The death of the U.S. auto industry was a bigger deal than many realized. It was a harbinger of what's to come for the rest of the country. In this episode, we talk about the root cause of the problem, and how to fix it.
00:03:18.960So, I mean, getting older is a process of realizing how many of the lies you've internalized and believed.
00:03:25.440And I guess if you had asked me when I woke up this morning what destroyed Detroit, I would say, I mean, I'm not actually even that against unions, to be honest with you.
00:03:33.300But I would say, well, everyone says the unions and EPA and safety.
00:03:57.840Another thing which I want to mention, two points.
00:03:59.880The other thing that's happening nowadays is we don't really innovate or make anything new anymore that people can afford, really.
00:04:08.060And I'm finding another, it seems like a symptom, a cross-culture of just everything now is about money from one pocket to another.
00:04:15.720It's not about really creating something new or building tomorrow.
00:04:19.120And I started to see that in the automotive industry with the nature of hybrids to electric.
00:04:25.420They have a purpose, but they're not a solution for everything.
00:04:29.880But the political push and powers are trying to make it a solution for everything.
00:04:34.700And I look at this and go, no, no, no, no.
00:04:35.980This isn't about what's best for everybody or even the environment or anything.
00:04:40.840This is money from one pocket to another and a power play.
00:04:43.540What does that mean, money from one pocket to another?
00:04:46.060So, it's kind of a deeper discussion that led to when I built what I called the Omega car,
00:04:55.540which I built that high-efficiency diesel car that I thought would be more recyclable, low environment impact, affordable, and a good car and a direction to go.
00:05:04.660And if I may, can I just back up a second kind of what I saw?
00:05:08.660So, you know, in my teens and 20s, I'm just a normal car guy.
00:05:12.480I liked fast cars and going on dates with pretty girls.
00:07:34.660You just sit on a golf course all day.
00:07:35.720I'm like, no, we're changing oil in, like, diesel tractors and back-lapping mowers and mowing and putting on banquets and doing family business, right?
00:07:42.520What does it mean to back-lap a mower?
00:08:34.140And I also saw how that affected, eventually, when the family was thinking of selling the business, you couldn't get lending for something like that.
00:08:41.660And I started to see how that hurt everything.
00:08:44.700But where I was going with it in relation to the overarching things with the automotive industry.
00:08:48.980So now we're bailing out the automotive industry?
00:08:57.780And I'd lived in Columbus, Ohio at the time.
00:09:00.360Head of my little shop working on vintage race cars and things like that, and riding my motorcycle around.
00:09:06.580And after we were bailing out the automotive industries, I kind of remember back, and I'm like, so I wonder, is Obama going to try to make everything efficient now?
00:09:14.660And I see us, we just kind of doubled down on making bigger trucks and muscle cars and things, which, I have to tell you, I love big trucks and muscle cars and fast cars, okay?
00:09:24.680Like, if you can afford the fuel and do what you want, don't get in my way.
00:09:28.100You can pry my sports cars out of my cold, dead hands.
00:09:31.340But, you know, it doesn't mean I don't necessarily want something that could be better for as a daily driver, or I can't think of something that might be more efficient.
00:09:37.260So, I was noticing that, and I'm thinking, this is wrong.
00:09:43.660And just in what I was doing and, you know, researching various materials and thinking of building cars, and it's kind of what I do, you know, I started to realize there's a myriad of ways that we can mass produce cars, automobiles, that will be less toxic, less environmental impact, cheaper, more efficient than what we're doing.
00:10:03.600Because, in a sense, all of our cars are stamped metal boxes with chairs bolted in them.
00:10:08.620We've been doing that since the mid-1930s.
00:10:26.160They came up with that in the late 1950s.
00:10:28.580We had to go to the trouble of getting all the titanium, I think, from Russia at the time, which required a zillion shell companies and orchestration just to get the material to build it.
00:10:37.940And we built an aircraft, effectively, in the late 1950s, 1960, that'll do Mach 3 and can map hundreds of thousands of miles of the Earth's surface.
00:10:47.000And, before GPS existed, be able to plot the stars through broad daylight and through clouds in the late 50s.
00:10:55.060And we're still making cars like the 1930s now.
00:12:03.680I was like, okay, I want to build a car that'll be representative of something that can be mass-produced that, let's say, would cost about $20,000 or less.
00:12:56.520I just put it in my garage for a better part of a decade because I didn't have a voice.
00:13:02.080But other things going on in life, I was doing my nonprofit Genius Garage, which I really believed in, because we can go into some big problems with the American educational system, especially higher education.
00:13:11.680I think we're stymieing our youth, the families in the future.
00:13:14.240And I think it comes from predatory lending and loans you can't default on.
00:13:17.300And I think the schools are creating this vacuum monster that is not the real world with majors that are not providing jobs and creating an environment for political radicalization.
00:14:03.500Like, I know it sounds silly, but when you work on cars, if you spend your day pushing around cars, you start thinking about how efficient they are.
00:14:10.660Look at a car and a SUV going down the road, or a semi.
00:26:17.740Okay, what's the carbon footprint on average, the United States electrical generation, whether it's nuclear, wind, coal, whatever.
00:26:24.280National average of the carbon footprint of a kilowatt hour of electricity.
00:26:29.020Say like you're in a perfect world charging your electric vehicle at home.
00:26:32.600And then I just did the basic math on, okay, what's the carbon footprint of my car on diesel getting over 100 miles a gallon versus the electric car charged at home, national average over 100 miles.
00:26:42.840My car beat the electric car at a lower carbon footprint.
00:27:48.060But, and that's the other thing about the electric car.
00:27:51.300So when I look at it, all the governmental control and what it appears to me globally is going on with much of that and the push.
00:27:58.620And then the other thing that doesn't make any sense.
00:28:00.100So the Biden administration doing the big electric vehicle mandates and such and push, but excluding Tesla from their meetings at the White House and Summit and all that?
00:28:10.320So what you're telling me is the thing that you want to do with industry and cars and transportation is super important, but not as important as the politics with the guy with the biggest electric car company in the world?
00:28:28.040I think a lot of my grandmother, who was married to my World War II vet granddad, of course, she always said, give him a fair trial and hang him in the morning.
00:28:34.680And that phrase has been ringing in my mind a lot lately.
00:29:47.180It'll add a few hundred pounds more to it.
00:29:49.300Maybe it'll make the car a little bit better.
00:29:50.560But the other thing that happens when you actually develop and build something like that, you tune it better.
00:29:55.140I still can get those numbers and meet all of those same requirements.
00:29:58.580Okay, so can I just ask, like, at that point, it's like if you invent something that is truly useful and that, you know, at 20 grand-ish, a new Suburban is, like, pushing 100 grand right now.
00:30:15.040If you're going to spend that much money on a car, go buy a vintage Ferrari or something, you know?
00:30:18.120I don't know that I've ever bought a new car in my life, and I don't plan to, but people want to, whatever, leaving that whole aside.
00:30:23.380But what you just described is something that, like, almost by definition would be successful.
00:30:28.680So why can't you find someone to build it at scale?
00:30:32.960Well, it's 2025, and we live in a wonderful country, but one that has evolved into a lot of industrial complexes, and they don't like change.
00:30:48.000Yeah, but, I mean, you know, no one wants AI.
00:34:03.660It has something of an open tail because I—it was very important the way the air flows around it but also underneath it so that I can make it highly efficient.
00:34:14.340So, you know, the bottom of the—it's a monocoque structure where it's not like a tube frame with a body stuck on it.
00:34:21.620The whole car is itself the structure as well.
00:34:23.680So, the air, the way it flows over it through the radiator in the back, also to the heating of the motor, and the way that then intersects the trailing edge and the way the air flows around it.
00:34:33.540It's just all designed to be design efficient.
00:34:38.520And you can even use the structure of the—sorry, the chassis or the structure.
00:34:42.920So, I can even make the stereo system very small and effective and efficient because naturally, acoustically, it works out well for that too.
00:35:20.640What do people say when you drive it around?
00:35:22.680I keep it relatively under wraps because, respectfully, for as much time as it took me to build and what it represents, I consider it kind of valuable to trust out there in the wild with people on their cell phones and stuff.
00:35:32.060So, I kind of go with a low profile, but people are definitely interested and enamored by it when they see it.
00:35:39.280But they're not beating down your door.
00:35:41.840And that was the other interesting thing.
00:35:44.000So, nobody reported on it, even though, you know, I got a few hundred thousand views on it when I said everything I wanted to say and show it and it did the numbers, right?
00:35:52.100I would think if somebody builds a diesel car that represents being affordable and recyclable mass-produced, that gets great fuel efficiency and has a low carbon impact and all people would be into that.
00:36:02.960Well, one word I got back from an automotive media was telling.
00:36:06.300They said, we don't report on dirty diesel.
00:36:26.360Why do, this is obviously a much deeper question, but why do the worst people in the world, the most small-minded, the stupidest, the meanest, the people with, like, the most unbalanced, unhealthy personal lives, why do they all go into journalism, do you think?
00:36:48.560And I see the worst ones as kind of, like, we talk about, like, the dark triad personality traits, which is, like, you know, psychopathy and Machiavellianism and narcissism, et cetera.
00:37:18.700Okay, well, watch Le Mans with Steve McQueen.
00:37:20.500Just getting a good vibe as Steve McQueen being himself and just Le Manson straight at Le Mans, early 70s, Porsche flat 12 against a Ferrari V12.
00:37:33.980So, I love exotic cars because, for me, something like a V12 Lamborghini is like, yes, I can't be Steve McQueen at Le Mans, but I can drive this.
00:38:21.180But, yeah, I mean, if you get the privilege of driving something like an old Lamborghini or Ferrari from the 70s or earlier, you've got to be a little sympathetic.
00:38:28.600You've got to understand the transmission.
00:38:29.740You've got to be able to rev match gears and such.
00:38:31.840You're not going to be doing wild burnouts and such.
00:38:35.580You've got to understand the carburetors and letting it warm up and appreciate it.
00:38:38.160And we're in an industrial age where you don't have to do that.
00:38:40.980But to answer your question relating to journalism, I make that joke about certain things attract certain personality traits because those personality traits can do well.
00:38:49.720So, you know, they also say Washington, D.C. is Hollywood for ugly people.
00:38:55.280And I think a lot of the traits of Hollywood to Washington, D.C. to journalism are the same kind of manipulative sociopath tendencies.
00:39:05.040That you can lie to somebody with a smile perfectly and find the structured crazy chess game to ruin people's life and power play your way up and find power and money.
00:39:14.620I mean, I think, I mean, everything you're saying is true, but it's just disappointing to see it in journalism, not because crappy people with weird personal lives go into journalism.
00:44:46.760Can you explain what that is for people who don't know what you're talking about?
00:44:48.180To be perfectly honest, I don't know it as well.
00:44:50.400But I think through the satellites and stuff that we can use now, like, nerds, and I mean that in a nice way, spend the time, like, looking over—it shows the exact topography of the ground.
00:45:19.220I really—I don't know if I'll have time or what the future will bring, but I really want to do some videos where you go to interesting places in the world to see and find these things.
00:45:31.440And one thing I'd really like to do is motorcycles around Saudi Arabia.
00:45:56.440And I don't know that they are, you know, focused on, like most emerging nations are not focused on archaeology.
00:46:04.420All of the archaeological sites of significance in the Middle East and then, you know, the Near East, the Levant, were discovered by the Brits and the French.
00:47:59.320I don't want this because they can't control it.
00:48:00.800It's the same thing of, like, saying you can pry this, whether it's a sports car or firearm, out of my cold, dead hands.
00:48:06.000If people don't ask questions and they're not interested in their own history or culture or the past or any others and they can't relate, it's easier to keep them in one place and your thumb on them.
00:48:16.540I think that's—I mean, look, if—but I don't begrudge people a lack of interest in anything.
00:48:21.620I mean, every person makes his own decisions about what he cares about and—
00:49:12.100Well, the iPhone has not made us better informed.
00:49:14.200You know, the internet has not made us better informed.
00:49:17.120In fact, it's centralized control over information.
00:49:20.540In effect, when Wikipedia is the first search result, and Wikipedia is completely controlled by the U.S. government, by the intel agency's fact.
00:49:29.760And the results in Wikipedia are shaped subtly, sometimes not so subtly, to produce a worldview that is inherently dishonest.
00:50:25.940A lot of people that become more prominent in the automotive region of YouTube, they weren't as big a car guy.
00:50:31.160They kind of just rose up as an interesting character.
00:50:33.500And they're happy to be somewhat famous, make some money, do their thing, get acknowledgement.
00:50:37.740And as I—I grew that, which is funny because the entirety of the reason I went on YouTube was just to try to get some exposure for the nonprofit I was doing because I couldn't get any with traditional media.
00:51:23.380It's a snake in the ant's tail for sure.
00:51:26.840I wonder that, like—I'm sure this has occurred to you, and I'm terrible at business, so don't take my advice.
00:51:32.460But, like, since you have designed something that has inherent utility and obvious mass appeal, and I'm naive enough to think that still matters.
00:52:13.340And I would have to go a different direction with the car where they'd kind of almost be, like, self-assembled prototype type things, and that's cool.
00:52:19.480But honestly, the thing I kind of worry about doing that, starting a small scale versus something else, is that I don't want to do something, in a sense, too good to where they try to change the laws and ruin the ability for people to build their own cars.
00:52:34.600I know that sounds a little kooky, but the other thing is if you think of, like, private equity guys and such, typically they want a faster return on such.
00:52:42.960And the problem is when you're thinking of something that, frankly, upsets an industry and relates to the automotive industry, how do you integrate it?
00:52:49.480Can you use the processes to make smaller parts that can be profitable in industry?
00:53:18.900You have a point, but you've got to scale that to a point that works, because there's a big difference between doing something in a small manufacturing to mass production.
00:53:26.940There's just got to be a way to get it out there.
00:53:29.420Well, Elon's first car with Tesla, the Roadster, was a Lotus Elise chassis with a different body and electrified.
00:53:36.340And the guys that I knew who had those originally were rich guys.
00:53:39.620They had Ferraris and Lamborghinis, and that was their cool toy to start with.
01:09:21.140I think that if you don't have the technical skill to do something actually beautiful, then I don't care about your hoo-hoo abstract ideas, right?
01:09:30.620But where I'm going with this is so-called art and design and product design has been influenced over the 20th century going back to, like, the Frankfurt School in Europe, which, frankly, was a lot of communist mindset that infiltrated the art world.
01:09:55.020In fact, I gave you this small detail.
01:09:56.720I ended up hating my experience there.
01:09:59.680I ended up quitting after, like, a year and a half and designing my own major just to get the hell out of school.
01:10:03.660Because I was kind of pissed off, actually, because there was one specifically, I remember in this one class, we get to design something for the whole semester, right?
01:10:12.240And we're going to design a bathroom scale.
01:10:18.360With the way they're teaching us to have an aesthetic, do the simplest thing possible, which is somewhat communistic in a way, you know, it seems almost solely—
01:11:05.140And if they just want to make the simplest thing possible, okay, here, here's a round piece of glass with an LCD display on it that tells you to go eat a salad.
01:11:13.940And so, I met with the academic advisor, and I said, I will meet all of your academic requirements for this class, but please let me design something at my level right now.
01:11:53.960And I just designed cars and things on my own.
01:11:56.600But how insane is that, that in college, when you're actually paying to be there, and there's supposed to be design and product design, that they won't actually let students do what they're capable of doing or push a boundary or go anywhere.
01:12:09.620They literally keep a thumb on you like that.
01:13:38.360So how, I just have to be clear on this, how, if there are other eccentric people out there who would like one of these vehicles that you've designed, how would they, would you be willing to make them to order?
01:15:57.280And to be honest, when I look at the car and what I've done with that or with the educational nonprofit or anything else in life, I look at how do I have the biggest positive impact I possibly can?
01:16:09.660You know, and right now, the biggest impact with regard to the car is talking about it.
01:16:39.340I've been around the sun, I don't know, 43 times in my life, right?
01:16:42.800When I was younger and we were working in a little town golf course that's a family business, and a lot of the guys that golf at our golf course were blue-collar.
01:16:51.120Everybody there is largely working class, old World War II vets, that sort of thing, right?