E296 - Our Turn to Talk About The Cybertruck

[00:00:00] Nick Roome: We're back! This is episode 296. We're recording this episode live on December 14th, 2023. This is Human Factors Cast. I'm your host, Nick Rome, joined today by Barry Kirby. Hello, it's great to be back. And Heidi Merzod. Hello. Hi guys, this is this is weird. We're back for the first time in two months.

So bear with us as this will probably be a dare I say cyber truck of an episode, but we got an awesome show, hopefully lined up for you all. We're going to be talking into. the main topic of the evening, the Cybertruck. Yes, it is our turn to talk about it from a human factors perspective. We'll also take a little bit of a fun approach on a debate a little bit later in the show.

So sit back, relax. Let's have some holiday spirit, holiday cheer here. And let's get the show on the road. But first I do want to address sort of the elephant in the room. I know I posted something separately to our social channels and to in the podcast feed as well, but I do just want to explain our absence.

So in the weeks leading up until HFES, we were super hard in prep work. You haven't had a full show since October. So it's like approaching three months, which is an embarrassing part for us. Upon returning from HFES this year I was hit with the latest. Tech layoffs. So I was involved in that latest wave.

And then I had an unfortunate furry friend that needed to be, we needed to say bye. And that was just really hard. So if you want the full story, listen to the last thing in our podcast. Podcast feed from a couple of weeks ago. We're back now. We've been doing some human factors, hangouts in the last couple of weeks just to get us back in the spirit of talking about human factors, the things in a public forum.

So if that interests you, please go back and listen to those on any of our visual media. Some of them have like visual gags and I don't know, jokes that we're actually. We played games so go back listen to those watch those if you want some more of this type of thing, but we're back now But I have to know Barry in our whole absence has anything been happening over at 1202

[00:02:12] Barry Kirby: not alone That's not true.

Actually. We had an episode go out just wait, and I'm going to do my own, hold my hands up to this as well, that normally we'd be doing, I think my normal plan is for 26 episodes a year to roughly fit once a fortnight ish. I barely managed 11. If I've, 11 are live, there's one more to drop.

And yeah, so great. Anyway, the last one is an interview with Brendan Haslett. And we talked about consulting because actually a lot of human practice practitioners either one man bands or they work in small consultancies and you end up consulting a lot rather than maybe being being part of a larger team.

And so I want, sometimes people can look down the noses a bit as a consultant thinking they're just there to grab loads and loads of money. Now there might be a bit of truth in that. But fundamentally being a consultant means you do end up working on your own quite a lot. You're you have to be the jack of all trades, all that sort of stuff.

And so we dig into that a bit because Brendan's done a lot of consulting. And we went, found out a bit the pros and cons from doing the job itself, but also what it means to you when you do your career, what are the advantages it gives you that way. So really interesting chat and really good to bounce some of them things off each other.

So it's over there, it's live now, go and have a listen and see what your thoughts and reactions are.

[00:03:29] Nick Roome: Great. Yeah, it doesn't sound like there's a whole lot going on. Okay thank you for that, Barry. I think this is me awkwardly struggling to find a transition. There's buttons to press, so I'm gonna press some buttons.

And if the audio stinger wasn't enough, this is the part of the show all about human factors news. Barry, what is our story this week?

[00:03:49] Barry Kirby: So this week we are talking about everything to do with Elon Musk's Cybertruck. The world has been anticipating the arrival of the Tesla Cybertruck ever since we all saw Elon Musk break his prototype whilst attempting to show off the bulletproof capability by trying to throw steel balls through the window.

It's landed and the web is alive with reviews and commentary on the truck itself, as well as the evaluation of the reality versus the hype of what we're, what we had to expect. Therefore, why should we be any different? We're going to jump on that bandwagon. And today's episode is based on a largely a review by YouTube tech personality, Marquise Brownlee.

Now we'd like this review because it does focus on a lot of the things that we as human factors, people like to get excited about now. They haven't gone around calling it an ergonomic or human factors analysis, but I believe that if they knew what it was, that's exactly what they call it. So we're going to do it on their behalf.

With a price tag of 99, 000 or just over 99, 000 Which is 30k more than predicted or estimated. And it's got a a range of 320 miles, which is 280 miles less than advertised. It's got no Tesla logos on it whatsoever, except on the starting card. We seem to have come down to earth with a bump.

People reported to be disappointed. Due to what they feel is broken promises on the key specifications made by Elon Musk and Tesla since the Cybertruck's initial introduction four years ago. But we're going to go through all that and get into that. So Heidi, have you got your new Cyber new Cybertruck on audit?

Is it shiny? Is it sparkly? Are you going to love it?

[00:05:28] Heidi Mehrzad: Does it come in a glitter version

[00:05:31] Barry Kirby: for 99, 000 and I would expect it to be whatever version you want

[00:05:36] Heidi Mehrzad: for 99, 000. I expect that thing to have a shower in the back but, i,

It's I got a real here because it's, I don't want to instantly jump into like how bad I think it's constructed and all that stuff. But I just think from the perspective of just the news hitting, like how he said it basically, how he likes to break things and demonstrate things and jump the gun way too quickly.

I think this could have Done with another year of development with actual people on there who think about more than just the aesthetics, but that's my initial kind of response. Nick, what do you think?

[00:06:27] Nick Roome: I think for the purposes of this discussion, I don't like to send people away from the podcast very often, but this is a great review.

It's not even a full review. It's like initial thoughts that. They put out and it's a great unbiased breakdown, like they talk about it in a very unbiased way. And I, it's about 40 minutes. So if you're into the whole breakdown that again, we're going to cover most of the aspects I think that pertain to human factors and ergonomics here this is a, a.

The Cybertruck is what happens when maybe you prioritize some of these looks or aesthetics over potentially some of the usability and even visibility or safety issues, and I don't, again we're not going to go straight into bashing these things, there's actually some really cool, feature enhancements or improvements that you might even be able to call them within the Cybertruck, but we'll get to those a little bit later.

Barry, I'm really curious as to what your initial thoughts on the Cybertruck are and where your mind is at.

[00:07:33] Barry Kirby: For me, I'm going to go against the grain slightly of what almost everybody else thinks. I quite like it. I think there is some bits around it, not necessarily the truck itself, as you've, as we will get into, it's got some tweaks that could be done.

I think there's some minor imperfections, but Tesla is always, when they've been doing what they're doing, the whole thing around Tesla is to break new ground. They've wanted to do new stuff. When they first started putting that, the the autonomous autonomy in that they broke the ground with that they've, and now we see it as way more as the mainstream than we did what five years ago, 10 years ago this truck certainly isn't perfect.

This district certainly things it could change. That driving down the street, there is no other truck like it. So it does that. I do wonder also whether a lot of this reaction is against Musk as opposed to against the Cybertruck because he has annoyed a lot of people. I've been, we've done interviews or we've done chats like this before where we've talked about SpaceX.

I'm a SpaceX. Love the type of stuff that he's done around fail, try again, fail, try again. But as soon as he did the whole, Twitter piece or x piece then you know anybody who didn't like him beforehand really doesn't like him now and so I do wonder whether this is some reaction to that There are when you go through that I completely agree what you said about the video that we're using as the as a springboard for this It is a really nicely Developed piece of unbiased review.

There's some really cool innovations with it. Not all of it will work Not some of it. I do look at it and goes a bit. That's a bit but I like you. I like the fact you've given it a go. And I I did write this in the show notes and I don't know whether it's the right analogy to use but Just see how many iterations spacex went through before they could get The successful program that they've got going now, that's not the best analogy because we don't want as many cyber trucks blow up in the same way that they had so some of their spacecraft blow up but yeah, I think fundamentally I think we need to give the we need we do need to step back and look at it For what it is not what we think it could be.

Or who

[00:09:39] Nick Roome: it's associated with, and thank you for, yeah, thank you for bringing that up too, because that's one piece that I, there's so many things that are musk adjacent that we talk on the show, and I, again, don't want to make this conversation about him, because you're right he's, Made a lot of really bad choices and there's some really strong opinions.

I have some really strong opinions about him. And so let's try to focus this on the discussion about the thing itself. But yeah, I think a good point with those. I do want to, yeah, go ahead.

[00:10:15] Heidi Mehrzad: But I just want to say that doesn't mean we're going to avoid it because there's a huge part. Like huge part in this where we have to think about the ethics and like the ethical behavior and the morals in this to how he uses humans as test dummies by putting stuff out there updating software on his stuff without just running, break stuff that's this mentality of break stuff is a lot of people do that and I understand that and I totally agree with both of you like in order to break through, you need to, do cutting edge a lot of stuff. But I think with him, what I feel I'm more and more.

Seeing is somebody who actually isn't that great of a businessman, and he just has a lot of money to fix the stuff that he makes messes up with his money. So I think there's a difference in failing to be innovative failure, as. As a path to innovation. This is something we've talked about, especially on my podcast too.

But and you're both absolutely correct. It shouldn't be about him, but the problem is he infuses his developments with his mentality and that's the problem. While I completely agree, and I will respect that we're not going to make it about him. I think the part that bothers me so much is that he just doesn't.

Yeah. Care and I don't like that. I don't like that kind of behavior in a development arena and industry where your development products are actually going to hurt people if they don't function, right?

[00:11:55] Nick Roome: Yeah. And I'm glad you said that because the last thing that I was going to make or the last comment that I was going to make is when you say break things I feel like sending things that have not been tested, like full automated, fully automated solutions break things.

People as well, and that's not an approach that we should be taking. Okay, with the personality out of the room let's talk about some of this. Barry, there was a social thought on one of your posts. I don't know if you want to bring this up as a springboard to talk about, because there's some live comments here in chat that I want to bring up as well.

Maybe we bring up the one that was on your post here and then I'll bring up the ones in chat. Yeah.

[00:12:27] Barry Kirby: Obviously we put this out on on our social media. So through LinkedIn, David Thompson commented that he thinks that the Cybertruck is an abomination. Now don't hold back, David, please. Don't just tell us what you really think.

And he goes on to do it's too big. It's too heavy. It's too ugly. It's too dangerous. It is intended to be provocative, no doubt. And in that respect, it succeeds for a good while. It was a really, it was really just a concept, but the more controversial immediate interest is secured, the closer to actual production it's got.

I hope never to see one on the UK roads. And I think Because I want to see one. But

[00:12:59] Nick Roome: anyway, that's I think you I think because of some of the safety concerns, you can't even put it on UK roads, is what I was reading in some other

[00:13:08] Barry Kirby: review. I think that there are issues around he just doesn't, the, the cru things like crumple zones and stuff like that and the fact he's just made the steel is an issue.

There's, yeah, there's a whole bunch of things that and

[00:13:20] Nick Roome: It's a safety issue, right? It's like the jagged edges on the front and the the crumple zones the soft spot to where that, where you hit people and pedestrians. Hopefully not, you don't hit them, but if you were to hit them, that is not.

safe enough for the pedestrians around it, right? Is that the issue? It's

[00:13:38] Barry Kirby: also when you when you, no matter what you crash into, just the, obviously the crumple zones exist to move that energy, that kinetic energy through the vehicle and not through the cabin. And that this is where I was really surprised, actually, that again, we've talked about legislation quite a lot in the past, but the difference in European and UK legislation, US legislation that we thought that this would have been such a common thing across the both.

I was quite surprised that it wasn't that you get away with. But then we have different relationships with automobiles.

[00:14:07] Heidi Mehrzad: Yeah and also this and this is where his personality and his thinking comes into play. And this is that's a little bit the problem. Like he gets away in the U. S.

with a lot more because the U. S. who is so much more. We're not going to make it a political I, I see the comments like, it's not going to be a political thing for me to point out, but because he is the 1%, right? He is part of the 1%. He gets away with things that nobody. Normally would get and with regulations being so loose when it comes to certain things here, he gets to push the envelope over here, which is why he likes this country so much like he would never be able to pull the stuff off back home or wherever, we can list so many countries where he would never be able to get away with that.

[00:14:59] Barry Kirby: Just to put the balance on that, there are other cars that also come in the U. S. that wouldn't be allowed to be over here either. So this is not the first.

[00:15:06] Nick Roome: Let's just balance. Sure. All right. Let's make one more comment about him.

That's not any of ours. We'll read this live from one of the YouTube comments. For what it is, this is KW from YouTube. For what it is, it's a less than usable truck with poor manufacturing, plus, this is about Musk, the anti right to repair, and taking credit for the engineers who work under him true Henry Ford of our time I'll, we'll leave it at that for Musk,

[00:15:30] Heidi Mehrzad: let's, pull out the,

[00:15:32] Barry Kirby: But the, because actually the right to repair thing, I think is really important to, to draw on. Because there is, I've got it down in my notes on just the human factor and the logistics. Things that we look at this we don't expect, they're expected to go back to the factory or be replaced rather than allowing people to do their own repair.

Which is not great. And when we look about how people want to manage their own logistics lines Aftermarket stuff. You look at the way that the tires are done tires look really cool, but again they're pretty bespoke to that vehicle. So when it looks at people's choice and to maintain and things like that, and that windscreen is the, it's highlighting thing.

It's the biggest piece of glass you've ever seen. Which on the one hand looks really cool. That whole futuristic bit, but it's highlighted the fact that if you were to put something down on, on, on the front dash, like I said, behind the steering wheel, you would lose it down the front of

[00:16:27] Nick Roome: the vehicle sliding forward.

Yeah, I think that's a good launching point here, Barry. Let's actually talk about some of the issues. Some of these I'm going to take, I'm going to, I took some notes as I was watching through that that video and these are all sort of human factors used. Ability focus, safety focus. So I'm going to go through this list.

We can pick and choose what we want to talk to you from here, but at least this gives us all a common ground to work from. So in terms of manufacturing, they brought up this issue with stainless steel, if you were to morph it, then push it a little bit further than it needs to go.

So that way it comes back into the into the shape that you're actually looking for. And this is a bunch of different tolerance issues with actually manufacturing this thing together. You brought up the windshield wiper. This is a great point. Now the windshield, now the wiper itself, it's just one big blade that goes across the whole front screen.

And in the, passenger side, upper left corner, it misses a whole chunk of the windscreen. And so they even mentioned it covers about 75 percent of the passengers side. You're still missing about 25 percent of that passenger side when it gets when it gets dirty. And so it's not cleaning that for visibility.

And is that the most important thing for visibility? Probably not, but it is something to be aware of in terms of rear visibility. Now it has this. Retracting a sheath that covers the bed of the truck and when that sheath is retracted or I guess covering the bed of the truck, there is no rear visibility.

Now there is a rear facing camera that is on the center console display that displays on the center console. But with that, then you're having to glance at the screen for a rear camera view instead of the traditional space. When you're looking at that. Screen. You're then taking your eyes and focusing them in a different space visually compared to where your eyes should be on the road.

So not that's been studied or whether or not that's been taken a look at. That is a consideration in terms of having to adjust to that new view in terms of pedestrian safety. We've already talked a little bit about the crumple zones. Yeah, go ahead. Let's go back to the visibility bit. Hang on. Let me get through this list.

I just want to get through this list. So that way everyone's on the same page and then we can come right back to that visibility bit. Okay. So in terms of pedestrian safety, we talked a little bit about it. The crumple zones driving driver or passenger safety is also a concern with those crumple zones.

The front trunk is rather shallow usability issues. These are some of that I, I noted from the video, there's no door handles. There is a button and there was a question of whether or not this would. Actually be functional in icy environments. So if you press the button, is the door going to have enough force to push any ice that's on the vehicle out?

And then you grab it from the side. There's the visibility over the nose of the car cited as a concern. It has a front camera to account for this. Although that might be. Very situational as you're parking. So again, getting used to the car itself, the gear shifter is actually up on the top where the rear view mirror would traditionally be in a car.

And once again, as we've seen in other Tesla vehicles, there's no button to, no physical button to open the glove box in terms of. Some usability improvements versus other Tesla models. Now, these are present in some vehicles now, but in terms of comparing them to other Tesla models, Hey, you got haptic buttons on the steering wheel.

So there that's an improvement, and then the steering is reportedly really comfortable because you don't have to do a full turn to do a one 80 turn. You just turn it. A 90 degree turn and you're able to do that tight turning. So that's everything. Let's get back to what you were talking about, because you were talking about the visibility here,

[00:20:05] Barry Kirby: Barry.

Oh, look, because I did pretty much the same. I've just copied my notes and underneath yours, I was just trying to work out what who's talking about what. So I guess some of the other bits that I picked out of what was happening. Again the manufacturing bit I thought was really interesting because it's not really on, in, on the car itself.

It's not a human factors problem. It's just a manufacturing problem. It's a, it's an engineering problem. However, it is a human factors problem when you talk about how these things are going to be developed. So when you look at the production line and how we do that and how we do that, do you do your testing and therefore the credibility of what they're doing?

I still don't, I could never, still can't get back to why they're so adamant about using steel. Apart from a couple of bits, but it's a bit weird. Tesla manufacturing is known not to be the best. On every single model there is complaints, huge complaints, about the quality of manufacture, the quality of finish.

So is this them just carrying on doing what they do? Fingerprints on that steel seems to be a big thing. That everybody seems to be reporting that and that this video does. The removable wing mirrors. Now this is an interesting one for me because the original was purported not to have wing mirrors.

In the video it does highlight the fact that they do have the the cameras to do, the, to do camera based wing mirrors. But they highlight the fact that they have to have wing mirrors because of the legal legal requirements in the state that they're manufactured. And so what they've done is make them so they're really easy to take off.

So they fulfill the legal requirement, but with the expectation that actually everybody will just take them off and use the use the camera versions instead. But you've already mentioned about the rear windows, the so one of the cool things it does is it allows you to use the battery for other things.

So you can, it's got places where you can hook in your the cigarette lighter charger and other types of charger. It's not the first, it's not the first platform to do that. So the Kia platforms tend to have that. So the EV6 was one of the first, certainly in the UK to have that. And it's, it, Shows that there is greater utility for having a large electric battery platform that can be used for the things you mentioned about the no handles.

I'm quite down with that. As I think we mentioned last week, that's they've copied what the what the Ford's have done in the marquee where the marquee has a button button opening and the rear door in particular works pretty much the same way. Which I think is good until it isn't.

Yeah. Can

[00:22:31] Nick Roome: I ask you about that? So have you used those in like an icy environment where have you ever had trouble getting into your vehicle because of that

[00:22:38] Barry Kirby: entry method? Because we're typically British, we don't have such such strong ice, shall we say, such layered ice is what they were talking about in that video.

We've had it where it's been very cold and it has been icy, but not, I'm not talking, you're talking like, Millimeters not inches. And so I've never had I've never had the problem of pressing it and it not popping out What you do sometimes get is sometimes the button doesn't work straight away Sometimes you have to like press and hold it or you might have to press it twice For it to open.

So it's not as, I don't think it's as tactically useful as a proper car door handle, if that makes sense. So yeah, no, I think it's a cool gadget. I just don't think it's a it's a long term winner. But the all around cameras, I think are really good. It's taken me a while to get used to them.

So again, My car, the Mach E at the moment has 360 cameras, it has front facing and that type of thing. And the rear view camera is there as well, and it is a bit where you you do have to get used to looking somewhere else if you want to use that rear view camera. But you do get used to it. It's not dangerous as such, but the thing that you do have to watch for is when you then don't, when you get into a vehicle that doesn't have a camera.

So the review camera on my wife's car wasn't working for a while. And the amount of times you'd sit there and go, how am I going to reverse into my driveway safely when I can't use the camera? And I'm having to use the traditional look back through the back through the window. So there's there's a whole bunch of stuff there that I think that it's not necessarily about, you'll get used to it in that vehicle, but it's when you then transition to other vehicles that that I think the true danger hits there.

And that's just the outside. I

[00:24:20] Heidi Mehrzad: I mean you just Did the outside, but I have so many issues with us from a safety point.

[00:24:27] Nick Roome: Let's talk about some of them.

[00:24:30] Heidi Mehrzad: So one of, one of the things that, one of the things, do you want to repeat your list and I'll just give you the counter argument for every single one?

Because that's how I feel. It's. It's not just that they're done different, like it's a different design, taking a different approach aesthetically or whatever. I think a lot of the things in there, what bothers me more is that certain things have found its way to be the way they are because it's been proven that's just the best safety factor.

There is just certain factors that come into play where We've already found the optimal design for certain things and pushing that envelope. I understand, but the safety with this truck is so there's so many things that come into play with that. You mentioned the glass, right? That means. So if this glass breaks, it's.

The amplification of the injury to the person is also higher. There's more glass. It has more angles that it can be broken on. However, I sure, whatever, if he wants to put military grade glass in there, whatever, however he wants to fix these, but I feel like a lot of these things that they're trying to fix is fixing something from the back end.

So why aren't you putting it? Put it making it safer from the front initially, when you're developing it, why are you just now it's all about now going back to fixing the safety issues, right? Because you didn't put much thought into it. And when I say much thought into it, I would like to respect all the engineers that work there.

That's not the issue. I think the problem is that a lot of these things fall into categories where must personally probably thinks he's above right? Good manufacturing practices, right? He spoke about manufacturing aspects, right? I heavily doubt he even knows what that is. Honestly, at this point, because where are his advisors to give him the safety aspects of these?

So that's just the glass, the front, the, what you, the collision area, that when you spoke about that. The angles on the side and in German, we say, and I'm failing to come up with a word for it in English. The area that is, that you were so kindly explaining how it's not supposed to take the kinetic energy and put it into the cabin instead.

It's supposed to buy crumple

[00:27:06] Nick Roome: zone,

[00:27:07] Heidi Mehrzad: Crumple zone. Yeah. That makes sense. Okay. Got it. Yeah. Thank you. Thank you for the visual. And that's a huge factor. And then, we haven't even gone inside yet, right? So let's stay with the outside. Then the, why is that all that space in the back? Why can't we put that in the front?

Why can't we just turn this truck around to improve the front, right? To make the front longer instead of the back longer. I don't understand that at all. If you could flip this truck around, it would already probably take care of that. Then the little design features like the handles and stuff like that.

I just think that is really there. You cannot tell me that there is a human factors engineer on their team. There's just no way. I don't see it. I'm having a really hard issue with that.

[00:28:02] Nick Roome: I will play devil's advocate here just for a second. Okay. Because sometimes there are people like us involved in these products and we can, and we get overruled.

We, yes, exactly. That's where I'm going. Is that sometimes personalities at the top can overrule some decisions that we have. That may be suggested that may have been a better solution for people. And so I'll just say that I feel like that probably right type of culture exists here.

So

[00:28:34] Heidi Mehrzad: spot on, to be honest with that,

[00:28:36] Barry Kirby: I'd be stronger devil's advocate in that. So you use the door as the example actually I think it works quite well. I don't,

[00:28:43] Heidi Mehrzad: And I'm going to interrupt you right away because you're not thinking of the disabled people like it works well for people who have a very high educated intelligence and are well functioning, but the second you aren't, this is a huge issue.

So what. You're saying in that, and I'm not saying you are saying, but what you're saying with your design is if you're not a hundred percent physically, mentally, all those things. At the top of your game and you're staying in tune with all the engineering and technology advancements, you can't use our car and that's my issue with it.

And that's why I get so amped up when the stuff like, I'm just looking at it from a lens where I go. Yeah, it looks cute. And yeah, for you, it works well. And for a lot of people, it works well, but the second you don't come with that kind of background and that ability, you can't use these products.

And one of the comments made and is in the chat is true, like it's sad, but there's going to be so many people lining up to buy this, that he's going to get away with a lot of safety issues just because of that. And I don't, I will be very honest here, I don't know exactly how much he's crossing the line with the guidelines, with the regular, with the regulation and all that stuff, like how many things he has to fix in order it to, be considered a safe car on the road or whatever, or licensable car on the road, I would take the word safe out of

[00:30:21] Barry Kirby: that.

Just on that, my belief is at the moment that it is safe to drive on the American roads. It's of course it is. It passes your legislation.

[00:30:31] Nick Roome: Yeah. Passing legislation and being truly safe. It's. Another conversation, if there's any, if there's any transportation experts that are listening to this live, I'd love to have you weigh in the post show we're not experts in transportation, let's be clear, like we're human factors, people who have our own domains that we work in, this is from our perspective, and this is why this show exists, is to talk about it from different perspectives, so we'll just cut that off there, but yeah, but

[00:30:57] Heidi Mehrzad: Okay, so let me and bear with me.

I want to draw an example here and I don't know how far it's out there and please feel free to interrupt me right away. If you think it's absolutely not. But what this reminds me of so much, if you're saying that, according to our regulation it's considered okay for the road. This reminds me so much of the time that they put the max out there.

Boeing put it out there and never tested the software upgrade, and planes

[00:31:31] Nick Roome: crashed. And now we have laws in place as a patch.

[00:31:36] Heidi Mehrzad: Why do we need to first lose people in masses in order for that to happen? And that's what I see happening

[00:31:46] Nick Roome: with this. We shouldn't have to. You're right. And this is a political discussion that no,

[00:31:52] Heidi Mehrzad: No, I don't want to go into the political, but that's the problem I'm having with this.

We already see so many safety issues. So why can't we fix those safety issues beforehand and instead of after? And when I say safety issues, it's some of the things are so obvious and it's not just disability. Yeah, to us. We're human factors. Experts and a lot of our listeners are human factors involved.

So it does, to us ring we see these things light up red flags everywhere. But the thing that also I'm very concerned about is the, but that's inside. Do you want me to just stay outside and cut it and bring it over to you, Nick? Because there's inside, there's some things where I'm just also a little Curious how that's supposed to play out,

[00:32:42] Nick Roome: but yeah you go wherever you want to go inside outside

[00:32:46] Heidi Mehrzad: Because the inside when you mentioned, like putting stuff on the dash and flying in, right?

Not being able to grab it. But also the steering wheel, like again, I don't know how this truck is supposed to what's intended. Has is this supposed to be like a mega truck for just rich people to show off with? Sure. Cool. Whatever. But the steering wheel is not really user friendly for purposes of okay, if this is an electric vehicle, right?

Maybe we should, this could be a nice solution for some of the big. Gir transportation issues that we have with all the consumerism around, right? So but it's not user friendly. The steering wheel isn't user friendly Not just because of its form, but also have you seen how thick it is like just holding getting your hands around it I don't I couldn't find any measurements but from just from the visual It looks like it almost would take your entire hand grabbing it So the grip strength that you now have with it lowers.

So now that you have a lowered grip strength in certain situations where you need more grip strength, you would be compromised. So that's for me, a huge maneuverability issue,

[00:34:04] Barry Kirby: right? So I'll challenge on that just because it's fun. The steering wheel is interesting because the way it's been based on or no, they're already proven design in the Yes, or something like that, that, that, that shape that, that, that's square.

I can't remember what do you, the name that he used for it, but it's a squircle or something like that. So it's the first one that they've done that is the equivalent of an aviation fly by wire. So there's not a mechanical linkage, so you don't have the same resistance to the road. That's why they can get away with the With just under 180 degree turn, which is really neat because it means if you've got a you've got less strength to be able to engage with the steering wheel, actually it should be better for you.

And combine that with this idea of rear wheel steering that it brings in as well, which is not a new concept that's been around for years, but it's the first time it's been employed on a vehicle like this, that it means you can actually get, it should be more nimble. It can turn in a much tighter circle and things like that.

But the difference here is going to be again, because it's going to be a new driving experience for many people, if you're not used to rear wheel steering, which is largely the purview of really large, arctics and very large trucks. If it's not something you're used to, without training or without somebody running you through that experience about how this new steering experience will work, that's where I struggle with it to a certain extent.

It's not necessarily the design. It's the it's again, the, it's going to be that learning experience about how you engage with it.

[00:35:31] Heidi Mehrzad: I do think it's the design. He's throwing too much crap in here. He's thrown too much new in here because I'll counter what you said. Yeah, we've had rear wheel driving.

I grew up in Germany. So if you wanted a real, if You wanted to drive BMW, you had to get used to it. So BMW drivers are used to it. If you didn't drive BMW Nick just chatted something. My chat window pops up and I have ADHD and I don't know why that is happening. Okay. So I couldn't, I didn't read it.

I'll read it in a second. Let me finish the. The thought, but but the, so there is, like you said, it's a user group, so we could play the user group thing, right? For certain users, they're going to come with more willingness to adapt to the differences, right? But I will also say from experience, it is quite the shock factor when you're used to driving.

Not rear wheel, not having a steering wheel like that, the sensitivity to it, right? Just take the comparison to driving a manual stick shift from the eighties, right? With no power steering and throw. And if you've been driving that forever and then put yourself in a new car, right? Like the feel instantly off, it takes a really long time to transition into it, to feel safe, to feel comfortable in it.

And so for me, the, that, that's a huge issue. You're not just taking certain parts of the car being new and aesthetically different and all that. It's too much. It's all this newness. And the problem I have mostly with it, and I'm sorry that's not engineering or design related, is actually who he peddles to as a user group.

So the user group, the people who are attracted to this stuff are generally, I'm sorry if it's not statistically proven, but generally young. They're younger. Okay. They come with a lot of impulsivity. They come with a lot of different behaviors. So while I totally respect that, and I would think Barry would be a safe driver in this.

I don't think half of them are, and It's this factor that it's a Tesla. It's this thing that's connected to the product brand instead of the actual product, whether or not it's usable safety, safe or anything that user group likes to glare over that stuff a lot too. So I am just I'm making a case for, I can see the upside on some of the things like you said, like it's easier to.

To have that steering maybe but combine that with rear wheel drive with this and with that and this and this and everything on that car is not designed as usual. As per your usual routine. I feel like that car. You would have to, I'd feel a lot more comfortable if they offered a training and you had to get a certificate on a training course with that car before you got

[00:38:44] Barry Kirby: it.

So I guess the, with that, then, because if you've already, if you've grown up with Teslas, so you've had your three series, you've had your S series, you've had the one that does the really cool celebration mode, which I can't remember which one that is, but it looks really, the one with windows.

A lot of this technology won't be new. So when you look at the, the, and I hate it. I'm not a fan of the, everything is controlled through the one big screen in the middle. And this had this does the same thing. It's 90 percent of it's controlled through the, through a big screen.

It's minimalist. I hate minimalist design. Though, as you quite rightly mentioned Nick earlier, it does have a tactile steering wheel, it does have proper clicky buttons as opposed to what it did have. If, but the training, if you've grown up using, going through the Tesla family, actually you probably won't see that much of a big step change.

A lot of the technology is the same or similar, it's just improved on from a Tesla perspective. If you're

[00:39:40] Heidi Mehrzad: coming. You've adjusted to a lot of bad habits.

[00:39:45] Barry Kirby: Not necessarily. I think you're in, just like you're, if you've grown up with BMWs, if you've grown up with any others, you get used to the way that they do things.

It doesn't make it safe. I'm not saying it does, but I'm saying that in terms of how you, Grow up all the way through, through a brand as it were, there's a lot of stuff that if you jump into Tesla's for the first time and I think I had it with, when I've looked around different EVs and stuff like that, if you go into a Kia, that's very different from a Ford is very different from, because of what it is.

But you're right in terms of, as I said earlier, the, if you're going to and taking on a lot of technologies at once and the upgrades that happen with them, because we've had it with Ford have just been pushing out new upgrades for the Mach E and they can, some of them are quite minor, you don't really know what's going on, but some of them will redesign the HCI which, I just find really worrying because suddenly things that you knew how to do things, you're having to relearn it.

And when they do their, we've upgraded your, it's treated just like software because it is just software. You get the little the description, and there's no real guidance on to. How they've updated. And not briefed in that way. So I think there's, I'm conflating two points. One is that if you've grown up in a family of thing, I think the level of change is not as savage as we think it is.

But if you're going into a new, into the brand new then it will be

[00:41:06] Heidi Mehrzad: But to be fair, that was my point on it. It was just the safety relatedness to all this news newness. And that's what I meant just because it's all tuned. It's all so much. And yeah, if you're used to it, that's great.

It still doesn't make it safe. I still I want to see the study that says it's safe to use a screen that big. That's a touch screen. In a car, I want to see the study on that and that doesn't exist because it isn't and.

[00:41:38] Nick Roome: And there's plenty that indicate the opposite, actually.

[00:41:40] Heidi Mehrzad: Exactly. There's plenty.

And that's my point. It's yeah, I can understand that the consumer who has all the Tesla products and, got the first car and you're totally on the money with that. Yeah, they're used to it, but it doesn't make them all safe. Now they're. That's what I meant with bad habits, they've all adjusted to these bad habits, like that screen, you should not, that screen should go black and not be functional during driving.

That's what my car does. I am not allowed to play with my screen, even though it's only this big, but because it's in the middle and it's a touch screen, I'm not allowed to use it during driving, it gets disabled.

[00:42:24] Nick Roome: Yeah. So quick show note here, apparent I guess it's apparent now that I'm cutting the debate section because this conversation was great.

We're running towards the end of the show and I just want to end on our own final thoughts here. I think for for Barry, what are your final thoughts on the Tesla Cybertruck? You want one? You don't want one. How are you feeling about it?

[00:42:45] Barry Kirby: I'd like to borrow somebody else's thing. I'd like to I'd love to go and take it out for a for a ride.

I think there is some novel things in there that I would love to see how it works and how it how it plays around. I think there's some, they try to do some clever things, but I also think there's other things that they just haven't looked around. And seeing how they, how some things haven't worked on other vehicles and learn from others experience.

But I think on the whole, I like the boldness. I like the idea that they've gone out and tried to do something because cars are pretty dull in the grand scheme of things. And it takes a level. They've got some amazing engineers in Tesla in the way that they've come up with some of these ideas.

I don't think this cyber truck will last very long. If I'm brutally honest, I think that it will go through a number of evolutions. At least I hope it does. But fundamentally as a new, as the new kid on the block, I think it's got a future.

[00:43:38] Nick Roome: Heidi, final thoughts on the cyber truck,

[00:43:41] Heidi Mehrzad: such a.

British thing to say, by the way, Barry. I'd like to borrow somebody else's. It's so neutral. But yeah, for me, it's a no. I don't want it on the street. I don't even want it to be. Tested on the street, I would rather they take it back into the R and D lab, fix all those kings and not subject the public roads on to this because that driver in that car is going to be a danger to another person.

And I don't like that factor on it. For me, it's an absolute no, there's too many safety issues on this car. The design, we could talk about the aesthetics of it, all light. All night long, but aesthetics to me are subjective. Safety things are not. Safety things are not subjective. Either you hurt somebody or you don't.

And in this, I see too many people get hurt.

[00:44:35] Nick Roome: Yeah, for me, I think there's this fine line of trying to push boundaries and break things versus making things functional and safe. And there's An interesting thing that is happening with things like the Max or with even Ocean Gate, or let's say Cybertruck, where you truly push the boundaries of what we should and shouldn't be doing as humans for safety reasons, for usability reasons, for aesthetic reasons, and I feel like the Cybertruck in a lot of ways like the Tesla Vehicles have pushed the boundaries of what we can call autonomous systems on the road and who's liable and all those conversations that are actually happening in government right now.

I feel like the Cybertruck will push us in those ways as well, and it shouldn't have to come at the expense of human life, but I fear it will. And so for that reason, I tend to agree with you, Heidi, that there should be more safety considerations. When it comes to this but ultimately I agree with you too, Barry.

It is a bold it is a bold statement and it needs to be, I think if we want to find where those limits of legislation and safety are. And so it shouldn't have to be that way, but I think that's where it is. Anyway, with that a huge thank you as always to our friends. And for let me, it's been a week here.

It's been a couple of weeks since we've done this. So let me stop and do that again. Thanks to all of our patrons and everyone else for selecting our topic. And thank you to our friends over at the street for our news story. We want to thank Marcus Brownlee for the big long YouTube video if you want to follow along, we do post the links to the original articles on our weekly roundups in our blog can also join us on our discord for more discussion on these stories and much more.

We're going to take a quick break and then we'll be back with our one more things right after this.

Yes, and we're back. Truly thank you to all of our patrons, especially wanna thank our human factors. Cast all access and VIP patrons like you truly have. kept the show alive in these months, these off months. So I just thank you all for that. I can't thank you enough. Usually this is where we do a separate segment like the debate, but like I said, in lieu of a debate, we had a longer conversation and I think it was necessary.

So that leaves one more thing. Now it's been a while since we've all checked in with each other, but Barry, I am curious, what is going on in your world?

[00:47:03] Barry Kirby: In my world because we haven't done this for a while, I'm going to, I'm going to have. Two, one more thing. So we have two more things. What is the, I think I mentioned ages ago, we were looking at getting kitchen, a new kitchen put in.

The kitchen is going in and it's taking shape, but it's amazing just how many small usability issues you've got to almost deal with on a daily basis. When you're trying to develop the, you've gone past the design phase, but you're in that sort of production phase almost and different questions that come up every day.

It's just been interesting to develop some of these things and develop them slightly more on the fly than what I'm used to. So that's been a novelty, but the other thing I think has been really interesting for me is learning new things. Generally, I, I do a lot of research for for my day job.

And so actually, soaking up new information, love doing it, but I have a real problem with languages. I cannot take on new languages, and I don't know why, it's just something, there's a block in my head. So I've been trying for ages to learn Welsh because I live in Wales. And I went, and I was using like apps like Duolingo and all them sort of things.

And I took a break quite an extended break. And so I started up again about a week or so ago. And I realize I'm still really rubbish at learning new languages. So if anybody out there has got any hints or tips or anything about how to make learning languages easier, then fantastic. And this is where I'd, some sort of brain link where I could just upload it a lot of the matrix, but that's not going to happen.

So yeah, it's about usability and language for me.

[00:48:29] Nick Roome: Are you telling me that the little green bird being passive aggressive is not enough for you to learn Welsh?

[00:48:35] Barry Kirby: It just gets, it falls down to the thing of saying, it's telling me what to do. It's you have to come and learn Welsh today, and I'm like, what are you telling me what to do now?

I definitely don't want to do that. So that, that, that's just the other issues that I've got. But no, it's truly a

[00:48:49] Nick Roome: struggle. Alright, Heidi, what about you? What's your one more thing this week?

[00:48:54] Heidi Mehrzad: . Barry, actually, I heard from a friend that Duolingo works really well.

[00:49:02] Barry Kirby: That's what I'm using at the moment. And that's the aggressive little green bird. It's okay. It's the, I guess the biggest struggle I've got is the, you need to use it.

To get there. So when I've like used French and stuff in the past, I've been looking enough to go and be able to immerse myself in it in like in Canada and France and things like that. Ironically, I live in Wales, but not that many people on the whole speak Welsh on a day to day basis. And then I'm also very scared of actually going to talk to Welsh people because I've got no idea what to say and they all speak really quickly and they're all met way more intelligent than I am.

So I struggle. Yeah, I'm taking away from your one. What's your one more thing? No, it's

[00:49:41] Heidi Mehrzad: fine. I'm just thinking, you got my wheels turning, they're spinning spinning, languages, it's my thing, languages, speaking multiple languages and. Always eager to learn another one, and I'm 10 years in learning Farsi, 20, 40, 40 years in learning Farsi, and I still can only, order my groma subzi.

So I made one more thing. I'm going back and forth. They don't really have one. I admitted that at the beginning. I don't really have 1 other than just what I had to deal with today was that everything has become so automated that. Manual interference is like not there anymore so I tried to stop something today from processing and it just, it won't, even though it doesn't have a date for another two days, like it's not supposed to happen for another two days, but it's, I can't stop it and nobody will let me stop it.

And I'm like, what? I'm confused. Like, why? Let's just talk about it. It's a banking, what Transaction, and I cannot stop it, even though it's my bank account, it's, it should require my authorization, it's my money, and I cannot stop the payment because it's all so automated. And now I have to fix this stuff in the background with my banking specialist, and I don't understand how we lost the human factor in all this.

I don't get it.

[00:51:25] Nick Roome: Talk to a human. I want to talk to it. Talk to a human. Oh my God. I'll end this out here and I'm, I want you both. So Barry in Welsh and Heidi in Farsi, if you can when we end the show, let's say it depends in those languages because as we're talking about languages, I don't know what

[00:51:43] Heidi Mehrzad: depends means.

I only know what it means. I

[00:51:45] Nick Roome: don't show this off very often. I don't show this off very often, but that's a 782 day streak in Duolingo I, and in Spanish. Oh, very good. Eso depende. No, I think for me, my one more thing this week is that as you all know, I've had some things going on in my life. I'm slowly getting back into the swing of things, and this is just a gentle reminder to give yourself grace this holiday season.

No matter what you believe, just know that it is. Not all on you. You don't have to do this alone. There are people out there to help you. And just give yourself some grace. If you're feeling stress or pressure to get the perfect gift to perform at work, before you go on leave, whatever it is, just give yourself a little grace.

That's all that off the soapbox. I know I'm echo. I'm echoing it from the episode that we did. All right. That's it for today, everyone. If you liked this episode and just. Enjoy some of the discussion about the cult leader, Elon Musk. I'll encourage you all to go listen to Road Rage meets RoboCars.

It's episode 282. Comment wherever you're listening with what you think of the story this week. What are your thoughts on the Cybertruck? Really curious what you all think about it from a human factors perspective. For more in depth discussion, you can always join us on our Discord community. Visit our official website, sign up for our newsletter, stay up to date with all the latest Human Factors news.

If you like what you hear, you want to help support the show, there's a couple things you can do. One, you can leave us a five star review, that's free for you to do right now on whatever podcast or podcatcher you listen to. Two, you can tell your friends about us, that is absolutely free for you to do and really helps the show grow.

And three, if you have the financial means to I want to help support us financially. You can consider supporting us on Patrion to do that as well as always links to all of our socials and our website are in the description of this episode, Mr. Barry Kirby. Thank you for being on the show today. We're going to go listeners.

Go and find you if they want to talk about how bold you think the cyber truck is.

[00:53:30] Barry Kirby: If you want to come talk to me about the cyber truck, then you'll find me on X and other social platforms at Basel. Disco K or if you want to come and listen to discussions with the great and the. Great in the bold and the human practice community.

Then come and find me on 1202, the human practice podcast, which is 1202 podcast dot

[00:53:46] Nick Roome: com. Heidi Marzahn. Thank you for being on the show today. Where can our listeners go and find you if they want to talk about how much you idolize Elon Musk?

[00:53:55] Heidi Mehrzad: Please do not contact me for that. You can find me on all social media.

I'm just putting it out there. Please do not contact me for that. But for anything else. At HFUX research across all platforms that includes his. Yes.

[00:54:13] Nick Roome: As for me, I've been your host, Nick Rome. If you want to find me and tell me to stop making fun of my guests while they're on the show, you can find me across social media at Nick underscore Rome.

Thanks again for tuning into Human Factors Cast. You guys ready until next time. Es kommt der Abende!