EP22 - Bugatti's poorly-parked wiper problem & a massive miss for CarPlay

Hoo boy, it's been a beat!

But: Joe and Drew are back with a dissection of everything that's wrong with the Bugatti Tourbillon's windshield wiper, and the massively missed opportunity that is Apple's second-generation CarPlay.

That's it for this episode! Thanks for listening.

If you like what you hear, please leave a review for us on your favourite podcasting platform. It helps other folk like you find us!

And you can sign up for Looking Out - The Newsletter, the sidekick to our podcast, here: automobility.substack.com

Transcript

Copy

Joe Simpson 0:00

Can we call it the turd bullion?

Drew Smith 0:02

the you can call it the Third Bull, and I'll call it the Big Watch because the, the funny thing was I started calling it the Big Watch Be before I realized the total SEO cluster Fuck. Because of course when you search for Bugatti Tourbillon, as, uh, Michael pointed out, you get all of Bugatti's watches with Jacob's. You

Joe Simpson 0:30

Oh, really? You don't get the car? Well, it doesn't matter. You have to be invited to buy the car, darling. You know, don't go on and like, Oh yes, I'll spec one up. Purchase.

Drew Smith 0:45

Oh dear. Gosh, I've never, I've never received so much hate from the internet.

Joe Simpson 0:53

I saw it when you were about an hour in to the Like, I don't like the wiper part, essentially, and I was like, oh, this is, this is kicking off. I was like, popcorn, and then I checked out as it, as it kind of escalated.

Drew Smith 1:07

And I'm just there, like, killing everybody with kindness. alright.

Joe Simpson 1:15

Don't you know, Drew, that it is an homage to the Type 35 centerline?

Drew Smith 1:22

Nope, I had no idea. You have no taste. No, I don't. None. You said nobody's ever done this before. Actually, on that one I didn't. If you parse my statement carefully.

Joe Simpson 1:47

So maybe we should just talk about that, with a, with a YouTube title of I don't like the wiper parked centrally, and then we'll get loads of views. You know, maybe that's, maybe that's the way forward.

Drew Smith 1:58

Hello and welcome to looking at the podcast sidekick to the newsletter in which we connect the dots across mobility design and culture. My name is Drew Smith. I'm an independent design strategist working through my own little practice called StudioPhro and these opinions, of course, are all my own.

Joe Simpson 2:18

And my name is Joe Simpson. I'm a design strategist for an automotive OEM in Europe, whose views I do not and have never represented on this show.

Drew Smith 2:30

And coming up in this show. Boy, Joe, do we have some views? Uh, we've had

Joe Simpson 2:38

got opinions.

Drew Smith 2:41

for days. Um, in the last couple of weeks we've had the launch, the big reveal of Apple's Next Generation CarPlay. And also the launch of a French brand's new mega car on whose name we can't quite decide yet. but Joe, Apple's next generation car play. Uh, Hoped for by many, uh, to be the saviour of good gauge pack design in the digital age. What do you think?

Joe Simpson 3:24

Can I start with a little, um, wormhole story?

Drew Smith 3:30

You can, but move your mic closer to your mouth.

Joe Simpson 3:33

Right, okay, I'll do that then. There we go. It's gonna make me sound like a very sad individual. But then probably most viewers and listeners already know that. When I was a little boy, when I were a lad in Yorkshire, I had, probably like many people listening to this show, a cosy coupe, and a little go kart thing, and a ride on tractor. And as soon as I could start, as soon as I started drawing, and as soon as I became interested in cars, which is what it was about. You know, three, four. I started to draw and copy out of magazines that my dad had car gauge clusters or what I thought were car gauge clusters. And I'm sad to say this was something that I kept doing for years and I used to find. What I thought were interesting car gauge clusters and then draw them out and stick them on the dashboard of my ride on car. And I even used to take one of those little gold split pins and put them in for the needle and then move them around. Yeah. So I could do things like I was pretending like I was speeding or pretending that I was running out of petrol and needed rescuing. Anyway. If we've still got anybody still listening now, because they clearly listen to a mental person that's been, you know, kind of slightly bonkers for a long time, this is a very long winded way of saying I've had a bit of a sort of obsession with the gauge clusters or the meters or the dim or however you want to say it, OEM, uh, for a long, long time. And I think, uh, that without wanting to sound like a Luddite, they're one of the most important aspects of the car because yeah, not only do they communicate the information about critical factors like speed and fuel and stuff like that, but they give the car a lot of its character. They communicate a lot of how the brand wants to communicate to you. And they're one of the things that you look at and interact with the most in the car now in recent years. Obviously many gauge clusters have gone to a digital display and this has in fairness to Apple among others, uh, sort of seen some very odd developments in the world of, I should say on screen graphics and, uh, you know, sort of car information display. And I think this ultimately is a very logical follow on. Apple. CarPlay into the center screen display. And as gauge clusters have gone digital, Apple brings CarPlay into the cluster. And I suspect that if a brand opposite, many. Users are going to say, great, I've got an Apple display. I've got Apple now, and that's fantastic. But this is a little bit different and worth unpacking because it's not just Apple taking over the cluster, is it Drew? Apple in their, uh, sort of announcements a couple of weeks ago showed how, and they, they say, uh, they work, are working closely and have worked closely in partnership with the OEMs and design team of Apple. To make a very customizable and as they call it, co branded display between Apple and the OEM. Um, but all might not be rosy, Drew, I think, uh, from your perspective with, with this little setup. Do you want to elaborate?

Drew Smith 7:16

I mean, so when I, when I watched the design, uh, video, so there's, there's, there's two videos that Apple published one is kind of a technical, um, technical video and the other one is, is, is about the design system for next generation car play. Um, the thing that just rang out over and over and over again was this repetition of, of, of co branded experiences. And I thought, gosh, that's That's interesting because as you say, Joe, I, I think anybody who works in the automotive design space will recognize precisely what you've just said, you know, the gauge pack is one of the defining areas for the character of a vehicle for the character of a brand, you know, to the points that we were making on, on our previous show and for Apple to, you know, Basically be muscling into that space and say, okay, well, we're going to share ownership of the visual representation of this space with you. Um, it's a big statement, right? So that, that's cool. That's cool. But the question then becomes what, what flexibility does Apple offer you?

Joe Simpson 8:27

Hmm.

Drew Smith 8:28

when it comes to that co branded experience. Now. If we start just with typeface, um, you look at any brand worth its salt when it comes to gauge pack design and the typography is such an, a critical element of communicating what the brand is about, you know, I'm thinking, for example, Porsche, BMW, Mercedes, okay, three German brands, sure, um, um, how, how typeface has been used across different Porsches to differentiate kind of different types of Porsche, for example, but still everything remains of a family. Um, Apple's going to give you one font, one typeface, it's, it's giving you San Francisco, which is the system font for. Uh, IOS,

Joe Simpson 9:22

Oh, yes.

Drew Smith 9:23

um, and that's about it.

Joe Simpson 9:28

Yeah, and I, I think this is interesting and important Drew, because, Um, Apple then in the video is at pains to point out the level of flexibility it brings you, but given what we're saying about branding and the sort of importance of type font or the recognizability of type font to car brands, not allowing font customization feels like, I would say Apple sort of like staking claim to this being. Their real estate, perhaps over the automotive OEM having full flexibility to do what they want because font is so fonts are so important in the world of graphic design in terms of identity, legibility, and branding.

Drew Smith 10:21

Yep. Yeah, yeah, yeah, absolutely. So the next, the next, I guess my next reflection, having watched the videos was the, the, the examples that Apple showed were to be frank, wildly mediocre. Um, it's just sort of almost like the most basic kind of template design that you could think about and, and, and, and. And I don't think they did a particularly good job of giving people a really strong sense of what the system could do when it came to customization. And I love the fact that, you know, they were basically harking back to the time when Jeep put like compasses and everything. I think every gauge pack that they showed had a compass and I'm like, yeah, because that's, that's what we do in gauge packs these days. Um, there is a, there is a video that we'll link to, and I'm just looking for it now, um, by a guy called, uh, or a company called Black Box. So, um, this company called Black Box has gone and tried to Um, what they feel are some iconic gauge packs, um, from history with, with CarPlay. So they've done a Porsche gauge pack. They've done a Ferrari Testarossa, Honda NSX. I never thought the Honda NSX gauge pack was particularly iconic, but there you go. And they, they've done a Delta Integrale and a DeLorean. And they're, You know what it feels like if they, they all feel like chat GPT generated copy, like competent, but kind of glassy and dead behind the eyes.

Joe Simpson 12:20

Right.

Drew Smith 12:22

And, and, and somebody asked me for my, my, my point of view on, on this black box video. And I said, it's like you've been given one Lego kit. And you've been told to make six very different things. It's like, yes, but,

Joe Simpson 12:42

shit things. Now that's, that's a bit harsh. What they've done is not shit.

Drew Smith 12:48

it's not like it's, it's wildly impressive that they've managed to get as much flexibility out of the system as they have. But there's that, there's that something missing from them.

Joe Simpson 13:04

I, right. And I, I think that's a really, really important point. And I want to try and link that. Hello. Can you hear me?

Drew Smith 13:16

Yeah, now I

Joe Simpson 13:16

Have you lost me? No, I think it's a very, very important point. And I want to try and link that to something that you said a minute ago, which is this point about this kind of glassy dead behind the eyes, ultimate skeuomorphism and the almost sort of lack of imagination about what we could do with a fully digital gauge cluster. So. A friend of ours, Sam Sahar, you asked him in a conversation we were having with him online, what he thought. And he just said, it's sort of like the ultimate, like return to sort of like skew a more, he had a better phrase now, but ultimate skeuomorphism. And I've sort of reflect on this and thought, this is interesting. Given that when Johnny I was at Apple, he deliberately moved iOS away from this skeuomorphic style. And here we are with Apple and then what, what people seem to be able to do with this kind of going into a deeply sort of skeuomorphic world. And yet when you're in a gauge cluster, All of those things you talk about, the tiny, the tiny offset, the interplay of light, the the fact that a one gauge might be slightly more recessed than the other, the way that the type of, Font will turn in certain places, the way that the needle might sort of turn in or have a different finish on the end with say a kind of transparency or an orange tip or something like that. All of these things, which to me made or make gauge cluster special are gone. And then, sorry, excuse me. And then at the same time, I. I was hesitating whether to bring up this example, but when in a previous life, I was working for a consultancy called car design research. We did a joint project with a, um, another agency called us to and us to, uh, Big, uh, we're a big London agency. They were the, um, they were the house behind Monument Valley, the game. Um, and then they went on to do, um, kind of quite a lot of automotive work off the, kind of off the back a bit of this, this project and what we really set out to do with that project was to say, if you have a digital gauge cluster, what a sort of fundamental level are you now trying to achieve or do? With the cluster and the one that I really held up was we, we took the entire square and we used as a graphical block. And we said, the thing that you want to understand is your range relative to the distance in destination. So we use the graphical blocks to represent the, and we'll put a link to this in the show, because in the show notes, because it's kind of hard to explain, but there's a video online, which shows it where you kind of have your destination at one point As a kind of horizon line, and then you have a kind of block of color showing your range. And if it's over the horizon line, you can get there. And if it's not, you can't. So, you know, you need to charge, which, you know, in an electric vehicle is kind of the kind of critical piece of information. The second thing we said was that increasingly in modern cars, it's very easy to speed and speeds change all the time. And one of the things that. Uh, you know, it's either the EU is about to bring in legislation to speed limit cars, albeit in a soft way. We already have in EU, I own a car now that kind of, uh, meeps at me if I'm going over the speed limit, but it's done in a kind of clumsy, cloddish way, which is fundamentally annoying. And I mean, this kind of, for all brands and all implementations that I can see right now, whereas we said, well, what if you took the color and when you went over the speed limit, the entire block actually changed color Because it kind of becomes eye catching. So you look down, you're like, Oh, I'm speeding. I'll drop my speed or you know what? I don't care. I'm going to intentionally speed. But there's something eye catching about it. We were thinking about how you reinvent what the cluster needed to do in an era where cars and driving conditions are. different to how they were 40 or 50 years ago. I may be doing Apple this service here, but with what I've seen them demonstrate, it looks like they're simply saying what we've had 40 years ago, what these brands have done, let's just do it digitally. There you go. And put an Apple layer on top of it. And that to me is not very Apple. Apple always comes into a space when it can really make a difference. And yes, you can argue. The OEMs do a poor job of their graphics in the cluster, and maybe people want Apple's clean style, but other than that, there doesn't feel like there's really that much going on.

Drew Smith 18:10

Well, and I, I guess this is where the tension emerges between. A co branded experience and an Apple experience. Um, because if we, on the one hand, if we think about the conservatism typically of the automotive industry, Um, if Apple came in and said, okay, well, we're going to completely reinvent how we display, um, driver information. Um, It's, it's easy to foresee an entirely allergic reaction to that as, as an unwelcome takeover. On the other hand, um, I, I'm really glad you mentioned the us two stuff because it, it was so smart and so well thought through and yet I'm, I'm going to put it out there. When it came to brand character with that new interface paradigm. That was by far and away the weakest element of the project.

Joe Simpson 19:16

a hundred percent. And, we, we, and

Drew Smith 19:19

Yeah.

Joe Simpson 19:20

admittedly, we didn't really consider that so much. And I will also hold my hands up and say, we know we got lots of feedback. Us too. Got lots of feedback, lots of people in the industry hated it. Um, and I, I respect that. Um, my point is. We were three guys in Cambridge. They were a handful of people in London. We did it sort of in our spare time, in a what

Drew Smith 19:46

still managed to come up with something more interesting than what Apple's managed to do.

Joe Simpson 19:51

And that's kind of my point, not to sort of like, not to throw shade on Apple, but I'm like, wow, how many people have been working on this for how long? And this is where it gets interesting to your point and a bit, the whole co branded stress. I wonder whether behind the scenes, Apple pushed further and then they got on, they started to see rejection. and like unhappiness from the OEMs that they have actually backed away from it or there's capability in the system what we don't yet know but this is the kind of uh, hold your hands, don't frighten the horses, like make everyone feel it's okay sort of first step.

Drew Smith 20:31

Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it'll be, it'd be super interesting to see how it plays out. It just, it, it just feels like two times now, um, the, the industry response to Apple's sort of next generation CarPlay reveals. So of course the, the first time I'm talking about was when they released the mock up Aston

Joe Simpson 20:56

Yeah in 2022, yeah.

Drew Smith 20:57

and Porsche gauge packs. And that they, they went down like a shit sandwich. Um, And, and, and, and justifiably, because again, like just sort of glassy dead behind the eyes, I think the, the Porsche gauge pack had sort of like a Pepita, sort of houndstooth cloth in the background of it. And he's just like, what? Like, this, this doesn't feel like something that Porsche would do. Uh, you know, and, and in the Aston Martin one, they had, it had, um, In a digital gauge pack, mind you, that I'm fairly certain was going to be manufactured by some supplier in China, around the edge of one of the gauges it had handcrafted in England. No it's not! The last time Aston Martin manufactured its gauge packs in England was for the Series 2 Lagonda and they didn't work.

Joe Simpson 22:02

was the charm of them. That's what I'm missing. Cage

Drew Smith 22:05

It's always been the charm of Aston Martin.

Joe Simpson 22:09

The last car I drove that did that, where I was like, notably didn't work properly, was ironically a Toyota. The IQ had a very weird fuel tank system, um, because the packaging was so immense. And I remember driving around the M25 in one, and it went down from, it was a digital display that had five bars in it, and it went from three bars, suddenly down to one bar and flashing. And I was like, oh shit. Right, I'm running out of petrol very suddenly when I thought I had half a tank. That's kind of an ironic character twist, you

Drew Smith 22:37

my 500 SL does that at the opposite end of the gauge. So I can go and put 80 litres of 98 Ron in it and the needle will show full. And then literally within 10 minutes of driving, I've lost a third of a tank. And I'm like, God, I knew this thing was thirsty, but it's

Joe Simpson 22:53

That's just,

Drew Smith 22:54

thirsty.

Joe Simpson 22:55

just because it's a five lead to the eight. And your foot's too heavy. I think to digress, but to me, there were a few interesting things at play here, which I'm really curious about how they play out. So we've seen already this week, it was kind of not connected, but Ferrari saying they won't continue to the work on that. This is not the same as CarPlay, let's be clear, but they said they will not continue to work on their own OS. They will move fully over, I believe to Android OS and then offer Android and CarPlay. And so one of the things that I think is interesting is which brands will fully embrace this and which won't. To me it's interesting how there seems to be some wind behind the smaller brands that have you know, massive brand loyalty, but also massive brand heritage in this area, actually being the ones that may seem to move more wholesale to Apple. And I sort of play with this idea in my head to say, it's interesting because maybe it's a resource and kind of, you know, um, effort versus costing, but also that the car is still fundamentally. A of that brand, you know, be it a Ferrari or a Porsche that just a small area of it, the cluster doesn't matter so much to the customer. And yet I come back to this point that we've highlighted, I think in the last or the last, but one podcast that Ryan McManus was sort of making about how you it's, it's a sort of slippery slope where you start to give away key interaction, key branded interaction points. Um, so that, that's kind of one of the, the interesting plays out. Whereas I think maybe as a mainstream brand or someone like Mercedes, you're big enough, you have enough resource, and maybe you were kind of the mindset that it was like, no, we don't want to go fully here. We do not want to give this way to Apple. And thanks very much. We believe we can do this job well enough ourselves.

Drew Smith 25:01

And, and yet, frankly, Mercedes would probably one of, be one of the brands that would most benefit, if we're honest.

Joe Simpson 25:08

But, but I believe Kalanis has already said they will not allow Apple to take over the, they were one of the partners that were announced on CarPlay 2, but he subsequently come out and said they won't allow them to fully take over their, like, you know, their hyperscreen. So I'm curious as to where that, where that's leaving them. Have they backed out and they won't let Apple have the cluster or, you know, are they, I don't know what it, what it means

Drew Smith 25:30

I seem to remember that in the article, he was saying that we've actually got enough, we've, to your point, it's like, we've got the resources to do this ourselves. I'm

Joe Simpson 25:38

Well, but that's the other point. I, I hope, I feel like this has not been an area that has been, I'm going to say, cared about enough. And what I hope happens Paradoxically is that some OEMs go, no, this is important. We didn't look at this enough. We need to think about this. Let's look at the heritage. Let's look at what users are doing. Let's do a really blooming good job in this area, better than we were doing. And let's bring both our brand and some innovation into this space. And we have teams in house to do it now, whether or not they're capable, whether or not they will. Moot point, open question. I'm very interested to see. I would highlight a couple of examples. Rivian have just brought or shown their new, very on brand, really different, absolutely wonderful. Slightly sort of cartoonized, um, graphic, like second generation, um, interface design. They do not. Famously, they do not have CarPlay. They do not partner with Apple like Tesla, but I think it's an example of a brand really understanding what it is, giving itself a very clear identity and understanding the customers and the use case and doing something really distinctive and frankly, really bloody cool. And it's one of the things that would pull me towards a Rivian.

Drew Smith 27:08

There was another example.

Joe Simpson 27:14

Put me on the spot. The, no, the, the other point I wanted to make, and this is going to be a very controversial point is that. We have this data, which is consistently held up, and we have parroted, which is blah, blah, blah, 85, 90 percent of new car buyers in North America slash the world say they would not consider a car if it does not offer CarPlay or Android, and or Android Auto. Fine. Uh, Tesla, up until now, I've done just okay without needing to do that. We have, um, thrown a lot of shade GM's way for them pulling out of this, but some things I was reading this week relative to like GM's new Blazer and Equinox, which I believe are the first ones without CarPlay, highlighting a couple of anecdotal examples, how people buying those and saying, yeah, CarPlay, but actually it's the Android auto system. And you know what? It integrates really well with my phone. I have Google maps natively. Uh, the park, the charging, uh, stuff on Google has just improved a lot. Do I really need it? Do I really need it? And I was thinking, I really want CarPlay or I think I want CarPlay and I've had it in my last few cars, but the amount of times I use it and the use cases are actually very rare. Now, once you move to wireless CarPlay and it defaults to coming on, that's different. In my current car it doesn't do that, and I was thinking about this the other day. Because I have native Google Maps, because I have Spotify built in, and because my phone connects just fine, it's only if I'm listening to a podcast on Apple Podcasts, or I need to join a Teams call because it's much easier on the muting and unmuting, that I actually connect my phone and use CarPlay. The rest of the time I don't care and I don't need it. And I, I'm very curious how the kind of mindset of how people answer surveys and I need a thing, uh, potentially meshes against more and more brands moving over to kind of the Android system and having things like Google maps running natively in your OS without needing to connect a phone. Will people continue to feel like they have to have it? Probably many of them will, but it's just a thought.

Drew Smith 29:33

Yeah, and I think, and I think this, this, this next generation car play moment, um, and, and Apple's decision to kind of push this co branded aspect of it and, and, and wrap so many, um, stylistic, what feel like stylistic limitations around it will, could well be kind of the make or break moment, you know, if, if, if other OEMs see. GM doing it well. I think to your point, if, if, if other OEMs think, Oh, actually, no, like we don't want to do this, but we do need to up our game,

Joe Simpson 30:12

Yeah, I

Drew Smith 30:13

it'll be really interesting to see how that plays out. Um, I want to move on to a car with a different type of gauge pack. Now, Joe, you've been calling this car, the,

Joe Simpson 30:29

don't want to say it's on a public podcast. Um, uh, billion,

Drew Smith 30:36

the Bugatti turd bullion. I've been calling it the Bugatti Big Watch, um, because a tourbillon, uh, was a type of device invented many years ago to, uh, mitigate the effects of gravity on, um, clock movements. Um, then made its way into wristwatches and, you know, you can go and spend 50 grand at Jaeger LeCoultre and buy yourself a tourbillon to play with. At which point the anti gravitational function of the tourbillon itself is rendered useless because your wrist is always moving around relative to the axis of gravity, but that's sort of beside the point because it's an expensive watch and it's not really about the mechanics, is it? Um, Anyway, what I've since discovered thanks to Michael Budofsky is, of course, when people go and search for Bugatti Tourbillon now, it comes up with Bugatti's watch collaborations with Jacob Co and not the new 4 million odd dollar supercar. So, well done branding and SEO experts at Bugatti. Job well done. But, but the link with the watch is an interesting one. Uh,

Joe Simpson 31:55

and one that's carried through somewhat, right,

Drew Smith 31:58

Yes, yes. Um, wow. I mean, talk about like the total antithesis of Apple's next generation car play.

Joe Simpson 32:08

this is very much in the, um, yes, mechanical world. And I guess sort of mechanical in every sort of mechanical movements. And. Yeah, to, to, to sort of build off the point, you know, the apple, uh, the, the apple segment of this show, where we're talking about, you know, dims, gauge clusters, some people call them the clocks. Well, this is literally like having a clock, um, in front of you. And Drew, I think I inherently know your view, even though we haven't discussed this at length. I, Want to get it out there that I don't think this car is to my taste and what they've done is not to my taste. However, as a designer, I can appreciate a certain, um, wowness of being able to see the amount of. Craft, effort, mechanical movement, um, and the way that, you know, the sort of the integrated speedo and tack sits floating around, well, as the steering wheel moves around it is sort of faintly incredible and the integration actually of a speedo and a tachometer. I had to watch the video of it like about six times before I actually understood what was going on. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. She's got a reflection more on me than, than what Bugatti have done. But you know, it's sort of speaks of a, a world that is the antithesis of the Apple one that we've just been talking about. And maybe a counterpoint to the one I was just making about, will it be the likes of the Ferraris and the Porsches that go fully digital and sort of don't care that Apple's taking over because the rest of the car still sells the brand. Um, this seems to be very much Bugatti coming out with a sort of, uh, a very much a counterpoint. And in fact, There is a center screen, but it's very small and it's hidden away until you reveal it. So this very much feels like trying to revel in the last hurrah of the internal combustion, uh, highly mechanical supercar, in a way, and the interfaces and clocks and interior designed to represent that. To

Drew Smith 34:29

I, look, again, I will come right out and say that, um, the Big turd, big watch, sorry, uh, not, not quite to my taste. Um, and, and, and I want to dive into that a little bit in a second, but, uh, if, if taken purely as a statement of like, what is the best that the industry can offer. Right? This is meant to be the most fantastic, the most expensive, this is the car that everybody is supposed to want, right? Everybody is supposed to kind of lust after. Um, the fact that it has mechanical gauges, the fact that the screen is hidden until it's required, sends a very interesting signal. Right. And I, and I kind of start to think through, Oh, okay. So what if luxury, um, now starts to become mechanics and, and a lack of screen? And I think that is what's really interesting about this is

Joe Simpson 35:47

hundred

Drew Smith 35:48

this set a precedent for other luxury brands to follow to say actually in an age of everything being digitized, the way you display, um, uh, well, no, I was going to say the way you display kind of a kind of taste or a sort of

Joe Simpson 36:09

Aha, okay.

Drew Smith 36:10

Is to actually get rid of the screens to focus on the mechanical experience because, you know, EVs essentially are refrigerators on wheels, cars are commodities, this is the antithesis of the car as a commodity and that's, that's sort of why it's, it's interesting for me.

Joe Simpson 36:30

It, it, right, it, This is a conversation we should be having. It raises a big question about the future of luxury and how luxury is communicated and, you know, what it is in sort of wheeled objects. Um, I think it's a really, really interesting statement in that regard. I think it's even more interesting when you consider that, um, Bugatti is now half owned by Rimac, who are, you know, a, well, the perhaps foremost producer of electric first supercars. Um, and I think, I mean, you've interviewed Martin Rittmack. I think he's a kind of very interesting guy, and I think it's very interesting where this potentially takes Bugatti. You can sort of, I think you can poo poo it, because you can say, well, it doesn't matter, because everyone's sold, and you had to be invited to kind of, you know, purchase one, and you had to already have a ton of Bugattis already, and blah, blah, blah, blah. But, Certainly, as you said, as that status symbol, as that symbol of ultimate, the pinnacle of kind of what the automotive industry can do as the pinnacle of kind of like, uh, rarity and storification and something that people will lust over. It's a very interesting statement about where luxury or what luxury is, or, you know, what it might be. Um, and as you say, it's very much the antithesis of the kind of dead behind the eyes screens.

Drew Smith 38:03

Yeah, absolutely. I mean, the, the, the thing that I find really interesting about this car though is. It, particularly from the interior design point of view, the, the overall theme of it, um, sort of like this, you know, this central spa that kind of comes down and scoops up between the seats and so these two cockpits, if you like, um, is, is very reminiscent all the way back to, to the Veyron.

Joe Simpson 38:34

Right. And they did it, I was gonna say they did it in the Chiron, right? Can't remember getting in the Chiron. And they had that divide.

Drew Smith 38:41

there's, there's this, so there's this nice sort of continuity of, of theme there. But the thing that I always liked about the Chiron was, sorry, not the Chiron, was the Veyron, was that it was super quiet.

Joe Simpson 38:56

Yeah, It

Drew Smith 38:56

was so kind of pared back and so calm. And, you know, this is the, the, the, the Tobion has kind of fallen into the, Like the contrast stitching and like quilted woven leather school of luxury. And to me, that was always one of the nice things about, but the Veyron in particular was that it was this car of absolutely epic performance. And yet it spoke quite quietly

Joe Simpson 39:29

Yeah.

Drew Smith 39:30

for what it, for what it was. And this new car just doesn't do that.

Joe Simpson 39:35

The Chiron simile was much louder on the outside, but on the inside was equally relatively calm and relatively demure. I think what you're getting at, to me, is almost like it's the Wow, hang on. I'm not going to say it right. The diamond encrusted. Let's add an Asian on the end of it of, of the interior. And that's.

Drew Smith 40:03

It's the Vajazzle. It's how to

Joe Simpson 40:05

Yeah, it's kind of. It's kind of inevitable. Um, I get why they've done it, but it's also, I think, a bit of a shame. And it also, to me, slightly riffs against this. You know, the, the, the, to me, the ultimate luxury statement would have just been to use the best materials and do some of what they've done with kind of like almost magic sort of way that, that, um, Gauge cluster is set inside the steering wheel and the steering wheel moves around it. And then what you touch being kind of the finest material, but not to Vajazzle it and encrust it and because they've sort of revealed so much of the mechanics Behind that and then in the kind of that center spine it feels a bit Like it's been driven through a swarovski shop at speed and Yeah, maybe we're, we're not target, so it's probably not.

Drew Smith 40:59

And, and you know how I know we're not the target, Joe, because I, I kicked a hornet's nest on the internet the other day. Um, because my, my, my other bugbear with this car is the fact that it has, well, not the fact that it has a center mounted windscreen wiper. I own a car with a center mounted windscreen wiper, and I find it absolutely delightful. Um, but one of the reasons I find it delightful is because when it's parked, it sits beneath the cowl.

Joe Simpson 41:26

It's not in your way. It's not obstructing the view.

Drew Smith 41:30

So PTI in their infinite wisdom, I'm sure it is wisdom. There must be reasons. And actually I did look at a, a video this morning, which showed just how insanely tight the packaging is in, in the front end of the car to get enough cooling in there for the V 16 engine. The wiper actually parks running up the center of the windscreen and

Joe Simpson 41:51

And do you know why that is, Drew? I'm being the internet.

Drew Smith 41:57

some something, something something. Type 57 Atlantic. Perhaps.

Joe Simpson 42:02

Blah blah blah, center spine. Yeah,

Drew Smith 42:04

yeah, so the story around it, like, harking back to the center spine of the Atlantic, I keep on thinking to myself, surely there was a more elegant way, if you were going to reference that, there was a more elegant way to do it than parking your windscreen wiper in the middle of the screen. And then everybody's like, oh, well, Koenigsegg doesn't. I'm like, yeah, but it doesn't look particularly great there either. Fun fact, fun fact. When I first saw the, the Jesko, the Koenigsegg Jesko at Geneva, um, many years ago, I was delighted to note that the car on the stand was fitted with a Mercedes W124 monoblade wiper system.

Joe Simpson 42:49

These sorts of things happen in the small world of, like, very low production supercars. I've

Drew Smith 42:56

where are they getting these things from? I suppose when you're only having to build five, you can just go to a junkyard and

Joe Simpson 43:03

stockpile of them in Angleholm somewhere and they're, you know, They're alright for the

Drew Smith 43:11

just seems, it just seems like a bit of a, a bit of a pity to have, I'm, you know, I'm sure it's, they've made it quite a nice looking wiper blade, but it just makes it look a bit Again, for Bugatti, you know, the thing about Bugatti has always been, you know, if I think about what, what the first Veyron achieves, you know, it was a thousand horsepower and it drove like a big Audi TT. there was a level of refinement and obsession to making this thing Not, not just a hypercar, but also like an extremely luxurious and comfortable and calming kind of thing to drive. And, you know, having the wiper whacked up the middle of the windscreen doesn't really suggest refinement to me, but there you go.

Joe Simpson 44:03

I like it, I think it's characterful.

Drew Smith 44:08

I'm just imagining it. You know, you're getting to whatever it is like 400 kilometers an hour and

Joe Simpson 44:13

It starts to lift off the screen

Drew Smith 44:14

cyber trucks wiper, it starts like

Joe Simpson 44:22

Oh dear.

Drew Smith 44:25

Oh dear.

Joe Simpson 44:26

So there you go.

Drew Smith 44:28

there you go. I think that probably brings us to a fairly neat close in this episode.

Joe Simpson 44:35

I wonder if I'll ever see her on the road. You know, might change her mind. Um.

Drew Smith 44:40

maybe. Might see it in parked in Paris on on Instagram Ladies and gentlemen listeners, thank you so much for tuning in We're going to be taking a bit of a break for Joe's European summer

Joe Simpson 44:57

Thanks. That made me feel even worse about taking the amount of time off I am, but, yeah. Come on, people. It's dark and cold in Sweden in the winter. I need to recharge in the summer. You know, we don't get that much sun.

Drew Smith 45:10

Absolutely, no, it's

Joe Simpson 45:11

So, yeah. But anyway, like the rest of Europe, you know, we take a reasonable amount of time off. Sorry, Americans. But, you know, it's, it's nice.

Drew Smith 45:20

It's not. Uh, so we will be back in a little while, um, between now and then. Thank you so much for listening in. If you'd like this show, uh, and you're watching on YouTube, hit subscribe. Maybe share it with somebody, drop it in a message to them. If you're listening to it on your favorite podcast app, go on, give us a five star review. I've noticed that a couple of you have makes

Joe Simpson 45:43

Thank you

Drew Smith 45:45

Thank you so much. Uh, this has been Looking Out the Podcast, unwritten and produced by me, Drew Smith.

Joe Simpson 45:54

And me, Joe Simpson.

Drew Smith 45:57

This is Drew Smith. Thank you so much for listening and watching.

46:00

Mhm.