Latest / In Wheel Time Podcast / Exploring Vehicle Sensors and Brake Fluid: Implications for Auto Safety and Maintenance

Transcript

Exploring Vehicle Sensors and Brake Fluid: Implications for Auto Safety and Maintenance · In Wheel Time Podcast

• 0:03
  Speaker 1: Welcome to another In-Wheel Time Podcast, a 30 minute mini version of the In-Wheel Time Car Show that airs live every Saturday morning 8 to 11am.
• 0:11
  Speaker 1: Central Podcast Channel Live from Studio A.
• 0:18
  Speaker 1: It's the In-Wheel Time Car Talk Show Coming up.
• 0:21
  Speaker 1: We speak with CEO of Ponto Sets, a company that develops sensors for your vehicle.
• 0:29
  Speaker 1: Conrad's going to have the In-Wheel Time Car Clinic and will have this week's Auto News Howdy, along with Mike out of this world, Mars King, Conrad DeLong.
• 0:39
  Speaker 1: We always need more.
• 0:41
  Speaker 1: Jeff Zekin.
• 0:42
  Speaker 1: I'm Don Armstrong.
• 0:43
  Speaker 1: Glad you could join us on this Saturday, Boy.
• 0:47
  Speaker 1: We had some big thunderstorms here yesterday.
• 0:49
  Speaker 1: I didn't need it, though.
• 0:51
  Speaker 1: Not here, not here, but about a mile from here.
• 0:55
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I didn't get a drop.
• 0:56
  Speaker 1: Not a drop.
• 0:58
  Speaker 2: I got a little bit of a drop in the office up in the woodlands got hammered.
• 1:02
  Speaker 1: Yeah, got nothing.
• 1:03
  Speaker 1: Alex, how do you pronounce your last name?
• 1:06
  Speaker 1: Good morning guys.
• 1:09
  Speaker 3: Good morning.
• 1:10
  Speaker 1: How do you pronounce your last name?
• 1:12
  Speaker 3: Yeah, it's pronounced chi Chi, Like the energy inside the body.
• 1:17
  Speaker 1: Yeah, chi, even though it's spelled QI.
• 1:20
  Speaker 3: Well, they made it complicated on purpose, I'm sure.
• 1:26
  Speaker 1: So, alex, accomplished, visionary industry leader with relentless passion for revolutionizing the automotive landscape, chief executive officer at Pontos Sents, tell us what Pontos Sents is and how you started this thing.
• 1:44
  Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean, that's a great question.
• 1:46
  Speaker 3: First of all, I hope you guys are staying dry.
• 1:48
  Speaker 3: I know what it feels like to be in a thunderstorm.
• 1:49
  Speaker 3: Yeah, it's always pleasant.
• 1:51
  Speaker 3: Yeah, exactly, but we focus on in cabin safety.
• 1:55
  Speaker 3: So we built a sensor that can measure movements.
• 2:00
  Speaker 3: If you believe they're not as small as a heartbeat.
• 2:02
  Speaker 3: So just for those keeping signs at home there, it's 0.2 to 0.3 millimeters that we can measure and for reference, they're grain of salt is 0.3 millimeters.
• 2:13
  Speaker 3: So we're measuring movements on your body as small as 0.3 millimeters in a vibrating environment from maybe a meter or so away.
• 2:23
  Speaker 1: This is truly amazing.
• 2:24
  Speaker 1: I had no clue.
• 2:25
  Speaker 1: So what would you use a sensor for something like that for?
• 2:30
  Speaker 3: Well, it's a great question because there's a use case right now and there's also a use case that they're looking at going forward.
• 2:37
  Speaker 3: The use case right now is really a safety use case, right, so it's like an airbag kind of safety device.
• 2:42
  Speaker 3: But the issue in the States is that a child every week on average dies from being left alone on a hard car.
• 2:48
  Speaker 3: Yes, absolutely Right.
• 2:49
  Speaker 3: This is a big issue that I'm sure you guys have heard a lot about.
• 2:52
  Speaker 3: So we are the first sensor in the world to be able to pass Euro-Incap regulations for in-cap and safety for child left behind.
• 3:01
  Speaker 3: But the interesting thing for a lot of these OEMs going forward is going to be what this technology can really bring as an addition, and that's really around a lot of driver monitoring, passenger monitoring.
• 3:15
  Speaker 3: By analyzing the metrics within vital signs, you can understand your drowsiness, motion sickness, alcohol consumption, things like that.
• 3:24
  Speaker 3: But it's really meant to keep you safe.
• 3:25
  Speaker 3: So this is integrated into systems that allow, for example, a telecommunications company to reach out to me and say, hey, listen, are you okay to drive?
• 3:36
  Speaker 3: Well, we'll keep an eye on you.
• 3:37
  Speaker 3: So something does happen, we'll get someone out there as soon as we can.
• 3:41
  Speaker 3: So these are just safety features going forward that OEMs that we work with are looking into.
• 3:46
  Speaker 1: Well, you know, one of the first things that comes to my mind is the fact that there's a lot of bad PR right now about you know, big brother looking over your shoulder and all of the information that the car is giving manufacturers or the government or whoever it is that has access to this stuff.
• 4:06
  Speaker 1: But let me just say this I fly on a helicopter pretty much every day and I will tell you that in a helicopter I want somebody looking after me and the ramifications of the information that your car supplies is pertinent to me.
• 4:22
  Speaker 1: That you have information being sent somewhere about your behavior behind the wheel.
• 4:28
  Speaker 1: If you're drunk, I don't want to be anywhere around you.
• 4:32
  Speaker 2: Yeah, just because they're sensing you doesn't mean you're not impacting others, right?
• 4:36
  Speaker 1: And everybody takes it so personally.
• 4:37
  Speaker 1: But when you get behind the wheel of a vehicle of any kind, you're putting everybody else at risk, in jeopardy, based on your behavior, and that's where you guys come in.
• 4:47
  Speaker 3: Absolutely.
• 4:48
  Speaker 3: I think also, just to add on top of that, right, the other way they're doing it already today is with cameras and listen.
• 4:54
  Speaker 3: Like you know, I sing in the car and probably do do even weirder things in the car.
• 4:59
  Speaker 3: So you want to have a privacy because I don't care if it's you or somebody else, right, I just care that somebody behind the wheel is going through something, and there's a lot of things that that car comes out do today, like you know I think you know on star and those type of things as well, so that will check in on you.
• 5:16
  Speaker 3: Just make sure you're safe.
• 5:16
  Speaker 3: I think that's really the main thing.
• 5:18
  Speaker 3: I'd rather have something check in on me that's privacy protecting, then something that's going to record my audio and video at the same time.
• 5:24
  Speaker 3: So I think you're absolutely right.
• 5:26
  Speaker 3: It's keeping yourself safe, it's keeping other people safe and and that's kind of where things are going, especially as art becomes autonomous right, if you hand back and in L three type of vehicle on the highway and you know your, your emotions sick, like, like crazy, are you going to be able to take back that control?
• 5:44
  Speaker 3: Those are just different things that OEMs are aware of these days.
• 5:48
  Speaker 1: Yeah, because I don't think that most people realize that cars today are a lot different than they were just a few years ago.
• 5:56
  Speaker 1: Oh yeah, and in fact, I'm driving a car right now.
• 5:59
  Speaker 1: It's a beautiful car and I'm going to review it in a couple of weeks, but I will tell you that the car is brand new.
• 6:05
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, it's only got a couple of thousand miles on it.
• 6:08
  Speaker 1: However, the technology that's in the dashboard is old.
• 6:12
  Speaker 1: I've got two video screens in there.
• 6:14
  Speaker 1: One is for the navigation on it, the rest of it is for the audio infotainment infotainment system down below.
• 6:23
  Speaker 1: Who does that anymore?
• 6:24
  Speaker 1: Nobody does that anymore, and that car is a relatively new car as far as development is concerned.
• 6:30
  Speaker 1: So things moving along at a really fast pace.
• 6:34
  Speaker 2: Well and think about it.
• 6:34
  Speaker 2: You have car manufacturers that are advertising oh, take your hands off the steering wheel and let the car drive for you.
• 6:43
  Speaker 2: You know, and now you know you're not active.
• 6:46
  Speaker 2: And that's where your sensors are going to come in, as far as you know, monitoring who the driver is and what they're doing, and are they truly paying attention?
• 6:54
  Speaker 2: I know the OEMs talk about, yeah, we have these eyelid sensors out there that are there, they're watching you, but yours is much more intense level of monitoring the physical movement and motion of the passenger and driver of the vehicle.
• 7:12
  Speaker 3: And it doesn't know who you are Like.
• 7:13
  Speaker 3: It doesn't need to know who you are, right?
• 7:15
  Speaker 3: I think that's listen.
• 7:17
  Speaker 3: I'm driving, someone's watching my outlets, I'm not feeling great, right, but really, I think also it breaks down to kind of what these car companies are looking into, right?
• 7:27
  Speaker 3: I think you know you mentioned all these technologies going into vehicles.
• 7:30
  Speaker 3: I absolutely agree.
• 7:30
  Speaker 3: You know they only move for two different reasons, right.
• 7:33
  Speaker 3: They only move because the government tells them to move, or they move because they can, you know, make more profit, Right, and you know there's a big push towards multi-use sensors.
• 7:45
  Speaker 3: So, instead of having a weight sensor, an airbag sensor, a, you know, privacy sensor, all these different things, why don't you just have one sensor that covers everything?
• 7:52
  Speaker 3: Right?
• 7:52
  Speaker 3: So that's kind of where, as we deploy into vehicles and you know we just, you know, confirm another 200,000 on the road but as we deploy more into vehicles, the multi-use piece of it is really really critical because they got to make some money.
• 8:10
  Speaker 3: And right now you know this is maybe a timely point, but right now it's what's happening with the UAW, of course, and everything that people are seeing around the country.
• 8:18
  Speaker 3: You know, profit questions are going to come into play and they can make more money and they can give some of that money to, you know, to the unions and the workers as well.
• 8:28
  Speaker 3: Then everybody wins in the end.
• 8:29
  Speaker 3: So profit is a big part of it as well for these large car companies.
• 8:33
  Speaker 2: Well, and in what you're building you just talked about, is you know why have 17 different sensors in a car?
• 8:40
  Speaker 2: That all kind of trying to do one thing, where that requires 17 different SKUs or 17 different part numbers, where your sensors can be one sensor that's going to be able to do multiple tasks, that and eliminate those other 17 that are in the car, simplify it in production, simplify it in inventory as well.
• 9:03
  Speaker 2: There's a cost savings to the OEMs on that.
• 9:07
  Speaker 2: Are you already working with some of the OEMs?
• 9:10
  Speaker 3: Yeah, absolutely yeah.
• 9:11
  Speaker 3: We launched in Europe first as their first market.
• 9:14
  Speaker 3: There's a bunch of EVs working with the there as well.
• 9:15
  Speaker 3: The ICEs are just, you know, a couple of years behind, but they'll get there as well.
• 9:20
  Speaker 3: You know we're doing about 200,000.
• 9:23
  Speaker 3: There's a bunch of you know metrics now that we're estimating how many lives we've saved with this technology in terms of children, things like that as well.
• 9:30
  Speaker 3: So we're actually, you know, absolutely hoping to do more, and you know the entire production process and automotive used to be like five to seven years.
• 9:39
  Speaker 3: Right, they used to plan for like a model in like 2030 or something, but now they shortened that to about one to two years.
• 9:46
  Speaker 3: So you will see a lot of these you know, life saving, child saving, driver saving type of technology in the market sooner than later.
• 9:54
  Speaker 1: What are you working on today?
• 9:57
  Speaker 3: Today we're building a lot of AI into the system.
• 10:01
  Speaker 3: So what we mean by that is we collect a lot of your vitals, again, all anonymous, all privacy protected, all locally stored.
• 10:10
  Speaker 3: We don't use cloud computing, we don't use any of that kind of stuff, so it's all kind of housed within the vehicle itself.
• 10:15
  Speaker 3: But if I tell you you're a heartbeat, that's not going to give you any information.
• 10:19
  Speaker 3: Right, I need to tell you more about hey, are you at risk for a certain type of accident?
• 10:24
  Speaker 3: I think that's something that we are actively working on here in Ontario.
• 10:29
  Speaker 3: We've got a couple of offices in Toronto, in London, ontario, in Waterloo, and also with our AI lab in Tokyo.
• 10:35
  Speaker 3: It's all kind of putting these pieces together where you know, instead of saying your heartbeat's 65, that doesn't tell you anything.
• 10:41
  Speaker 3: But let me tell you hey, you have a 30% chance that you're going to fall asleep in the next two hours if you keep on on those drives, and that's kind of what that predictive analysis is going to be able to bring.
• 10:54
  Speaker 4: So how do you get to that?
• 10:55
  Speaker 4: I mean, I understand that your sensors are much more attuned to what's going on.
• 11:00
  Speaker 4: I mean I'm envisioning you actually being able to tell if I stop breathing behind the wheel, I mean because my chest isn't moving, or anything like that.
• 11:09
  Speaker 4: So if I just held my breath you would pick it up, but you wouldn't know exactly why and I could see that maybe, ok, this guy's not breathing, so I'm going to get some, I'm going to shut the car down or I'm going to do something to kind of help that situation.
• 11:23
  Speaker 4: Is that kind of what you're talking?
• 11:26
  Speaker 3: You could be talking, and that's also.
• 11:28
  Speaker 3: You can't breathe and talk at the same time.
• 11:30
  Speaker 3: So there's different reasons why you're doing those things.
• 11:32
  Speaker 3: But I'll tell you guys, the the honest transparency is that the key metric you're looking at is something called HRV.
• 11:37
  Speaker 3: So HRV stands for heart rate variability, it's the time and space between each heartbeat and that's in humans, that's the fight or flight response.
• 11:46
  Speaker 3: So, to answer your question, we're looking at a bunch of different metrics and then I kind of you know tune it to like WebMD is that you could be not breathing for a lot of different reasons.
• 11:56
  Speaker 3: Some of the reasons are good reasons.
• 11:58
  Speaker 3: Right, you're, you know you're, you're relaxed, you're talking, you're having a conversation, you're not breathing.
• 12:02
  Speaker 3: But as you go down those different things we can send, then start to narrow down and understand again at a very high level what is something that could be a potential risk in the vehicle.
• 12:15
  Speaker 2: So your sensor could pick up somebody who's having a heart attack?
• 12:19
  Speaker 3: We technically, yes, but we would not use that as a use case because for a lot of car companies that's a little bit risky.
• 12:25
  Speaker 3: I think that's coming down the pipeline, that that's in the roadmap, but it's not something we're doing the next couple of years just because, as you can probably imagine, that's something that is going to cause, you know, quite a bit of risk for the car companies.
• 12:39
  Speaker 3: What we're doing for the first one I'll give you the exact use case.
• 12:42
  Speaker 3: It's going to be stress and comfort.
• 12:43
  Speaker 3: You've had a rough day.
• 12:45
  Speaker 3: You're coming back from the office, you're not feeling great.
• 12:49
  Speaker 3: You know your heartbeat, hrv all these different measures we have are a little bit off.
• 12:53
  Speaker 3: Let us turn on that.
• 12:56
  Speaker 3: You know whirlpool seating in your Porsche vehicle and you're going to have a nicer ride home than you did when you're at the office.
• 13:01
  Speaker 3: I think that's the first stage.
• 13:03
  Speaker 3: Is that comfort level, safety level, and then you get into more about that drowsiness, attention, cognitive attention, alcohol detection.
• 13:10
  Speaker 3: In some states, maybe you know even marijuana detection as well.
• 13:14
  Speaker 3: So those are things that then again, you're not feeling great, you're not stopping the car because that's very dangerous, but you're letting something like on-star know, you're letting something like those systems know that, okay, there might be a risk there.
• 13:27
  Speaker 3: Let's keep a close eye on this person.
• 13:30
  Speaker 4: So would you incorporate this with any of the insurance?
• 13:33
  Speaker 3: companies.
• 13:33
  Speaker 3: That is part of it.
• 13:36
  Speaker 3: That is part of it, and I think you know there is, I would say, a tug of war right now in this industry I'm sure you guys have heard it as well is previously we got our insurance from all state, state farm, you know, farmers, all these different insurance companies.
• 13:50
  Speaker 3: But looking forward, in the future you may be getting your insurance from Ford and GM, and there's a reason for that and there's a way that they're going to work together with the insurance companies to make that happen.
• 14:00
  Speaker 3: But these are things where you know we are not a company that's going to impact that ourselves directly.
• 14:07
  Speaker 3: They have their own plans.
• 14:08
  Speaker 3: But I really think that you need to see your premiums go down.
• 14:14
  Speaker 3: There is a case study that came out where you know, if you switch to an OEM based insurance, your insurance could decrease by as much as 40% every single month, which is nice to have.
• 14:24
  Speaker 3: Oh yeah, absolutely so.
• 14:26
  Speaker 3: I think you know there is this danger.
• 14:30
  Speaker 3: I'm concerned, people are concerned that your insurance are going to go up because, hey, you know you're constantly stressed when you're driving and that may be causing your insurance to go up, and then those are things that you know we as an organization, want to make sure that we're capturing again.
• 14:44
  Speaker 3: It's, you know, potentially private and anonymous, so that it doesn't know it's you as well and you can keep those rates a little bit lower as well going forward.
• 14:51
  Speaker 3: It's all about repair costs timely.
• 14:53
  Speaker 3: I live in Canada, guys.
• 14:55
  Speaker 3: I mean we have a lot of snow here.
• 14:56
  Speaker 3: I crashed my tires, took me a month to get new tires, so so, insurance wise, I think you'll see a streamlining of that industry in the next, you know, five to 10 years.
• 15:05
  Speaker 1: Wow, I mean, the ramifications of that knowledge are unbelievable.
• 15:11
  Speaker 1: We're talking about Jetsons kind of stuff here.
• 15:14
  Speaker 3: Absolutely.
• 15:15
  Speaker 3: I mean, besides the flying cars and the and the talking dogs Absolutely, I think this is where we're going Right.
• 15:20
  Speaker 3: So you got to keep people safe.
• 15:24
  Speaker 3: You got to keep people safe and you can't shut down cars.
• 15:27
  Speaker 3: You can't make cars not not start because they're the defective alcohol in the vehicle.
• 15:32
  Speaker 3: These cannot have those things happen, because there was a case, I think you know, a couple of years ago, where someone was assaulted and she ran into the vehicle and try to get the vehicle to start and it wouldn't start because it detected something.
• 15:45
  Speaker 1: Those are just cases, you can't have that.
• 15:47
  Speaker 1: They also have the vehicles that you can't start unless you have a breathalyzer test, those, those that's on the other side of that, though, that's a court order thing.
• 15:55
  Speaker 4: Right Right Right.
• 15:55
  Speaker 4: Do you ever watch Cujo?
• 15:58
  Speaker 3: Yeah, exactly, yeah, yeah.
• 16:02
  Speaker 2: So.
• 16:02
  Speaker 2: So, right now, your, your market is Occupant detection in the rear of the vehicle.
• 16:09
  Speaker 2: That's kind of where you're selling at the moment.
• 16:12
  Speaker 3: That is what the house on fire problem is going to be right.
• 16:16
  Speaker 3: In the US it's going to come in 2025, probably after the 2024 election, but in Europe it's already happening.
• 16:23
  Speaker 3: In China, in Japan and around the world it's already happening as well.
• 16:27
  Speaker 3: So to your point there, that's like the government mandated house on fire.
• 16:32
  Speaker 3: You've got to have this going forward type of situation.
• 16:34
  Speaker 3: But these car comes there smart.
• 16:36
  Speaker 3: They're run by really intelligent people.
• 16:38
  Speaker 3: So they're thinking okay, I'll put this in if you want, but I want to do other things as well.
• 16:43
  Speaker 3: And that's kind of where we talk about this aspect of driver safety and monitoring as well.
• 16:49
  Speaker 4: Interesting.
• 16:49
  Speaker 4: There's all kinds of questions you want to ask.
• 16:54
  Speaker 4: Well, again, you mentioned privacy a couple of times.
• 16:59
  Speaker 4: I understand the safety aspects to make sure that there's no children or somebody left in the back seat, and I'm not sure how that works.
• 17:07
  Speaker 4: But I don't need to know how, I just know that it works.
• 17:09
  Speaker 4: But there was an example on one of the news shows here recently about stuff that people did in their back seat of their car and how it might be considered to be a privacy issue.
• 17:22
  Speaker 1: Well, yeah, I believe that it was Tesla that was spying on people having sex in the back of their car.
• 17:27
  Speaker 1: They were showing it to the people that they weren't.
• 17:29
  Speaker 1: Hey, man, come over here and check this out.
• 17:31
  Speaker 4: Yeah see what this couple is doing yeah, exactly.
• 17:35
  Speaker 2: Yeah, so that's what he's talking about all the privacy issues and the concerns about that.
• 17:40
  Speaker 3: Yeah, I don't want any of my video recorded.
• 17:42
  Speaker 3: I don't want any of my audio recorded, frankly.
• 17:44
  Speaker 2: So the children's car?
• 17:45
  Speaker 2: It's almost like David Hasselhoff and you're turning the car into kit.
• 17:49
  Speaker 2: Yeah, you know as far as level of understanding what the driver needs and what the passenger needs are, as well as as the propulsion of the vehicle.
• 18:01
  Speaker 1: What does?
• 18:01
  Speaker 1: What does NCAP mean in in European language?
• 18:08
  Speaker 3: It's a new car assessment program, so it provides a safety rating for how you know how how safe your vehicle is.
• 18:16
  Speaker 1: Do we have most?
• 18:17
  Speaker 1: Do we have?
• 18:18
  Speaker 1: Do we have that here in the United States, some something similar to it?
• 18:23
  Speaker 3: We have.
• 18:23
  Speaker 3: We have American and cap here at the US.
• 18:25
  Speaker 1: I see American and cap OK and who, who?
• 18:28
  Speaker 1: Who controls those regulations?
• 18:31
  Speaker 1: Is it the government?
• 18:34
  Speaker 3: I.
• 18:34
  Speaker 3: There's a bunch of people wearing ties over in Washington and in Detroit making those, making those in demand dates.
• 18:39
  Speaker 3: So there is a governing body for for those types of things here in the US.
• 18:43
  Speaker 1: So you have to deal with them.
• 18:48
  Speaker 3: I would say that in this case our interests are aligned.
• 18:51
  Speaker 3: I think they also want to keep people safe on the road and, sure you know, in hot vehicles.
• 18:55
  Speaker 3: So generally they have a guideline.
• 18:58
  Speaker 3: But what is more, you know, interesting is that actually car companies have much stricter guidelines than than in cap in many cases.
• 19:07
  Speaker 3: So I'll give you, I'll give you an example.
• 19:10
  Speaker 3: So in in the FDA, right, if you are, if your device can measure heart rate accurate to plus minus 10 beats per minute, so if it's 65, really, but your registered, between you know, 55 to 75, that is FDA cleared and that's ready to go.
• 19:27
  Speaker 3: That's what Apple Watch does, right.
• 19:28
  Speaker 3: But OEMs, they need plus minus five, right, they need a much more accurate system for their vehicles.
• 19:35
  Speaker 3: So I would say the in cap is one of those you know hurdles you have to get through.
• 19:41
  Speaker 3: But OEMs are really the ones that setting a much stricter, you know regulation and they're run by very smart people that have a view on these things that go in the future as well.
• 19:51
  Speaker 3: So so I would say that actually we work closer with the OEMs and the car companies to make sure that we fit what they need and then, just so happens, we'll also clear the the in cap requirements.
• 20:01
  Speaker 1: Well, Alex, you are truly one of the smartest people that we've ever had.
• 20:05
  Speaker 1: A program we're not worthy, but where can we find out more information about Ponto sense?
• 20:12
  Speaker 3: You can check out our website at Ponto sensecom, so that's P O N T O S E N S E dot com.
• 20:18
  Speaker 3: We also have an email, so contact at Ponto sensecom as well.
• 20:24
  Speaker 3: We'd love to hear from from you guys.
• 20:26
  Speaker 3: We'd love to hear from from the audience as well, because I do think that there is a new era now of innovation within the US and automakers and and what's what's happening right now with the UAW and things like that.
• 20:37
  Speaker 3: I know that's you know tug tugging and pulling in different strings there, but I do think that there's a really bright feature for this industry in the US and we're happy to be a part of it.
• 20:46
  Speaker 1: But truly having me on.
• 20:47
  Speaker 1: Yeah, thank you.
• 20:48
  Speaker 1: Truly a fascinating conversation.
• 20:50
  Speaker 1: We appreciate it.
• 20:51
  Speaker 1: Let's stay in touch.
• 20:52
  Speaker 1: Hope to talk to you again soon.
• 20:54
  Speaker 3: Absolutely.
• 20:54
  Speaker 3: Folks have a nice day and stay dry in the thunderstorm there.
• 20:58
  Speaker 1: Alex, chief CEO of Ponto sense.
• 21:01
  Speaker 2: Very cool A look into the future.
• 21:03
  Speaker 1: Yeah, no doubt All right time now on the In-Wheel Time Car Talk Show for Conrad's car clinic we're still talking about fluids, fluids.
• 21:12
  Speaker 2: You know, last week we talked about transmission fluid and how the color is pretty important, yes, indicator of what's going on.
• 21:18
  Speaker 2: Well, the same thing with brake fluid.
• 21:20
  Speaker 2: Brake fluid should typically, when it's new, be like an amber color, you know, very light tan, maybe even to the point of being clear.
• 21:28
  Speaker 2: And the reason they use brake fluid is it's what I call a force multiplier.
• 21:35
  Speaker 2: You know, if I, if I, it's the physics of hydraulics.
• 21:40
  Speaker 2: You know, if I have a two inch piston and I move it one inch through a line on the other end, and doesn't matter how far away it can be, you know, and in a car it could be 12, 14 feet away you know a one inch piston is going to move two inches.
• 21:54
  Speaker 2: So all that force multiplying so that when I step on the brake the brakes happen.
• 22:00
  Speaker 2: So the fluid's a critical port of how that functions.
• 22:04
  Speaker 2: You know, you want to make sure that the fluid is clean, you want to make sure that the fluid's not contaminated.
• 22:09
  Speaker 2: Brake fluid itself is hygroscopic.
• 22:12
  Speaker 2: It's always wanting to absorb a little bit of moisture.
• 22:15
  Speaker 2: So opening and closing your brake cap all the time is a bad thing to do because just a little bit of humidity in there can impact.
• 22:22
  Speaker 2: That Brake fluid has to not just transmit hydraulic force, it also has to withstand pretty high amounts of heat.
• 22:31
  Speaker 2: You know, if you think about a pickup truck pulling off the highway, coming up to a stop sign, those brake rotors could be six, seven, 800 degrees hot and they're you know they're inches away from four or five ounces of brake fluid inside your caliper, so that radiating heat is going to generate the heat inside the fluid.
• 22:50
  Speaker 2: So we talked about we talked earlier before we got on the air about DOT 3 fluid.
• 22:56
  Speaker 2: Department of Transportation.
• 22:59
  Speaker 2: Standard 3, that's DOT 3, is a boiling point of 400 degrees.
• 23:06
  Speaker 2: So the fluid, when it boils, that becomes a problem because now all of a sudden we've introduced air pockets in the brake fluid and that's where that spongy pedal comes.
• 23:18
  Speaker 2: The other problem is once it starts to absorb moisture you know what happens to water at 212 degrees it turns to steam.
• 23:27
  Speaker 2: Now that steam also creates a soft or a spongy brake pedal.
• 23:33
  Speaker 2: If you watch your brake fluid color, that's going to give you an indication of when it needs to be replaced.
• 23:39
  Speaker 2: But manufacturers know what's going on.
• 23:42
  Speaker 2: Because brake fluid becomes old, it becomes corrosive, and one of the things brake fluid does is, as it becomes corrosive, it begins to leach copper out of the inside of the system, whether it's copper out of the analog braking system or copper out of the metalized fuel or brake lines that are in the vehicle.
• 24:02
  Speaker 2: And you see, people will go in with like a little test strip to test your brake fluid.
• 24:09
  Speaker 2: They're actually measuring the parts per million of copper.
• 24:12
  Speaker 2: You know, the funny thing is, you know Honda cars when their brake fluid gets old it turns green.
• 24:19
  Speaker 2: What color does copper turn when it corrodes?
• 24:23
  Speaker 2: Green.
• 24:23
  Speaker 2: So it's a good indication that your brake fluid needs to be changed when it starts to turn green.
• 24:29
  Speaker 2: But different manufacturers tell you to change the fluid at different intervals and I never really understand why everybody's variance.
• 24:37
  Speaker 2: You know a lot of the Europeans say every 20,000 to 24,000 miles or every two years.
• 24:43
  Speaker 2: A lot of the Asian imports will tell you every 30,000 miles.
• 24:48
  Speaker 2: Gm says every 45,000 miles you should change your brake fluid.
• 24:53
  Speaker 2: Ford doesn't ever tell you to change your brake fluid at all.
• 24:57
  Speaker 2: Mopar doesn't ever tell you to change your brake fluid at all.
• 25:01
  Speaker 2: They all basically use a very similar fluid.
• 25:05
  Speaker 2: So as the fluid ages it needs to be changed.
• 25:08
  Speaker 2: What's?
• 25:09
  Speaker 1: the difference between regular, like a DOT 3, and silicone fluid, and can you mix the two?
• 25:13
  Speaker 2: You cannot mix the two at all.
• 25:15
  Speaker 2: Silicone fluid is going to have a boiling temperature generally north of 600 degrees.
• 25:20
  Speaker 2: Dot 3 is the factory fill for 99% of the vehicles out there.
• 25:26
  Speaker 2: And then there's also a DOT 4 fluid which has a boiling point above 500 degrees.
• 25:32
  Speaker 2: So the DOT 4 fluid.
• 25:34
  Speaker 2: You really don't see that as factory fill anywhere.
• 25:37
  Speaker 2: But there's a lot of places that will put DOT 4 fluid which is totally interchangeable with DOT 3.
• 25:43
  Speaker 2: But silicone brake fluid really does not exist from an OEM.
• 25:49
  Speaker 2: That's purely on a race car and you know we can talk to Richard how often does he change brake fluid?
• 25:55
  Speaker 2: Probably every time he races a car he puts fresh brake fluid in it.
• 25:59
  Speaker 2: Why?
• 25:59
  Speaker 2: Because he has to depend on the fluid doing what it's designed to do.
• 26:03
  Speaker 2: So you always want to have fresh, new, fortified fluid inside the vehicle.
• 26:07
  Speaker 2: So again, amber, light amber color is normal.
• 26:13
  Speaker 2: As it begins to darken, it's time to think about it.
• 26:16
  Speaker 2: If it gets black you should have replaced it already, and it'll get so black it'll stain the inside of the reservoir and once that happens, the only way to clean that reservoir is basically to replace it.
• 26:29
  Speaker 2: There's no, you can't put any cleaner inside of a brake fluid, brake fluid.
• 26:33
  Speaker 2: You don't want to intermix with anything at all because it'll affect its performance.
• 26:37
  Speaker 1: Wow, very interesting.
• 26:38
  Speaker 1: Yeah, so I'm glad that I had my Corvette brake fluid changed a couple of years ago.
• 26:45
  Speaker 1: That never had been in the car's 20 years old.
• 26:51
  Speaker 2: And with that you also have the clutch fluid.
• 26:53
  Speaker 2: You know, in a manual transmission with a hydraulic clutch that's basically brake fluid that's in there.
• 27:00
  Speaker 2: That's also exposed to pretty high temperatures down there at the clutch.
• 27:03
  Speaker 2: So you want to make sure you're changing that clutch fluid.
• 27:06
  Speaker 1: Well, I just want to change the clutch, so with the clutch change, there goes the fluid, and now it's got a little valve down there that it didn't have before.
• 27:15
  Speaker 2: That makes it easier to change the fluid Right.
• 27:18
  Speaker 1: Yeah, fluid, very good.
• 27:20
  Speaker 1: Thank you, fluid valve.
• 27:21
  Speaker 1: Okay, time now for a quick break and then we'll start the top of the next hour.
• 27:26
  Speaker 1: Our next guest is already here and standing by, so stay with us.
• 27:30
  Speaker 1: Quick break on the Inwheel Time car talk show.
• 27:33
  Speaker 1: The original group of loopy tortilla restaurants will have you telling your family and friends just what the original recipes mean when it comes to the best fajitas in Southeast Texas.
• 27:41
  Speaker 1: Founder Stan Holt invite you to visit the original loopy tortilla near I-10 at Highway 6.
• 27:46
  Speaker 1: Here's the original house that inspired the design of all the rest and the original charm that helped make loopy tortilla the go-to destination for Houston Tex-Mex.
• 27:54
  Speaker 1: Speaking of original, nothing can compete with the original lime pepper marinade.
• 27:58
  Speaker 1: That everyone will agree makes loopy tortilla award-winning beef fajitas the best anywhere.
• 28:03
  Speaker 1: Loopy tortilla Katie is another location that gives you the same quality and service Houstonians have come to expect at loopies.
• 28:08
  Speaker 1: It's located just off I-10 in the Grand Parkway.
• 28:11
  Speaker 1: At Kingsland Boulevard in Katie, find yourself an Aggie land.
• 28:14
  Speaker 1: Head to the loopy tortilla college station, located just around the corner from Kyle Field.
• 28:18
  Speaker 1: It's a great place to enjoy those famous frozen margaritas before or after the game.
• 28:22
  Speaker 1: Head to East, to Louisiana.
• 28:24
  Speaker 1: Stop in at the loopy tortilla in Beaumont it twos on I-10.
• 28:27
  Speaker 1: You can't miss it.
• 28:28
  Speaker 1: The original group of loopy tortilla restaurants invites you in for the best Tex-Mex.
• 28:32
  Speaker 1: Anywhere.
• 28:33
  Speaker 1: You own a car you love, but why not let Gulf Coast Auto Shield protect it?
• 28:36
  Speaker 1: Houstonian John Gray invites you to his state-of-the-art facility to introduce you to his specialist team of auto enthusiasts.
• 28:43
  Speaker 1: We promise you'll be impressed.
• 28:45
  Speaker 1: Whether you're looking to massage your original paint to a like-new appearance, apply a ceramic coating, install a paint protection film, nanoceramic window tint or new windshield protection called ExoShield, gulf Coast Auto Shield is where Houston's car people go.
• 28:59
  Speaker 1: Curb your wheels.
• 29:01
  Speaker 1: Instead of buying new, why not have them repaired?
• 29:03
  Speaker 1: How about a professionally installed radar detector?
• 29:05
  Speaker 1: Gulf Coast Auto Shield does that too.
• 29:07
  Speaker 1: Get a peek inside the shop and look at the services offered by getting online and heading to GCautoshieldcom.
• 29:13
  Speaker 1: Better yet, stop by their facility at 11275 South Sam Houston Tullway, just south of the Southwest Freeway, and get a personal tour.
• 29:20
  Speaker 1: Gulf Coast Auto Shield is your place to go for all things exterior.
• 29:24
  Speaker 1: Call them today, 832-930-5655, or GCautoshieldcom.
• 29:31
  Speaker 1: The award-winning In Wheel Time car talk show is available on the most popular podcast channels out there in 30-minute episodes.
• 29:37
  Speaker 1: We realize our three-hour live show can be difficult to catch in its entirety.
• 29:41
  Speaker 1: So now you can listen every day to a convenient, fresh 30-minute episode.
• 29:45
  Speaker 1: Check us out on Apple Podcasts, spotify, google Podcasts, amazon Music and Audible, along with a dozen more.
• 29:51
  Speaker 1: In Wheel Time has the most informative automotive guest interviews and new car reviews, along with popular features including Conrad's car clinic and this week in auto history, along with automotive news headlines.
• 30:02
  Speaker 1: Our live broadcast airs every Saturday, 8 to 11, central on InWheelTimecom, the iHeart app and on YouTube.
• 30:08
  Speaker 1: Be sure to say hello when we're broadcasting from the tailpipes and tacos cruise in AutoRama and the Houston Auto Show, among others.
• 30:15
  Speaker 1: Now it's easier than ever to hear about all things automotive all week long.
• 30:19
  Speaker 1: You're invited to join fellow car enthusiasts in becoming part of the ever-growing In Wheel Time car talk family.
• 30:25
  Speaker 1: Don't forget those 30-minute podcast episodes on your favorite podcast channel.
• 30:29
  Speaker 1: That's it for this podcast episode of the In Wheel Time car show.
• 30:33
  Speaker 1: I'm Don Armstrong, inviting you to join us for our live show every Saturday morning 8 to 11 am, central on Facebook, youtube, twitch and our InWheelTimecom website.
• 30:44
  Speaker 1: Podcasts are available on Apple Podcasts, spotify, stitcher, iheart Podcast, podcast, addict, tunein, pandora and the In Wheel Time car show.