 Hey, we're at the 2018 Detroit Auto Show. I'm Tamara Warren from The Verge. I'm with Andrew Hawkins and Sean O'Kane, our transportation team, and we're going to tell you about all the news at the Detroit Auto Show. So I think we should start with probably the biggest news of the show, what kicked off the show, which was Ford decided to dramatically increase its promise for how much it's investing in electric cars, how many electric cars it wants to build. It sort of bridged the gap between CES last week and Las Vegas to Detroit this week. Andy, you wrote the story. Why don't you give us a little bit more information about what it was before we talk about it? Sure. So I think it was in 2015 that Ford said that they were going to spend around $4.5 billion on electric cars, and they were going to have around two dozen of them, and they were going to be rolling out sometime in the 2020s. Now they say that they're going to spend $11 billion, more than doubling the amount that they said that they were originally going to spend. We're going to start seeing some of those battery electric cars rolling out a little bit sooner, maybe 2019. So I think it's a big deal that Ford says they want to spend this much money. Whether or not they get, you know, this produces vehicles that people actually want to buy and drive and can drive, like there's an infrastructure in place that people can charge these cars, I think is going to be the real big question. I think facing Ford and all companies that are making electric cars. Well, I was going to say they showed up, they did this, and they showed up with a diesel F-150. So I mean like, you know, what does it mean in the short term? It feels like it doesn't mean much in the short term, right? And it's also even the charging network, too, that I'm wondering if part of this investment is investment in infrastructure. I mean, they talked a lot at CES, which was just a few days ago, seems like a year ago, but where Ford talked about really wanting to be involved in smart cities. And so I'm curious if these two strategies meet or if they're just separate ideas kind of fishing in the pond. I mean, they almost have to have some sort of infrastructure investment because, I mean, that's what makes Tesla such an exciting company. Yeah, sure, they miss all their deadlines and sometimes their cars are a little janky, but they also have sort of this like complete picture of electric vehicles, right? They have the cars, they have the charging network with the superchargers, they have the solar panels in terms of, and the battery power, the home chargers for people's homes. So they sort of present this clear picture where it's like a weld wheel type of investment. So let's talk about some of the other big news of the show. Mercedes came out with the new G-Wagen. That was for sure the craziest event we saw all week. Hands down. You should go watch the video if you haven't already. It involves fire shooting up from a mountain on a stage in an old theater and also Arnold Schwarzenegger doing shots of snops. Why did Mercedes go so far pulling out all the stops to announce this new G-Wagen? I mean, the G-Wagen is, it is a ridiculous car. Like it's a huge, it's expensive as the S-Class. It's this massive wagon that, or massive SUV that dates back to the 60s as well. Another move in that playbook. It's a lunch box on wheels. Yeah, it's boxy, it's square, lots of power. It's not particularly comfortable to ride in, so it doesn't have like what Range Rover has, which is that it's evolved over time. But it's also completely like, look at me, I'm ostentatious. And it's all about the body of it, which is why they brought a former body builder and the former governor of California to introduce this car, along with Dieter Zetsch, who is the CEO of Daimler. And so it was all about spectacle. And if you're going to do it, do it big, and that's what they did by having this event at the Michigan Theater, an iconic theater that's decaying and falling apart, and fire going off in the background. I thought the most telling aspect of that announcement was when Schwarzenegger asked Dieter whether or not there was going to be an electric version of the G-Wagen coming out. And he had apparently retrofitted his own G-Wagen to run on battery electric power. Dieter kind of hemmed and hawed. He's like, oh, our entire lineup is going to be electric at some point. And he kind of pressed them a little bit. But I think that that's sort of like, it speaks to this sort of like this internal conflict that all these automakers are facing. They want to sort of speak to their audience. People want to buy these. The types of cars that people buy are not electric cars. But at the same time, they feel like they have to sort of trudge their way into the future with electric. But let's talk about the Jetta. Well, that's the type of car people buy, right? This is an accessible car. This isn't a car that's affordable. It's a car that we see out on the road. And it got a little bit of a refresh this year. I think the most interesting thing about the Jetta is we've seen Volkswagen over-correct maybe a little bit post-dieselgate and sort of try to make themselves seem like a better, more clean company than they obviously were. Well, they're definitely trying to grab onto this place that they hold in American history where they're this iconic brand with the Bug and the Microbus. This is the first normal thing I think we've seen them do since dieselgate, right? Like, here it is. Here's the Jetta. There's not really anything special about it. It'll probably still sell pretty well. It's not electric. It's not hybrid. It's just like, here it is. That was, I think, the funniest thing about the Jetta announcement to me, that Volkswagen feels comfortable enough that they can just sort of get back into the groove now as opposed to making big claims about, oh, we want to electrify our entire lineup by 2020, whatever. It was the first time that company's felt normal in a little while. I don't know if consumers are ready to give them credit for that. I don't know if the press is ready to give them credit for that, but they're trying. But their sales are there, which is totally crazy to me that dieselgate or not, people kept buying their cars. Yeah. So it was time for them to get back to that point. And also, they did a great job of marketing diesel as clean technology. It just wasn't true. Let's talk about some of the weird screens that we've seen, especially in some of the concepts. We've talked a lot about the cars that are actually going to be on sale, but there were a couple of interesting concepts that came out at the show this week. The Infiniti Q Inspiration, I think, was a real noteworthy one. You described it as a... What was it again? A land yacht for movie villains. Yeah, right. Like for Bond villains, specifically. I was intrigued by it coming into the show because the teaser image they released looked like a lot like the Lucid Air or the Model S. It had this sort of stout rear end, and it just had that sort of vibe, that sort of curve in the ceiling of it. And it looks totally different here on the show floor. It actually impressed me more than I thought it would. It is, like the name suggests, supposed to be an inspiration for Infiniti's design going forward. I've never particularly liked Infiniti's design, and this one actually sort of strikes me as different and a thoughtful reimagining of what their cars look like. And so I'm excited to see where that goes. One thing I thought was interesting, even though it sounds ridiculous in their press release, is they talk about this whole concept of there's a Zen mode that before or after you drive, the screen will enter this Zen mode to try and calm you down. That's a ridiculous idea, and it's not something that's going to come to a production car, but I think at least, I hope, means that they're thinking about things like that and not using the screen to just horribly distract you while you're driving. This also isn't a concept where the seats turn and it's all about full autonomy. It's still very much a car you're going to drive, maybe with some assistance from Nissan's pro pilot, but you're still going to drive this thing. It's built like a car in the way that we know. Contrast to the Nissan cross motion SUV concept that Nissan introduced. Nissan obviously owns Infiniti, but the cross motion SUV was not my favorite car of the show, but I definitely think it was the most interesting in terms of how they were tackling this idea of how the car's interior is going to change. There was also a pillar to pillar screen in the front of the dash. Seven screens, one on the center console, one on the roof, two on the sides. Screens as far as the eye could see, plus there was a virtual personal assistant that was a koi fish that would swim across all the screens and tell you about some of the places that you were seeing as you were autonomously driving through whatever city you were driving through. Here's a McDonald's, the koi fish would say. That's what it will be. Pretty much. It'll have some sort of advertising tie in, no doubt. Those concepts are fun, they're cool to look at, they're cool to sort of pour over and debate, but it's still a show about trucks and SUVs. It is. One thing I'm thinking about what you're saying being here, the reason to still come to an auto show is to actually see everything in physical form. Because oftentimes what we see in pictures looks very different in person. We're all here as media covering the new announcements, but when the public day is open on Saturday this is where people will come to do their car shopping. What are they shopping for? The best selling vehicles are trucks and SUVs. Something that we've seen since last year is that we saw some dips in sales numbers in the auto industry. This show is critical for them to get to that place where they can have koi fish swimming on their screens. We saw a lot of big announcements from the big three who love to make a splash in Detroit. This is their hometown, their front page news in the local papers. It's important to them. People who live here work for these companies on all levels and some get perks on driving these cars. It's a sense of pride and it's also sort of an insider competition. What we saw here was those wars are still going on. The first reveal was the Chevy Silverado pickup truck. It's a big pickup truck with lots of features and you can have eight different trim levels. It's just really going into the heart of what pickup truck drivers want in their vehicles, which is power, payload, towing. And increasingly what we saw in the other truck that we just mentioned, which is the Ram 1500 and another big seller, neck and neck with the Silverado for sales in the US market, super important for the success of CA's future is selling that truck this year. That's what we're seeing here. The other side of that is in the midsize range, Ford had the Ford Ranger on display. And Sean, I think you described the Ford Ranger really well. I'll let you talk about it. Truck for millennials. Yes. It's the Tumbler truck. It's like what you want if you're a younger person in this country and you maybe want to go camping but maybe not. Maybe you just want to appear like you're going camping. This is what Ford's going after. Toyota has owned this part of the market for the last decade probably with its smaller pickups and so this is Ford trying to get into that game. I think what's really interesting to me about trucks and SUVs and all the stuff that we've seen in the larger vehicle space is that it's finally starting to really bleed over. We see the Lexus LF1 concept here is an SUV. The Mach 1 electric car that Ford is teasing is probably a crossover of some kind. We are seeing a lot of concept sedans and coupes but we're starting to get to a point where we're also just seeing bigger stuff and they're imagining maybe they don't have to be electric. Maybe they can be hybrid and that way we can still make them real big. Part of the announcement from Ford, it was the Ford F150 that's coming that will also not be the traditional gas guzzler that we've known. They've gone increasingly lighter by the last generation using aluminum frame but we're seeing that happen across the space. So it's like all these worlds are starting to come together. Maybe what is also interesting too is that you're coming from CES where everything was kind of crazy and out there. So it's hard after you've been at CES and seen the future to come here and really be impressed with the present. So what do you think both CES and Detroit are telling us about where we see things heading with the car industry and the transportation industry in 2018 and 2019? My take was that this is going to be sort of, this is like the calm before the storm. This is about the reality of the car business. This is what they sell, trucks, SUVs, it's supposed to make them money. CES is more aspirational. It's about the future. It's about ride sharing. It's about autonomy. It's about things like the Toyota concept of the e-palette where we're going to have all these sort of like self-driving retail businesses. Ford's got its self-driving Domino's Pizza delivery car here, but at the same time it's sort of shunted off to the side. It's tucked in the corner. It's not being given as much prominence as the Mustang or the Ranger. So I feel like we're starting to see like an industry in transition, but there's still like a lot of fundamental realities that they're dealing with. Maybe there's a little bit of denial mixed in with a little bit of it. There's like a resistance. They don't want to go whole hog on the autonomy and the ride sharing and the idea that they're going to be losing money in the future because these are technologies that are going to come out and it's going to rob them of like 40% of their profitability. And that's like got them probably scared to death. It's an interesting thing because you think about the idea of brands here. Like the brands are still the car companies. Where at CES the car companies often sought to partner with familiar brands. And then you think about the screens that are going to be in all these cars and that's advertising space. And so I think that's an interesting thing that we're all seeing is that these names that mean something in our consumer lives, whether it's Amazon or something like Domino's or Pizza Hut, it's things that we know creeping into our personal space in the cars as we move toward autonomous driving. And another part of that is within the next 10 years, every executive you talk to tells us we're going to see more change in the auto industry than we have since the Model T was produced, right? I think these two shows back to back helped us see that there's some things that are actually starting to like coagulate. Like we're finally starting to see all these balls have been up in the air, autonomy, electrification, all this stuff, and now we can actually sort of see where it's headed in the sense that everybody's been talking about the cars, no one's been talking about the infrastructure to support electric cars. And so we're probably going to just see a whole bunch of hybrids up until we get to the point where electric cars are viable for everyone everywhere, which is still a ways out. And once we get to that point, then we'll probably have these sort of other services creeping in at the edges in cities and hopefully outside of cities where you will be able to hail like a self-driving lift, like I got to ride in Vegas. We also seen that even before these two shows, you know, like all these companies talk about the electrification of their fleets, not electric cars. And they're trying to like bank off the goodwill of electric cars by saying that, but also talking about hybrids. And so that seems to be the clear path forward, you know, 2018, 2019, 2020, we're going to get more electric motors in these cars, but they won't exclusively be electric on the way to eventually maybe getting there. It's like the companies like Ford thinks that you're more likely to buy an electric car if it's an electric Mustang. If it's a nameplate that you recognize, maybe it's an easier transition for the public. But you know, it's like it's a crazy show every year. It's always a lot of fun to see the ideas that people are bouncing around. We'll be back next year again, talking about all this stuff probably. We think scolding the companies that aren't doing a good job and, you know, drooling over the cars that seem like they're going to be bad ass to drive. So thanks for watching. Be sure to go to the verge.com to watch more and subscribe to our YouTube channel at youtube.com slash the verb. We do talk to each other. We do. We are coworkers. We tend to talk to each other. We have mouths that speak.