Hello and welcome to SAE Tomorrow Today Unplugged. I am your host, Grayson Brulte. Thanks for the great feedback on the last Unplugged. I enjoyed it, and today we're going to go a little different angle and we're going to discuss something that I've been thinking a lot about. Something that, frankly, dominated my Thanksgiving Day conversation with friends and family: driving. I don't want to drive anymore. I said it. I don't want to drive anymore. I don't find the fun in it. I find it to be a chore. I find it to be boring. And I find it, frankly, it's something I don't want to do. You know, some folks, they don't like going to the dentist. I actually like going to the dentist. My teeth feel great when I leave. Some folks like to drive a car. Some, like me, they don't. It's just something that I think a lot. And it's not just me thinking about this. It's come up in conversations with friends. It's come up in conversations with colleagues. And lo and behold, what happened in early December? Wall Street Journal. She came out and there was a reporter there that wrote an article said that she used to hate driving and then self-driving car finally taught her to let go. And I'm going to quote the reporter here. And quote, "The first time I let the vehicle take control, something shifted. As the car guided the cell through traffic, I felt tension melt away." Key there: tension melt away. She wasn't driving. She was not driving. The reporter was not driving. How, you ask? She was in a Tesla with FSD. Yes, I know. Oh, it's not self-driving. Oh, it's automated. It's not autonomous. I own a Tesla. It drives itself. I said it there. I said it. It drives itself. And frankly, my opinion, I think it drives better than I do. And that's why I've really started thinking about this. 99% of the time, I use FSD. Grocery store, school drop off, going to a friend's house, going to play golf. I don't touch the wheel. I supervise it. I don't want to drive anymore. I can't wait till the day, and this is going to happen at some point, when Tesla goes full-blown FSD unsupervised. They're going to do it. They're going to use the term I use, the term they're going to crack it. Okay. They're going to do it. Am I going to give you a timeline of when they're going to do it? No. Because I don't know. But I truly do believe. And then when I travel, I don't rent a car anymore. I use robo taxis if available. And if I have to go back in time, I use an Uber or a Lyft. Yes, I said back in time. Because when you are used to riding in an autonomous vehicle, you enjoy the experience. You come to rely on the experience. The experience is a consistent experience. And to use the Forrest Gump term, life is like a box of chocolates. You never know what you're going to get. That's what happens when you go in a ride share vehicle. You never know what you're going to get. You have good rides, bad rides, sorry, smelly rides, or in some cities, you know, I've complained, smoky rides. I don't want that. You get into a robo taxi, it is a clean, consistent ride. I could play my music as loud as I want. I could play. One of the greatest experiences I had in a robo taxi was in a Waymo riding around San Francisco listening to Miles Davis' Kind of Blue in the rain. That was pretty magical. Couldn't necessarily do that in a traditional robo taxi because it's a consistent product. Or if I want to take a nap, I could take a nap. You can do what you want within legal realm inside of a robo taxi, where inside of a ride share most likely you're going to talk to the person. You're going to stay quiet. You're not going to talk on your phone because you might be afraid of what they're going to, they're going to listen and you might not want to upset them, or they might want to play their music and that turns into a whole conversation. That's right. Robo taxis eliminate that. So, I don't want to drive. I had to travel a few weeks ago and a global auto manufacturer gave me a vehicle to drive to test. I said, "Oh, that's very nice." I drove the vehicle. I didn't like it. The car was extremely well engineered. It was, frankly, it was awesome. It was a great car, but I said, "Why do I have to drive? This is a beautiful car. It's extremely well designed. It's very comfortable. It's fast." So, but why do I have to drive? I said, "This is not right." And then being silly, I had to try and find how to adjust the mirrors. Why do I have to do that? That's antiquated. How do I turn the blinker? That's antiquated. And you had to go through all these different antiquated things. And I'm thinking to myself, this is not fun. And I'm being unproductive. I'm having to think because when I look at society, I think one of the biggest things that automation and autonomy is going to unlock, and we're going to first see it in robo taxis and in personally owned autonomous vehicles, is that we as a society are no longer going to have to think. And we know when we no longer have to think, what does that unlock? Because think about it this way. You get in the vehicle, you commute to work. You get in the vehicle, you go to the grocery store, you go to a friend's house, you pick the kids up at school, take the kids to sports. What are you doing that entire time? You're thinking. And what are you thinking about? Well, am I going to be able to pay the bills on time? Because I got news for you. This economy is not as good as the folks on CNBC and Bloomberg tell you it's going to be. I think we're definitely having a K-shaped recovery here. You're also thinking about, am I going to be late? Is there going to be traffic? Do I have food in the refrigerator for dinner? Oh, do I bring up a bottle? Did I forget the bottle of wine for tonight? You're starting to think about stuff, and then does that make you a less better driver? Possibly. I think it could, but I don't have scientific data to push back. But if the vehicle's driving itself, you know exactly what time you're getting there. You can take care of those tasks. You can order a DoorDash and an Uber Eats, an Amazon food delivery. You can do that when you're not driving. You're not thinking. And then when we don't think, do we become healthier? When we don't have to stress out in dealing with traffic, having lived half my life in the LA region, I can tell you traffic to me is a dirty four-letter word. It's horrible. You can go four miles and it takes you an hour and a half. You're stressed out. What does that do? That causes your cortisol levels to rise. So, does driving in traffic make individuals fatter? Does it make them heavier? Does it make them unhealthy? There's a real case there. So, think about that. You're sitting in traffic now. You're no longer stressed. Your cortisol levels are lower. Do you feel better? Are your medical bills lower? What about your mental health? Is your mental health better? I think so. These are the things that autonomy is going to unlock. It's going to unlock freedom. It's going to unlock economic freedom. It's going to unlock mental freedom. It's going to unlock one of the greatest gifts that we have as a species of humans is the ability to think. Autonomy is going to give us more time to think, more time to do, and more time to build. And the size of the vehicles is not always going to be four passenger, six passenger, eight passenger. They're coming in at different sizes. At some point, Tesla will commercialize their Cybercab, their two-passenger car. The President of the United States, Donald Trump, put out a post on Truth Social said he wants to introduce tiny cars. Is that an allusion or a hint towards the Cybercab? Or could it be towards the Rimac which is being built in Croatia? Or could it be that Mini or Smart car is opening a factory in America, the small ones? Don't know. But the form factors are going to change and we're not going to drive. Which raises the big question: as vehicles become smarter, they drive themselves today. I'm sorry to the purists. They do drive themselves. Is somebody as myself and a lot of my friends that rely on FSD, full self-driving in their Teslas, are we becoming worse drivers? Are we accelerating the decline in our driving abilities because we rely on the system? We don't have the data yet, but it's something to think about because again, I don't want to drive anymore and nor do my friends. And then the plus side to this is getting a vehicle with full self-driving or the ability to fully autonomously drive itself. Does that eliminate the conversation that a lot of us have to have with a parent or a grandparent about taking the keys away? And some of those situations are just downright bad. They're not happy because some individuals, they hold on to it with an iron grip. Could this prolong those individuals' abilities to drive? Potentially, especially if they don't have to supervise the vehicle, then that opens up a whole new use case. And then if they don't have to supervise the vehicle, they don't have to think. They can think about the grandkids. They can think about going to play golf or going to play cards or going to play croquet. So what does that do? That stimulates their mental health. And when an elderly individual, and there is data to back this up, by the way, when an elderly individual is mentally healthier, they live longer, healthier. And so that removes a potential burden on the healthcare cost. So putting this all together, not wanting to drive is going to give us the ability to think more, to build, but it's also going to have an extremely positive economic impact on healthcare. And whether the positive economic impact on healthcare passed down to the consumer, that's a debate for a politician, which I'm not. But the opportunity is there. And what we do know is I'm not the only one that no longer wants to drive. Today is tomorrow. Tomorrow is today. The future is no longer driving. Thanks as always for tuning in to SAE Tomorrow Today Unplugged. And it's a controversial topic. Send us what you think,
[email protected]. That's sae.org. And let us know, do you still want to drive? Be sure to join us next week as we explore the upcoming Detroit Auto Show and why you'll want to be in Detroit January 14th through the 25th, 2026. SAE International makes no representations as to the accuracy of the information presented in this podcast. The information and opinions are for general information only. SAE International does not endorse, approve, recommend, or certify any information, product, process, service, or organization presented or mentioned in this.
