On FSX flight lesson on climbs and descents, what does "free ride" mean? The following is from a lesson on Microsoft Flight Simulator X regarding climbs and descents:

While engine power moves a car uphill, gravity pulls it down. Without your foot on the accelerator, the car's downward speed is determined by the steepness of the hill it's descending. The steeper the hill, the faster it goes. If the hill becomes shallower, then the speed decreases. If the hill becomes too shallow, then some power is necessary to maintain sufficient forward speed.
Airplanes can also move downhill without power.
Just lower the nose, and you'll get what appears to be a free ride (it isn't, but let's not get into that).

I cannot seem to understand what the author meant by the last sentence. Is the author trying to say that descents are not &quot;free&quot; as in descents are not &quot;powered&quot; by the weight of the aircraft and some form of thrust is needed?
I am rather new to the concepts of the physics of flying and may be missing out on something. Hopefully, someone is able to point out what I am not catching. Thanks so much!
If I remember correctly most of those FSX lessons were done by Rod Machado.   He’s a good CFI but has a tendency to speak tongue-in-cheek about things. What he means by that is that by lowering the nose you can maintain the same airspeed but use less power to do it i.e. getting a free ride out of it. In truth what’s happening is that the airplane is compensating for the reduction of thrust by exchanging potential energy for additional kinetic energy, and it does this by descending.  It’s not exactly a “free ride” per se - energy is conserved after all - but the effect is similar to a car rolling down a hill whereby the driver does not need to give the engine gas to maintain a given speed.