Don't buy a Tesla? Apple Car Play & Android Auto Advances, and the Latest from Apple Vision Pro

Ever experienced the rollercoaster of emotions that comes with owning something that's both cutting-edge and slightly on the edge? Buckle up as I recount my Tesla Model Y saga—a journey punctuated by the delight of driving a tech marvel and the dismay of its less-than-perfect reality. We'll traverse the terrain of charging challenges and leaky trunks that ultimately led me to swap my electric dream for a more traditional Ford. It's not all bumps in the road, though; I'll also regale you with an anecdote from my coaster-collecting escapade at Disney's Hollywood Studios and drop some exciting intel about Apple's Vision Pro.

Rev up your engines and your curiosity because we're about to peek under the hood of Android Auto's latest advancements. While it may not be stealing the show like Apple CarPlay, there's a flurry of features in the pipeline that could shift gears in our in-car tech experience. We're talking smart projections of smartphone prowess right onto your dashboard. And with rumors swirling about GMC's potential pivot away from Android Auto, we're on the edge of our seats wondering how this will steer the course of vehicle-tech integration. There's even some backseat banter about the highly anticipated version 17.4 update—what will it bring? No spoilers here, you'll have to tune in to find out!

Transcript

Ronnie: 0:01

Hey everybody. Hey, we're back at the beach. We are. Hey, didn't you used to have a Tesla? Yes, I did.

Adam: 0:06

We should talk about that and we got a lot more to talk about, and all of this on 5acreTech.

Ronnie: 0:31

So you turned your Tesla in. Why would you do that?

Adam: 0:35

Well, this is going to be a long story. I'm going to make it as short as possible. But before we do that, just kind of brief update. When you go to Disney's in Florida Hollywood Studios and you go to Batu, which is where Star Wars is at, and then you go to August Cantina, you can try to get all you can of these. And these are coasters. Yeah, it's kind of hard to get the blurriness out. Got to do it right here. And this one has a Rancor. They're nice collectibles for your house and when you're really nice to the waitress, you get a load of them. Yeah, there are a ton of these things here. So I just happened to have these in my jacket pocket and I was like man, I got to share that Nice. But the other thing, apple Vision Pro Blowing up. It is blowing up like crazy and it is absolutely cold out here.

Ronnie: 1:36

It's perfectly cold.

Adam: 1:41

And Apple Vision Pro. So I found today that I can actually go and do a demo a 25 minute demo. So I'm going to go to the store do a 25 minute demo. I think you have to go online and make an appointment. Yes, make an appointment and do that.

Ronnie: 2:01

I've been seeing several people say that on reviews doing that.

Adam: 2:04

So this coming weekend I plan on doing that from the time you see this. So we'll see what happens. But back to my Tesla. Yes, I had a Tesla. A few years ago, during COVID, I bought a Tesla Model Y I think I've mentioned it before and it was awesome. It was actually going to be my first attempt to do YouTube videos and I got everything ready. I used that mount that held the camera on a couple of our last episodes. I got about all sorts of equipment sound equipment I was going to use my phone, got some video equipment. I was ready to go.

Adam: 2:51

I get there, I get the car, I'm driving back. I'm saying, okay, I'll drive back, and I pulled over to get to charge, which I didn't think I was going to have to in another city between Corpus and San Antonio I think George West may have been close to it and all of a sudden I need a charge and I know there's a charger there. So I'm like, why do I have to charge so soon? I already got a charger set up at home, prepped everything. So I get home, I mean, I get to the charger and I'm charging there. I'm standing there looking over the car, just got it, literally picked it up in the San Antonio Tesla and it was really foggy on the way home. And I open up the trunk area of the Tesla Model Y second run and I got water, literally got water in the back where the latch of the trunk goes, and I'll try to provide some pictures as I talk about this to pop up for those people on YouTube. So I'll pop some pictures in, show you the water.

Adam: 4:03

And every time it rained, every time I got in fog which it took me quite a while to figure out, you know where this problem was coming from. I would go chase rain clouds and then I realized no, it's just, it's everything, anything that can cause moisture was coming in somewhere on the trunk lid hatchback of the Tesla Model Y. Had no idea why. So not only that, I'd taken the car back several times for fit and finish. They could not align the doors properly. It looked horrible. It got better, but they got to a point, after they finally fixed the trunk lid, that they just said no, we're not going to fix anything else. It all goes within our guidelines. And I'm like you know what, this is the last time I'm coming here, I'm going to trade it in. So I literally traded in for the Ford that you saw in the beginning of this video, if everything worked out right Otherwise I'll provide a picture for that and I was done which was almost a year in going through that.

Adam: 5:11

So I probably had taken it in between the Corpus store for lots of different things and the San Antonio store maybe 10 times. I'm a reasonable person. This truck's been in a few times, but it's mainly warranty work. Things stop working, things didn't you know. For example, my PowerPoint or my power inverter stopped working on this truck and they were able to figure that out. It took a while. Somebody finally figured it out and we got a fix for it and they fixed that.

Adam: 5:45

But Tesla was kind of not, you know, to the point of wanting to do that. The other thing that happened that was not good was I worked in a small city in the middle of nowhere, almost by Laredo. They were going to build close to that city, a Tesla charger. That was exciting, because that's where I work in those two cities, one next to it. So I was like, ok, you sure this is happening, it's on the website, it's going to happen. So I said, ok, I'm going to buy it.

Adam: 6:17

They told me where it was going to be Everything. Well, it didn't show up. So, as they're building SpaceX and Boca Chica, one shows up there the following year, which is a few months later and that one disappears in that city and I'm like in the other city and I'm like, no, you know, I cannot make it. This is only 140 miles, or 100 miles to one location, 125 to the other location, total from my home, and I could never make it to both without having to leave early to get back to the Kingsville Charger, to get home, never would work.

Ronnie: 6:58

That's a bummer. Just too far of a distance to drive.

Adam: 7:00

It was a 315 or 28 mile raid.

Ronnie: 7:04

In South Texas.

Adam: 7:05

heat In South Texas heat With AC going right, ac going yeah, the truth about battery life is ugly. It's not what you think. That that number that you get is not what you think. Now was this the best car I've ever owned, absolutely as a car, as a fast car, as a comfortable car, as a luxury, even though it wasn't the luxury model, model S, or a model X. Right, it was a fantastic car. I mean, I couldn't believe it. I loved it. I hated the part with it, but I had more trouble with that.

Ronnie: 7:45

If it doesn't fit your lifestyle. You know you're having to drive to the distance. So anyone who's in town or you know those types of situations where they're close by charging stations it's going to be great for them. But someone like you, in extreme heat, driving long distances, it just didn't fit your lifestyle.

Adam: 8:02

Now here in Texas we drive 70, 75 miles an hour depending on roads you're on. Most of mine were 75. So it would just drain down the battery. I took it at 50 one time and I literally got home with no problem. I didn't even have to charge 55 actually it was and made it all the way home with no problem, got plenty of range. I drove out there normal, as I normally do, but I drove home at 55, made a lot of people mad.

Adam: 8:30

But for for a small city or you know, or a large city and you're not traveling very far, it's an awesome car to have. I mean it is fun, it is gas saving, environmentally friendly. I mean there's no reason not to get it for long traveling. Wouldn't recommend it. I don't even know what it did to the batteries, just really don't even know. Very sad, I really wanted to keep that car, but sometimes you just have to.

Adam: 9:00

But what really kind of ruined it for me was the attitude of most of the people that I dealt with from the Tesla service station where they work on your cars. I mean they were not very friendly about it. There was a couple people there that were friendly. They weren't in charge, but you know, I guess that's just everywhere. But I also wrote a letter back to Tesla from the, from the guy I had to deal with in order to purchase it, to get my loan, to get all the paperwork done. I called him several times, told him about what was coming, never responded, emailed all sorts of people, never got a response and that was mainly off of the fit and finish, the leak in the car which put lots of water on it.

Adam: 9:46

Probably at one point up to a half a gallon of water was in the back of my car and especially the fact that I was told I can drive to these locations to get home without even charging a second time. Well, that wasn't true, so never got a response from them. Don't know if they ever do, but it just seemed like they just really didn't care. And I hate to say it. You know I'm not here to bash them in any means. It's an incredible car. I would do it again if I lived in an area where I needed a car, a third car. You know my wife's got one. I have a truck, I don't need a third car.

Ronnie: 10:21

Got you.

Adam: 10:22

Yeah, but I would recommend it. Recommend it if you're not traveling far distances or you're on a good path with a lot of Tesla charges if you're making a trip. Yeah, it was pretty fun.

Ronnie: 10:37

Cool, so you're done talking about Teslas. I'm done, I'm all done, what are you going to?

Adam: 10:45

talk about now. Well, how about?

Ronnie: 10:50

Apple CarPlay Apple CarPlay, apple CarPlay. It's pretty cool stuff that they got going on.

Adam: 10:55

The new version, the point four coming out any day now, is going to have a lot of really cool features and I think it's going to upgrade the look of it. They usually do that once a year and kind of like Tesla does, but you can't get Apple CarPlay into Tesla.

Adam: 11:16

I guess if you have a separate device, you could probably do that, but they're also making it where it will take over all the gauges and that will With your phone, With your phone, well, it's going to be native, and then your phone will connect to the rest of it, but it's going to be in there, and right now it's Aspen Martin and Porsche that have it.

Ronnie: 11:38

That's only downside. Those are the two cars, but they're all going to jump on board like anything.

Adam: 11:46

It's going to actually be pretty amazing.

Ronnie: 11:48

I'm really Lots of distractions going on. Yeah, where are we? I think we're at my daughter's graduation party. Ah, well we better keep this short, because it's going to get loud here pretty quick.

Adam: 11:59

We have noise cancellation on. Actually it's not on. I'm going to turn it on Now. It's on.

Ronnie: 12:08

Hopefully that's better. You won't hear so much clanking and crap.

Adam: 12:12

Yeah but back to Apple CarPlay. So it'll actually do everything. It's going to be a new system, similar to Apple CarPlay, where they're going to make all the screens in the vehicles, where it's going to be this awesome system so you can have all your gauges, all your warnings, everything, adjustments I don't like a test, but to be honest with you and start your car from the phone. You can start your car from the phone, everything from the phone. It's pretty cool. So it's an environment that Apple's been working on. It's going to be incredible.

Adam: 12:45

Sound card I can't wait.

Ronnie: 12:46

I really can't. I was looking to see what Android Auto was doing right now and all of this is released at the CES. Right, I'm not sure I did not read that Well. The article I was reading was about Android Auto and what new features of it that were released in CES, and it wasn't anything super exciting, Not like the Apple CarPlay, which is pretty cool.

Adam: 13:09

But I think the look of it and some new features will probably get turned on to everybody who has got Apple CarPlay on their vehicles right now in a minimal way. But we're going to have to see what every manufacturer does. It's going to be interesting. And if anybody doesn't really know how that works, it just goes from your phone into the car, the car's infotainment system, and then it just pops up on your screen. So it's pretty incredible, Sounds pretty cool. So it's really operating on your phone. It's not installed inside. I did see Just a link.

Ronnie: 13:41

Right, I did see that GMC was actually pulling it for some reason. I think this, all this stuff, is negotiating ploys. Who?

Adam: 13:50

knows.

Ronnie: 13:50

You know what I mean. So it'll be around. It's way too cool of a thing to not be added as many cars as possible. It's about negotiating, yeah.

Adam: 14:02

It's going to be fun to watch, so we'll just see what happens on the next version. I think it's what 17.4?. What is it coming out?

Ronnie: 14:13

It wasn't.

Adam: 14:14

It didn't say, but it could be. Whenever 17.4 comes out, we're at 17.3. Yeah, or 3.1. So it'll be soon. Cool, it'll be here.