. And I've found other ones that are much nicer-written, some are funny. I hate AccuWeathers, but that's not HelloWeather. And so here we are.

• 1:13:13Speaker 09

  Yeah, that's really weird.

• 1:13:14David Pierce?

  Yeah, but it's a very good app and it has really good widgets. So I just, I have a widget that I can just swipe over and it shows me the hourly. And that is most of how I check my weather and I like it very much. But basically, I think the way to start is to figure out which data source you care about, and then figure out which app supports that data source and then just kind of find the one you like looking at the most, right? Like, is that a reductive way to put it?

• 1:13:34Speaker 09

  Yeah, absolutely. If you don't travel a lot, maybe you find your weather source and just download that weather source's app. But if you do travel a lot, you're going to want an app like the ones David and I are talking about, where you can go in and set the source that is most accurate for where you are in the world.

• 1:13:50David Pierce?

  Yeah, I agree. Don't use Apple Weather. I like Apple Weather less and less as time goes on. There are lots of better ones out there. And I will say a bunch of them cost money, but most of them don't cost very much money. And I think for as often as I check a weather app, you know, 10 or 20 bucks a year seems pretty easily worth it.

• 1:14:07Speaker 09

  Yeah, totally agree.

• 1:14:08David Pierce?

  Sweet. All right. Liam, thank you as always.

• 1:14:11Speaker 09

  Of course.

• 1:14:12David Pierce?

  Go back to your weather station.

• 1:14:13Speaker 09

  I will.

• 1:14:15David Pierce?

  All right, that is it for The Vergecast today. Thank you to everyone who was on the show today and thank you as always for listening. There's lots more on everything we talked about, rest days, Tesla, all of it, at theverge.com. We'll put some links in the show notes. I don't know if you're seeing those every time they go up, but we have a post with all the links to everything we talk about. I find it very helpful. I hope you do too. But also, in general, read theverge.com. It's a cool website. As always, if you have thoughts, questions, feelings, or Tesla vehicles you'd like to see, you can always email us at [email protected], call the hotline 866-VERGE11. We love hearing from you. I know I keep saying that, but I love hearing from you. And I think we're going to do another all hotline episode at some point this summer, so keep all your questions coming. This show is produced by Andrew Marino, Liam James, and Will Poor.

• 1:14:58David Pierce?

  The Vergecast is a Verge production and part of the Vox Media Podcast Network. Neelai, Alex and I will be back on Friday to talk about more Apple news, more AI news, the thing where McDonald's isn't testing AI anymore, which I have a lot of thoughts about, and much more. We'll see you then. Rock and roll.

• 1:15:22Speaker 10

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