MotorTrend's Ed Loh & Jonny Lieberman sit down with Founder & CEO of Hardline27 - Sasha Selipanov! Sasha talks about his recent experience with the Tesla Cybertruck
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00:00:00 Welcome to The Inevitable, a podcast by Motor Trend.
00:00:04 Hi there, and welcome to another episode of The Inevitable.
00:00:18 This is Motor Trend's podcast where we talk about the future of transportation,
00:00:23 the future of mobility, the future of the car.
00:00:25 Where are we going? How are we going to get there?
00:00:27 I'm Johnny Lieberman, joined as always by Mr. Ed Lowe,
00:00:31 head of editorial at Motor Trend, and with a special sponsor message.
00:00:34 The Inevitable podcast is brought to you by the all-electric Nissan Ariya,
00:00:39 inspired by the future, designed for the now.
00:00:42 And right now, let's get into our question of the episode.
00:00:46 Yes.
00:00:47 So we have a question from Declan Casey, who asks,
00:00:51 "Will we get to the point with hot-swapping batteries
00:00:55 that we have an all-electric competitor at one of these 12 or 24-hour endurance races?"
00:01:01 I can answer that, and the answer is no, we will not be doing that with hot-swappable batteries.
00:01:06 In terms of endurance racing?
00:01:08 Yeah, or just ever with cars.
00:01:09 But it's funny, I just went to the 23 hours, 58 minutes of Daytona.
00:01:14 I was there with BMW, and I was speaking with Frank Van Meel,
00:01:16 who's the head of BMW's M division, and somebody asked him essentially that question,
00:01:21 like, "What's the future of electrified long-distance racing?"
00:01:25 And he said, "Very simple, it's hydrogen."
00:01:28 And so, it's still electric, remember, a hydrogen fuel cell vehicle.
00:01:33 It's just creating electricity that flows into an electric motor and a battery that's in the car.
00:01:38 And it's much quicker to fill up a 10,000 PSI hydrogen tank
00:01:42 than it would be just for safety and blah, blah, blah, than moving very heavy batteries around.
00:01:47 They wouldn't swap the tanks? You wouldn't see them run in and just change a tank?
00:01:51 You'd change a tire?
00:01:52 I don't think, just because of like crash and stuff like that.
00:01:55 I just think they just, but you can fill, you know, 10,000 PSI, whap, you know, it fills up fast.
00:02:00 Now, for those of you like, "What are you guys even talking about?"
00:02:02 Declan's question is a good one.
00:02:03 It does come from, there was a time, and there actually still is a company in China
00:02:07 that I think is doing battery swaps for production vehicles.
00:02:13 Tesla flirted with this idea very shortly after introducing the Model S.
00:02:18 They actually went to, they used to do these demos, kind of similar to when they introduced the Cybertruck.
00:02:25 I went, I don't remember even where, it was at--
00:02:27 It was at the Grapevine, wasn't it?
00:02:28 Well, it was at one of their first supercharger stations outside of Los Angeles, I believe.
00:02:33 And they had a whole dog and pony show where they showed, they pulled a Model S out,
00:02:38 and they showed this thing come out of the floor, and it unbolted the battery pack, pulled it off,
00:02:44 and then another one came in, and they slammed it in.
00:02:46 And what's interesting, actually, is that the Model S was designed with four bolts that hold the battery in place.
00:02:52 To do that, right.
00:02:53 And I think it's a nice idea, and it certainly is being explored for other forms of transportation.
00:02:58 I keep sending people links to this Taiwanese scooter startup that is doing it.
00:03:02 You pull these batteries out, and they're like the size of a small propane tank, and you just--
00:03:07 Smaller than that, yeah.
00:03:08 You just kind of like, "Doink," and screw it in, and then off you go.
00:03:12 But to Johnny's point, and just this thing we've been talking about, batteries are so expensive--
00:03:16 And heavy.
00:03:17 And heavy, and they're so much a part of what makes the EV an EV, right?
00:03:22 How do you manage that?
00:03:25 And that became the problem, because the reason Tesla did that--
00:03:29 I don't think they ever wanted to be in the battery hot-swap business,
00:03:32 but California gave them some kind of grant, and if they could demonstrate that it was possible.
00:03:38 And they've been criticized for taking the money and never actually putting a swap thing into production.
00:03:45 There was an Israeli company that was going to do it, but the problem becomes,
00:03:48 when you buy a car-- and Americans, we buy cars--
00:03:52 you buy a battery, and so you go to a hot-swap station, okay, boom,
00:03:57 your battery gets pulled out, charged, put into another vehicle.
00:04:00 That guy drives to Texas.
00:04:02 Well, now your battery's in Texas, and you have a battery that's from New York.
00:04:05 And then it just becomes this logistical headache for no reason.
00:04:08 Or now you might end up-- I would love to go buy a 10-year-old Tesla,
00:04:13 go get my battery swapped, and then get a much newer battery, and not have to worry about--
00:04:17 And we know that batteries degrade-- Model S batteries, specifically--
00:04:21 degrade at about 1% a year, so you're looking at, now you've got 90% of that range.
00:04:26 Hey, in 10 more years, 80%-- I've got a better battery.
00:04:30 But it does change the performance of the vehicle.
00:04:33 I think it's kind of a non-starter.
00:04:37 Back before there was any infrastructure whatsoever, it made sense.
00:04:40 But I think infrastructure is improving pretty radically,
00:04:44 and is really going to start improving with the Alliance.
00:04:47 What's it called in-- Iona? Iona. Iona, yeah, yeah.
00:04:51 We'll talk about that. We'll talk about that next episode.
00:04:54 But hey, Declan, thank you so much for your question. Appreciate it.
00:04:57 If you want to get your question answered, shoot us a DM,
00:05:01 put it in the comments when you see these episodes pop up on your Instagram or on the YouTubes.
00:05:06 Comment on the YouTube if you're watching it there.
00:05:09 Shoot Johnny a note at johnnylieberman@instagram. I'm @lowdown, L-O-H-D-O-W-N.
00:05:14 You can also email us, motortrend@motortrend.com.
00:05:18 Just put "inevitable question" in the subject line or somewhere so we can get it flagged.
00:05:22 And we're sending Declan a hat or a shirt or-- Yeah, we'll send him something.
00:05:26 Maybe. Something. No? Good question.
00:05:29 If you want your question answered and maybe some swag, shoot us a note.
00:05:32 And let's talk about our guest. Yeah.
00:05:35 Because this guy may or may not have definitely designed this car right here, Bugatti Chiron.
00:05:41 Yeah. Amongst many other of your favorite supercars.
00:05:47 Super legendary dude. I was actually quite scared of chatting with him because he comes off.
00:05:52 If you go to his website, if you go look up Sasha Slepinov, click on the image button.
00:05:58 He's always scowling. But he's very metal.
00:06:02 You guys were talking about-- Oh, yeah. We get along great in terms of music.
00:06:06 Swedish death metal. Yes.
00:06:08 But I think as you'll find, he is actually super thoughtful, quite soft-spoken.
00:06:14 Smart. Smart. Smart as hell.
00:06:17 As a Russian mathematician.
00:06:20 A car designer of world renown. Just a quick inventory.
00:06:25 Art Center graduate, 2005, and then started at VW.
00:06:30 Worked there for I think like seven or so years, but did everything under the sun as you do at a giant multinational like VW Group.
00:06:37 Including working on Lamborghini Huracan.
00:06:41 Bugatti Chiron. Made his way to Genesis for three years.
00:06:48 Worked on the Ascentia concept, which is an EV, very slick-looking, grand-touring EV concept.
00:06:53 Big coupe. Yep. And then landed at Koenigsegg, a small company you might have heard of.
00:06:59 Yeah, did a couple hypercars for Koenigsegg. Four-seater.
00:07:02 Including the Jamera. And then now is doing his own thing, which we'll talk about, his own design consultancy called Hardline 27.
00:07:09 So without further ado, ladies and gentlemen, Sasha Slepinov.
00:07:14 All right. Sasha Slepinov. Did I get it right?
00:07:18 Yeah, you did. Amazing. Amazing.
00:07:20 Thank you so much for coming on our show, The Inevitable.
00:07:25 Thank you guys for having me.
00:07:27 This is a trip. Let me just say, I'm very intimidated. I have been very intimidated by you.
00:07:33 Because almost every time I have seen you, you've been wearing, yes, sort of a pissed-off expression.
00:07:41 That's just Russian. If it's sunny, they're upset.
00:07:46 All black, probably a heavy metal T-shirt, when everybody else around you is wearing a suit.
00:07:51 And you're usually in front of a stunning car that you had some hand in designing, but you always seem like angry.
00:08:00 But you're here now, and you don't seem very angry.
00:08:03 You guys are beautiful, so I'm always happy.
00:08:05 We can make him angry. I know his buttons. I can push his buttons a little bit.
00:08:08 Also, what's a trip is, if you are listening to us, this is half of this audience is a podcast.
00:08:12 It is a video podcast. He's kind of an imposing-looking dude, but his voice doesn't match.
00:08:18 He comes off as kind of quiet, and as you'll see, again, not to stereotype,
00:08:24 very articulate and super, obviously, very smart and student of design, and now a teacher.
00:08:30 But yeah, it's great to have you here. I'm so happy that you decided to come.
00:08:35 You're scaring Ed.
00:08:36 I'm scaring him.
00:08:37 But I know how to start this one.
00:08:38 All right, so the other night, Sasha and I drove the Cybertruck.
00:08:42 Oh, yeah, that's true.
00:08:44 And you had--
00:08:45 That wasn't the most enjoyable part of the evening, though.
00:08:48 No, not even close. No, not even close.
00:08:50 Let's start there.
00:08:51 Yeah, but you had some-- your take on the Cybertruck as a designer.
00:08:57 Let's start from the design, and then I want to hear about the drive.
00:09:00 Yeah, so obviously, right into the heat, right? Big question.
00:09:04 Yeah, well, you're the first A-tier, whatever you call it, top-shelf designer, car designer,
00:09:14 that I've heard talk about the Cybertruck on a personal level.
00:09:17 Right. I'm willing to repeat what I said.
00:09:20 Yeah, yeah, yeah.
00:09:21 But for the audience who doesn't know who this person is, we'll give 15 seconds--
00:09:24 No, we did an intro there. They heard it.
00:09:26 Oh, right. Okay. So go ahead. So let us know what you think of--
00:09:30 Ed's after lunch.
00:09:31 He's so scared by Sasha.
00:09:33 I am scared by her.
00:09:34 Let us know-- what were your initial thoughts about it when you saw it,
00:09:40 like saw them try to break-- accidentally smash the glass,
00:09:43 and then in person after sort of running your hands over it or whatever?
00:09:47 Well, I guess a little bit of a disclaimer is I do like extreme things,
00:09:50 so that's just generally where my tastes always lean towards,
00:09:53 both in cars and in music and whatever else.
00:09:55 I just like things that are making a difference.
00:09:58 They look not like everything else and somehow-- some way exceptional,
00:10:02 usually more challenging in terms of public acceptance.
00:10:08 Again, going back to my taste in music,
00:10:11 most of what I listen to would clear a room in a heartbeat.
00:10:14 Nobody would pay money for that.
00:10:16 I'd hang out. I'd be there.
00:10:18 You'd hang out, but with rare exceptions.
00:10:20 So same thing with product design and car design.
00:10:24 When something comes out that is truly out of the box and exceptional,
00:10:27 I don't think anybody can deny Cybertruck being that.
00:10:30 It kind of pleases me.
00:10:32 So I was always predisposed to liking it.
00:10:34 When I first saw the images, I was obviously like, "What the actual F?
00:10:37 This is crazy they did this."
00:10:39 Of course, there's tons of background to these themes.
00:10:43 They all come from the '70s.
00:10:45 There's the wedge cars in the '70s.
00:10:47 There's the show cars that Italians did, the Giugiaro stuff,
00:10:50 the Gandini stuff, the Countach, the Stratosero.
00:10:53 There are so many things that are kind of the prequels to the Cybertruck,
00:10:56 but then people at large, they don't know those cars.
00:10:59 They're aware of no relevance.
00:11:01 And they see the Cybertruck, they think, "Oh, it's completely without background.
00:11:05 It's this wild, obnoxious thing, unprecedented."
00:11:08 For me, it wasn't.
00:11:09 It was more like finally somebody's brave enough to truly tap into that wedge car era.
00:11:14 And, of course, there's also a dystopian aspect mixed in for a good measure.
00:11:17 There's a little bit of sci-fi dystopian, definitely not a utopian,
00:11:21 but a dystopian sci-fi.
00:11:23 Again, I'm a fan of those books. I like them.
00:11:25 So, yeah, I liked it. I didn't have any issues with it whatsoever.
00:11:28 It's a little bit clumsy.
00:11:29 I think the volumes probably could have been managed a bit better,
00:11:32 but it's so pure, it's, for me, impossible to dislike.
00:11:36 And then what did you think was going from seeing pictures of it
00:11:40 to we were standing on the street in Venice staring at it,
00:11:43 and also the actual size of it.
00:11:47 Yeah, I think it's plenty of holy shit factor.
00:11:51 It's just really--people ask me what is my primary criteria for a hyper car,
00:11:55 and I always say, "Holy shit."
00:11:57 -Kuntash. -Yeah, Kuntash.
00:11:59 That's the word in Piedmontese, right?
00:12:01 It's the holy shit, wow.
00:12:03 And this is what the Cybertruck did for me,
00:12:06 and in sharp contrast to the most other, let's say, super hyper whatever cars
00:12:11 out there that I kind of look at and go, "Okay, nice."
00:12:14 The Cybertruck is not a hyper car,
00:12:16 but yet it does deliver on that kind of Kuntash factor.
00:12:19 How much of that is the choice to use stainless?
00:12:22 Like, if it was--I keep thinking,
00:12:24 if that car just had traditional powder-coated aluminum or sheet metal,
00:12:29 would it have that same presence?
00:12:32 Do you like the stainless decision?
00:12:34 I do like it because it just adds to the cool factor,
00:12:37 but I think obviously the car would lose a little bit
00:12:40 if it was painted in your Toyota beige and a bunch of layers of--
00:12:44 I saw a real cherry red, brash-wrapped Cybertruck
00:12:49 cruising downtown the other day, and it really popped.
00:12:53 It was even more shocking.
00:12:55 It looked finished and even more aggressive.
00:12:58 It was like a hot-rodder, black cherry wrap, and it was just like, "Whoa."
00:13:03 But you've never designed, to my knowledge,
00:13:06 a pickup truck or even an SUV, right?
00:13:09 You've only done supercar hyper car, four-seat hyper car.
00:13:13 I was at Volkswagen for a long time.
00:13:16 Yeah, you did a Jetta.
00:13:18 Had you ever considered or penned a small pickup truck
00:13:21 or a full-size pickup truck?
00:13:23 Yeah, so there is a prequel to Cybertruck that I did,
00:13:26 which actually looked a little bit similar.
00:13:28 It was called the Bertone Ferro.
00:13:30 I don't know if it can be even found online anymore, but probably.
00:13:33 I used to have a website called angrycardesigner.com.
00:13:36 [laughter]
00:13:38 So that was a place where I kind of vented my anger.
00:13:41 Ferro? F-A-R-R-O?
00:13:43 No, like the Egyptian monarch.
00:13:45 Oh, Ferro. Oh, okay, all right.
00:13:47 Yeah, so Bertone Ferro, and that thing was pretty much
00:13:50 a wedge Cybertruck shape, basically, with giant wheels.
00:13:54 It was very clearly a Lambo, but I didn't want to put a Lambo badge on it.
00:13:57 So it was basically a Stratos Deiro with monster truck wheels.
00:14:01 And a bed? Had a real bed?
00:14:03 It didn't have a bed, no. It was mid-engine,
00:14:05 so it had something more valuable.
00:14:07 [laughter]
00:14:09 So what do you think--
00:14:11 But it was similar, aesthetically speaking.
00:14:13 But if you're asking if I ever worked on a real vehicle
00:14:15 of that caliber, no, I didn't.
00:14:17 In Europe, most of my career, the two decades
00:14:20 were primarily spent in Europe,
00:14:22 and it's just not a market for this sort of vehicles.
00:14:24 SUVs, plenty. I mean, I've worked as a part of the VW design team
00:14:27 on everything from Touaregs to--you name it.
00:14:29 I mean, just Q7s, whatnot.
00:14:31 Were you on the original Touareg?
00:14:33 No, I joined the company when the second gen was being designed,
00:14:36 and I participated in that project.
00:14:38 What do you think, just going with the Ferro and Cybertruck,
00:14:42 what do you think of the Lamborghini Strato?
00:14:44 Because it's obviously a car you designed.
00:14:46 You were the Huracán designer.
00:14:48 What do you think of that?
00:14:50 I love it. I mean, when I was at Lambo,
00:14:52 I spent a couple of years there.
00:14:54 I was part of that design team, as you mentioned,
00:14:56 on the Huracán exterior.
00:14:58 That was actually one of the ideas I was pushing for like crazy.
00:15:00 I even have my drawings from back then,
00:15:02 saying we need to do a proper off-roader.
00:15:04 I even had a mashup of an Audi all-road
00:15:06 and the Huracán with a big plus sign between them
00:15:08 saying we need to go off-road with this vehicle.
00:15:11 I don't know if my original push had anything to do
00:15:14 with the car coming to fruition at the end of the day,
00:15:16 but I do have a feel-good moment
00:15:18 that I kind of felt it was a good idea back then.
00:15:20 That might have been actually left out of it,
00:15:22 because I went in 2018 or '19 to drive the prototype.
00:15:26 And they were just basically like,
00:15:28 "Hey, look, we spent a lot of time off-roading with the Urus,
00:15:31 and we all decided, 'This is fun!'"
00:15:33 That's probably the story anyway.
00:15:35 "Yeah, we've never done this before. We like going off-roading.
00:15:37 Hey, San Aguilar, we're in a farm.
00:15:39 Off-roaders, as a straddle means like a stony path."
00:15:42 I'll tell you, half the time,
00:15:44 you are stuck behind the tractor on a one-lane road there,
00:15:46 so if you could just go around, it doesn't...
00:15:48 Right, right.
00:15:50 But that's interesting.
00:15:52 I didn't know that about you doing an early design.
00:15:54 But let's go back to the Cybertruck,
00:15:56 when you drove it for all of two minutes.
00:15:59 Yeah, briefly.
00:16:00 Just around the block.
00:16:02 Yeah, look, I mean, my issue...
00:16:04 I have two issues with the Cybertruck.
00:16:06 One is that the bed is... you can't reach into it.
00:16:09 Just like any full-size truck, you can't reach into it.
00:16:11 You can only reach into it at the back, right?
00:16:13 Yeah, but it's just cockamamie.
00:16:16 But that's a small thing,
00:16:18 because most full-size pickup trucks,
00:16:20 no one's tall enough to reach in.
00:16:22 But I don't understand why it's steer-by-wire.
00:16:26 Yes, if you're going to say,
00:16:28 "Hey, we can move the steering wheel anywhere,
00:16:30 so if you need to sit on the roof and drive, okay, fine."
00:16:33 They didn't do that,
00:16:35 and the steering wheel is in a place
00:16:36 where they could have a steering column,
00:16:38 so it's just cheaper to build.
00:16:39 But the first thing I did, I walked up to it,
00:16:41 the window was down, I grabbed the steering wheel,
00:16:43 the car was off, and I turned it all the way,
00:16:45 and the wheel didn't move, and I was just like, "Ugh!"
00:16:48 As a driver, I don't like that.
00:16:50 But I will say it felt extremely high-quality.
00:16:53 I thought the fit and finish of the interior,
00:16:56 while plain and boring as all Teslas are,
00:16:59 felt a level up from other Teslas I've been in.
00:17:02 It also felt like it was sealed and pressurized.
00:17:05 I'm sure they're going to send one to Mars when they go to Mars,
00:17:08 and so it has a way to seal or something like that.
00:17:11 And, yeah, once you get used to the fact
00:17:14 that 45 degrees is lock on the steering,
00:17:17 which is, I don't know why they would do that,
00:17:19 but they did that.
00:17:21 Is it variable, or is it always 45 degrees?
00:17:23 It's variable.
00:17:24 It must be variable.
00:17:25 I don't know if it is.
00:17:26 I don't think it is, because at no miles an hour,
00:17:28 it was lock.
00:17:29 I mean, it was crazy.
00:17:30 The fastest we went was, like, 40.
00:17:32 We literally were driving around
00:17:34 until your sugarfish door dash showed up.
00:17:36 [laughter]
00:17:38 So you're mostly known for exterior design,
00:17:41 but do you have an opinion on Tesla interior design
00:17:44 or Cybertruck specifically?
00:17:45 It's very minimalist, Swedish, they say.
00:17:48 Yeah, so, I mean, obviously,
00:17:50 I do have more credentials in exteriors than in interiors,
00:17:53 but as a design responsible,
00:17:54 I've had to oversee many interior designs,
00:17:56 and I'm doing a lot of interior work myself at the moment.
00:17:59 There is --
00:18:00 It's something I came to later in my career,
00:18:02 but I've already kind of some experience under my belt.
00:18:06 I like it.
00:18:07 I like it very much.
00:18:08 I like the minimalism.
00:18:09 I like that there's kind of a decluttered space
00:18:12 that doesn't have all the traditional layers
00:18:15 of automotive interiors where you have, you know,
00:18:18 material A coming up against the bezel of material B
00:18:22 and moving to material C,
00:18:23 and then the elephant's ass, like, grain texture on the dash.
00:18:26 Right, right.
00:18:27 Like, all this stuff.
00:18:28 Like, it's just none of it,
00:18:29 and for that, it feels really, really fresh.
00:18:31 I do think that minimalism and this kind of, you know,
00:18:37 white space requires a little bit more poetry.
00:18:40 Like, there is a way to do it even better
00:18:42 than they did in my mind,
00:18:43 but this is a complaint on a very high level
00:18:46 because literally they are the only ones
00:18:48 doing something as radical.
00:18:49 So, for that, hats off, and I do think
00:18:51 there's still a little bit of room for improvement,
00:18:53 but it's just on a very high level.
00:18:55 Would you agree, though, that Cybertruck --
00:18:57 and again, we were only in it for 10 minutes max,
00:18:59 but, like, the quality of that compared to, like,
00:19:03 a Model Y or even a Model X,
00:19:05 I just felt everything felt a little bit better,
00:19:08 and it just looked a little bit more polished, you know?
00:19:11 It's hard to tell.
00:19:13 It was dark outside, too,
00:19:14 and I was just overwhelmed with the proportions
00:19:16 and the ergonomics of the cabin.
00:19:17 I didn't really pay attention at the smaller details.
00:19:20 I would love to do a more thorough, you know.
00:19:23 If you remember, we were there just literally
00:19:26 for five minutes, maybe eight tops, right?
00:19:29 Yeah, I mean, it was sort of -- I don't know.
00:19:31 Well, it was Ben from Unplugged Performance.
00:19:33 It was his Cybertruck,
00:19:34 and he'd already modified it a little bit.
00:19:36 Like, I think he put different wheels on it already,
00:19:38 and he's already --
00:19:39 Spacers?
00:19:40 Yeah, yeah, yeah, and yes, he put on spacers
00:19:42 so the wheels were sticking out a bit more,
00:19:44 but, yeah, I was impressed.
00:19:46 Are you having one on order?
00:19:48 No, no, no, no. I don't need one.
00:19:51 Okay.
00:19:52 Actually, I'm wondering how many people
00:19:53 are actually going to use the truck aspect of it
00:19:56 because it's going to make a lot of people switch from --
00:19:58 It just has a ton of cool factors,
00:20:00 so I'm sure there's going to be more people
00:20:02 jumping from a Model 3 or a Model S
00:20:04 over to Cybertruck than really abandoning an F-150.
00:20:08 Well, the price gap is huge, though.
00:20:10 The step from -- I mean, Model 3s now
00:20:12 are, like, fire sale cheap.
00:20:13 I don't know how you can make that gap.
00:20:15 I'll tell you one thing.
00:20:16 One oversight is the overall length.
00:20:19 I have a buddy who has one.
00:20:21 His number came up, and he measured his garage.
00:20:24 He's like, "It won't fit."
00:20:25 Yeah, it's big.
00:20:26 It's too long.
00:20:27 But pickup trucks, if you're a pickup truck person,
00:20:30 that's a problem.
00:20:31 If you have a full-size pickup truck,
00:20:32 it's the same length.
00:20:33 And, you know, curiously, the F-150
00:20:37 has a 5 1/2-foot bed, the Lightning,
00:20:39 and the Cybertruck has a 6-foot bed,
00:20:40 so if you really are moving stuff around
00:20:43 and you need a lot of bed length,
00:20:45 Cybertruck wins there.
00:20:46 It tows more than a Lightning.
00:20:48 It's impressive they got a lot of the specs pretty good.
00:20:52 I just, you know...
00:20:53 And yet still didn't deliver on the promise Elon made.
00:20:56 Which was?
00:20:57 Yeah, everything.
00:20:58 The range, the power, and the price.
00:21:01 Oh, yeah, the range is bad.
00:21:02 Yeah, well, the price went way up.
00:21:03 Three small things.
00:21:05 Okay.
00:21:06 I tend to forgive these things much more
00:21:08 than other people, though,
00:21:09 because a lot of these promises are made
00:21:11 when basically a vision is being unveiled,
00:21:14 and then reality kicks in
00:21:15 and course corrects a bunch of stuff.
00:21:17 So the fact that it's here
00:21:18 and it looks something like what they showed in the beginning,
00:21:21 and in fact it looks 99.9% like what they showed in the beginning,
00:21:24 is nuts, because when I saw that,
00:21:26 I thought this is a plain show car.
00:21:28 Now they're going to learn it the hard way.
00:21:30 They're going to have to put all this other stuff
00:21:32 that we're used to from traditional car design
00:21:34 and legislature and homologation and you name it.
00:21:37 But no other manufacturer makes any kind of--
00:21:40 never shows a concept like that
00:21:41 and announces the price, the performance, the range,
00:21:44 and then consistently fails to deliver.
00:21:46 The way Tesla has.
00:21:47 But, Ed, as you know better than anyone else,
00:21:50 Elon Musk is uncontrollable.
00:21:52 His PR people gave up.
00:21:55 I'm running a risk of sounding like a Tesla fanboy
00:21:58 at this point in time.
00:21:59 No, you're not bad.
00:22:00 They're not promising stuff,
00:22:01 but they're also not delivering anything interesting.
00:22:04 So great.
00:22:05 We never promised, we never delivered.
00:22:07 Yeah, same.
00:22:08 And I like--you said something when we had that crazy--
00:22:11 so me, him, and Ben had this day-long text thread.
00:22:15 [laughter]
00:22:16 Where lots of things were being said that we can't mention.
00:22:19 But you were talking about the Cybertruck,
00:22:21 and you said--you were saying how you like the boldness
00:22:24 and how it's going to allow other people to take chances.
00:22:28 Yeah, totally, liberating.
00:22:29 And not designers to take chances,
00:22:31 but allow the accountants to take chances.
00:22:33 And that is--you're 100% right there.
00:22:36 I'm really glad it exists,
00:22:38 and it's much better than I kind of assumed it would be.
00:22:42 Just for a brief drive, it was a pretty elegant thing.
00:22:46 I just--the steering--
00:22:48 You might be the first person to use the word "elegant"
00:22:51 in Cybertruck in the same sentence.
00:22:53 The driving experience was--
00:22:54 again, I've never been in a car--
00:22:56 I'm driving this Rolls-Royce, it's not pressurized.
00:22:59 You're aware of the outside atmosphere.
00:23:01 This felt like there was positive pressure pushing out.
00:23:04 It was a bit like those quiet comfort headphones
00:23:06 or whatever you put on, just goes like--
00:23:08 Yeah, and I think it does--my understanding is--
00:23:10 I looked into it afterwards--it does, like, pressurize.
00:23:13 It must be the--it's the same--what do they have?
00:23:16 Biohazard mode in the Model X,
00:23:18 where it's positive air pressure.
00:23:20 But I don't think those--I've been in a lot of those--
00:23:22 I don't think they're sealed as well as this thing is.
00:23:24 This thing seems really--I mean, everything's thicker,
00:23:27 and, you know, more weatherstripping and all that.
00:23:29 So don't eat Mexican food before you drive to Cybertruck.
00:23:32 Ah, damn it, hey, don't kink-shame it.
00:23:34 Okay, all right.
00:23:37 So I did do some research on Sasha.
00:23:41 I listened to-- That should have been a spy.
00:23:43 Matt Farah's podcast with you.
00:23:46 Smoking Tire. Smoking Tire.
00:23:48 And one of the things that you mentioned was--
00:23:51 it got me thinking--you're a graduate of ArtCenter in 2005.
00:23:55 Yeah.
00:23:56 And you talked a lot about how you have sort of this--
00:24:00 mixed feelings about clay,
00:24:02 'cause you mostly do your designing on computer.
00:24:04 Right.
00:24:05 Are you then--is it fair to say, 'cause now that's--
00:24:08 it's almost 19 years ago--
00:24:11 are you part of this first generation
00:24:13 of truly computer-enabled car designers?
00:24:17 And my reference point is, I went to school--
00:24:19 I graduated in '98 from college,
00:24:22 and I was part of the newspaper there,
00:24:25 and I love photography.
00:24:26 And the year--my second year there,
00:24:28 they ripped out the wet lab, the photo lab,
00:24:30 'cause they're like, "It's not the future, guys.
00:24:32 "The future is this thing called Photoshop.
00:24:34 The future is computers."
00:24:36 And it was true.
00:24:38 You had a pretty long discussion there on Smoking Tire
00:24:43 about how, you know, you can do things now
00:24:48 by yourself in a computer
00:24:50 that you don't need essentially a clay modeler for.
00:24:53 So back to that question.
00:24:54 Are you this first--do you think you're part
00:24:56 of this first generation of computer designers?
00:24:58 It really felt like that, yeah.
00:24:59 So my first internships already,
00:25:01 when I was coming into work with a laptop,
00:25:03 and that was the time when people still had
00:25:05 one workstation per design department.
00:25:07 So they didn't even have--
00:25:08 each desk wasn't equipped with a computer,
00:25:10 and all of a sudden, an intern shows up
00:25:12 with their own private laptop.
00:25:14 Like, "Wow, you know, what are you doing with that?"
00:25:16 "Oh, I'm gonna sketch with my Wacom pad,
00:25:18 and I'm gonna--I don't need to pen and paper,
00:25:20 and I'm gonna build my own alias models
00:25:22 or 3-D models, whatnot."
00:25:23 So I was definitely seen as kind of a tech kid,
00:25:28 you know, bringing all this weird stuff,
00:25:31 disrupting a little bit.
00:25:32 People appreciated.
00:25:33 There was definitely no kind of hostility
00:25:36 from the experienced designers or anything like that.
00:25:39 They were happy to see kind of the change of tide
00:25:41 and change--shift of generations.
00:25:43 But I have to say, I'm not the tech kid.
00:25:46 I'm not that guy who is just jumping
00:25:48 and falling in love with technology.
00:25:49 I actually have a serious appreciation
00:25:51 and a soft spot for the analog way of doing things
00:25:54 and the conventional, traditional way
00:25:57 of getting things done.
00:25:58 And I like to think of my approach
00:26:00 as very unusual because I am doing
00:26:03 what clay guys are doing in the computer.
00:26:05 I'm not doing computer models
00:26:06 as computer modelers would do them.
00:26:08 I'm doing them as a clay modeler.
00:26:09 - So you're surfacing within--digitally.
00:26:12 - Yeah, I'm surfacing digitally,
00:26:14 but I don't--I don't want to bore you guys,
00:26:16 but the way 3-D modeling is taught
00:26:19 is unfortunately coming from--
00:26:20 it's like a lineage that starts off with mathematicians.
00:26:24 So these mathematicians, they are the ones
00:26:26 who came up with NURBS, with Bézier curves,
00:26:29 these NURBS and Bézier curves have given
00:26:31 a so-called A-class design philosophy its grounds,
00:26:36 and then some of the, let's say, engineers
00:26:38 who are A-class surfacers have this very rigid way
00:26:42 of building up 3-D models that complies
00:26:44 with all the single-span whatever nonsense
00:26:46 they want to do, and this is the right way
00:26:48 to go into tooling, this is the right way
00:26:50 to go into production, and this is always seen
00:26:52 as the final step of the design process.
00:26:55 So when the clay model is done,
00:26:57 all the reverse engineering has been done,
00:26:59 checks with engineering complete,
00:27:00 this is the final step in German called "Strach,"
00:27:02 where you actually produce this watertight,
00:27:05 bulletproof CAD model of the tooling for the car.
00:27:09 And this approach trickled down
00:27:11 all the way to creative phases,
00:27:13 where the CAD modelers are using almost
00:27:15 an arsenal of tools that is not geared
00:27:17 towards actual creativity, but is more
00:27:19 of a final set of tools that are used
00:27:22 for panel making, tool making.
00:27:24 This is not how we work, this is not how I work.
00:27:26 I actually learned so much from the clay guys.
00:27:28 I watched them work diligently, I asked questions,
00:27:31 I was a nuisance, I was annoying them.
00:27:33 I learned how they work, it's totally different.
00:27:35 First of all, they don't actually construct
00:27:38 everything to rigid intersections,
00:27:40 there's a lot of what they call, you know,
00:27:41 the feeling from your hand and the human touch.
00:27:44 It's because they're doing it by hand,
00:27:45 they're sculpting, they're putting their heart and soul,
00:27:47 there's kind of a movement of muscle,
00:27:49 there's a movement of your limbs and digits
00:27:52 across the surface with slicks and tools.
00:27:56 And the key here is, volume and sculpture
00:27:59 is primary and the curves are secondary.
00:28:02 The curves, a designer always knifes a curve in,
00:28:05 or tapes a curve on a completed surface,
00:28:08 and the surface gets adjusted,
00:28:09 but there's always a volume to work off of.
00:28:11 In 3D modeling, you're putting these curves
00:28:13 in free air, and then you're stretching
00:28:15 sheets of surfaces between them.
00:28:17 That's the wrong approach.
00:28:18 What I'm trying to do is I'm building big volumes,
00:28:21 and then I'm trimming them away.
00:28:23 So it's a little bit similar.
00:28:24 - Like a sculptor, right?
00:28:25 - Exactly, it's more sculptural.
00:28:26 - The statue's in the boulder somewhere,
00:28:28 you gotta get it.
00:28:29 Could you give us an example of a car
00:28:30 that you think maybe suffered, the design suffered
00:28:34 a little bit from too much of this A-spec?
00:28:36 'Cause I hear what you're saying,
00:28:37 I just wanna give some examples to the listeners,
00:28:39 like this car has too many mathematician curves on it.
00:28:44 - Well, I think that the car design,
00:28:45 as any kind of applied field, is always influenced
00:28:49 by the status quo in tools.
00:28:51 So if you look at how car design has evolved,
00:28:53 you can always trace the eras of different tools
00:28:56 coming into action and those tools dominating
00:28:58 the design world.
00:28:59 It's a little bit like if you look at art
00:29:01 and you think of, let's say, a relationship
00:29:03 between, I don't know, like Jackson Pollock
00:29:05 and quantum mechanics.
00:29:07 Quantum mechanics is the new big thing,
00:29:09 everybody's talking about it, nothing is certain,
00:29:11 all of a sudden paintings come on that look
00:29:13 like nothing is certain and look wild.
00:29:15 And the same way car design in the, let's say,
00:29:17 late '80s, early '90s, and into 2000s went through
00:29:20 a very heavy digital phase when things started
00:29:22 to look a little bit more rigid, constructed,
00:29:25 sometimes more planar, sometimes more basic.
00:29:28 And then it sort of clay-headed, it's kind of a comeback
00:29:32 where we said, yeah, the human touch is important
00:29:34 and more sensuous, more beautiful surfacing came back,
00:29:37 a little bit of 9/11 feeling in the cross-sections,
00:29:40 fenders, transitions between surfaces.
00:29:42 Less theme-driven, more sculptural.
00:29:45 So themes are kind of these rigid lines on the car
00:29:47 that you're trying to build towards,
00:29:49 very digital in a way, and then volume and sculpture
00:29:52 and more of a kind of natural analog expression,
00:29:55 9/11-like, comes back now.
00:29:57 My point of view is that you should never be able
00:30:00 to tell which tools were used.
00:30:02 You should look at the final result and say,
00:30:04 this is what I like or this is what I don't like,
00:30:06 but there shouldn't be a trace of tool left on it.
00:30:08 - I've just never heard it defined that way,
00:30:10 but if you look at cars from the '20s,
00:30:13 they're pretty slabby, and then all of a sudden
00:30:15 they figured out how to curve aluminum panels,
00:30:18 and then suddenly in the '30s you get this explosion
00:30:21 of Fagani and Fellaci and De La Hayes and Bugatti's,
00:30:25 where suddenly, then there was that moment,
00:30:27 like the Type 57 Atlantic, they could do half a curve,
00:30:31 so they bolted them together,
00:30:33 but then Fagani and Fellaci the next year
00:30:35 was able to get the alloy right where they could do
00:30:37 a full curve, and you're right, it's the tools.
00:30:41 - The tooling got better, the materials got better.
00:30:43 - And then they started to develop actual,
00:30:45 try to put in the theories of aerodynamics
00:30:48 into the cars, and then you can start to see--
00:30:50 - Yeah, it's tools and the science.
00:30:52 - But then stamping came about,
00:30:54 and so if you stamp something, at first flat,
00:30:58 and then okay, well we can stamp with curves,
00:31:01 or then VW-Audi was we can do these crazy lines.
00:31:05 - Super precise.
00:31:07 - Yeah, three millimeter, what's the--
00:31:09 Sorry, two and a half millimeter line,
00:31:11 which I remember with those, I think it was an Audi A3,
00:31:15 and I was staring at it, I'm like,
00:31:17 this is insane on a $25,000 car.
00:31:19 - Tom Gale pointed it out and said,
00:31:21 this is a total flex.
00:31:23 This is Audi VW group telling the rest of the world,
00:31:26 like FU, we can do this.
00:31:28 - But only in the way that almost nobody understands.
00:31:30 - Yes, yes, it's so German, it's so like--
00:31:33 - But, I mean again, I don't necessarily see
00:31:35 American execs doing this, but I was gonna kick out of it
00:31:38 like in auto shows, you see all the German execs,
00:31:40 like the CEO-- - With measuring tapes.
00:31:42 - And they walk around and they stare at hinges and stuff.
00:31:45 - No, with measuring tapes, we always had that.
00:31:47 They would pull out from somewhere a measuring tape
00:31:49 and we would start the discussion of how could they do this
00:31:52 and why can't we do this?
00:31:53 - Well, I heard a follow-up to a similar story
00:31:56 about the Germans, the VW group, they do such Audi,
00:31:59 they have such a great body crease here,
00:32:01 and I think Angus told you this, or maybe it was,
00:32:04 not Chris, Chris Theroux might have said,
00:32:07 like some union metal stamper boss came back
00:32:11 and, "Oh, you wanna do that?"
00:32:14 And had his guys create a body panel that had a seam
00:32:17 that was as sharp or sharper, and they're like,
00:32:19 "You never asked us to do it, we can do this."
00:32:23 - That was Theodore, I remember that, yeah, yeah, yeah.
00:32:26 - So, okay, let's, where'd you grow up?
00:32:31 - I kind of fall over the place.
00:32:33 I was born in Georgia, Soviet Union, Tbilisi,
00:32:37 lived there until I was nine years old,
00:32:40 living got tough, my dad moved to Moscow to start a business,
00:32:44 Soviet Union fell apart, a year after he moved us
00:32:47 out of Georgia to Moscow, I spent the next,
00:32:49 what was it, seven years in Russia, in Moscow,
00:32:54 and then came out here for my college degree,
00:32:57 and then went to Germany after that
00:32:59 and the whole European journey.
00:33:01 - What was the first car you, what was your car,
00:33:04 what business was your dad doing?
00:33:06 - My dad, so, what business was he doing?
00:33:09 I mean, '90s, everybody was doing whatever they could
00:33:11 to just earn a living, before that he was a physicist
00:33:15 and worked in a physics lab doing research, I think,
00:33:18 on holograms and all kinds of pretty cool lasers and stuff,
00:33:23 so I remember that as a kid, going to his lab,
00:33:26 but '90s, he was doing import, he was bringing food
00:33:29 up to Russia, and slowly but surely transitioned
00:33:32 to making fish preserves together with my uncle,
00:33:36 and that's what they're doing still to this day.
00:33:38 - Fish preserves. - Yeah.
00:33:40 Buying raw fish, kind of salting it, smoking it,
00:33:42 and selling it in pre-packaged beautiful--
00:33:44 - Can we get some, no, is there any place
00:33:46 around here that sells it?
00:33:47 - The countries are now basically at war,
00:33:49 so I can't import anything out, but it's pretty frustrating.
00:33:52 - That's gonna be tough.
00:33:53 What was it, we'll get to your first question in a second,
00:33:55 but what was it like coming from Moscow,
00:33:58 tail end of the Soviet Union, to Southern California?
00:34:01 What was that like for you?
00:34:03 I mean, that's gotta be a crazy transition.
00:34:05 - You were what, like 17? - 17, yeah.
00:34:07 - And so 2001-ish? - Yeah.
00:34:09 - So you land in-- - Just the beginning of '01,
00:34:12 so actually, yeah, first week of 2001.
00:34:15 - So you land in Pasadena, and what are you thinking?
00:34:18 - First of all, just many things kind of coincided, right?
00:34:24 It's my first experience living outside my parents' home,
00:34:28 17 years old, not fully equipped to be an adult by any stretch,
00:34:31 and then all of a sudden I'm also in a country
00:34:33 which feels unfamiliar.
00:34:35 Language, which I guess I had pretty good grasp of it,
00:34:39 but it was challenging to only speak English,
00:34:42 to never have a chance to just go back to Russian
00:34:45 and say what it is that I have on my mind
00:34:47 and always search for the right words,
00:34:49 but I guess it was good because actually,
00:34:52 it ended up making English my--
00:34:55 I don't even know if I'm more fluent in Russian
00:34:57 than I am in English now after all these years.
00:34:59 - Yeah, you've been speaking English longer
00:35:01 than you lived in Russia. - Professionally, for sure.
00:35:03 - Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. - 100%.
00:35:05 So culture shock, wild.
00:35:08 And then another point is I was growing up
00:35:11 in a world where car design didn't exist as a thing.
00:35:16 - Right. - So I didn't have any friends
00:35:18 who were into cars the same way that I was.
00:35:20 I didn't have any friends who drew cars
00:35:23 or wanted to become a car.
00:35:24 All of a sudden, you're being transported
00:35:26 into a place where everyone's on the same track,
00:35:29 everyone's dreaming of the same stuff.
00:35:31 Of course, with time, you see the differences.
00:35:33 You understand that some people are in it more
00:35:35 for, I don't know, a fancy career.
00:35:37 Others just love cars.
00:35:38 Others are more artists at heart and are just doing cars
00:35:41 because that's a way to apply their talent.
00:35:43 So there are differences, but this impression--
00:35:45 - Which one were you? - A car guy.
00:35:47 - Yeah, he's solid.
00:35:49 - So back--
00:35:51 Where, when, how old did that start?
00:35:53 When did you know you wanted to be a car designer
00:35:55 or start drawing cars?
00:35:56 - I was a little kid.
00:35:58 I was very much into jet fighters.
00:36:00 I was into cars, too, and I think my first word
00:36:02 my parents told me was car,
00:36:03 but jet fighters quickly overtook that obsession
00:36:06 because they looked even more kind of powerful,
00:36:09 even more badass.
00:36:10 - And in the Soviet Union, you could see a cool jet fighter.
00:36:12 - You could see them, yeah.
00:36:13 - Mig-21s? Come on, what were you drawing?
00:36:15 - 29s. - The 29s, okay.
00:36:17 - SU-27, Mig-29, my two favorite little toys.
00:36:21 And then the Soviet Union collapse
00:36:23 was actually a pretty violent endeavor,
00:36:25 so there was a bit of infighting.
00:36:27 There was, you know, first breaking off from Russia.
00:36:30 Georgia had its bloody conflict with Soviet Union
00:36:33 to actually get out.
00:36:34 Then inside the country, there was a bunch of conflict as well.
00:36:38 Became a pretty convinced pacifist
00:36:40 throughout that experience.
00:36:41 Saw war closer to my eyes than was necessary
00:36:46 and didn't really enjoy what I saw.
00:36:48 So jet fighters were--
00:36:50 probably they're still cool, but I lost the passion for them.
00:36:54 - Right, it's a weapon of war.
00:36:55 - It just completely went away.
00:36:56 - Yeah, it's designed for killing.
00:36:57 - Around the same time, we were spending a few days
00:37:00 kind of hiding away from all the violence
00:37:02 that was happening in our street
00:37:04 at my grandparents' place,
00:37:05 and my grandfather had an old--
00:37:07 I don't even know what it was,
00:37:08 maybe an automotor sport or some German thing.
00:37:10 Maybe an automobile sport or some German magazine
00:37:12 that was just in his--
00:37:14 somewhere. - Yeah.
00:37:16 - Hidden away. I found it.
00:37:17 I started looking through it in final pages.
00:37:19 There was a picture of a Zillwilner 126 C3 Ferrari.
00:37:23 I just remember seeing it with a number 27 on it
00:37:26 that's just right here.
00:37:28 And I fell in love with it right away.
00:37:30 I thought, "This is better than jet fighters.
00:37:32 This is like a jet fighter, but it has stance."
00:37:34 - Yeah, yeah.
00:37:35 - What really pissed me off about jet fighters
00:37:37 are those teeny wheels.
00:37:38 - Right, proportions suck.
00:37:39 - All of a sudden, you got this well-planted, beastie thing
00:37:42 with just massive tires and nose cone with a 27 on it.
00:37:45 - So you had no real automotive influence as a child
00:37:49 because you grew up in Georgia and Moscow?
00:37:52 Or did you see--you must have--
00:37:53 there was some pop culture cars? None?
00:37:55 - None. The best thing you could see,
00:37:57 which is actually a pretty cool car,
00:37:58 is a Lada Niva.
00:37:59 - Yeah, yeah.
00:38:00 - That was by far the best thing you could possibly see.
00:38:02 - What's it called? The Bahooka?
00:38:03 - Bohanka. - Bohanka.
00:38:05 I think Bohankas are cool.
00:38:06 - But when you're growing up-- - The Soviet VW bus.
00:38:08 - Yeah, yeah. When you're growing up with those cars,
00:38:10 and you kind of see how uncool Soviet regime was
00:38:13 and how it was dying, cancerous, and decrepit,
00:38:16 these cars relate to that regime in my mind.
00:38:19 Now I see them as cooler,
00:38:20 but back then they looked like decrepit pieces of crap.
00:38:23 - I mean, they are. I've driven a couple of them.
00:38:26 They were not engineered for performance or comfort.
00:38:32 - So Jacques Villeneuve's car
00:38:33 is one that made the strongest impression
00:38:35 - Jules. - Sorry, Jules.
00:38:37 - His father. - Yes, Jules and his car.
00:38:39 And you were what? 12? 11?
00:38:41 - No, no, younger than that. I would say 7, 8.
00:38:44 - 7, 8? Okay. - Yeah. 7.
00:38:46 - Do you think, real quick, though,
00:38:47 do you think all car guys,
00:38:48 and I don't like that term because it's not inclusive
00:38:50 for women, but like car people--
00:38:52 - They're also car guys. - Yeah.
00:38:54 Do you think that you have to have a moment like that?
00:38:56 'Cause I still remember mine.
00:38:57 - What was yours? - I was nine years old.
00:38:59 I was in Montreal.
00:39:01 There was an orange Countach
00:39:03 parked in Old Town, Montreal,
00:39:06 on the Grey Cobblestones.
00:39:08 And it was just, like, I just--
00:39:11 I couldn't understand what was happening.
00:39:13 - Was it the holy shit moment?
00:39:14 - Yeah, it was, you know, it was like an '82 Countach,
00:39:18 I think, '82, '83.
00:39:21 You know, so it was still carbureted,
00:39:22 but it had the flares on the wing, it was orange,
00:39:25 and it was just--
00:39:27 My dad, who loved cars,
00:39:29 he let me look at it for like 30 minutes,
00:39:32 and I just stood there, and I could not believe--
00:39:35 And it was--
00:39:36 You know, playing the memory back,
00:39:38 it was--I'd never seen
00:39:40 cobblestone streets like that before.
00:39:42 You know, big grey, you know, Old Town, Montreal.
00:39:45 And then the orange and the contrast of it.
00:39:47 Like, it was like--
00:39:48 'Cause, you know, Old Town, Montreal is like,
00:39:50 not medieval, but for North America,
00:39:52 it's a pretty old-looking place.
00:39:54 And that was a spaceship, you know.
00:39:56 'Cause, you know, I was 83, so I was eight, yeah.
00:39:59 You know what I mean?
00:40:00 It was like a Star Wars vehicle,
00:40:02 like Luke's Landspeeder or something.
00:40:04 And, like, do you have to have that to, like,
00:40:06 [imitates car screeching]
00:40:07 and, like, mess your brain up
00:40:08 or all you think about is cars?
00:40:10 I do think so.
00:40:13 I know people who didn't have that kind of moment,
00:40:15 who grew up in a family where a Countach
00:40:17 was part of what they owned.
00:40:19 Oh, right.
00:40:20 And they are car guys, genuinely,
00:40:21 but they miss--they lack this childish,
00:40:24 wow kind of excitement about things.
00:40:26 They're kind of taking things--
00:40:27 It was like business as usual, you know.
00:40:29 Yeah, it's another hyper car, okay.
00:40:30 I was trying to explain this to a kid.
00:40:33 He's, like, probably 27 or something like that.
00:40:35 But I used to--where I lived,
00:40:37 there's the hills that separate Teal from Camarillo.
00:40:41 There's, like, some rich houses up there,
00:40:43 and I'd ride my bike up there
00:40:45 because there was a green Yalpa.
00:40:47 And this green Yalpa never moved.
00:40:50 It didn't run, but I didn't know that.
00:40:51 But it was a green Yalpa, it was there every day.
00:40:53 And back then, you know, there wasn't a Yalpa poster.
00:40:56 I could buy a Countach poster,
00:40:58 Yalpa got written about maybe once a year
00:41:01 by one of the four American magazines,
00:41:03 and it was probably a black-and-white photo.
00:41:05 So my only way to see this was to get on my bike
00:41:08 and ride up a mountain,
00:41:09 and I would do it, like, at least once a week
00:41:12 because I didn't have a phone that I could, like,
00:41:15 Yalpa and, "Oh, look at that."
00:41:17 And it was, you know, like, I don't know.
00:41:19 So as far as making, like, an extra effort
00:41:22 to see something cool is concerned,
00:41:24 I think I had a fair amount of that as well
00:41:26 because, like you said, we didn't have the chance
00:41:28 to see these cars in Russia or in Soviet Union.
00:41:32 Early '90s as well, I mean, people, when they got money,
00:41:34 they just went out and they bought, like, rich stuff,
00:41:38 but they didn't buy cool stuff.
00:41:40 You know, like, nobody bought, like, an old Countach.
00:41:42 Yeah, they would buy, like,
00:41:43 the biggest Mercedes money could buy.
00:41:45 And then you saw a bunch of that on the roads,
00:41:47 but it was not inspiring to me.
00:41:48 So the first time we got a chance to go anywhere at all
00:41:51 as a family out of the country, first trip we did,
00:41:54 we went to Hungary, and I kind of begged my parents
00:41:57 to take me to a Ferrari dealership
00:41:59 that was in Budapest on the main road,
00:42:01 on the ring road there somewhere.
00:42:03 So that was my first impression.
00:42:04 They never let us in.
00:42:05 I was just standing outside in front of the glass.
00:42:08 What was that like, though?
00:42:09 There was a Testarossa there, and I just refused to leave.
00:42:12 I was just standing next to it,
00:42:13 like, in the presence of something holy.
00:42:16 You should go back to that dealership
00:42:18 and throw a rock through the window.
00:42:20 Check it out.
00:42:21 The next trip was already to Maranello,
00:42:23 'cause I told them we have to go to Italy.
00:42:25 We're going there.
00:42:26 It's a pilgrimage.
00:42:27 I'm a kid. I need to go there.
00:42:28 Our brains are wired similar,
00:42:30 because we used to do two weeks every summer.
00:42:33 We'd rent a house in Newport Beach,
00:42:35 and everybody else would go to the beach.
00:42:37 Me and my friend David, we'd hop on our bikes,
00:42:39 and we'd go stand in front of the Aston Martin window.
00:42:42 They wouldn't let us in,
00:42:43 but they had a Lagonda and they had a Vantage,
00:42:45 and we would just stand there, just staring at these things.
00:42:49 Like, 12 years old, no time for the beach.
00:42:51 So how did you find out about ArtCenter?
00:42:55 It's funny, because nobody--
00:42:57 most people in California don't know that they have--
00:42:59 in their backyard is this epic school for automotive--
00:43:03 Factory.
00:43:04 --or vehicle design in general,
00:43:06 but specifically transportation design.
00:43:08 I owe a lot of that to my parents,
00:43:11 because they took my hobby very seriously.
00:43:13 They took both my brothers' and my hobbies very seriously,
00:43:16 and he's now a very well-accomplished composer,
00:43:19 writing scores for movies, and I'm designing cars.
00:43:21 So they took hobbies seriously, and something came of it.
00:43:24 So what happened was, they realized--
00:43:26 And you guys also had some talent.
00:43:28 Well, I don't know about that. I'm not so confident.
00:43:31 On my end, anyway.
00:43:32 Yeah, yeah.
00:43:33 But they realized very early on that,
00:43:37 while my brother could get his education and degree
00:43:40 and career started in Russia
00:43:41 because of how traditional and rich the music school is,
00:43:47 but the car design didn't exist.
00:43:49 So they started putting money aside.
00:43:51 They never bought an apartment.
00:43:52 We lived like--
00:43:53 We could have lived a far better life in Russia
00:43:56 if they weren't just saving up for my education,
00:43:58 which was like the commitment of the whole family.
00:44:01 My mom wrote a letter to Ferrari.
00:44:03 She actually sat down and wrote a letter saying,
00:44:05 "My son keeps drawing sports cars,
00:44:06 and where does he need to go to school?"
00:44:08 And sent a bunch of my drawings.
00:44:09 I remember being upset that she sent those childish scribbles
00:44:13 to this great big company, but she did.
00:44:15 And we got a response with a bunch of schools listed there,
00:44:18 and checked out a couple of them.
00:44:20 And CCS was another option,
00:44:23 and my parents didn't want to have their 17-year-old son
00:44:27 in a pretty bad neighborhood in Detroit.
00:44:30 I was going to probably get into some kind of trouble there,
00:44:33 and they picked Pasadena out of safety.
00:44:36 Hey, you know, you guys went through a war.
00:44:39 To Johnny's point, were you talented as an artist?
00:44:43 Would you say that?
00:44:45 How good is your drawing?
00:44:48 I think I'm smarter than I'm talented.
00:44:50 I think that's primarily where anything that I ever accomplish
00:44:52 comes from is because I know how to kind of apply my brain to things.
00:44:56 I don't think things came easy.
00:44:58 I don't remember anything coming easy.
00:45:01 I've met people for whom drawing is kind of second nature.
00:45:05 They're really good at it.
00:45:07 I found my own sort of handicap, poor man's drawing style
00:45:15 that ended up being very, very powerful
00:45:17 because I only used black and white.
00:45:19 I only used two colors.
00:45:21 That became kind of trendy in itself.
00:45:23 People liked what I drew, but it only was that way
00:45:25 because I didn't know how to use color.
00:45:27 I'm actually a little bit colorblind too,
00:45:29 so I really understood how colors work.
00:45:31 Which colorblind do you have?
00:45:33 Desaturated greens and reds.
00:45:35 I don't know if they work together.
00:45:37 Nothing came easy, and I don't think there was any particular talent
00:45:40 outside of being good with my brains.
00:45:43 I think you're being modest.
00:45:45 We talked to the two students from Art Center.
00:45:49 Yeah, Maddie and Preston.
00:45:52 Preston, I think when we were at the Art Center show--
00:45:55 or you must know Maddie.
00:45:58 That first year she describes where you just spent all year
00:46:01 at Art Center drawing circles and squares and stuff.
00:46:03 Was that hard, easy?
00:46:05 Did they break you down into little bits
00:46:07 from a basic skills perspective?
00:46:09 Yeah. I almost failed everything at Art Center.
00:46:12 I was doing pretty badly those first couple of semesters.
00:46:15 First of all, I don't really work well with authority in general,
00:46:18 so when something gets told, like, "You must,"
00:46:21 then I'm like, "Oh."
00:46:23 So right to the Volkswagen Group in the natural fit.
00:46:25 Sorry, go ahead.
00:46:27 Pretty much.
00:46:29 I had a close encounter with the possibility
00:46:33 of being kicked out of school for almost failing everything.
00:46:36 My drawing classes, I still torment my old instructors
00:46:41 by reminding them how they gave me D-minuses
00:46:43 and I almost failed everything.
00:46:45 This is shocking, because I want to transition to,
00:46:48 I think when you're remembered,
00:46:51 and I think when the new one comes out, it'll change things,
00:46:55 but the Huracán,
00:46:57 and I want you to tell this, if you can,
00:46:59 I want you to tell the story you told me about the Huracán,
00:47:03 but that is, in a company like Lamborghini,
00:47:06 where they have a long history of stunning, gorgeous automobiles,
00:47:10 that one really stands out.
00:47:12 That's like podium.
00:47:14 How do you get there if you're so, by your own volition,
00:47:18 untalented and you failed your first two classes?
00:47:21 What's your superpower?
00:47:23 How did you get to VW and then end up doing Huracán?
00:47:27 I actually think I'm a really good designer.
00:47:30 Yeah, he is a good designer.
00:47:33 I'm modest, too.
00:47:35 So then, is that, but it's in the,
00:47:38 because I know this is what people think,
00:47:40 designers, it's only the drawing,
00:47:42 but there's the conception, and there's a fair amount of selling.
00:47:45 Very early on, I realized the drawing is an over-
00:47:49 -emphasized.
00:47:51 -emphasized, over-celebrated part of the job,
00:47:53 where what you need to deliver is a product
00:47:55 that people actually want to use.
00:47:57 So delivering that product definitely starts off with a sketch,
00:48:00 somewhere, somehow.
00:48:02 But we spent so much effort trying to learn how to sell that drawing
00:48:07 that we forget that it's the car that we're supposed to be selling.
00:48:10 It's not the drawing.
00:48:11 So most of the education in modern design schools
00:48:14 is focused on visual communication skills.
00:48:17 It's not even called that. It's called viscom.
00:48:19 There's classes that, a D-minus that I got, that was viscom.
00:48:22 That was how to basically bullshit your way
00:48:24 into winning the presentation by not doing good design,
00:48:27 but by drawing something that is going to fool the audience
00:48:30 into believing that that's the best thing in the room.
00:48:32 -You've got to tell the Huracán story,
00:48:34 because I've been thinking about this nonstop,
00:48:36 because it's a wild story.
00:48:39 -Okay, all right.
00:48:41 -So you're at VW, you're doing Jettas.
00:48:43 -Yeah, I was working on a Jetta, and that didn't go down well
00:48:46 without going into detail of what went down,
00:48:48 but I was a bit too young for my own good,
00:48:50 and I behaved a little bit badly and got kicked off the project.
00:48:55 And I didn't just take this as a grown-up would.
00:49:00 I kind of threw a little bit of a tantrum as well,
00:49:02 said that I'm very unhappy that I'm being kicked off the project.
00:49:06 And then for a couple of years, nobody wanted to look at my work
00:49:09 because I was seen as the bad guy.
00:49:11 And then I realized that actually working on Jettas anyway
00:49:15 wasn't what I dreamed of, that wasn't very, very low
00:49:18 on my priority list, but it's just something that was--
00:49:22 the work that we did, the projects that were coming in,
00:49:24 they were all responsible VWs, and all of a sudden,
00:49:27 there was a Lamborghini Huracán interior project,
00:49:33 if I remember right, coming into our studio
00:49:35 where we were supposed to contribute just interiors.
00:49:37 I was an exterior team, so I didn't have an access to that project.
00:49:40 And anyway, my work wasn't well-received at the time
00:49:42 because I had this Jetta fiasco.
00:49:46 And I built up a couple of 3D models, just spare time, free time,
00:49:51 and I asked my boss to put them into the presentation.
00:49:55 He said something along the lines of, like,
00:49:59 "Sure, but if you're allowed, then everybody else should be allowed.
00:50:02 And if you're putting yours in, then what about the other exterior guys
00:50:05 who didn't get a chance?"
00:50:06 So then we had a weak sketch phase on the Huracán project
00:50:10 where everybody was allowed to do a couple of sketches.
00:50:13 And then I thought, "Okay, well, fair enough."
00:50:15 Now everybody has a shot, but we all put our work--
00:50:17 there was old presentation formats where we still prepared portfolios
00:50:22 with drawings, so we put those sketches into the presentation portfolio.
00:50:26 Interiors, first 30 pages; exteriors, final 10.
00:50:31 And the thing is that Walter De Silva opened the booklet
00:50:33 from the wrong side.
00:50:35 So first thing he saw wasn't those interior sketches.
00:50:37 He actually saw one of my proposals, and he really liked it.
00:50:40 The exterior of the Huracán.
00:50:42 And they reminded him.
00:50:43 They were like, "Oh, it's this guy that you like."
00:50:45 Little unknown designer named Walter De Silva.
00:50:47 He was like, "He can be forgiven."
00:50:49 And this also coincided with the fact that I worked on a quarter scale
00:50:52 for the Chiron project, and he loved that one too.
00:50:55 So then the Huracán drawing that I did, or 3D model rendering,
00:50:58 and the quarter scale clay model of the Chiron, he also liked.
00:51:02 He was like, "I forgive him. He's good."
00:51:04 So I was told that I need to find him, and he'll give me a kiss.
00:51:09 That was what was said.
00:51:10 There was no kissing involved, but he did give me a hug,
00:51:12 and he said, "You're good. Full power. Come on. Go to Italy."
00:51:17 And now I'm kind of fast-forwarding many, many months,
00:51:20 and maybe even a year, but ultimately this whole exercise
00:51:22 ended up with me being in Italy, joining the team there.
00:51:25 I have to be really, really honest with you guys.
00:51:28 I am not credited as a designer of the Huracán, and I should not be
00:51:32 because I joined the team.
00:51:34 I joined one more designer, Michele Tinazzo,
00:51:36 who was working on the project from their side, from the Italian side.
00:51:39 We were both reporting to Filippo Perini, who was the boss of Lamborghini design,
00:51:43 and it was Michele and me on the exterior.
00:51:46 My design proposal was brought in as kind of a,
00:51:49 "Look what they did in Germany. Let's do something similar to this."
00:51:52 But Michele also had his ideas.
00:51:53 So in the end, it's a synergy of Michele's work and my work on that car.
00:51:57 I would be very happy to acknowledge that the door having no air intake on the side
00:52:02 is something that I fought for from the very beginning of the project.
00:52:05 The more minimalist, reduced, and slightly more sensual surfacing on the car
00:52:10 without too many creases, without too many kind of wild angles,
00:52:15 that was also something that my original proposal had.
00:52:18 That front with these two shovels, that was also from my proposal.
00:52:21 But then it's teamwork, right?
00:52:23 The good thing about that design team, I really loved how they worked,
00:52:26 was digital, and everybody shared the files.
00:52:29 So at all times, you had access to everybody else's work.
00:52:31 You could open up and say, "Oh, Michele, I have another idea for the front.
00:52:34 Here it is." And he would be, "Oh, that's actually pretty cool.
00:52:36 Well, let's see if it works with my new rear end."
00:52:38 So there was teamwork. There was collaboration.
00:52:41 I think most people that are really into design, they understand that.
00:52:44 It's really rare that you have like Freeman Thomas,
00:52:47 who freehands an Audi TT, and they put it in a production.
00:52:50 I don't think that was exactly the case either.
00:52:53 Well, look, I'm a super modest guy,
00:52:56 because I actually came into this going like,
00:52:58 "I don't remember seeing Sascha's name anywhere on the Huracán,"
00:53:01 and he just admitted that he's not getting the credit.
00:53:04 They did release some of my sketches, which was really cool.
00:53:07 Filippo texted me, I think, a couple of years after my time in Lambo was finished,
00:53:12 and said, "Hey, we're preparing a press release for the car,
00:53:14 and there's going to be a design article.
00:53:16 Would you like to submit a couple of your drawings?"
00:53:18 And I thought that was just the best day.
00:53:20 I'm just thinking out loud, like the odds of a kid from Tbilisi
00:53:25 who saw a Ferrari in a magazine in his grandfather's basement or whatever,
00:53:30 and then is like working on the Huracán, the odds are zero.
00:53:34 No, it was incredible. I remember sitting there,
00:53:36 I remember coming down to Italy for the first time, getting to the factory,
00:53:40 and I was also like on a very, very limited budget, young designer,
00:53:43 not much money at all.
00:53:44 So all I could do is afford like a bowl of mozzarella that I bought,
00:53:47 and a little carton of red wine, and I was sitting there on the asphalt,
00:53:51 just eating the bowl of mozzarella, the milk just running down my face,
00:53:55 and drinking the red wine, and touching the ground,
00:53:57 thinking like, "Holy shit, I made it. I'm at the Mecca.
00:53:59 The greats have walked these roads. I get to do something cool."
00:54:02 That's amazing. I love that.
00:54:04 I just wanted to ask a follow-up question on that design.
00:54:07 So you didn't want to put a vent on the side of the Huracán,
00:54:12 because this is – I should know this – Aventador had already –
00:54:17 It has both the vent and the door.
00:54:19 Right. So was it –
00:54:23 Sorry, it took me a second. This coffee's not working.
00:54:26 Sean, was that a reaction to something within the Lamborghini style book?
00:54:35 Yeah. I have actually strong opinions on what Lamborghini design should be.
00:54:39 In my opinion, every one of those cars has to start as a really beautiful,
00:54:44 minimalist, clean sculpture.
00:54:46 Like the same way that LP400 kicked off the Countach era,
00:54:50 and then it sort of gets butchered and more aggressive,
00:54:54 and becomes what the posters all have on the windows.
00:54:57 Right. But you go from Aventador to SVJ, and there's a lot of stuff going on.
00:55:01 In my opinion, Aventador was already as saturated as an SVJ should have been.
00:55:05 Right.
00:55:06 So they started with a level of saturation that doesn't leave much space for upping the game.
00:55:11 And with Huracán, what I really wanted to do was just go back to this purity
00:55:15 of the original Lambos, with just one clean line that is the silhouette of the vehicle.
00:55:19 And are you talking LP400, 500? Are you talking Mira? How far back are we going?
00:55:24 I don't like the Mira. What?
00:55:26 See, this is where we get along.
00:55:28 The Mira is very pretty, but to me it's intellectually dishonest,
00:55:32 because it's a mid-engine car that looks like a front-engine car.
00:55:35 It's very beautiful, but they could have put an engine in the front.
00:55:37 I don't think it's beautiful. I really don't like it.
00:55:40 I think no car which has A-pillars wider than track can be beautiful.
00:55:46 You can't have cabin wider than your track.
00:55:48 It does look weird from certain angles, yeah.
00:55:50 It just doesn't ride on the right platform.
00:55:53 First of all, it works inside you beautifully, but in three-quarter views it just falls apart completely.
00:55:57 Side view is great, yeah.
00:55:59 GT40 Mark II does a much better Miura than Miura.
00:56:03 Yeah, yeah. Okay, so you're saying...
00:56:05 I've said this forever, that Lamborghini only exists because they happen to put the Countach in the production.
00:56:11 If the Countach had never been in production, they would have been Bisarini 2.0.
00:56:15 Nobody would have cared that they went under.
00:56:17 That company has been saved from bankruptcy like four times.
00:56:20 And because the strength of the Countach design, it's too good to fail.
00:56:27 You have to keep a company like that building cars in that model.
00:56:31 I think, again, you and the other team members captured that with the Huracan.
00:56:37 I remember the first time I saw that, what was it, Pebble Beach, maybe? In 2014?
00:56:42 I think the unveiling was probably Frankfurt.
00:56:44 But outside, sunlight, flesh, and I just couldn't...
00:56:48 It was the side, the side and the way the doors went under.
00:56:52 And I was just like, that is the most beautiful car.
00:56:55 And I was telling people, I always rank my Lamborghinis, and I was like, it's the second...
00:57:00 The Countach is first, and then it's Huracan.
00:57:02 I'm like, it's third.
00:57:04 I do have a soft spot for the Murcielago.
00:57:08 I know we don't fully agree on that, but I do like the Murcielago.
00:57:10 I like the Murcielago, but it's a Belgian Lambo.
00:57:14 Nissan headlights.
00:57:15 It's a weird-looking... It's cool. It's cool, for sure.
00:57:20 It just doesn't like... You know, Countach, Diablo.
00:57:25 Then you have this very Belgian-y looking thing, and then...
00:57:30 It's out of place.
00:57:32 I know Luke is Belgian, but I think it's more Audi DNA.
00:57:35 Yes, Audi too. I call it Belgian because it's odd.
00:57:39 Because you mentioned it, we have to talk about it.
00:57:41 You mentioned you had done the Chiron design before you had got into the Huracan.
00:57:46 Right.
00:57:47 How did you end up doing...
00:57:49 That was in a parallel universe, where things don't fully make sense.
00:57:52 Okay. So, how did you... Can you talk about how you ended up working with that?
00:57:57 Basically, in short, the design that I did, the project wasn't really...
00:58:03 It wasn't the Chiron project. It was the next generation of Veyron project at the time.
00:58:07 The company wasn't even sure they were going to make the next generation.
00:58:10 They were evaluating Galibier and other plans.
00:58:12 This quarter scale, we did it.
00:58:14 There was a bunch of other quarter scales other designers did,
00:58:17 but the program didn't really kick off.
00:58:18 It was just a trial run to see what would the next generation look like.
00:58:21 Then that project came back with a vengeance much later,
00:58:24 and I was part of that restart of the project that I was very much involved in.
00:58:29 But my original quarter scale that opened the doors for me
00:58:32 really does date back all the way to pre-Huracan times.
00:58:36 How does... What's your level of excitement when somebody says,
00:58:40 "Hey, you get to the... Can you start sketching the next generation Veyron?"
00:58:44 Are you like...
00:58:45 Completely crazy.
00:58:46 I still remember Achim Manscheid, the boss of Bugatti Design,
00:58:50 who just very recently actually... I think he's going on retirement.
00:58:54 Yeah, I interviewed him in Pebble.
00:58:56 It was his last hurrah. Cool guy.
00:58:58 Cool guy.
00:58:59 He actually called me and he's like, "I don't want you to get too excited,
00:59:02 but do you have time tonight to do a few sketches?"
00:59:04 I'm like, "Sure. What do you need me to sketch?"
00:59:06 He's like, "Next generation Veyron."
00:59:08 But yeah, do something that looks good.
00:59:10 What year is this?
00:59:11 I think like '07 or something.
00:59:13 Do you just fall on the floor?
00:59:15 Where do you even start with that?
00:59:17 Well, real quick also, that question, but also like...
00:59:21 I love everything about the Veyron except maybe the way it looks.
00:59:25 I don't like the way it looks. It's not my favorite.
00:59:27 Yeah. So are you like, "Oh, God, it's going to look like that,"
00:59:30 or are you like, "I can do better"?
00:59:32 I was very excited to do better, and I thought I could do better
00:59:35 just because some things on the Veyron that didn't work
00:59:38 were low-hanging fruit in terms of fixing it, in my mind.
00:59:42 There were some genetic things that were much harder to fix.
00:59:45 Like, for example, the fact that the transmission is in the cabin
00:59:48 and pushes the seats as far out as they are
00:59:50 and pushes the window barrels very far out,
00:59:52 doesn't allow for a shoulder really on that car.
00:59:55 So there are some architectural things that you wouldn't be able to fix
00:59:58 as a designer, especially at my level back in the day.
01:00:02 I wouldn't be able to challenge the architecture of the car back then.
01:00:05 But there were also low-hanging fruit like the dumpy expression of the face,
01:00:09 the slightly too narrow taillight position,
01:00:11 and the fact that the car kind of looked a little bit like a Christmas tree
01:00:14 that always picked up in height.
01:00:16 If you look at it from rear view, it sort of keeps growing.
01:00:19 There's never a moment when it settles itself.
01:00:21 It's not really planted.
01:00:22 But that car's got to be so hard,
01:00:24 because there's just so much plumbing and radiators and parts.
01:00:27 There's no less of that in the Chiron, if not more.
01:00:30 And it comes from a really beautiful drawing,
01:00:34 or set of drawings that Joseph Caban did, a really fantastic designer.
01:00:39 I just think that those drawings should have been less dogmatically interpreted
01:00:46 into the full-size model.
01:00:48 It was just a very dogmatic interpretation.
01:00:50 Here's the drawing. It's really beautiful.
01:00:52 It was also very Bauhaus at the time.
01:00:53 Everything had to line up. Everything was on the grid.
01:00:55 Everything was drawn with a set of very rigid designs.
01:00:59 It's very like that 2004 Piaque.
01:01:02 This is how engineers do it.
01:01:04 I really like that whole philosophy.
01:01:06 I just think that there needs to be a slightly more automotive hand executing it,
01:01:10 and then it looks great.
01:01:11 But would you say the same thing--
01:01:13 And I get it. I never thought the original Veyron was gorgeous.
01:01:17 But I also didn't really like the EB110, but I think it's cool.
01:01:21 It ages well.
01:01:23 EB110, that car still excites me.
01:01:26 I always liked it.
01:01:27 But it's kind of evocative of that moment in time, right?
01:01:31 It looks that way because of the people involved in that era.
01:01:35 Definitely.
01:01:37 Although EB110, that is one of the strangest stories in car design.
01:01:42 You know the story of that?
01:01:44 Gandini made one and they're like--
01:01:46 Everybody made one at the time.
01:01:47 Yeah, but Gandini got--
01:01:49 They built a prototype and they said, "Could you change it?"
01:01:53 And he did his typical, "The maestro has spoken," and he wouldn't change it.
01:01:56 So they literally got the architect of the building.
01:01:58 They're like, "Could you tweak this?"
01:02:00 And he came up with that.
01:02:01 It's the only car he's ever done.
01:02:03 This fantastic book, Romano Arteoli's--what was it?
01:02:07 I don't remember.
01:02:08 It's not even that big of a book, but it's a fantastic read.
01:02:11 Really interesting.
01:02:12 I'll look for it.
01:02:13 Okay, so fast forward.
01:02:14 Something like my Bugatti and Lotus nightmare or something.
01:02:16 Yeah, that poor guy.
01:02:17 But EB110.
01:02:19 So you do these sketches for Occam and then the project--what?--delayed or shelved,
01:02:26 and then you come back to it a few years later?
01:02:28 Yeah, so while I was at Lamborghini working on the Huracan,
01:02:31 there was already some whispers of the fact that the project might come back,
01:02:34 and I just rang people at Bugatti and I said, "Guys, remember that quarter-scale model
01:02:39 that everybody liked?
01:02:40 I would love to be a part of this project if I can."
01:02:42 And then Achim said, "Yeah, you know what?
01:02:44 Actually, we have a position in the team for an exterior lead,
01:02:47 and why don't you then join us and be part of Bugatti,
01:02:50 and you can continue on this project?"
01:02:52 And it comes back to life.
01:02:53 There was obviously way more thrillers and roller coasters involved.
01:02:59 So you then moved?
01:03:02 You had to move to--
01:03:03 I was moving all the time, and it was actually a pretty difficult moment for us as a family
01:03:07 because my wife, Ina, and our firstborn, Lucia, were in Berlin,
01:03:12 and I was working in Italy, so I was flying every week, Monday, 6 a.m. flight out of Berlin
01:03:17 with a connection usually in Munich or in Frankfurt and then to Bologna.
01:03:22 Wonderful airports. Wonderful airports.
01:03:24 I spent nights there.
01:03:26 It was crazy.
01:03:27 Every week for a couple of years.
01:03:29 It's so funny how Germans are the most efficient people on earth
01:03:31 except for the Frankfurt airport.
01:03:33 Or for train stations or for their trains.
01:03:36 It's so weird.
01:03:38 So, yeah, traveling a lot.
01:03:39 And then Bugatti studio was actually not far.
01:03:41 It was in Wolfsburg.
01:03:43 Oh, it's not in Molsheim?
01:03:44 No, Molsheim is the production site.
01:03:46 The development and engineering and design was happening in Wolfsburg,
01:03:49 and that's a two-and-a-half-hour drive from Berlin.
01:03:52 Autobahn. It's right there.
01:03:53 That's like the straightest part of the Autobahn.
01:03:55 It took five years, I think.
01:03:56 What were you driving?
01:03:58 A brand-new GTI every six months,
01:04:00 and I would put 80,000 kilometers on it in six months and then trade for the next.
01:04:03 How fast would you go?
01:04:05 All the time, 250.
01:04:06 Nice.
01:04:07 You should have been part of the captured--
01:04:09 Well, that's kilometers.
01:04:10 He should have been the captured test fleet for VW, like a quality engineer.
01:04:13 I remember driving from Oderstadt, Wolfsburg to Berlin,
01:04:18 and I was like, "Why don't I have a Veyron?"
01:04:20 I was in a diesel VW.
01:04:22 I've done that drive in a Veyron, too.
01:04:24 This is the most wide-open, unpopulated, four-lanes-each-direction stretch of Autobahn on the planet.
01:04:30 You've got to get that.
01:04:31 You were on a good day.
01:04:33 There's usually a lot of traffic going to and from Poland there,
01:04:36 a lot of commercial traffic, too, so you're fighting for dear life.
01:04:38 I remember I had to stop on the side of the road
01:04:41 and rub dirty snow into my face to wake up while going 250.
01:04:46 You're going 250, and you realize you're falling asleep,
01:04:49 getting off, rubbing cold snow.
01:04:51 It was the first time ever in Germany without a fast car.
01:04:55 Who knows what a diesel VW could do?
01:04:58 Very slow.
01:04:59 I've got to do this because I've been sitting on this thing this whole time.
01:05:02 When you see something like this--
01:05:05 Oh, Jesus.
01:05:06 Pull that out of my pocket.
01:05:09 For those of you listening at home, this is--
01:05:12 A gas station.
01:05:13 I texted you from this CVS because they had this.
01:05:17 This is actually quite expensive.
01:05:20 $179.
01:05:21 $179.
01:05:22 124 scale Bugatti.
01:05:23 There goes our budget for the year.
01:05:25 It's not badly made.
01:05:26 It's actually not bad.
01:05:27 The wheels are stanced nicely.
01:05:29 It's not awful.
01:05:31 When you see something like this,
01:05:33 a kid from Tbilisi, and you're blown away.
01:05:38 What was the moment when this thing--
01:05:40 Was it when it was unveiled?
01:05:41 Were you with Bugatti when it came out?
01:05:44 Yeah.
01:05:45 Okay, cool.
01:05:46 Because a lot of times designers, they move around,
01:05:49 and something they worked on that they drew--
01:05:51 Yeah, six years go by.
01:05:52 Yeah, and they're at a totally different company.
01:05:54 No, no, I was still there,
01:05:55 and we had a couple of other projects that we were working on,
01:05:58 so I was still very much vested in the company when that thing came out.
01:06:02 Vision Gran Turismo came out six months prior to the Chiron unveiling,
01:06:06 and by then Chiron was already obviously in the dry docks.
01:06:09 It was finished, so we knew that we had two very exciting unveils
01:06:12 in the next six months.
01:06:14 Another program was still very much alive and kicking.
01:06:17 It was Gallipoli.
01:06:18 No, no, it was what later on was shown as the Atlantique concept.
01:06:23 That was also an exterior that I was very heavily involved in.
01:06:28 So, no, I was with the company, and what do you feel?
01:06:31 Amazing.
01:06:32 You feel completely, like, speechless.
01:06:36 I definitely take a moment every single chance I get
01:06:42 to look back and contemplate what an amazing journey it has been.
01:06:46 I'm not someone who takes things for granted.
01:06:49 I don't just say, "Oh, oh, whatever, another project."
01:06:52 For me, every one of these moments is kind of earth-shatteringly significant,
01:06:58 and I do have trouble sleeping before and after,
01:07:00 so it's an emotional kind of high that you get, but it feels amazing.
01:07:04 And especially seeing the little toys,
01:07:07 I do think that my personal primary market is the child.
01:07:12 That's really the person I'm working for, both within and without,
01:07:17 and I think that if the kids like what you do, chances are the grown-ups
01:07:21 will also have that inner child in them somehow awakened.
01:07:24 Do your kids like what you do?
01:07:27 Do they appreciate it, or are they like, "Oh, my dad's"--
01:07:29 I don't know, because they were kind of born into it in a way.
01:07:32 So, Lucia, the older daughter, she has the, what was it,
01:07:36 A-scale Lego of this thing that she put together,
01:07:39 and she loved every bit of it, and she has it on her shelf.
01:07:43 And she is into architecture and doing a lot of 3D modeling,
01:07:46 so she's definitely picking up at least the inclination towards arts and design.
01:07:52 My younger daughter is into physics and science,
01:07:54 which is also a huge part of my kind of interests as well.
01:07:58 So they do take their hobbies from me,
01:08:00 but I don't think that they realize what an exceptional--
01:08:05 They're not car guys, right?
01:08:07 Christian Koenigsegg coming over for dinner doesn't shock them.
01:08:10 They're not like, "Oh, my God, we can't believe this guy is over for dinner."
01:08:13 They're like, "Oh, Christian's coming over, okay."
01:08:15 So that was our time at Koenigsegg.
01:08:17 They weren't shocked that we had Christian and Haldor over for dinner.
01:08:19 They were invited over to their place frequently.
01:08:22 For them, it was just this family that we know in Sweden
01:08:27 that sometimes we have dinner with.
01:08:29 Right, right, right.
01:08:31 It's funny, though, what you said about the child,
01:08:33 because you know Mieczysław Burkert.
01:08:37 I've known him since Porsche days,
01:08:40 and he's the head of design at Lamborghini now.
01:08:42 But I remember when he got the job, I ran into him,
01:08:45 and I'm like, "Look."
01:08:46 I go, "Whatever you do for the next V12,"
01:08:48 because the Aventador at that point was a couple years old.
01:08:51 But I'm like, "All that matters is if a 12-year-old looks at it,
01:08:55 they have to jump in the air, scream, and spin in a circle.
01:08:58 That's all that actually matters."
01:09:00 100%.
01:09:01 And he was like, "Okay, okay."
01:09:02 The problem that I see today is that Cybertruck does more of that
01:09:05 than Lamborghini.
01:09:06 It does.
01:09:07 And this is where I feel like lost opportunity, guys.
01:09:09 Flat glass on Lamborghini, flat panels.
01:09:11 Come on.
01:09:12 Do an 8-bit Lamborghini.
01:09:15 No, you're absolutely right.
01:09:17 It is a showstopper, and that's what Lamborghinis did.
01:09:20 They stopped you.
01:09:23 I remember--I was just writing about it the other day--
01:09:25 the first time I saw the last-gen Maserati GranTurismo in traffic,
01:09:30 it was like this beautiful thing and a bunch of refrigerators
01:09:35 whizzing by around it, like washing machines and dryers,
01:09:38 and there was this thing.
01:09:40 And, yeah, it was whatever it was as a car, but, I mean, God,
01:09:43 it was beautiful.
01:09:44 Or I remember seeing a DB9 in traffic from the back.
01:09:47 Yeah, this thing is stunning.
01:09:49 The surfacing on that, the rear three-quarter,
01:09:51 might be the best ever.
01:09:53 It's just Ian Callum at his full powers.
01:09:57 And, yeah, it's the 12-year-old in me that gets excited about this stuff.
01:10:02 And so transition from 12-year-old stuff to 12-year-old stuff.
01:10:05 Koenigsegg, we've got to touch on it.
01:10:07 You did a--but before you jump to Koenigsegg, you did an interlude--
01:10:11 I do these great transitions in this game.
01:10:13 I'll pull you back.
01:10:14 You did an interlude to Genesis, right?
01:10:16 Okay, and you worked--I remember it was the New York Auto Show debut.
01:10:20 -Essentia. -Essentia, yeah.
01:10:21 How long were you there?
01:10:23 Just under three years.
01:10:25 That didn't entail you going to Korea.
01:10:27 Were you working on Korea?
01:10:29 Well, the original plan was that we would move to Korea,
01:10:32 but then they ended up offering me a job in Germany
01:10:35 and my wife a job in Germany too,
01:10:37 so we had two jobs that were offered to us in Korea,
01:10:39 but we said we weren't ready for family reasons,
01:10:41 relocating our kids, kindergartens and schools and all.
01:10:44 So they offered us jobs in Germany,
01:10:46 but it was such a high mobility and travel-intensive job
01:10:52 that I was in Korea.
01:10:54 One year I counted something over 30 times in one year.
01:10:58 I think over the three years, probably 50, 70 times in Korea,
01:11:03 like every other week on average, Korea, Korea, Korea.
01:11:05 Are you a million-miler? Do you have million-mile status?
01:11:07 I had every kind of status at that point in time.
01:11:10 I haven't kept up. I don't even know.
01:11:12 Maybe some of those still exist, those points,
01:11:14 but I just don't know.
01:11:15 Wow. So you're done with flying, it sounds like.
01:11:18 And that was Sangyeop or who?
01:11:24 Luke. Luke Donkerwolke.
01:11:26 Sangyeop, of course, I also worked a lot with him,
01:11:28 but the primary contact was Luke.
01:11:30 When I was leaving VW, we were in touch,
01:11:34 and he said, "Why don't you come to Korea?
01:11:36 I'll show you what we're up to," and was very impressive, obviously.
01:11:39 A huge industrial powerhouse, just a monster of a company.
01:11:43 With designers given a lot of freedom.
01:11:46 A lot of freedom to be world-class.
01:11:49 Because there's-- look, you can hire anybody,
01:11:52 but if you handcuff them, they're handcuffed.
01:11:55 I always think of it this way.
01:11:57 If you have a beautiful growing flower out in the garden,
01:12:00 you just take it and put it in a dumpster,
01:12:02 and you're surprised it doesn't grow anymore.
01:12:04 Well, it's not the flower, it's the rest of the environment.
01:12:08 It was good times, three years, but to be honest,
01:12:12 I always had a sports car itch.
01:12:15 I can do other stuff too, and I'm happy to do it
01:12:18 if there's a sports car on the menu somewhere,
01:12:20 at least down the line or within my grasp.
01:12:24 We did the Ascensia, I was very, very happy.
01:12:27 The team I put together, I think we did a really nice job on that car.
01:12:30 Gorgeous car.
01:12:31 Well-received. Thank you.
01:12:33 And then I was really excited to put that into a production program,
01:12:38 and somehow I wasn't seeing that coming together,
01:12:41 and just the feeling that I'm very wary of time in general.
01:12:47 I'm under pressure, kind of self-imposed pressure,
01:12:51 that says if you don't think something's working out,
01:12:54 then you just better do what your heart tells you in sports cars.
01:12:57 I was in touch with Christian for many, many years,
01:13:00 starting with my ArtCenter times.
01:13:01 The first email between us, I sent him '03 or something like that.
01:13:05 Okay. So let me transition to Koningsgade.
01:13:08 What did you think of the CCX, the first Koningsgade?
01:13:12 Yeah, what was Koningsgade doing in 2003?
01:13:14 The CCX?
01:13:15 No, CC8. CC8S.
01:13:17 Sorry.
01:13:18 CC8S, which actually I really liked.
01:13:20 Later on, I met all the people who worked on it,
01:13:24 and actually some of them I met at Bugatti, this clay modeler, Ian.
01:13:27 He worked at Bugatti, and I talked to him a lot about Koningsgade,
01:13:30 and I liked the car.
01:13:32 I thought it had a lot of original DNA
01:13:36 that wasn't from other car makers.
01:13:38 Well said. Yeah, yeah.
01:13:40 I do know where some of these themes come from.
01:13:42 917, this and that, GT40 Ford.
01:13:46 But it's also through such a strong Scandinavian prism.
01:13:50 I was going to say, I see so much like--
01:13:53 It's going to sound crazy, but like Saab 9-6.
01:13:56 Right, it's like a Saab 9-4.
01:13:58 You know what I mean? Like the old, just kind of--
01:14:00 But for example, that front shoulder,
01:14:02 the way it kind of moves into the headlight area
01:14:04 and into the front bumper, that's a GT40 corner, basically.
01:14:06 I've built that corner many times,
01:14:08 and I always look at GT40 for the way that's constructed.
01:14:12 Cabin, this kind of teardrop cabin with a wraparound
01:14:15 has a little bit of 917 genes to it as well.
01:14:18 Christian very openly talks about the original set of influences,
01:14:22 but the key is when there's such strong character
01:14:25 in the team and the designer--
01:14:28 and I would say Christian is the designer of that car, in my mind--
01:14:31 it gets all these inspirations,
01:14:34 get interpreted through such a powerful, unique mind
01:14:38 that they end up being something else when they come out.
01:14:41 You can't just say, "Well, that's a GT40 corner."
01:14:43 It is a mechanic's egg, and it's whole and it's complete.
01:14:47 So when you got there, the first car you--
01:14:50 You were working on the 4-seater was the first one?
01:14:52 The Jamera and the CC850, yeah.
01:14:55 So the CC850 is the one that has the wacky transmission
01:14:58 that can be manual or automatic? Yes.
01:15:01 So what's it like when Christian says,
01:15:04 "Hey, we're going to do a 4-seater." What is your mind?
01:15:07 That was a really crazy story. That was a nuts story.
01:15:10 Because that's a wild car. It's wilder than you think.
01:15:13 So what happened was I met him in Geneva.
01:15:16 We met a few times, but that one particular Geneva Motor Show
01:15:19 when I said, "Look, I'm actually going to be leaving Genesis.
01:15:22 I don't think it's the right gig for me."
01:15:24 And he said, "Oh, it's funny you should mention
01:15:26 because we are working on a very exciting project,
01:15:28 and we might actually just need your help.
01:15:30 So why don't you come to Engelholm and check out what we're working on?"
01:15:33 So I went to Engelholm, and he presented these technical drawings
01:15:36 of the 4-seat car, and I had this insane deja vu moment
01:15:39 which happened to me every once in a while,
01:15:41 and I'm always thinking, "Ah, it's going to pass. That's going to pass."
01:15:44 But it wouldn't pass, so I came home after the trip.
01:15:46 I was really impressed, blown away.
01:15:48 The facilities, the team, the motivation, the spirit.
01:15:51 It's really like a skunk works-- And the innovation.
01:15:54 The innovation is awesome.
01:15:56 I went home, I thought, "I've seen this technical drawing somewhere."
01:15:59 I couldn't have-- Did he release it on the internet? What happened?
01:16:02 And then I found an old hard drive, 2007, April date, save date,
01:16:06 a drawing that I did, a technical drawing
01:16:08 made out of road and track package drawings that they used to publish.
01:16:11 Remember those? I had made a 4-seat Koenigsegg with mid-engine,
01:16:14 4-wheel drive, 4 seats, Koenigsegg wheels and all of that,
01:16:17 and I screenshotted the save date and the picture of what I had drawn
01:16:21 and I sent it to Krishna. I was like, "What?"
01:16:23 - 2007. - This is wild.
01:16:25 And he's like, "Dude, I actually came up with the idea of building that car
01:16:28 that time."
01:16:30 And it's funny, you always hear the term, "the collective unconscious,"
01:16:33 but it's--
01:16:35 Can we rewind if you publish that drawing?
01:16:37 I can find it for you guys, for sure.
01:16:39 Sorry, when you mean technical drawing, literally, was it plan view?
01:16:42 No, it was a side view cut-through where you see the occupants,
01:16:46 the way they're packaged, you see the drivetrain,
01:16:48 you see the 4-wheel drive, and what gives it away
01:16:50 is that it has CCX wheels with Koenigsegg logos in them.
01:16:53 And now did Krishna show you a save, like a side view?
01:16:56 Krishna showed me also a side view which was very similar,
01:16:58 and he was like, "Okay, this is destined, it's meant to be,
01:17:01 you have to-- let's do this."
01:17:03 - Was yours a 2-door? - There was no doors.
01:17:05 In my drawings, it was just the 4-seat side view, mid-engine, very clear.
01:17:09 And he was convinced that the Camaro needed to be a 2-door?
01:17:13 - Yes. - Okay.
01:17:15 Yes, very much.
01:17:17 Why not-- if you're going to have 4 seats, why not do 4 doors?
01:17:20 I can explain it from a few different angles.
01:17:24 First angle would be to say 2 doors is always more exotic
01:17:27 and more hypercar-like.
01:17:29 Second, they have a really cool door, and it's just very tempting
01:17:32 to try that door on the bigger scale.
01:17:34 I think it's very, very tempting.
01:17:36 Another point, no B-pillar.
01:17:38 Very easily, you eliminate the B-pillar.
01:17:40 You could also do the RX-8 trick where the B-pillar is on the front door,
01:17:43 on the rear door, and you kind of lock it into place,
01:17:45 but no B-pillar.
01:17:47 And I think-- what was another point I had in mind?
01:17:50 Yeah, the whole factor, just the wow.
01:17:54 Did you come up with the name, the code name, the Tiny Friendly Giant?
01:17:58 No, no, no, that's Christian.
01:18:00 Is that also-- is that your first production hybrid car that you worked on?
01:18:07 Essential was a concept-- - Essential was electric.
01:18:10 Electric concept, but is this your first--
01:18:12 We have to talk about the E and the V and inevitable.
01:18:15 He's got a great take on this, because at our center,
01:18:18 he gave a lecture, and it was very cool.
01:18:20 But is this the first time you were working on something
01:18:22 other than a pure internal combustion engine vehicle?
01:18:25 No, it maybe was the first time that something that I worked on
01:18:27 actually made it to the show stand, but obviously,
01:18:31 the ratio of success to failure is something like 95 failure, 5 success.
01:18:37 So for every 5 cars that every designer's career
01:18:41 ends up bringing, there's 95 that just never materialized.
01:18:45 So what is your take on-- I don't know if you want to diverge--
01:18:49 Oh, no, I was just-- yeah, look, you can say it,
01:18:52 but it was lockstep in line with my take on EVs.
01:18:57 And if I may paraphrase, you were talking to all the ArtCenter people,
01:19:01 and you said, "Look, for 99% of cars, they should be EVs,
01:19:05 but for the exotic stuff, it doesn't make--
01:19:09 you want to have a big V12, naturally that's pretty V12."
01:19:12 I think so.
01:19:13 Right?
01:19:14 Yeah, that really sums it up.
01:19:16 First of all, I think that there's a bit too much emphasis
01:19:18 placed on the drivetrain as a defining parameter of what a vehicle is.
01:19:23 In my mind, whether an iPhone has an LCD or a TFT or an OLED
01:19:27 or a mini LED or whatever, that's nerd speak.
01:19:30 The fact of the matter is it's iPhone, and it does things
01:19:32 that iPhones should do, and that's what the customer sees,
01:19:35 and that's what they appreciate.
01:19:36 So in my mind, the idea that EVs are somehow a marketable entity
01:19:41 is not very relevant.
01:19:42 I want to talk about what the car can do.
01:19:44 What kind of unique features does it offer?
01:19:46 What are the new safety innovations?
01:19:48 What are the use cases?
01:19:50 What could you do with it that you couldn't do with the previous one?
01:19:53 And if it has, as part of its innovations, zero emission, that's great.
01:19:58 Whether it's achieved through EV or whether it's achieved through biofuel
01:20:01 or whether it's achieved--I don't know.
01:20:03 I'm not a scientist, but there's got to be other ways of doing it.
01:20:05 The zero emissions is an attractive component of it.
01:20:10 Another point is people really think that electric drivetrain opens up
01:20:14 new horizons for designers and for engineers.
01:20:18 I don't think so.
01:20:19 I think internal combustion engine is so downsized these days, so compact.
01:20:23 Most of the time we're really only talking about maybe 20, 30 liters
01:20:27 of frunk space.
01:20:28 Who uses that?
01:20:29 Nobody really uses that.
01:20:31 But the fundamentals of car packaging and layout have to do with
01:20:34 crumple zones in the front, have to do with overall vehicle mass
01:20:37 and how much safety you want to provide here, there, everywhere,
01:20:40 vision angles, homologation.
01:20:42 There's so much that goes into it.
01:20:44 So if you just say, "Here, we've swapped out ICE for EV.
01:20:47 It's a brave new world," it isn't.
01:20:48 The car is still predominantly the same.
01:20:50 But what about the skateboard chassis, the lack--you don't need a
01:20:53 transmission tunnel, batteries in the floor, all the mass is going to be
01:20:56 low down.
01:20:57 I mean all this stuff seems to favor supercars.
01:20:59 Front-wheel drive vehicles also don't have tunnels in the floor or don't
01:21:02 need to have a tunnel in the floor because you're just doing all your
01:21:05 business in the front end.
01:21:07 For hypercars or for sports cars, okay, low center of gravity is
01:21:10 definitely a good thing.
01:21:11 But I'm going to try to make a point here that outright performance isn't
01:21:15 a differentiator anymore for hypercars.
01:21:17 That isn't what--up until very recently it was, and bragging rights came
01:21:21 from numbers, and you could say, "Well, I could do this corner with,
01:21:24 I don't know, this many Gs and then pull that."
01:21:26 - And the Pininfarina Battista and the Rimans showed up and it's like--
01:21:29 - The Plaid.
01:21:30 - No, I don't think those cars really.
01:21:31 I'm thinking Plaid.
01:21:32 I'm really thinking Plaid really.
01:21:34 - You guys got to drive that Battista though because it's like--
01:21:37 - But so few--
01:21:38 - Accessibility.
01:21:39 - I'll tell you, you know, honestly, the thing that recently, like literally
01:21:43 last week, no, earlier this week, the latest Taycan was released.
01:21:48 I read the numbers and I'm like, "Cool."
01:21:50 All the comments on Motor Trend, Instagram was like,
01:21:53 "Plaid still kicks its butt in several areas."
01:21:57 And it's like, it's hard to argue that.
01:22:00 - Yeah, well, trust me, there's something coming from Porsche that's going to--
01:22:03 - Sure.
01:22:04 - Yeah, yeah, yeah.
01:22:05 - No doubt.
01:22:06 - It's going to slaughter.
01:22:07 - No doubt.
01:22:08 But just the level of excitement for me, I'm not speaking for everyone,
01:22:09 for me is finished.
01:22:10 I'm not excited about another tenth of a second shaved off from your 0 to 60.
01:22:14 - Really?
01:22:15 Because I still am.
01:22:16 Like, I, I, like, like, I mean, again, you know, when I became conscious
01:22:21 of 0 to 60, it was like, you know, a Mustang at the time could do 0 to 60
01:22:26 in 12 seconds.
01:22:27 There was this thing called a Shelby--
01:22:30 - Quarter mile in 12 seconds.
01:22:31 - No, no, no, no.
01:22:32 - Oh, 0 to 60.
01:22:33 - No, 0 to 60 in 12 seconds.
01:22:34 There was a thing called a Shelby Cobra and car driver got it to 60
01:22:37 in four seconds.
01:22:38 - Whoa.
01:22:39 - Four seconds, right?
01:22:40 It was probably didn't, but you know what, I care, Shelby.
01:22:43 And then there was this Porsche 959.
01:22:48 It was 3.6 seconds.
01:22:50 And that stayed until the GTR showed up in 2008.
01:22:55 - Which I proudly owned.
01:22:56 - Owned.
01:22:57 - Yeah.
01:22:58 - For many years.
01:22:59 - You owned that in Europe?
01:23:00 - Yeah.
01:23:01 - And you were driving it around?
01:23:02 - Awesome.
01:23:03 - Every day, taking kids to school, doing 300 kilometers per hour on the way
01:23:04 to school.
01:23:05 Almost every day.
01:23:06 - Dad of the year.
01:23:07 - And you were working at VW Group at that time?
01:23:09 - That was Genesis Times and Koenigsegg.
01:23:11 - Nice.
01:23:12 - And then I still think it's, I love it.
01:23:14 Like, I love the, like, go faster.
01:23:16 It's so cool.
01:23:17 Like, I don't know.
01:23:18 I think it's great.
01:23:19 - I don't know, man, because, like, then again, maybe I'm just incredibly
01:23:23 fortunate and probably spoiled.
01:23:25 My sensory palate is saturated with outright performance to a point where
01:23:30 there are points where it's not even enjoyable anymore, where you feel like,
01:23:34 no, no, but let's say you are doing two Gs in the corner, manageable.
01:23:39 Two and a half, three.
01:23:41 - Yeah, your ribs hurt.
01:23:42 - Four, four and a half.
01:23:43 I mean, when Adrian Newey says mere mortals can do lap times of a Formula
01:23:47 One, can they really?
01:23:49 And the enjoyable aspect of it is what I'm questioning, not whether it's
01:23:52 possible to sit in a vehicle that corners that fast.
01:23:55 It is possible, but would you like that on repeat?
01:23:57 Would you do that every weekend?
01:23:59 - We had Miles Nirenberger here, and I asked him, like, that whole thing,
01:24:03 the Valkyrie sounds awful.
01:24:05 - Valkyrie's a rough ride, man.
01:24:07 I've driven that.
01:24:08 - You need a pair of those.
01:24:09 - It does not sound pleasurable.
01:24:10 - No, but it's, everything about it is rough.
01:24:12 But, like, I don't know.
01:24:13 I drove that Batista, 1,900 horsepower, right?
01:24:16 And my takeaway was, like, that's the right amount of horsepower.
01:24:20 This whole time, I thought it was 1,580 in the Chiron, you know, speed.
01:24:25 Nope, it's 1,900.
01:24:26 That's the amount of horsepower I want.
01:24:28 Like, I loved it.
01:24:29 - I think what you paraphrased him saying in terms of every luxury exotic should
01:24:36 have, like, this, sorry, hypercar should have a V12, I think it actually is,
01:24:40 it's the flex in the other direction.
01:24:42 You can, you'll be able to go, you'll be able to go fast, you'll be able to go
01:24:48 faster, quieter, instantaneously in an EV.
01:24:52 But the real flex in having a V12 is that that V12, that, it's likely have to be
01:24:57 handmade, and it's going to be, like, 10 times as many parts in that car just to
01:25:02 get that thing to go, yeah, to go maybe 70% as fast as this EV you can get off
01:25:08 the shelf.
01:25:09 - It's like Gordon Murray's car, right?
01:25:11 He's just like, "Okay, who cares about anything?
01:25:13 We're going to, the stuff I like is high revving, manual, 12-cylinder."
01:25:18 - So, in general, the development of hypercar for the longest time was tied
01:25:23 with the status quo in technology, and it's, at least we should agree on the fact
01:25:27 that it's finally become untangled.
01:25:28 The development in technology doesn't necessarily facilitate better hypercars
01:25:32 anymore.
01:25:33 Because the development of technology means going the direction of a quartz
01:25:37 watch and a smartwatch, but the customer and us as fans, we still appreciate the
01:25:42 beauty of the mechanical, right?
01:25:43 So, we want to see the mechanism, we want to talk about what's cool about it.
01:25:48 And all of a sudden, yeah, the timekeeping is so much better with all these other
01:25:51 things, but who cares, right?
01:25:53 So, that's the fork in the road where hypercar development is now a separate
01:25:58 subject, not necessarily tied in with what's possible technologically.
01:26:01 - So, then, what makes…
01:26:02 - By the way, I bet you that's the social clip that they pull for this.
01:26:06 - Nah, that's too nuanced.
01:26:09 - What… trust me, it'll be like…
01:26:12 - Say something more provocative.
01:26:14 - A poop joke or something.
01:26:16 What then defines a good hypercar?
01:26:19 - Holy shit factor.
01:26:21 - But just design?
01:26:22 - No, experience on all levels.
01:26:25 - But here's… okay, so here's my take on that.
01:26:28 Is that I've… James, forgive me, but I was riding around with my buddy, he's got
01:26:35 a Diablo SV, a Monterrey edition, just the greatest.
01:26:39 Like, I love it, I'm driving it.
01:26:41 And, you know, driving, in my mind, I'm at 5/10, so I'm going to go up to about
01:26:46 7/10, and we get to about 5 grand, and he's like, "Whoa, slow it down, whoa!"
01:26:51 And I'm like, "Hell, I never drive it that fast."
01:26:54 So, and I've seen this happen.
01:26:56 Another time, I was in a C6 ZR1, you know, 638 horsepower, and I just started
01:27:02 a motor trend, and my buddy was like, "Dude, you've got to let me drive it."
01:27:05 This guy I grew up with, we're in Camarillo.
01:27:07 All right, out on a farm road, and like, "3000, shift, 3000, shift."
01:27:12 And I'm like, "No one even drives these things."
01:27:16 You know what I mean?
01:27:17 And these are guys that own them, and my buddy had a lot of… he had a GTR,
01:27:23 he had a GNX, he had all these big, you know, heavy metal cars.
01:27:27 So, like, if it's not at right performance, like, the, you know, I don't know.
01:27:37 I guess I'm struggling with, like, well, then what's a hypercar?
01:27:40 That's why I like the Chiron, because it pushes the envelope
01:27:44 in terms of performance.
01:27:46 I think pushing of the envelope in terms of performance is, again,
01:27:50 speaking just for myself, is finished.
01:27:52 Because the next time the new production car land speed record gets passed
01:27:57 on to a new contender, it's going to be over 500 kilometers,
01:28:01 it's going to be over 300 miles.
01:28:03 It's probably going to be on a public road.
01:28:05 If you want to do it the right way, you drive both directions.
01:28:08 If there's a wild animal or a rock, it's just dangerous.
01:28:12 And actually, even the test drivers who have driven that fast,
01:28:15 and I've spoken to all of them or many of them, and they say it's utterly unpleasant.
01:28:19 I don't want to do this again.
01:28:21 Great bragging rights, but really I don't want to be in this anymore.
01:28:24 I've never gone close to 300, but I went 245 in one of those.
01:28:28 Miles or kilometers?
01:28:29 Miles an hour, 245 miles an hour, so 396 kilometers an hour.
01:28:34 And I don't think I'd do it again.
01:28:37 I don't think I would.
01:28:38 On a public road?
01:28:39 No, no, on a runway.
01:28:40 But it was like, they were like, hey, man, there's, like, you know,
01:28:42 there's alligators, so if you see an alligator, like, try and don't hit it.
01:28:46 And if, you know, by the way, keep your visor down,
01:28:48 because if a bird comes through at 200 miles an hour, it'll kill you.
01:28:52 I think what you're saying, when you say there's hypercars,
01:28:54 it'll be like the ocean factor, is that it's, to your point,
01:28:59 no one's going to actually do any of that.
01:29:02 But they want the car that represents that.
01:29:04 I think you would do it.
01:29:05 No, no, it's this kind of rarefied, extremely delicious experience
01:29:11 on all sensory levels that starts with what you see in front of you
01:29:15 and that transitions into being inside the vehicle and the haptic
01:29:18 and just the whole experience and then finally starting the engine
01:29:22 and hearing the note and getting out of the car again
01:29:25 to see how the exhaust actually sounds, getting back in, engaging first gear.
01:29:29 There is a theater, there is romance in that,
01:29:31 and there is an experience that is not every day.
01:29:33 You don't just get out of your house and pop open a bottle of Villette
01:29:38 and drink it out of the bottle.
01:29:40 Maybe some of us do.
01:29:41 Oh, we did that.
01:29:42 [laughter]
01:29:45 We should have recorded that.
01:29:46 That would have been a much better podcast.
01:29:48 Hey, hey, hey, this one's pretty good.
01:29:49 Well, no, but that was--
01:29:51 And you're absolutely right.
01:29:52 And again, because that's why back to the 99% of cars probably should be EVs
01:29:58 because nobody with a RAV4 is going for the theater.
01:30:02 They're trying to get to work.
01:30:03 That's way too much ceremony for just your mundane,
01:30:06 like I need to get my kids to school.
01:30:07 Well, okay, so on that, and I want to--I appreciate all of this.
01:30:12 What's interesting to me is, again, we started the conversation about how
01:30:15 you're arguably--you're still quite young in the industry,
01:30:20 and you've had all this experience, and you started as one in this digital--
01:30:23 the first digital class of automotive design.
01:30:27 You have a company now, Hardline 27, right?
01:30:30 And that's--we know where the 27 comes from.
01:30:32 Hardline, does that bear some explanation?
01:30:35 Yeah, sure.
01:30:36 I mean, I've just--people always think of--people always talk about thinking
01:30:39 outside the box and, you know, doing things that challenge you,
01:30:44 take you to places you've never been.
01:30:48 I kind of believe in the opposite.
01:30:51 I actually think you should think inside the box.
01:30:53 You're so Russian.
01:30:54 You're so Russian.
01:30:55 It's fantastic.
01:30:56 Like, instead of being an amateur, the hundred things, be really good at,
01:30:59 like, you know, the five things that you're good at.
01:31:01 I love it.
01:31:02 I love it.
01:31:03 That's the hard line?
01:31:04 That's the hard line.
01:31:05 Just stay within the line.
01:31:07 Yeah, yeah, yeah.
01:31:08 Interesting.
01:31:09 Okay.
01:31:10 That's great.
01:31:11 So there's also another aspect to it.
01:31:12 I do think that showing too much flexibility sometimes borders on prostitution.
01:31:18 And there are some lines, right, in the sand or whatever else that you just don't cross.
01:31:24 Like, for me, purity is one of them.
01:31:26 Like, I love working on projects that have purity as the goal.
01:31:29 And this purity can be defined in every which way.
01:31:31 There's so many ways to define purity.
01:31:33 I don't like crocodiles with zebras' torso and, you know, rollerblades.
01:31:39 You can do it.
01:31:40 That's outside the box.
01:31:42 Just because you can doesn't mean you should.
01:31:44 So then -- okay, so this is great because it's very consistent with your sort of track record.
01:31:49 Outside of the earliest days at Volkswagen where you worked on cars like the Jetta,
01:31:52 you've been very focused on supercar, hypercar.
01:31:55 I have to interrupt you.
01:31:57 That's not at all actually what I meant.
01:31:59 I think working on Jetta is just fine and working on the next tech company's road car endeavor is an amazing opportunity.
01:32:06 I really believe those things.
01:32:08 It's just the purity of the project that I'm talking about.
01:32:10 I'm in a minivan.
01:32:11 Like, original Renault Espace is an amazing project to have been a part of.
01:32:16 And original Golf is a brilliant project to have been a part of.
01:32:20 They rank as high on my list of favorites as any hypercar would.
01:32:24 And the only reason I like hypercars today is because it feels to me that a lot of the purity can still be had in that realm, in that segment.
01:32:31 And mainstream car industry, they basically make the same car over and over and over again.
01:32:35 Even if you just look at -- if you just take apart a vehicle and lay it out in front of you, they're all exactly the same.
01:32:40 Right.
01:32:41 Okay, good, because I was concerned for you because I feel like if you're starting your own design consultancy
01:32:46 and you're only going to be limiting to hypercar, supercar --
01:32:50 No.
01:32:51 -- there's a lot of other opportunities you or a man of your talents could be focused on.
01:32:55 I'm perfectly excited about all of them, honestly.
01:32:57 It's just doing them the right way.
01:32:59 Great.
01:33:00 Then can we transition to China?
01:33:03 Because I keep hearing about how China is coming for everybody in automotive, right?
01:33:10 And I follow all these guys on Instagram and these cars -- and I know this feels like a very dated --
01:33:16 China went through this whole copycat phase, but a lot of this stuff looks very derivative,
01:33:21 but also super over-styled.
01:33:24 I've seen these cars now that have -- it's got kind of a Land Rover vibe to it,
01:33:28 and then the inside, but it's got crystal -- I saw this one, the Yang -- the Yang Wang.
01:33:33 It's from BYD.
01:33:35 It's their luxury division, this SUV.
01:33:37 And it really did have either the new Santa Fe, saying it's baby with the H kind of lights on it,
01:33:43 but the inside had, like, BMW crystal knobs and then, like, quilted leather.
01:33:48 Know the market.
01:33:49 That speaks as luxury.
01:33:51 What's your take on -- A, is China out there going to eat our lunch?
01:33:55 Like, we all screwed.
01:33:56 We've heard this from, like, CEO for Jim Farley, like, China doesn't need --
01:33:59 I think Elon Musk said something along the same lines the other day.
01:34:02 Elon said the same thing.
01:34:03 Does not need -- does not need any of the brands.
01:34:06 Their home market is -- first of all, it's huge, and they're coming real fast with a lot of products
01:34:11 from brands you've never heard of.
01:34:13 Do you have -- and then what's your take on the vehicles that you maybe have seen?
01:34:19 Yeah, so it's a little bit similar to the Cybertrucks.
01:34:22 I'm not quick to bash things when they come out.
01:34:25 You know, like, when people used to make fun of Korean car industry for the longest time.
01:34:29 There's still videos of that on YouTube.
01:34:31 People still say, "Oh, it looks like a Kia," as if that's derisive.
01:34:34 It's like, "Wow, really? That's great."
01:34:36 Nice compliment.
01:34:37 Look at that EV9, yeah.
01:34:38 So I'm not -- like, even -- I do understand that to arrive at a mature design philosophy
01:34:43 when you're starting from zero, it's a pretty wild process, right?
01:34:47 I know some of the stories of how Hyundai, you know, started out and how they ended up where they are now.
01:34:52 It's a long process.
01:34:53 So a little bit of mimicry, a little bit of borrowing, that's just fine.
01:34:57 Everybody's done that.
01:34:58 I mean, I don't necessarily think that there's anything, you know, wrong with it at all.
01:35:06 And now they're maturing, so there's also slightly -- there's this Chinese almost minimalism that they're playing with now.
01:35:15 Brutalist notes in it, too.
01:35:17 Very almost Scandinavian in some way, but not.
01:35:21 So there's something unique that is starting to emerge, and I'm really excited about where this is going.
01:35:25 There's an aesthetic, you know.
01:35:26 They are -- they look like, you know --
01:35:30 GAC is at the forefront of it, in my opinion.
01:35:34 Their concepts, the car culture concept, which was done, obviously, with some help from European designers,
01:35:39 but it has a very unique design philosophy in GAC.
01:35:42 That stark, minimalist look, you can also see it in Polestar as well.
01:35:46 Not a Chinese company, but some Chinese connections there as well.
01:35:49 Yeah, yeah, yeah.
01:35:50 Yeah.
01:35:51 No, but you're absolutely right that, like, they've matured very quickly, like, three or four years ago,
01:35:56 and then this -- and their generations happen quick.
01:36:00 And the current crop of Chinese cars, like, boy, they look as premium as anything we're getting here.
01:36:06 I mean, I'd be hard-pressed to say which is a more competent design organization,
01:36:12 one of the big German brands right now or a Chinese manufacturer.
01:36:15 Really?
01:36:16 Well, that could --
01:36:17 Looking at the product that the German car companies are putting out,
01:36:20 I don't necessarily feel more inspired than I would by looking at a Chinese.
01:36:23 Yeah, it's funny you say that, because you look at, like, you know, Audi's sort of, like, paddling water.
01:36:29 Mercedes is sort of, I don't know, scattered.
01:36:32 BMW is, like, I don't know, I mean, they're off the reservation in terms of design.
01:36:36 I hear that that's changing.
01:36:38 I hear, like --
01:36:39 Neue Klasse?
01:36:40 Well, yeah, Neue Klasse is good, but I hear that there's a facelift coming for, like, the i7 and a couple of things.
01:36:45 You won't even recognize it.
01:36:46 It's a radical facelift.
01:36:48 But it's an interesting observation, though.
01:36:51 Have you -- a guy with your credentials must have been approached to work on --
01:36:55 have you done any Chinese, like, products?
01:36:57 Within Hardline 27, we did have a few Chinese clients, and we've had a great working relationship.
01:37:02 I have nothing to complain about.
01:37:04 And I've been repeatedly approached to relocate, move to China, do something great, amazing packages on offer.
01:37:13 I wasn't tempted.
01:37:14 Not yet.
01:37:15 I mean, I am a father of two kids.
01:37:17 We have a family, and we did a lot of traveling that is inspired by my kind of career dreams
01:37:26 and working for CanXec was one of the most recent travel kind of --
01:37:31 How many languages -- how many languages do your kids speak?
01:37:35 Russian, English, German, and they understand Swedish.
01:37:39 How about you?
01:37:40 Russian, English, and German.
01:37:43 No Italian?
01:37:44 Italian I understand just because of how much time I spent there.
01:37:47 And when I lived there or when I worked there, I was forced to speak it often enough with --
01:37:54 I had a lot of engineering meetings, or I had enough to get by, but I don't think I could do that right now.
01:37:59 Right, right, right, right.
01:38:00 And you're, like, in Manhattan Beach?
01:38:02 Yeah.
01:38:03 Yeah.
01:38:04 Oh, nice.
01:38:05 You're not leaving Manhattan.
01:38:06 Why would you leave?
01:38:07 It's difficult to leave.
01:38:08 But I think -- I don't know.
01:38:10 Let's see.
01:38:11 I always get bored.
01:38:12 Okay.
01:38:13 Fair enough.
01:38:14 Tell me about driving a GTR while working for Genesis in Europe.
01:38:18 Because I remember that popped up.
01:38:20 I think I read an interview.
01:38:22 I kind of asked you about it.
01:38:24 You were just -- you love that car.
01:38:26 You're doing that because it was new at the time, right?
01:38:29 No.
01:38:30 Not that new.
01:38:31 So when it was new, my group of friends at VW and myself included, we were all in love with it.
01:38:37 The show car came out.
01:38:38 It was this pretty cool seven-spoke or nine-spoke, really beautiful wheels on that.
01:38:43 Just the car looked amazing, and it had so much of the spirit of, on the one hand, R34 and R32,
01:38:49 but also something very new and forward-looking and loved the car.
01:38:53 And then with the salary that I had, it wasn't even a far-fetched dream.
01:38:58 It was just like, so that's never going to happen.
01:39:00 And then one of my good friends at the time told my wife to get me a Tamiya for my birthday,
01:39:05 so she got me like a 10-scale RC kit and put that together and kept running around with it.
01:39:11 That was my GTR back then.
01:39:13 And then I just waited for my very first opportunity, financially speaking, to buy it,
01:39:19 and I went out and bought it.
01:39:21 What was--can I ask you, like, when the R35 came out in 2008-ish, within VW Group
01:39:28 and specifically the Porsche guys, who I think the GTR really forced the 911 to get a lot--
01:39:33 Step up.
01:39:34 --a lot better.
01:39:35 Get rid of that MacPherson suspension in the front.
01:39:37 Yeah.
01:39:38 So what was the mood when that thing came out?
01:39:42 Were they like, "Oh, boy"?
01:39:45 VW design and design in any big company is actually siloed.
01:39:49 You are sitting in a separate building with only designers, only a couple of studio engineers.
01:39:54 So we weren't on the, let's say, Porsche shop floor when the car came out
01:39:57 to really hear what those guys said.
01:39:59 Amongst us, it's actually like amongst the design team, they're--how do I put it?
01:40:06 Everybody just loves cars.
01:40:08 The allegiance to your employer is far weaker than your passion for cars in general.
01:40:13 So nobody was like, "Oh, damn, what are we going to do now?
01:40:15 Porsche doesn't have an answer."
01:40:16 No, they were like, "Oh, this thing is amazing.
01:40:18 It kicks Porsche's ass.
01:40:19 Like, how cool is that?"
01:40:20 Yeah, yeah.
01:40:21 Okay.
01:40:22 And did you guys appreciate it as a good-looking vehicle or more purposeful?
01:40:26 Like, is it very Japanese?
01:40:29 When you look at it, you're like, "That's a Japanese car."
01:40:31 But good Japanese.
01:40:32 Yeah, so I don't necessarily think of it as a classically beautiful car,
01:40:36 but it just has, like, tons of character.
01:40:39 It's one of those cars that when you park and you walk away,
01:40:41 you always have to turn around and take a look and smile just because it looks so cool.
01:40:45 It does have good proportions in my mind.
01:40:47 You know, the overhangs are short.
01:40:49 The front is nice and stubby, and the cabin is squashed a little bit.
01:40:53 It has a bit of a hot, rotty feel to it, and wheels are in the right place.
01:40:57 Of course, if I was designing it, I would probably change all of it,
01:41:01 but I'm not sure it would be for the better just because I like what they did.
01:41:06 I hope people remember it fondly because I hear so many younger kids--
01:41:10 Oh, it's heavy.
01:41:12 I did some track days on that thing.
01:41:14 It drove circles around almost anything else.
01:41:16 I remember when that thing came out, I ran into, like, a pack of, like,
01:41:20 three Ferraris, a Viper, and, like, an M6 up in Angeles Crest somewhere.
01:41:26 I just smoked them.
01:41:28 They hated it.
01:41:30 They were like, "Ugh."
01:41:32 It's like a cheat code.
01:41:34 Yeah, but also, I hate the narrative that it does any of the--
01:41:38 It's not autonomous in any way.
01:41:40 If you turn off traction control, there are no computers doing anything
01:41:43 except shuffling torque around like any all-wheel-drive vehicle.
01:41:46 It is a masterfully engineered performance car.
01:41:49 It really is.
01:41:51 It's also quite predictable if you know it well,
01:41:53 and it puts so much traction down.
01:41:55 You can pick a line, especially out of the corner,
01:41:57 and overtake almost anyone.
01:41:59 Porsche is struggling for traction, and you're just driving outside.
01:42:01 It's such a masterpiece. I love that thing.
01:42:03 I really do love that thing.
01:42:05 I like it, too.
01:42:06 Unfortunately, I had to sell it, so I'm kind of missing it.
01:42:08 Well, you know, they're around.
01:42:10 But by the way, it didn't depreciate, which is another interesting point.
01:42:13 On a car of, let's say, relatively not expensive value,
01:42:17 these things usually depreciate like crazy.
01:42:20 This thing, I sold it for exactly the same money.
01:42:23 I keep looking for--what was the one you had?
01:42:25 You had the 2012 Black Edition?
01:42:27 Yep.
01:42:28 I keep looking for that one, and they haven't budged at all.
01:42:31 They're still 80 grand.
01:42:33 It's like, "Hmm."
01:42:35 So you're--again, I keep going back to you being this digital car designer.
01:42:40 You kind of entered the space right before the iPhone came out.
01:42:45 Yeah. What was it like?
01:42:47 When was the iPhone? '06? '07?
01:42:49 '06, '07.
01:42:50 iPhone was '07, yeah.
01:42:52 What's your take on having to design vehicles for that whole generation
01:42:59 and the screens and everything that's coming into the car,
01:43:03 including this future that we're looking at where, theoretically,
01:43:08 cars will do more of the driving and there's games and videos
01:43:13 and AR/VR available in the car?
01:43:17 Does this horrify you?
01:43:19 Are you excited in any way about this prospect?
01:43:23 Is it different?
01:43:25 Do you think it's different for you as a car designer to have to factor in
01:43:29 that people are just sort of more distracted?
01:43:32 They're always looking at this thing, or now it's going to be the vision--
01:43:35 Apple Vision Pro, like these guys driving around.
01:43:37 Driving Cybertrucks.
01:43:39 Do you think about this stuff in terms of from a designer standpoint?
01:43:42 Yeah, so I think that the whole screen fetish is just a passing thing.
01:43:46 That's just not great for anyone involved.
01:43:48 I don't think anybody enjoys browsing through menus to find the seat warmer.
01:43:52 That's just not an enjoyable experience.
01:43:54 It's new, it's novel, and it's a bit of a stamp of the time.
01:43:57 You know, it's the type, guys, that you need to have this screen on the interior,
01:44:00 and the wider the screen is or the more done it is, that's going to go away, I'm sure.
01:44:05 There's going to be other ways to communicate with a smart vehicle
01:44:07 that don't involve browsing through menus on the screen.
01:44:11 Maybe it's voice, maybe it's holograms, maybe it's projections.
01:44:15 Neural link.
01:44:16 Neural link level.
01:44:18 I am excited about this stuff.
01:44:20 I have this deep passion for the historic stuff, old Ferraris and sports cars and such,
01:44:27 but I'm also very excited about the future.
01:44:30 Like I said, I brought digital design into the picture when I started out as a young designer.
01:44:36 I was really a proponent of it, and I love new things that come to the market.
01:44:43 I always try everything that is fresh and new, but I'm not religious about it.
01:44:49 I won't just use it because it's new.
01:44:51 I won't just believe that it's better than what we had yesterday because it's new.
01:44:55 I like to think almost as a neutral bystander to look at a piece of technology
01:45:00 and think, "Does this actually enhance anything, or is it just like the screens in the interior,
01:45:04 kind of a passing thing, just live through this phase, and then it will be soon gone?"
01:45:09 Right. Yeah, it is funny how, like, if you look at the Mercedes hyper screen
01:45:16 or the Cadillac Escalade IQ, whatever, the electric Cadillac, you can't make bigger screens.
01:45:24 Physically, you'd have to go outside the vehicle.
01:45:27 The mirrors would have to be screens.
01:45:29 And even if the vehicle is autonomous, I don't think it's good to take eyes off the road
01:45:33 because you're in this moving object.
01:45:35 There's a lot of kind of panoramic vision that is occupied by stuff happening around you,
01:45:41 and you have to divert attention to a screen.
01:45:43 It doesn't matter how autonomous the vehicle is.
01:45:45 You want to be looking outside.
01:45:46 That's why we worked with this company called WayRay a couple of years ago.
01:45:49 They were doing a lot of hologram work, and I tried out their tech.
01:45:56 It's windshields that are fully kind of augmented, and you get depth perception too.
01:46:02 So you don't just get something that hovers in front of your nose,
01:46:05 but you get a sign that hovers over the intersection exactly where the intersection is
01:46:10 telling you to make a left there.
01:46:13 And you can refocus on that intersection, and that's where the arrow is.
01:46:16 So the depth perception changes everything.
01:46:18 And then they were doing lots of cool things with bringing gaming into these systems
01:46:24 so that the passenger can engage in, I don't know, like finding Pokemons or whatever.
01:46:28 But there is this engagement between the reality outside the vehicle and the content juxtaposed,
01:46:34 but not with a little pop-up display in front of your face, but at distance.
01:46:39 This stuff really is like you think if a car had that, who needs a screen?
01:46:44 At what point in time do you actually need a glossy, fingerprinty thing in front of you?
01:46:49 It's true. This mixed reality, I think, is what they call it.
01:46:53 Yeah, I mean augmented reality.
01:46:55 Mercedes and BMW are doing that with their NavNow, which is pretty interesting.
01:46:59 So I think it's going to get the screens phased out. I don't believe that they'll stay.
01:47:03 Interesting.
01:47:04 So what's--that's the last question for me.
01:47:07 All right, bye.
01:47:08 What's in your personal collection? What cars do you--
01:47:11 I don't have a personal collection.
01:47:13 I'm investing a lot of my time and money at the moment into a much bigger project than buying stuff.
01:47:18 Which is the company?
01:47:20 We're going to build something under our own roof, under our own name as well.
01:47:25 And it has wheels.
01:47:27 It may or may not debut this year, so we're working very hard, flat out, on something cool right now.
01:47:32 Obviously with wheels.
01:47:34 Under this, as Hardline 27 branded, or is there a new--
01:47:38 To be communicated.
01:47:40 Interesting. Very nice. All right.
01:47:44 I might know a little bit more about that, but I'll keep it under my hat.
01:47:47 You're under embargo.
01:47:48 I'm under embargo. Thank you. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
01:47:50 Well, this was awesome.
01:47:51 Yeah, this was phenomenal. This was great.
01:47:53 Thank you.
01:47:54 Next time we'll do a music and whiskey session.
01:47:56 Nice. Yeah, that's a good idea.
01:47:58 I can't say a lot about whiskey, but you'll--
01:48:00 You know what? You are a very good consumer of whiskey. I'll just say that.
01:48:05 That was--I ubered. It was one of them nights. It was a lot of fun.
01:48:10 Good drinker and proud of it.
01:48:12 Well, Sasha Salapanov, founder/CEO of Hardline 27,
01:48:17 thank you so much for coming on The Unenvable.
01:48:19 Thank you, gentlemen. It was a great pleasure. Thank you.
01:48:22 [music]
01:48:44 The Inevitable Vodcast, brought to you by the all-electric Nissan Ariya.
01:48:48 Inspired by the future. Designed for the now.
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