Doug DeMuro: The Inside Scoop on Cars

Foreign.

Kawasaki. This is remarkable, people. I'm on a mission to make you remarkable. Helping me in this episode is the one and only Doug Demuro. If you're a car guy or gal, these YouTube intros will sound familiar to you.

This is the 2022 Porsche 911 GT. This is a Bugatti Diva. This is the new 2022 Ford F150 Lightning.

You may know that I love cars, and if you didn't, you do. Now, today's guest not only loves cars, but he has made his passion the foundation of his success and career. Doug received an economics degree from Emory University in Atlanta. After graduation, he spent three years working for Porsche Cars North America. Doug has created a YouTube channel starting in 2013 with a focus on cars, and he now has more than 4 million subscribers. And his videos have been watched more than one and a half billion times. Doug is also an entrepreneur. He started an automotive online auction site called Cars and Bids. He focuses on cars from the 1980s and after. Currently, Doug lives in San Diego with his 1997 Land Rover Defender 90. Go figure. A 2005 Ford GT, a 2012 Mercedes Benz E63AMG wagon, and his wife and his dog noodle. I'm Guy Kawasaki. This is remarkable, people. If you're not a car person, you should listen. Anyway, this is one entertaining episode. With no further ado, my buddy, Doug demuro.

This is remarkable, people.

I'm a huge fan.

You have no idea.

I have watched hours and hours and hours.

Thank you. I appreciate that.

I appreciate that you're second only to Yellowstone as far as hours consumed.

I appreciate that. That means a lot. A lot of effort goes into these videos.

What's in your current stable these days?

The car I drive the most is a convertible Mercedes G Wagon, which is just about the ugliest thing in the world. It looks like a regular G wagon, but shorter and wearing a toupee. So stupid. But I love it. My wife loves it. We drive it around. And I have an old Land Rover and a new Land Rover and a Ford GT, which is a really special car, and an Audi RS2 station wagon. It's a lot. It's an enormous amount to keep track of and to maintain, to deal with is what I've learned.

Now, of that list of cars that you own, the one I find the most surprising, or the ones I find most surprising is Land Rover. Now, why would you buy a Land Rover given its reliability reputation?

Well, the old one is just a cool car and old cars in general kind of break and that's just kind of how it is. Yeah, Land Rover. Old Land Rover is bad, too. And so that car has been very special. I use that as, like, my wedding getaway car and we had on our honeymoon, and I'll always keep that. Probably the new one. I, you know, I don't know. I. Land Rover does have a lot of issues, and I've had Land Rovers in the past that have had a lot of issues. But new cars in general, even Land Rovers, are not really so bad, and that's certainly true of my new Land Rover. I've already done 26,000 miles in that car in a year, and it's been fine. So no complaints. I wouldn't get one used, I'll put it that way, unless it was a vintage one that I really was paying attention to and knew I wanted to own it and maintain it.

I'm just checking. I found many things interesting about your background, but working at Porsche North America as the start, like, holy cow. So what did you learn or unlearn there?

Yeah, that's a good question. I learned a lot, actually, and not a lot of people think about this, but I learned an enormous amount about the car industry. So I was the vehicle allocation person at Porsche. So basically, I was responsible for making sure all the right cars went to the right dealers at the right time, that sort of thing. And that's the point person in a car company, what gets distributed, where and when and how many. And so it was a really, really cool experience to kind of learn how it all works, how dealerships work, how invoicing and sales and what's desirable and what do dealers not want and how do they weasel out of some things? And it was a very interesting, very, very interesting job, and it was Porsche, but frankly, I think it would have been an interesting job at any automaker.

And in that job, the timing may have been right. Did you ever get a request from Stevens Creek Porsche, Audi, saying, steve Jobs wants a black Cabriolet tomorrow?

Cars like that the dealers got open allocations for, and they could just build them. And so exact units didn't necessarily come through me unless they were very special cars. But I'm sure I distributed the allocation and they ordered that car for him at some point. And as you can imagine, with Porsche, there were a lot of celebrities and crazy stories and people who needed cars. We had people fly cars over on airplanes, which now is actually not all that uncommon. But back then it was a crazy one guy a year did it or something, and it's incredibly expensive.

I Think Steve did that once.

You just gotta have it. The thing is, if you put the car on a boat like normal, to the west coast, it takes about four weeks. And an airplane takes about, I think, a couple days, but at the cost is like 30 or $40,000 more. So if you're paying 30 or 40 grand for a few weeks, it's just insane. To me. It'd be nice.

I knew someone very highly placed in the Audi organization, and back then it was Porsche, Audi, together. And so once I was about to buy a Porsche and I told the guy, will you go contact PCNA and tell him it's Guy Kawasaki who wants one? And so he did that. He said he talked to the general counsel of Porsche at the. And he said, my friend, the general counsel said that everybody who buys a Porsche is special.

That's right. It was insane. And after a while, you're just numb to the request. It doesn't really matter anymore because everybody's some guy with $50 million. You know, it doesn't matter. All of them are buying our cars. So the 12th guy and the 18th guy who wants this special option has got $50 million, is like, get in line, dude. You're not. This isn't anything.

Were you involved with the Martina Navratilova ostrich leather? There's some weird.

Yeah, I don't remember that there was ostrich leather, but I remember there were cars for tennis players and race car drivers and that sort of thing. And I never really understood any of that. The executives would just come to me and say, hey, man, you need to get a car. This spec to this person and this dealer at this time. I was like, all right, got it. Understood.

Tell Hans to fire up the factory. Right, so I'm interested in your business model. So is it about gathering eyeballs and selling YouTube ads, or is it promoting cars and bids?

Well, cars and bids has become a big part of my life these days, but the business model is really both. So the YouTube channel is still where the vast bulk of my income comes from, and it's still number one in new car reviews here in the U.S. that's it. Everybody watches. And I try not to shill for products in the videos. The YouTube ads do a good job of keeping the income rolling in because I feel like, as a journalist, if you start going out there and specifically talking about certain products, whatever, it's not really a great look. But I think the viewers feel that way, too, because the views have always remained really strong. And I think that most of them Think I'm a pretty objective source for info.

So how do you position cars and bids against Bring a Trailer?

It's an interesting thing. Bring a Trailer is a huge success. I mean, they're a massive business and they're doing really, really well. But Cars and Bids, we feel, has a few big differentiators, the biggest of which is we're only focusing on cars from the modern era, from the 1980s and up. But also Bring a Trailer has gotten out to be so massive that we're finding that some stuff is kind of getting lost on Bring a Trailer. To be totally honest, we have cars that are coming to us after having not sold there, after having failed to meet their reserve or whatever. And we're getting more. We have a running spreadsheet among our team that we have 50 or 60 cars that have not sold on Bring a Trailer and come to cars and bids and sold for more money. And that's a big deal for us because when we first launched, we thought we'd have to compete kind of on the fringes. And now it's pretty clear to us that we can compete in the actual heart of this. Especially when they're running 500 auctions at any given time. It makes it a little hard to find stuff sometimes. And they got 20 BMW M3s live. Your car's not special, but it's special to us.

The innovator's dilemma. So, listen, I really love cars, and so I'm going to go deep. Maybe I'll lose a lot of my audience, but I'm gonna go deep. I really am curious about some stuff.

Okay.

This is a special moment for me. All right. I know a little fanboying out here, but so let's talk about the review process. So first of all.

Yeah.

Are you on the press list? So, you know, you just send an email to someone@pcna.com and you say, listen, I want a GT3 in black with rear wheel steering stick, and I'm gonna review it and bada bing, bada bang.

Yeah, you've got a car. That's a great question. So that's the biggest question. And the answer is, it depends on the automaker. Some automakers have realized the value of YouTube and the benefit of YouTube, and they have responded in kind with providing what I need. Now, it's not as simple as saying I need this color and this spec. They only build it maybe three or four press cars for my area or whatever, and they just send me what they have. But some automakers haven't and some Automakers, it's still a fight, and sometimes it's still a big fight, and sometimes I just give up and go to dealerships who do understand. All the dealers understand because they're dealing with the customer day to day, and they know how much the customers are watching videos in order to make car decisions. But the automakers, some of them, maybe half, are still in a world of print media and don't really get why some guy wearing shorts on YouTube is someone that's important and I don't mind. That's fine. I'm not here to convince them. I've convinced their customers, and to me, that's all that really matters. I will find the car one way or another. I just need to keep getting viewers to come in and eventually they'll all come around. I would say about half of them have figured it out and are in my world.

You want to name names? Who doesn't get it yet?

Let me think.

Just narrow down the country, you know.

It'S not that simple. You would think it is, but it isn't that simple. I have not had an enormous amount of luck with Mercedes Benz, which is funny because I've owned a lot of Mercedes Benz cars. However, Audi and Porsche, they get it. They understand perhaps because they're going after younger buyers in Porsche's case, or because they have younger buyers in Audi's case. And so they understand the benefit of that. And it goes that way throughout the big three. American automakers are pretty good, but it can be hard to shake stuff loose. Tesla, of course, doesn't even have a PR team. You got to find a guy who has one. But I'm pretty good. I've gotten pretty good at that. And the Japanese, I don't know. It's kind of 50 50. And it's. Nissan has never really done much with me, but their cars aren't that desirable, so I've never really worked that hard at it. It hasn't really mattered all that much.

Up to about a year and a half ago, I was a Mercedes Benz brand ambassador from the corporate, not America. It was like Roger Federer and Guy.

Yeah.

And that's the only time that's. Yeah, that's the only time my name is mentioned in the same sentence. But I could have helped you a year and a half ago.

So, I mean, I'm in contact with all the automakers, but it's just a question of priority, right? It's a question of some of these automakers. They'll get Doug a car eventually, but the car's been out for six months by then. And I don't wait. I openly will tell automakers, if you're not going to get me one, I'm going to go to a dealer. And they don't like that. They really don't like you circumventing their process. But I don't really care what they like. My goal is to get the cars to the people as fast as possible because obviously speed matters in our business. And so, you know, if they say to me, hey, we wish you hadn't gone to the dealer for that car, we could have had you a better spec. We could have given it to you for longer. My response is, I got the video up a month sooner and that that mattered. That was a big deal to the audience.

Partially based on your review, I just picked up Ioniq 5 All Wheel Drive Limited. So if you can't get one of those, you can have mine.

I actually have one of those coming in a couple weeks, which I'm really excited for because I filmed that, that walk around of it, which is cool, but I haven't gotten to drive it. So I'm really excited to drive it. And check it out.

Have you ever wanted to get a Peace van which is a Metrics upgraded to be a weekend camper? I have one of those. I have two of those, actually.

And actually, vans are so hot right now. That's like the thing right now. I'm trying to get through as many vans as I possibly can. We're selling them like crazy on cars and bids and they get crazy views on YouTube too. Vans are every. Everybody wants to be in vans right now.

If you want a Metrics converted to a weekend camper from Peace vans, I have two. Feel free. I'll be my pleasure and honor to let you use it.

What are you doing with both of them? Like you got. You're using one. What are you doing with the second one?

So it's a long story. So I got one and then my son loved it, so I said, I don't want to fight him for it. So I bought another one and now he says, oh, I'm gonna. So anyway, it's a lost or. I got two right now, so if you want one, let me know. Okay, Now a serious question. So how much can a car reviewer say negative without worrying about, oh, shit, Mercedes is not going to send me the next car. If I say that the eqs looks like a deflated jellyfish, I mean, what's going to happen?

You don't like how it looks? I like how the EQs look, but I'm in the minority. There's no question most people hate it, but I think it's cool as hell. I finally saw one, actually just a normal one on the road the other day and I'm like, I love it. That's a good question. And I don't know what the answer is quite. I have at times clearly said things that the automakers didn't like. And I was not early in the list to get a car next time. But again, to me, it doesn't matter all that much because I have other outlets where I can get the cars from. The dealers don't seem to really care all that much. And at the end of the day, I got hundreds of private owners email me every single day. And obviously they're not gonna be the first person to get the car. Yeah. But if I have to wait a month because I said something bad, that was true. So I wait a month to get a private owner's car, then I'll do that. Doesn't matter to me that much now. Some of these journalist outlets, the media, they can't really do that. The press, cars are kind of their golden goose. And so I do worry about sometimes the truth aspect of some of my colleagues reviews.

I have to ask you, why do you stand in the back of the car?

Because the car is the most important thing. It's not me. And it's interesting, there's some distinction. Some people stand in front of the car and I'm not the video. You're here to watch the car. And I really believe that people like me to an extent. But if you go and watch some of my lesser viewed videos, people don't like me enough to watch a Pontiac vibe with you. They want to watch the car. That's what they're here for.

In your Harley Davidson. I don't know what model truck that is. The Harley truck. You just see your head. That was an ad.

But I remember that some of those vehicles, I guess I should maybe stand in front of some of those. I've never actually even thought about it. Part of the problem is that I wear shorts in every video and people just hate that. And so standing behind the car allows me to at least conceal the shorts in the intro. And by the time they get inside the car, they're hooked up. If I stand in front of the car, they turn on. They're like, look at this jackass wearing shorts. I don't need any of this. Okay.

How many takes are you doing to get that? I'll do my Doug Demuro impersonation. And this is the 20, 22 ionic.

Those take some. Usually three or four takes. The shots where I'm standing up next to the car, the ones where I'm inside the car going over the stuff, that takes less takes, but it's still a process. It usually takes me about six hours, five hours to record one of these videos. And the runtime is 27, 28 minutes. So it's a real thing. And the automaker sometimes, hey, we'll give you two hours with this car. Hey, we'll give you an hour with this car. That's not. What am I. Okay, then what you gonna give me another three? People think, oh, hey, can you come to my house and film a video in 45 minutes? The video is only 25 minutes long, so you might be able to. No, that's not how it works. It takes a long time.

It took you 15 minutes to explain the Targa roof, so I know you can't do the whole thing.

That roof is complicated. I always wondered. It was like magic. It was like, how does the top go up and it go back? I never really understood, but I get it.

And 20 years from now, people are going to regret buying a Targa. There's just no.

I wonder about that. I wonder about that a lot. About all the cars that I film is, yeah, how are these things going to hold up? How is the tech going to hold up? How are these complicated processes going to hold up? I think about that all the time at Ionic 5 is cool, but would you want to own that thing in 20 years? You know, I don't know. Batteries depleted, the tech is not new.

This is coming from the guy who buys two Land Rovers. But I digress.

The new Land Rover, the one that is my daily driver car, I got an extended warranty on that because you have to with Land Rover. And when about 20,000 miles before that warranty ends, that car is gone, I don't want any part of that.

So that's a good question. Do you recommend people buy the extended warranty?

Only if they're buying a car that is absolutely known for its horrible reliability. And if the warranty is coming from a reputable company. I bought it from land. The warranty came directly from Land Rover, so I'm pretty confident. And if you actually plan to own the car that long, I will own this car to 100,000 miles or 75 or whatever. But a lot of people buy them thinking they'll own it forever. I'm gonna have this Car forever. And then you end up selling it in a year, and the warranty's not used, and they can't get their money back. Don't do that.

Now, you said the end product is 30 minutes. There's six hours of recording. How many hours of editing is there?

I think three or four. I think my editor is down about three, four hours. And then obviously, getting to the car, which isn't always easy. Sometimes they're local, which is great. And sometimes tonight I'm driving up to Thousand Oaks, which is like four or five hours from me, to film a car tomorrow morning. And so that's overnight hotel stay and 10 hours on the road. And so it's not always that easy.

So if you shoot it tomorrow, when does it hit YouTube?

That's a good question. People always wondering that. The answer is, it depends on the car. The new cars, they go up quick because they're relevant now. And if you wait to put up a video on a lucid air a month even, you could lose a third of your views because other people already have. But an older car, and some of the people whose older cars I film, they get upset like, where's my video? And it's like, well, it doesn't matter. It doesn't matter. If your 1990s car goes up today or a year from now, it's gonna get the same views because its relevance is no different. And so the new cars always have to take priority, which is upsetting to me as a guy who likes some of these weird and quirky older cars, but it's just the way the business works, so you can't really change them.

So how long? I need a number here, Doug.

I can turn around a video. I shot the Bronco Raptor on a. And it was up the following Monday, but I can turn them even quicker than that. I shot the Corvette Z06 on, like, a Tuesday, and it was up the following Thursday. I can turn around in a day if I could go home that night, edit it, and get it up the next day. If I.

You do the editing?

No, I have an editor. But in situations like that, where it's so tight, it doesn't make sense for me to send him all the files because he's in Arizona. He has to download all the files, then he puts it together, then he sends me a draft. It's too long. It's easier in a quick turnaround like that. It's easier for me to just do it all.

And are you using Premiere when you do that?

No, I use iMovie the finest. No video editing.

Oh, Frick. That's two strikes against you. Land Rover and imovie.

The thing that I learned is simplicity is key, especially on YouTube. People think, oh, I'm gonna make the best. This the best. That's not necessarily what people want. You can go on TV and watch really high production value content on YouTube. People just want to kind of click on something, find out what a guy has to say, click on the next thing, whatever. They're not necessarily looking for like 4K drone shots of the mountain you're about to climb and all that stuff. People get bogged down in that stuff. And it takes a month to make a video. And that's not necessarily what people are interested in. My opinion, anyway, some people disagree.

Now, did someone instruct you to use your hand in such evocative ways or is that a natural Dougism?

No, I think it's natural. And actually, if you watch the earlier videos, I don't do it because I was nervous in front of the camera.

Well, you've definitely got over that.

Oh, yeah. Now it's everything is whatever. And people seem to appreciate it too.

Next question. So I can't tell what gets you more excited, like a cool feature or a quirk.

I think it depends on exactly what it is, but I really do love seeing it's kind of both. When I filmed the new electric cars, I did the Lucid Air and I did the Rivian. And those are both really cool. And they have some weird quirks. But mostly it's interesting to see where those brands are innovating, what kind of features they're coming up with that are different. And so for cars that are new and cool and special and innovative, I think it's that it's like seeing what they've come up with. But for the older stuff, I mean, it's interesting to see some of these bizarre decisions that were made terribly in the 80s and 90s and some of the weird quirks that automakers did.

Okay, next question. For someone who does a lot of video recording, I am amazed by your ability. And frankly, other YouTube car reviews, I don't know how many takes it was, but they sent them and said, well, the 2022 911G, when you put it in the sport chrono Mode, it lowers by six and a half millimeters and it jacks up the horsepower from 405 to 407 and a half. And that means 060 is now 3.1 seconds instead of, you know, 3.2. How do you Memorize all that shit.

I don't. I appreciate you asking that. No one has ever asked me that before. And I think people just assume that it happens. But it's hard. That is not easy. And I'll tell you, there is nothing worse. And this happens to me at least once every couple weeks. There is nothing worse than you get through one of those lines and you've said nine numbers, and you look at your shot list or your notes and you got the last one wrong, and you're off by six. And you just know that you're gonna get nailed on it in the comments. So you gotta go back and you gotta do the whole thing again. And so in your mind, you're thinking, 400, 403, 6.4 seconds. And those are the numbers you gotta hit. And people will often say to me, well, you know, your delivery is this. That, like, you know, why do you talk too slow, too fast? It's because in my mind, I'm just thinking about these numbers. I don't care about the rest of the line. I got to get this.

Access problem.

The right way to do it, of course, would be some sort of teleprompter situation.

Yeah.

But it isn't necessarily relevant often enough for me to lug that around everywhere. And I don't necessarily want to be reading, you know, while I'm doing it. I want to seem like I'm engaged, because I am generally. But sometimes those numbers make it a little challenging. Okay.

I'm amazed. So speaking of the Raptor, when you open up the fuel door.

Yeah.

And you see the little icon, you say, well, you know, in the other Broncos is this. But in the Raptor, it's this. Did the PR people at Ford tell you, hey, Doug, be sure you open up the fuel door and look at the icons. Or do you just go over each car with a microscope so you see something like that?

Yeah. It's to the point now where the Ford PR people did point that out to me, but I don't miss stuff like that. I've gotten really good. And it's funny because I'll meet the car owner when it's known I'm not doing a new car. I'll meet the owner of an older car. And they almost all say this to me. I don't know how you're gonna make a video on this, because there's nothing quirky about this car. And the truth is, what actually is the case? They've lived with the car for the last seven years. And so in their mind, there's nothing quirky about it, but really, if you're coming at it with a fresh set of eyes, knowing what the audience views to be quirky, you can find a lot of quirky stuff about just about any car. And I've gotten a good eye for that sort of thing, for figuring out exactly what is going to be seen as interesting or weird to the audience.

This is a good example of quirk. So I noticed that every review of a modern 911, they go back to the engine and they say, all right, so you see that there's nine slots and then there's two brake lights and that's symbolic of 911. And I swear to God, probably Hans and Dieter are in Germany saying, what the hell are these Americans talking about? That wasn't on purpose. We just put that there.

Porsche insists that was on purpose. Which I insane. But I literally, just before this, just 30 minutes ago, was watching my review of the 911 GTS and I mentioned that exact thing. But yes, Porsche insists that was an intentional little Easter egg put in there to, you know.

And do they insist you unveil the Easter egg?

No, not at all. Not at all. In fact, they assume that most people won't, but that's my thing, so to me, it's worth covering. And sometimes stuff like that isn't mentioned in the broncoraptor. If you watch the other Bronco Raptor videos, they didn't cover all of the weird little Easter eggs, which is fine. It's not necessarily. Everybody's audience doesn't necessarily want to see all that stupid crap, but mine does, and I love it, personally.

What kind of camera are you using?

I use just a Sony 4K camcorder. Just one camera, and then also my iPhone. Anytime you see me in the shot speaking, that's the camcorder. And anytime you see me showing a little detail or whatever, that's my phone. Just because it's so much more compact.

And when you're on the road, do you have GoPro stuck to the windshield?

No, I just use a ram mount, like a motorcycle mount with my phone, and that's it. No GoPros.

Oh, my God.

Really? It's a low tech, simple setup, but. But it seems to work. And I will point out one important thing is that my viewers don't care quite as much about the drive as they do about the little quirks and stuff. If I really was doing like a hardcore performance drive, wanted to show every aspect of the car, I would bump up the production value. But my Viewers want to see like 85% quirks and 15% drive.

Because one of the questions I was going to ask is, have you ever considered doing the drive before the, the walk around and all that? But apparently not, because your users, they don't care about the drive.

It's not that they don't care, it's just that I have an enormous contingent of people who tune into the channel just to watch the quirks, regardless of whether they're interested in the car. And the drive is primarily interesting to people who are actually interested in buying the car. You wouldn't watch a guy driving, right? Right. You wouldn't watch a guy driving a Honda Ridgeline.

Right.

Who cares? But you might watch like, what, how does the cooler, the ice chest in the bed work? Like that might be interesting. Exactly. And so I think that's what happens. I think that the people who stick around to the end are the ones interested in buying the car. Except for my videos about crazy supercars, Ferrari F40 and 918 spyder and that sort of thing. People watch those drives almost as much as they watch the quirks. Ioniq5 I think a lot of people, they see that car and it's insane looking. And so they're like, okay, what is this all about? And they watch the quirks. But ultimately, as an electric car, the drive is only important to the people who are now actually considering, okay, do I get an Ionic 5? Do I get an EV6? Do I get a Mach E model Y? That sort of thing.

Mm. When someone clicks dislike or like, do you have any feeling about whether they're saying I like the video or I like the car or I dislike the video or I dislike the car?

I think it's about the video. And I've learned that when I go negative in a video, I get way more dislikes. Even if it's generally accepted to be true. There are evangelists of every brand. But it turns out those people exist for almost every brand. So I just did a video review on the Mazda MX30, which is a horrible car. It's an electric car that they came out for compliance reasons and it's just a truly terrible vehicle. It has a hundred mile range and costs $40,000. I mean, it's like laughable. So I mentioned in the video that it's just a terrible car and I got 2% more dislikes than usual. I'm thinking, how could anybody disagree with me? But there are mods of fans out there. I guess everybody at Mazda corporate dislike the video.

And you don't interpret that as, oh, they're just like me. They agree they dislike the car.

Oh, no. Because I'll do it on cars that are not as universally disliked and I'll still get more dislikes. And my like count is it's like 98% likes. But I can see sometimes it does drop to 96, 94, and I'll look and see, okay, what, what was it? And there's always a reason. It's always some car that I reviewed positively that most people don't like, or a car that I reviewed negatively, or some factor.

That's all I have to learn about the nuts and bolts of reviews. So now back a little bit higher. Okay. In three years, what do you think the range will be of a Tesla?

That's a good question. The range numbers just keep increasing and you get to a point where it maxes out. It's like how airplanes don't need to be able to fly further than halfway across the globe. Right. Like at some point, you know, 600 miles, it's not relevant to anybody anymore after that, you know, there are a few people who are doing long road trips, but you're talking about now such a small use case. But I think 500, 600 miles is not going to be out of the realm. I don't know, about three years, but not that long in the future.

And at that point, what's the magic number for range anxiety go away?

You know, I think it's like 350. I think most people are happy at even 250. Obviously it depends on your exact life situation, But I think 250, 300 for a lot of people is like, for like the vast, vast majority of people is enough to not have anxiety. I think 500 is how could you at that point have anxiety? And I think in a few years we're going to stop measuring electric cars based on their range. Right now that's a big topic of conversation when electric cars are announced. But someday batteries and such will advance to the point where 400, 300, 400, 500 miles, every electric car is like that. And people will start to focus on other stuff, namely the technology in the car.

Having been an owner of Ioniq5 for about three weeks now, the, the first three times I went to a public charging station, I could not get the charging station to work.

Interesting.

So I think the biggest issue is I live in the Santa Cruz area. If I were driving to, let's say, la, I wouldn't take the Ioniq 5 because I don't know if Electrify America or EV go along the Way is going to work.

And you know, the apps have like reviews of the charging station and sometimes the Electrify America it'll even tell you in the app, hey, this one is down or whatever. But I had a similar problem. I had a Rivian for a week and I don't have a charger at my house yet. And I went to a public charger and it worked fine, but it was like janky and I had to plug it in three times while I was charging. And that's not a realistic solution. I will say. Last year I reviewed a McLaren Speedtail, which is a $3 million crazy exotic car, one of the coolest cars I've ever reviewed. That car is a plug in hybrid and the way that it charges the plug in battery is you pull over a inductive charger and you position the car correctly on the inductive charger and it begins charging the battery. And I don't know if this is the future. There are a lot of limitations with that particular car. But to me that seems like the best way to solve this problem. Imagine if you with your Ionic five had a mat that you brought with you everywhere, right? And almost like a phone, own an extra battery and you could just stick it on the ground, pull over it, you're charging while you just sit there. That would be something. Or charging stations become that. As opposed to something where you have to make a physical connection with the car which is obviously not as reliable.

Case in point, who plugs in a phone to charge it anymore? But you blew past a little detail here. So how does one go about getting a three million dollar car to review?

Up next, unremarkable people. What tends to happen is as cars become more advanced, people say, oh, you'll never be able to work on these again. And then they get cheaper and weird third party solutions for stuff start showing up and it seems to make itself work out. Hello, I'm Jane Goodall and I just want to tell you that I've been on Guy's podcast twice now and had a great time and I really hope that you'll listen to it. Of course, especially the one when I'm on. But the other two, you're listening to remarkable people with Guy Kawasaki.

How does one go about getting a $3 million car to review?

Well, that particular car, the supercars and the hypercars, the automakers don't give those to journalists. But the good news is I've reviewed so many of those that I have A big following in that community. And so that particular car was owned by a group of people in Ohio called the Triple F Collection, who have an enormous, wonderful collection of amazing cars. And they are really good about sharing them with anybody who wants to. And so I came out there and filmed a video with that and a couple other cars. And that's a way you have to do it with exotic cars like that. I just filmed a video with the Ferrari Monza, which is like a single seat race car that Ferrari is making, and it was the same deal. Ferrari only makes 500 of those for the world. They don't care about getting one in the hands of a journalist. They're not trying to sell that car. It's already sold. But there's. Eventually someone will reach out to me and say, hey, I have one of these. Do you want to review it? I've now done so many Koenigseggs and Bugattis and Ferraris and McLarens that the owners of those cars can trust that. I'm. I've never had a loss. I've never had a problem, and they can trust that.

So do you have the Sultan of Brunei on speed dial and you say.

Hey, I would give anything. I would give anything to go down there. I would review those cars for free. No YouTube ad revenue, and I pay my own. Way to go down there. He has some of the coolest cars that have ever been conceived at any time. And there are a lot of them are one off cars that he had commissioned by Bentley and Ferrari. Imagine having that kind of money. It'd be pretty cool.

Well, if I interview him for this podcast, I will take care of you.

Doug, you're kind of gun shy about that collection now, because I guess the collection was bought by his brother who then ran into legal trouble. And at some point I heard they were quietly trying to sell some of the cars. I don't know what the deal is now.

I don't hang with them, so I wouldn't.

Yeah, right.

All right, next question. So do you feel any guilt? That's a strong word, I realize. Doug, do you feel any guilt about owning or recommending an internal combustion car at this point?

Not at this point. And I hope that forever people will be able to enjoy internal combustion cars as fun weekend vehicles. I hope that lasts at least through my lifetime, because I think that's an experience that electric cars can't really replicate. Is the enjoyment on a mountain road or a back road with a manual transmission and a, you know, rev matching and, you know, there's something about that. But I do take very seriously my role in being able to tell people some of the benefits of electric cars if they're not necessarily certain about them yet. And that's a big deal for me because a lot of my audience is car enthusiasts and a lot of car enthusiasts are very skeptical of electric cars. And I'm not. I love electric cars. I think they're great. I think they're many, many great things about them. And I try to make those benef very obvious and I try to explain it very clearly. And this year, my car of the year was an electric car. That Rivian two years ago it was the Model 3 Performance. And so I do try to make it a very big part of the channel. To the extent that I should do more or feel guilt about it, I'm not there yet. Just because there are still so many internal combustion cars and that's still such a high percentage of the market. And I just have to go where the viewers are. But I think in a few more years, I'm going to start trying to convince even more people to start to make that switch. And I think, frankly, the automakers are doing a good job in themselves. They're making desirable electric cars.

Yeah, the Ioniq is highly desirable. It's the infrastructure that's the problem.

In my humble opinion, honestly, cost is a problem too. There's electric pickup trucks now, but most of them cost $100,000. That's not feasible for people who are looking at a Toyota Tacoma. And I think that as cost comes down too, people will start having less of an excuse not to have one.

Now, do you have any qualms about naming a brand new truck from a brand new company as car of the year?

Yeah. Aren't you worried about parts? Yeah, absolutely. And I almost didn't for that reason because I don't trust it. And they have a lot of defenders, as does Tesla, and Lucid, but I don't trust any of those companies. Tesla has already proven that part supply is a bit of a challenge. You get into an accident with a Tesla, there's horror stories all over the Internet. There's horror stories all over the Internet of people who just trying to get simple services done and can't do that with their Teslas. It's hard to upstart a car company. It just is. Production is hard. It's one thing when you're making an app, it's hard to make a car and to provide the network and the repair network and the accident repair network and the parts Supply network. It is really tough. And so, yeah, I have some qualms about Rivian now. Rivian has an enormous amount of investment from some legacy brands that I take seriously. And so as a result of that, I take Rivian more seriously than I take some of these other electric startup companies. The car is incredibly good and so I have a strong hope that they will be able to get production going and that they will get these out to people and everything will be fine. But yeah, I definitely think about that. Now the car, they're having trouble with production. So this is a good question because it's news flash, they were saying in June they would have these on the road. I follow the Rivian hashtag on Instagram and oh, I got my Rivian today. And you click on the. The profile and they work at comms at Rivian. Oh, they work at battery development at Rivian. I don't know how many are being sold to actual people right now. And it seems like it's going a lot slower than they thought.

What is your advice for the best first car for a teenager?

Safe and reliable. That's it.

Which is what?

I don't know. It depends on your budget, I guess. But you can't go wrong with a Toyota or a Lexus or a Used obviously new if you have the budget for it for sure. Because safety is the biggest thing. I think with a kid, they all crash their cars. If you can get your kid a Civic or whatever, do that. Or it doesn't, it doesn't matter. Just the safest, most reliable car you can possibly get. That's what you should be getting your kid.

And do you think that they should start with a stick or forget it. Sticks are just dinosaurs.

Yeah, it's over.

No point.

Nah, no point. Not even in Europe. You know, people used to say, well, at least you need to learn how to drive a stick in case you go rent a car in Europe. That used to be the big thing for American would say. But I last few times I was in Europe, they gave me an automatic without me even asking for it. It's becoming even more and more common in Europe, which is a shame. I love driving manual, but it's not relevant in today's world unless you're an enthusiast.

And what about the concept of God forbid you want to do work on your own car? I think that's dead.

It's not dead because there are still so many internal combustion engine cars and some of them are still relatively simple. But it will die, right? You got to figure as electric Cars permeate. I mean, Porsche is a great example. The rear of Those Porsches, the 992, you can't get in an engine anymore in a 911, you can open a flap where you can fill it with fluids, but there's no more. It's gonna be harder and harder to work on cars yourself, but I don't think it's gonna be impossible for a long time. And I think people find a way. What tends to happen is as cars become more advanced, people say, oh, you'll never be able to work on these again. And then they get cheaper and weird third party solutions for stuff start showing up and it seems to make itself work out. Okay.

Do you think all this lane keeping assistance and adaptive cruise control and lidar and all that stuff, think it's making us better drivers or worse drivers?

It's a good question. The truth is it probably doesn't matter because it's making us safer in the sense that it's there. It's probably making us worse drivers on you and me on a day to day basis, but. But it's probably making road use safer and that's more important.

I'm gonna give you a little lightning round.

Okay?

Okay. So it's A or B.

All right.

Plaid or GT3?

Wait, do I get a pick? What is my life situation? My current life situation? Plaid. Whatever, baby. Plaid. Plaid.

I'm not asking if you're the Sultan of Brunei.

Both. No, the plaid. I would get a plaid. I'm not as obsessed with the GT3 as the last. Lot of people. As a lot of people. Okay.

Cabriolet or Targa?

Targa definitely.

PDK or seven speed, depending on your use case.

For me it would be a manual.

Okay. Rs3 or M2?

M2. Wow.

I think I know the answer to this one. Ford 150 Lightning or Rivian?

Rivian. But I do love the 150 Lightning and it's a lot cheaper than the Ford.

Okay. IOS or Android?

IOS, but I don't know. Mac. Mac for everything, imovie and all that.

What's model Mac?

I have a MacBook Air that I got three days ago because the prior one broke.

Michelin pilot or Pirelli P0?

I don't care that much about tires, but my friends tell me the Pilot Sport is the one. So that's what I have on my sports cars.

Okay. Ioniq 5 or EV6?

Ioniq 5. I actually just reviewed the EV6. The video is not up yet because it's next week. The driving embargo they're the same, but the Ion 5 is just cooler. It just looks so cool. I love it.

Okay, AMG GT or sl?

AMG GT for sure.

Really?

Yeah. I mean, the new SL seems appealing, but I haven't driven it yet. But prior SLs have been such old man cars. AMG GT is a fun and exciting thing.

Are you into the smooth, bubbly kind of design or the angular Ioniq 5 kind of design?

I think I've moved past the smooth. I like weird. Like I'm around cars all day, every day and that's all I do and think about. So I like weird. And so when someone comes out with something like the Ioniq 5, I'm like, yes, this is what I'm looking for. This is so bizarre that it turns heads. That's what I want. And honestly, that car is getting a ton of praise in the press right now for its design. And Hyundai and Kia both have done such great things with design that I think that hopefully that car proves that other automakers should follow suit and maybe take some more risks.

Do you think South Korea is the new Germany?

It seems like it, right? The Kia Telluride is the hottest SUV on the market and it has been since it came out three years ago because it's gorgeous. And the Hyundai version, the Palisade, is also attractive. The Ioniq 5 is like that. The Stinger, so many key and Hyundai models are so attractive now. Now, part of the reason for that is they hired Germans to design the car, but it seems to have worked. So.

Here'S a personal question. I'm going to offer you a favor here. Now, don't take this as an insult, but would you like me to have someone design a new YouTube header for you?

What? You don't like my fantastic green YouTube header that I've had for the last five, eight years?

I'll take that as a no.

I actually have a guy who does design because he does my thumbnails, which for my non car reviews when I'm just sitting in the garage and everybody loves these thumbnails and he's always like, come on, let's do something new. But I don't really care.

Okay, just thought I'd offer. And by the way, this is a mystery to me, so what happened to more Doug?

You know, that's an interesting question. A lot of people wonder and I'm going to send them a link to this podcast every single time I get asked this going forward. Yeah, the YouTube algorithm is a beast. And trying to figure it out is a challenge. And I devote an enormous amount of time and spreadsheets and charts and graphs to doing just that. And what I learned was that it seemed to me that I was getting similar views or more views by putting those More Doug videos on my main channel. And also I get a higher ad rate on my main channel because it has so many more subscribers and a larger reach, that sort of thing. Last spring, I took the risk of. Of taking some of the More Dug videos and putting them on my main channel just to see what would happen. It's sort of an experiment. And what happened was they have performed better and they have gotten more money and they haven't been a detriment to the videos on the main channel. And so I think that was the right call. So I still do those More Doug videos, but they show up now on Sundays on my main channel.

I went to the More Dug last night and there's nothing at the home, there's nothing on the playlist, there's nothing on the video.

What happened? It's crazy to imagine abandoning a channel with 750,000 subscribers, but the other channel has four and a half million subscribers and the videos are just doing better. And I have the percentages and everything. It seems like I'm getting something like 20% or 30% more views and making at least 30% more money by putting those same exact videos on my main channel. And so it is sad because I can't do some of the creative stuff that I was doing on More Doug. I reviewed some houses that was interesting, but at the same time, if you're smart about it, it's just a better way to do it. And I've realized that I can use some of these weekend videos to do like second reviews of cars, where I've already reviewed the main version of it or something. You know, when a 911 comes out, I've reviewed that and the GT3, then the GTS comes out, and I can do that on Sunday still on my main channel, but in sort of a shorter format. And that's. That's the right way to do it.

I think I would say that it's working.

Yeah. So far so good. We'll see. We'll see how the next few years go.

Although there's no more air cooled 911s, but. Okay, so I have.

But.

But one last request for you. First of all, I have to say I really enjoyed this.

Can you tell? Yeah.

And. And I don't want to slam the competition, but I watched you on a podcast, a YouTube whatever, where you were the guest. And this was fairly recently. I can't remember what the name of it was, but the guy would not let you talk.

I think that there are some podcast hosts who get into it because they want to get their info out into the world, and I think that's not necessarily the best way to do it. And I try to explain that to people. Amateurs aren't as good, and that's just kind of the reality of it. But some are really good and some aren't. I've been on a lot of podcasts, and it's interesting to get the variety.

I'm all about the guest.

Well, I appreciate that. I'm all about the car. That's why I stand behind the car. That's why you ask. You know, I appreciate it. I think that's what people are looking for, but sometimes it's the other podcast host. It's a little bit tough for them to keep that in mind. They got a microphone they want to speak.

I thought you're gonna say, oh, yeah, Guy, I've been meaning to get around redesigning that header. So, yeah, go ahead, knock yourself. I'll do it.

All right. I'll do that. Oh, I'll have. I got a guy named McMike. I'll have him do it. He's gonna do a great job.

Okay. And people all hate it, so I thought you'd say yes to that. Then I was gonna ask you for a return favor, so I'm gonna ask you for the return favor anyway, because I'm just that kind of guy.

All right, what do you got?

So I want to record you saying maybe even multiple takes a the Doug. This is remarkable people. Can you do that for me? Yeah.

Do you want me to do it right now or later when I'm standing in front of you?

No, right now. Right now.

All right. Ready? Ready? Yeah. This is remarkable people.

I love that, Doug.

Thank you for having me. I appreciate it. And I'm glad you got the Ionic 5. It's so cool.

So that, my friends, is Doug Demuro, the most popular car reviewer on YouTube. If you're thinking of buying a car, be sure to go to his YouTube site and search for a review of it. If nothing else, you'll be highly entertained. I'm Guy Kawasaki. This is remarkable People. I want to help you buy a remarkable car. My thanks to my team, Jeff C. Shannon Hernandez, Peg Fitzpatrick, Luis Magana, Alexis Nishimura, and Madison Nismer. Until next time, keep the pedal through the metal. Aloha and Mahalo. This is remarkable, people.