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The Garage Podcast : S2 EP16

Rich Nass of Open Systems Media

In this episode of The Garage we talk with Rich Nass, famed journalist who is Executive Vice President with Open Systems Media following his long career at storied electronics periodicals. Rich talks with John Heinlein, Ph.D., Chief Marketing Officer at Sonatus and shares his perspective from talking with leaders across the industry about vehicle innovation ranging from architecture, software, safety, regulations, AI and much more.

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Episode Transcript | Rich Nass of Open Systems Media

Overview

JOHN: Today in The Garage, Rich Nass from Open Systems Media. Let’s go.

JOHN: Welcome to The Garage. I’m John Heinlein, Chief Marketing Officer from Sonatus. Today, we’re so pleased to welcome Rich Nass, who’s Executive Vice President from Open Systems Media. Rich, welcome to The Garage.

RICH: Thanks. It’s great to be here.

JOHN: You know, we’ve, we were thinking about this, and I think we’ve been talking with each other, for maybe upwards to 20 years now in my various roles, I was at Arm and other places. And you’ve been in many different periodicals from UBM, E Times, many times. And for the most recently

RICH: Embedded Computing Design.

JOHN: Embedded Computing Design. And you’re also a frequent podcaster. You talk with everyone in the industry.

RICH: So you’re saying I’m old?

JOHN: No!

RICH: Is that where you’re going with this?’

JOHN: No, I’m not. But I think you because you talk with everyone in the industry. We were so excited to have you on the show, because I think you bring a perspective of talking with a wide range of ideas and influences. Almost like a mutual fund. Right? You’re not exposed to just one idea. You’re exposed to lots of ideas. So welcome to The Garage. Let’s begin by telling us about you and your background.

Meet Rich Nass

RICH: Sure. Went to engineering school in lovely Newark, New Jersey. Graduated with a EE. But I never actually practiced as an engineer. I started at an electronic design magazine as an intern while I was still in college, and I never left media. So I’ve worked for most of the media companies, as you said. I’ve worked at EDN, EE Times, Electronics Design. And I’ve been with Open Systems Media for just over ten years now.

JOHN: That’s fantastic. And you’ve covered a range of areas. In this podcast, we talk about, you know, vehicles and automotive technology and so on. But, what kind of… what’s the range of things you cover?

RICH: Well, I’ve been working in the embedded space for 30 years or so. And embedded to us is… It’s a niche, but it’s a big horizontal niche. So the things that are most interesting are systems in the industrial space, automotive, medical health care, and consumer applications. So that’s pretty much everything.

JOHN: Right. Well, we always like to get to know our guests and begin with a fun fact about them. You have to tell us a fun fact about you.

RICH: I’m a sports junkie. I love sports. I love to play, I love to watch. So that’s a big one for me. I’m an avid golfer. So here’s a fun fact. I have six holes in one.

JOHN: That’s a fun fact.

RICH: Yeah, and I just got number six a week or so ago.

JOHN: That’s fantastic.

RICH: Yeah, we moved to Florida a few years ago. I’m a Jersey guy. I lived in New Jersey my whole life. We moved to Florida and we live on a golf course, and I get out as often as I can. And yeah, I’ve managed to get six holes in one, so that’s a fun fact.

JOHN: That is a fun fact. I’ve never had a hole in one. And my fun fact is, I graduated from Carnegie-Mellon. And when I was coming to Stanford, I knew there was this one professor who was from Stanford. And I said, hey, you know, you got to tell me, what’s the tip? You know, should I go to this restaurant? And he said, when you go to Stanford, take up golf. It’s like, why is that? Well, because the Stanford Golf Course is this championship level course and students can play it for 16 bucks. And then actually, another related fun fact is, when I was at Stanford, my officemates were a couple guys named Jerry Yang and Dave Filo, who later founded Yahoo! And I played golf with Jerry Yang and Dave Filo back in the day.

RICH: But not Tiger.

JOHN: I actually saw Tiger in the driving range. So when I was in the driving range, Tiger was like 20 ft away behind the, “He’s on the team. Don’t bother him” fence.

RICH: I got it. Got it. So another fun fact, I’m a maker and I love to tinker. I think I run five different wireless protocols in my house. And I… if you. My wife just hates that I got this… All this crap all over my office and all over the garage, but I love to build stuff.

Vehicle Architecture

JOHN: That’s great. Fantastic. Well, let’s get into it. And let’s talk about vehicles and vehicle technology. One of the first topics I thought we’d cover is vehicle architecture. Vehicle architecture is evolving rapidly from a kind of a purely distributed approach to some higher performance domain controllers and then a lot of evolution towards zonal architectures. But it’s a kind of a continuum. Where do you see the spectrum in the industry today? And what’s your outlook on vehicle architecture?

RICH: You yeah, it’s kind of funny because it is this pendulum that goes back and forth, and I think it started with centralized because that’s where we were. We had these big compute engines. And then people figured out that they wanted to have all the various subsystems all around the car. And that was easier to deploy, but it came with its own set of problems. So we seem to be moving back toward this centralized. But I think where we are and where we should be is a hybrid approach, and that seems to make the most sense. That’s the easier – won’t say “easiest,” – but easier way to secure things. It’s the easier way to drop in replacement systems. And that seems like the one that makes the most sense. And there’s not a lot of people doing that right now, because it seems to be one or the other. But I think that’s where we’re going to end up.

JOHN: A balance between the two.

RICH: Yeah.

JOHN: Yeah. I was just mentioning to you, we had… A recent podcast guest on the show is Rivian. Vidya from Rivian. And they’re using, I would say, a similar approach where there’s a few very high power domain controllers for IVI and autonomous, of course, but also, a zonal architecture based on three zones and some other things that allows them to really optimize the vehicle wiring. And, do you see a shift towards zonal more?

RICH: Somewhat. I mean, when you talk about the vehicle wiring.

JOHN: Yeah, that’s a huge benefit.

RICH: Yeah, a reason to do this. And there are other reasons why you’d want to do that. But like I said, there’s… I can make an argument on either side. And I have made the argument on either side. One of the things about my position, I don’t really have anything vested, so I don’t have to be right.

JOHN: Sure.

RICH: I can make these statements and whether they come out or not, you know, it doesn’t really matter in the world because I’m… I don’t have anything behind it. But, yeah, I would say that that’s where we’re going.

JOHN: Yeah

RICH: Yeah. And it’ll probably change again, you know, as we do that. It also happens to be somewhat geography based, depending on what region you’re in. And there are areas of the world where they want to just do things as inexpensively as possible to a fault, and in some places.

JOHN: But those are some of the reasons why it goes one way or the other.

JOHN Yeah. The reason… And Sonatus works a lot on vehicle networks. It’s one of the many things we do. And one of the things that we observe, and I’ve seen in working in this area is there is a physical reality of you’ve got lights on this side of the car, and if the controller for that light is on the other side of the car, you’re going to have to run wires across the car. So either shifting towards a shared media like automotive Ethernet– which there’s a lot of people doing– and/or a hybrid of having zone controllers so that some of the local control can be in the local region that allows you to not physically run wires across the car. Seems to me a natural trade off that people will evolve towards, even though, as you say, the compute level may vary based on perhaps price point or region.

RICH: Yeah, I would certainly agree with that. As we talked about different regions, different regions have different standards for safety and for security. And they have to follow those standards first. Safety’s first, obviously. It has to be safe. But then you look at how you can economize from there.

Vehicle Software and Safety

JOHN: Right, right. Fantastic. Well let’s talk about software because vehicle architecture and software are close cousins. Historically you saw vehicles being dominated by more kind of closed standards, Autosar, and things like that. And more and more, you’re seeing a shift towards Open Source and open standards, Linux, Automotive Grade Linux and things like that. What do you see about the evolution in vehicle software as you talk to people?

RICH: This is one of the ones that we talk a lot about lately for the last year or so. And it isn’t so much in the automotive space because the automotive space isn’t a leader there, because things have to be… It has to work all the time by the time you get to the automobile. So this is playing out in other spaces. And as I was thinking about this, I was thinking about how both hardware and software have become commoditized. Way back in the day when we started, people came out with this awesome hardware. I got the fastest “this.” So, you know, it has the most gigahertz. And the software was just an add on to run on that hardware. And then after a while when everybody got their hardware up to snuff, it all became about the software and the hardware was a commodity. And you just had to have the best software to run on pretty much anybody’s hardware at the time. And now we seem to be going back again, where people are differentiating their hardware by the use of the software. So all that said, that’s a long story to get to where with Open Source, you can do a lot of these cool things on hardware. That’s– I won’t say it’s less important or easier– but it’s not the focus anymore. It’s, what can you do with the software on this hardware? So I’m still selling you the hardware because that’s where I make the money. But I can differentiate through the software and Open Source with things like Linux and Zephyr and every driver you could possibly imagine available and tested and retested and tested again is available to you. It’s easier. Does that make sense?

JOHN: Yeah, somewhat. I mean, you mentioned safety. And I think an important thing to think about is whether we’re talking about the non safe parts of the vehicle, you know the IVI, navigation, and so on, which have a lower level of safety requirements versus the things that are higher level safety. I still see in my impression of looking at the industry. We work closely with a number of silicon providers like an NXP, for example. And companies like that are trying to provide hardware that allows you to put multiple workloads together, but also have them be safe. So I think the safety versus non safety dichotomy will remain. And there will be, I think in my opinion, you need to have a lot more focus on safety and the software that can work with that. You’re seeing operating systems from Elektrobit from RedHat that are safety certified. So you can bring Linux into the safety world, which historically wasn’t the case.

RICH: Yeah, that’s a really good point. There’s definitely a divide there between mission critical and non mission critical. And the innovation, if that’s the right word, the glitzy part happens on the non mission critical where people can do all this cool in-cabin stuff. But when it does come to mission critical, safety critical, it has to work right all the time every time. So you have to be far more careful on that side.

JOHN: Right. That’s an important area. Sonatus has been doing a lot of work on safety. And we’ve got some exciting things coming out about that in the period ahead. But it’s this dichotomy. I think people sometimes think, and my impression is, I see people who are talking about this area conflate putting an app in the IVI and that that’s everything. But there’s much more to it than that.

RICH: It’s actually funny. We were just having this conversation years ago.When we looked at the smartphone, you look at a smartphone today, it’s this super cool device. Oh yeah. And it makes calls too. And people are starting to look at the automobiles as the same thing.

JOHN: It’s this “transportation’s a side thing.”

RICH: Yeah. You know, it does all these things. It’s a moving office. Oh yeah. And it also drives. And the automakers are looking at that as a revenue source once the vehicle has left the shop. It isn’t like, okay, you know, the only way I’m going to make my money is on repairs. Now you’re talking about upgrades and downloading things and all stuff like that.

JOHN: Well, that’s a perfect transition. I’d love to talk about-

RICH: That’s on purpose.

JOHN: There you go. I love the praise you because, you know, you run a podcast. We were saying that you run multiple podcasts. So, it’s exciting to, like, be your host, but also feel like I’m being hosted as well, so we can decide who’s the boss here.

RICH: It is a little weird because I’m always in that chair.

Upgrades and Monetization

JOHN: No problem. But let’s talk about apps and upgrades after shipments and also monetization, because there’s a holy grail kind of a windmill on the hill, if you will, of OEMs are looking to find ways to monetize. But there’s also pushback from drivers and vehicle owners that they don’t want to have, you know, be extorted for too much money. I think there’s a balance to be had there. What’s your take on these upgrades after sale and monetization?

RICH: Well, there’s two different things. One is that I guess it’s generational. Going back to that, I’m an old guy and I’ve already paid whatever it is, $40,000 in some cases for a car. I’m done with you. You know, I’ve given you my money. I don’t think you should have to come back to me for more money. But I think a younger generation gets that. That’s just the way it works. Then there’s always… You’re not gonna be paying anything of that significance again. But pop in a couple hundred bucks every few months is to be expected to do some of these cool things. The other part of this is that, doing over-the-air updates is hard. It sounds simple and it should be simple, but it’s not. You’re talking about a vehicle that’s moving, for example. Or are you doing this when it’s in your garage? How do you ensure that it’s safe and secure? Just like when we talk about these other hacks where, why would somebody want to hack my baby cam? Why would somebody want to hack my car? Because that’s the gateway into everything that you own.

JOHN: Yeah. So lots to talk about there. First, on the idea of, updates. I mean, we agree updates are important. Sonatus has a product called Sonatus Updater that we think is going to be the best solution in the market to address the complex and growing needs of OTA updates for vehicles, especially-

RICH: The other thing it allows you to do– sorry to interrupt–

JOHN: No, go ahead.

RICH: So, something I’m not in favor of. It lets them ship the car before it’s ready to be shipped.

JOHN: Sure.

And, it is what it is. And that’s become the norm now, where the first thing you do when you pop something out of the box is, okay, let me run the updates. And I think those updates should have done before I got it, not after I get it. And it allows the automakers to do the same thing.

JOHN: It’s interesting. I mean, I think when Tesla first came out, you could argue they did a little bit of that…

RICH: A little bit?

JOHN: …maybe a lot of that. They’ve released a lot of features and then rapidly improved them. And I’m of two minds about that, because on the one hand, I think you’re right that there’s some cases you’re seeing that happen too early. On the other case, if it’s done properly with safety in mind, you still have the opportunity to improve rapidly and so there is a usefulness of having updates. I think the mindset of smartphones has given people the interest in having updates to the vehicle. And Tesla has really proven how their drivers can be incredibly satisfied by seeing, “oh, I got a new feature on my vehicle!”, and generally they’re free. A few of their features are non-free. But I think in general, what we believe is that there’s some appetite for monetization to a point. And I think you want to offer driver services that kind of inspire and delight them. And if you do that, in some cases, drivers are willing to pay some small up charges.

Data Privacy

JOHN: But as we’re talking about these apps and services another important area is privacy. Drivers… There’s been a lot of recent scandals where data was being shared inappropriately. We do a lot of work with data. It’s one of the things we’re famous for. And actually, one of the things our product does is actually promote privacy because it allows drivers to individually opt in and opt out of services that they want or don’t want. What do you see as the role of privacy in improving this ecosystem?

RICH: It’s the same as any other application. Your car now has to be as safe as any other device that you own. And there’s different levels based on what you’re doing in that car, whose car it is, sort of thing.

JOHN: I think transparency is important. Right? It’s so much that if you–

RICH: Transparency of what?

JOHN: In terms of being clear about what you’re doing. Being clear that we’re going to use your data in these ways and not these ways.

RICH: Yes.

JOHN: And I think so many services–

RICH: Yes and no.

JOHN: Even on smartphones today are not transparent.

RICH: But a lot of times the user doesn’t even know what they’re doing. And I think that that could be the case in the car. How many times you see these agreements and you scroll way to the bottom and hit I accept. And is that being transparent? Well he signed the agreement.

JOHN: Yeah. But I think that there’s a lawyer-y transparency and there’s a sort of a plain stated thing. In fact, there’s a lot of discussion in governments about– in smartphones, not cars, in smartphones– about saying it should be easier to understand how things are being used, as opposed to the fine print of page 37. I’m thinking about from an auto industry perspective that if we want to promote users to use these features as opposed to automatically opt out, opt out, opt out, I think it behooves us to be clearer that we want to provide you these services, and by doing that, we’re going to share this data. Is that okay? As opposed to 37 pages of fine print.

RICH: Well, you also remember that when we started with some of these features, they were directly in the car. And then the automakers figured out that that’s not the way to go. Let’s put them into the phone. Then when the user comes into the car, it becomes enabled. And so you’re enabling them somewhere else. And you’re allowing that checkbox or signature to happen someplace else other than the vehicle. And that is an easier method for people to understand and get. Does that make sense?

JOHN: Well, you mentioned using people’s phones. I mean, many different applications, say Waze, Google Maps, and other things, use aggregated data to provide a broader service that people share. And I think people are okay with that. So it feels to me from an industry perspective, we need to be transparent about how things are going to be used, and for example, anonymized, so drivers are willing to, you know, share data appropriately for beneficial services.

RICH: “Appropriately” is definitely the right word. You mentioned the Waze app. On my way here, you know, we’re in Silicon Valley. There’s mega traffic. And my Waze app took me through these neighborhoods that I didn’t even know existed. And that’s a good thing because people are sharing the data. And Waze knows that there’s some traffic on 101 and you need to avoid it this morning. If you actually asked them if they wanted to share the data, I don’t know if you’d get the same answer, but it just sort of happens with a lot of these apps. Yeah.

JOHN: So it comes back to this, “appropriate.” Making sure it’s appropriate–

RICH: And Anonymized.

Regulations

JOHN: Yes, very good. I wonder if we should talk about regulation because regulations, which is kind of sometimes a dirty word. But regulation also has potential benefits as well. One of the areas that we’re seeing in regulation is raising safety standards, for example. Then privacy, which we sort of just talked about, is another. What do you think is the challenge or perhaps the opportunity that’s raised by regulation, this both in the U.S. and Europe and other regions?

RICH: I’m a huge believer in this. The only downside, and it’s actually a very large one, is that it slows the process to a painful… It isn’t to a halt, but it’s really, really slow. And that drives me crazy. I’m a Jersey guy. I know I want it yesterday and sometimes you just have to wait and you get the big players in the room. And to some extent, everybody has their own agenda. And what you end up agreeing on may not be the best for the end user, but it’s best for everybody who’s in the room and usually the people with the loudest voices in the room. But regulations are what they are and we have to have them. Otherwise you’d have autonomous driving would already be here and you’d have cars bopping at each other on the road.

JOHN: Right? So think about certain standards like automatic emergency braking. And other kind of preventative features. I was just reading the European NCAP standards. And their standards are interesting because they have… over the coming years, the bar goes up and up and up to maintain the high, you know, star rating that they have in NCAP. And even things like, you know, stopping the car from rapidly accelerating, for example, from a stoplight, if there’s a pedestrian. You know, you’re at a stoplight, maybe you look away for a moment, the light turns green and you go, but actually there’s a pedestrian who crossed in front of you. That’s something that’s in the Euro NCAP standards that has to be deployed in the coming years. Do you think those safety standards from these agencies is helpful in the industry?

RICH: I don’t know. We’ve been driving for 100 years. All of a sudden we need the car to tell us that there’s a pedestrian in front of the car?

JOHN: But pedestrian fatalities are going up.

RICH: They are.

JOHN: And like, really crazy going up.

RICH: Yeah, I you’re right. And I shouldn’t minimize it.

JOHN: I think it’s distracted driving too, I mean…

RICH: Boy, is that a big one. And you’re driving down the road. It seems like the majority of the people are not looking at the road. And they’re looking down at their device. Yeah, that is definitely huge. And okay I’m on the bandwagon. Yep. I’m a believer. And where I live in Florida, we actually have a very high rate of people getting hit by cars. Yeah, it is definitely true.

JOHN: But I think it also can be an opportunity. So looking at it from the industry perspective. Bringing these features in, you know, OEMs are using this as a selling feature. In fact, when they’re doing standards that they know they’re going to have to do later anyway, in some cases they’re pulling it earlier. Subaru has a big ad campaign about emergency braking, which is a great ad campaign showing how if you look away for a moment, they can help protect passengers. And I admit, I’ve used these features and they work great when something happens.

RICH: Well, it’s all part of the software defined vehicle that we’ve been talking about a real lot over the last year or so. The electrification of the vehicle.

JOHN: Right.

RICH: These are all things that are getting baked in and being way more complex. And Open Source plays a big part of that. So I think we’re coming full circle here.

JOHN: Yeah. Software defined vehicle. It’s a major theme of this podcast. And it’s really about how the vehicle is going to evolve faster than the hardware can evolve. And being smart about having software improvements over time, is really important.

RICH: And it is Open Source that will make that happen because it has the ability to move much quicker.

Evolution in Vehicle Design

JOHN: Yeah. Another thing you’re seeing in the industry right now is a real rapid shift in how vehicles are being developed and designed, partially driven by the pandemic. Partially, it’s driven by other factors where OEMs and their approach to outsourcing, how much they do inside, how much they do with tier ones and other providers is changing a lot. What’s your take on how the vehicles are being developed now and how is changing?

RICH: It’s interesting. A lot of it has to do with, well, let’s first talk about what happened with the pandemic, where people had to work at home. The only people who were in the office were the absolute have-to-be-there-people. And the OEM figured out that this works. It may not be where we want people home all the time, but on a semi-regular basis, they’re just as productive, if not more productive when they’re not in the office. So the design became distributed. It’s also different regions want to do things differently. The folks that are more of the tried and true, the traditional brands, seem to stick to what they’ve always done. And in some of the regions in Asia where they want to cost-reduce and are more accustomed to having this done. They’re more willing to outsource. And if they can get something done faster, cheaper, they’re willing to take that risk.

JOHN: Well, what if we look from a software perspective? We focus a lot on software in this podcast. How do you see the software appetite for OEMs changing?

RICH: Same thing. The OEMs that have been around for a very long time. Seem to want to do it themselves in-house, and they’re starting to look at Open Source a little bit, but they’re not as quick to say, absolutely, let’s do it that way. Where the, there’s so many startups in the software defined vehicle space. I guess it’s easier to get into business with something like that. But we’re seeing a lot of startups on the software defined vehicle side.

JOHN: And my impression is that OEMs, partially driven, as we said, in the pandemic, where there was supply chain crunch, where parts were in some cases unavailable, it seemed like that drove them to want to have more control over their subsystems. In some cases, more control over their software is that what you saw?

RICH: Somewhat there’s only so much that they can do if a part is not available, the part is not available. And these cars sat on the factory floor waiting for, in many cases, a part that was a few dollars that they just couldn’t get anywhere. Or they ship without the part and they said to the dealer, soon as we get this part, you snap it in yourself. And the same thing on the software side, they were doing these downloads later. Ship the car now and we’ll send you the software later.

Artificial Intelligence

JOHN: Okay. So then we’ve talked about many different topics from hardware or software to vehicle architecture. What are the things you’re seeing in your many conversations around the industry?

RICH: Well, never a conversation goes by without talking about artificial intelligence.

JOHN: Great.

RICH: And machine learning. And how that affects everything that we do and has in the past without people really even knowing it. But it’s moving more now to doing AI at the edge, and that’s where it comes back to all the things that we do, where an edge has different meanings to different people. But if you bring that computer on prem, the things that you’re able to do where you don’t really have to worry about security as much because your data is never leaving your facility, it opens up the world to lots of different things. And when you bring machine learning in, having your automation equipment optimized, if you want to bring this back to automotive, the machines that are producing the automobiles are so much more optimized with AMR’s autonomous mobile robots on the factory floor. It’s awesome what we’re seeing.

JOHN: Okay, so certainly in the manufacturing side, there is a ton of investment AI in the fixed infrastructure in that area. It’s something I worked on before at my last role at Arm.

RICH: Yep.

JOHN: But if we look into the vehicle of course tons of AI is being used and things like autonomous driving, you know, as those are people going towards level three and more autonomy, Waymo and things like that. But other than autonomy. Do you see AI also proliferating into other systems of the vehicle?

RICH: On the ADAS side, on the infotainment side, absolutely. Because there’s less risk involved.

JOHN: Right.

RICH: So people can experiment a little more. If you have to reset, you have to reset.

JOHN: One of the things we’ve been researching and doing some work with lately is looking at how AI can be used for quality improvements in analytics. I use this example of vibration. Well vibration is a very complicated thing, like how much vibration, which frequency ranges. And so if I ask you to write a conventional algorithm to say is there vibration? That takes some real work. But from an AI perspective, there are patterns of vibration. You could say when there’s vibration, tell me, or within these parameters. And I think there are examples like that where AI can be used to do analytics that may have been more difficult before.

RICH: And it’ll have to evolve over time because you need a fairly large data set to make that work. But yeah, we could definitely do that. And they’ve been doing that in airplanes for years.

JOHN: That’s right. I had a friend who worked at an oil company and they used AI techniques to do preventative maintenance and say, this pump’s going to fail in three weeks, and they could very reliably predict that and fix it before it failed. And I think there’s an opportunity in vehicles to do those kinds of preventative things, things we don’t even know about yet.

RICH: Yeah, it is true. I think it’s harder in the automobile because there’s there’s a lot more components. There’s a lot more going around than just a motor that just spins in the same direction all the time. It’s easier to detect one that’s going to fail.

JOHN: Right.

RICH: But absolutely. That’s a good place for that. The issue that that does bring up is who’s going to repair the automobile when it does fail at that point. Your average mechanic doesn’t have the training to work on that vehicle anymore.

JOHN: It’s a double edged sword because especially EV, as you mentioned earlier, the transition to EVs. EVs are a fundamentally simpler machine, which is great. It’s more reliable. My EV, I barely do any service to it at all. And you generally don’t have to do very much. But the downside is that the repair is becoming more specialized and, you know, sometimes OEMs have to do it. And for OEMs, there’s probably an opportunity. For the drivers. It’s a little bit of a constraint. But for me, I mean, I net positive on the vehicle being much simpler, much more, I think, overall reliable.

RICH: I’m a car guy. I like to fix my own car. But I don’t have any experience at all with EV. Attempting to repair it. But it’s definitely a different animal.

Conclusion

JOHN: Well, Rich, thanks for visiting with us. We’ve covered so many different topics in today’s conversation. It’s always great to talk with you. Thank you.

RICH: Thanks. This is a lot of fun. As people like to say, I’ve never had a microphone I didn’t want to be in front of.

JOHN: Thanks a lot for joining us. Thanks for joining us today. If you like what you’re seeing in The Garage, please like and subscribe to see more episodes like this. And we look forward to seeing you again in The Garage very soon.

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