#126 podcast: Couple embraces home tech business

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Valerie Antkowiak and Mark Pallone are retired Intel engineers, but they’re still involved in their careers via a home-based business about home technology.

The husband-wife team, who lives in El Dorado Hills, California, publishes the website AppMyHome.com. The site and their home is the testing ground for all things in the extended home technology field.

Antkowiak is our guest on episode No. 126 of The Weekly Driver Podcast.

Co-hosts Bruce Aldrich and James Raia discuss talk with Antowiak about the couple’s history with the site and their process for testing home technology equipment.

The couple’s home technology extends to the automobile industry, and we discuss that, too. We talk about navigation systems to the future of autonomous driving.

Antkowiak and Pallone recently purchased a Hyundai Santa Fe, and they’re impressed with varied and efficient technology functions the South Korean SUV features.

Antkowiak narrates and Pallone produces a piece on the extensive features available on the Hyundai. It’s among the many videos the couple has featured on their YouTube channel.

Here’s how Antkowiak and Pallone define their business:

“Exploring technology and products available for the Smart Home, the Kitchen and Travel. We test and review products in our own home or occasionally, at our friends’ and relatives’ homes, and share our experience with stories and videos.”

For more tech reviews, visit: www.appmyhome.com.

Episode Transcript

James Raia: Welcome back to The Weekly Driver Podcast. My name is James Raya. I’m an automotive columnist for Bay Area News Group, and I edit and publish the website, the weekly driver.com. My friend and colleague is Bruce Aldrich, and today our guest is Valerie Ann Kak. Valerie and I met, at a meetup group several months ago, and we had a nice conversation after getting some expertise in, in the WordPress world in Sacramento.

And Valerie was nice enough to contact me oh, a few weeks ago that she and her partner husband bought a. New Hyundai Santa Fe, and she let me know that we had talked about that and they drove it and they liked it and they thanked me for my recommendation, which was really nice of them.

But more importantly is that Valerie in her world does great things with a wonderful app called app my home.com, and on that website. You guys just do everything in the wonderful world of how it technology relates to your home. And the video that you guys did on YouTube about the navigation system and other things in the Honda Santa Fe was very impressive.

So that gets us to today, and we’ve reciprocating each other’s expertise. And so you’re our guest today to talk all about all the things that in the technology world with in your website that relate to the automobile, which is. Almost everything these days. So the long way of saying welcome to our show, and it’s great to have you as a guest.

Valerie Antkowiak: Oh, thank you very much. I’m happy to be here.

James Raia: Valerie, can you take us through a kind of a general overview of the site and how it began for the two of you and what what the mission statement is, if you will? Of, of at my home. Sure.

Valerie Antkowiak: So my husband and I started at my home in 2013. And we’re both techies, we both work at, we worked at Intel and so we obviously love technology and we were playing around with all these smart home gadgets.

And my husband Mark, he just kept bringing home all these different things to play with. First it was smart light bulbs, and then it was a smart garage door opener. And then and he just he would hook them up and he would put the app on his phone and put the app on my phone, and then he would tell everybody about it.

Oh, I got this great smart light bulb. Let me show you how I can turn it on and off from my phone. And so after all of this, all this expense at the Apple store and a lot of stories, yes, I said to him, I said, Hey. I said hey, maybe we should start a blog and then instead of me hearing the same story 50 times, when you tell all of our friends, typical husband, wife, open the garage door.

James Raia: Yes.

Valerie Antkowiak: Yeah, I said, maybe we should start a blog and, I wanted to learn how to do blogs and learn how to do social media better. And I gave at first my feeling was I was gonna give Mark a platform to to talk about all this with everybody. So we started on Twitter and face.

Book and we called the app from my home because at the time everybody was using apps on their phone to control everything. So that was really the only way you could control things in your house. You download an app and then all of a sudden you change the light bulb color from red to green to blue, or you can open and close your garage door.

You can lock and unlock the door. So that’s how we got started. So it started off as fun we would. We would put some things on there. We got the very first video doorbell that one of the very first ones that came out called the SkyBell. And Mark would write little pieces. He would basically email them to the WordPress site and we’d put them up there.

And after, maybe 10 or so of those little blogs, I said, Hey, how about you install the technology and I’ll do the writing and maybe that’ll work out a little better. Yes. So I, I have a background in journalism and I was a product manager and a software engineering manager, but I wasn’t getting a lot of opportunity to write.

So it was a great partnership for both of us. I could do some writing and he could tinker with the electronics in the house. And our first goal was, it was a hobby. And I thought, maybe if we get some free stuff out of this, it will help us pay for the website hosting.

Sure. And we won’t be spending $60 on a light bulb at Apple Store all the time. So that’s how we got started. Back in 2013, the smart home technology market was different. I would say it’s still not mature, but it’s evolved a lot over the years and we’ve had a lot of fun. We go to the Consumer Electronics Show every year and look at all the new gadgets and write about it and shoot videos and we’re, we’re at the point in our, on our website.

Companies really enjoy working with us and we have no problem getting free gadgets to test. That keeps us really busy and achieved my first goal of getting the free stuff. We really like it because we. We’re both technology people. We like working with a new technology.

We like, especially working with the small companies that are really trying to make a difference. And our policy is that, if you send us a product and we test it we know we keep it in our house, we’ll do a video or a story. But if we don’t like it and we don’t think it works very well, we’re not gonna do a negative story.

It’s just not our, it’s not in our personality. It’s not what we’d like to do. We think everyone’s really trying hard to make these products work, and we don’t see the point of doing a negative review. So in that case, we would just send the product back, and that’s happened a couple times and not very often.

Most of these products now are really good and they, we can always find something good to say about them, even if it’s not the exact thing we would recommend.

James Raia: Yeah, I would say similar to that in the automotive world is people sometimes will ask Bruce’s more of an expert in automobiles than I am, but they’ll ask, what kind of car should, what would you consider?

And I would say something along the lines every car’s got something good to offer and. I’m not of the mindset to rip cars either, because they’re all, in my opinion, they’re all pretty good. They’re just degrees of better than, some are better than others. But yeah I understand and agree with your point is that there’s something, why be a doom and gloom or there’s something positive or there’s some balance.

If there’s a fault or a weakness in the product that you review, that’s okay, but there’s no reason to go after stuff on purpose like that. So in take moving forward, you’ve had the site for almost a decade now. And I’m not asking specifically, but it’s turned in, it sounds like it’s turned into a good business for the two of you.

You have Amazon affiliate, you have other relationships, and how are the two of you finding the business world of owning a website? Is it, something that you could work 24 7 and still work on it, or do you, have you found some balance that, we’re turning off the laptops, now it’s time to do something else.

Valerie Antkowiak: I think that we’re in a situation in our lives where, we can drive how much we wanna work or not.

James Raia: Yes.

Valerie Antkowiak: Yeah, we both retired from Intel. Mark did it in 2016 and I left in 2018.

And we just, we, we, we we’re able to make some. Some money from the Amazon affiliates.

Affiliate marketing is challenging.

James Raia: Yes. As

Valerie Antkowiak: probably everybody knows. But, so we’re make, we’re able to make some money and we’re able, especially with YouTube, everything is going to YouTube nowadays, so we’re really focusing on getting more videos onto YouTube because we get a lot more traction, all of that.

So it’s going well for us and it’s. We love to travel and so it gives us the opportunity to do it from wherever we are. And the nice thing about traveling is that you, when you have smart home technology, you can keep an eye on your house while you’re away. So that makes it a nice,

James Raia: that’s really good.

Yes.

Valerie Antkowiak: A nice benefit. It’s and we drive how much we wanna work or not. It gives us a really good excuse to go and see new technology and meet new technology companies and that’s what keeps us.

Bruce Aldrich: Enthused. That’s great. Valerie, when you’re driving are you really into the new car manufacturers all wanna do connectivity in the car?

Is that something that you’re really enjoying? Do you like that?

Valerie Antkowiak: Oh yeah, for sure. The the. We were following Apple CarPlay and Android Auto for years. And when my husband bought his Ford Escape in 2017, he had been, he had a really old Ford Escape from 2006, and he had actually considered upgrading the head unit with a.

With one of the the third party upgrades. Like I think Pioneer makes a third party upgrade and he had been looking at that for years. ’cause he really wanted the Apple CarPlay in the car and the technology in the cars, it’s gotten a lot better. A lot of the things in general you’re stuck with in the old model where.

Your navigation system has to be upgraded with CDs, right? And it’s always, by the time you buy the CDs, it’s two years old. And we were thinking why can’t we just use our car maps from our phone? Sure. Why can’t we just use Google Maps or Apple Maps? He really wanted that Apple CarPlay and he followed it closely for years.

And when it finally hit the Ford Escape in 2017. We were calling all the Ford dealers in the area saying, when are you getting the 2017 escape? Because we want CarPlay. And we were one of the first ones in the area, I think, to get the, that 2017 Ford Escape just because we wanted the upgrade in the technology.

Bruce Aldrich: I was gonna ask you the difference between the built in NAV systems versus the CarPlay Android application for maps. So you’re a fan of the. The ones on the phone apparently.

Valerie Antkowiak: Oh yeah, definitely a fan of the ones on the phone. And, I also when I was working at Intel, I was working with the automotive industry and I can see the challenges, right?

Because they all want to control the user experience in the car and give it its own branded experience. They want you to have a Toyota experience or a Ford experience or a. An Audi experience. They don’t want you to have an Apple experience or an Android experience.

Bruce Aldrich: That’s right. We were talking to a right, to a garment rep.

He was saying the same thing. They call ’em white label when they sell ’em to a manufacturer and the manufacturer do the have their own tweaks? They want ’em ’cause they want that experience. Yeah. Just like you say, Audi or Honda or whatever. What’s the future of, what’s the future of connectivity?

What would you like to see in a car? That’s not they’re not working on right now.

Valerie Antkowiak: That’s that’s a really good point. I would like to see more of a seamless integration between, if I’ve got Apple CarPlay or Android Auto, I would like to see more of a seamless integration with the.

Car itself because I drove a lot of cars when I was looking for my Hyundai and almost all of them have their own experience. And then when you plug in your phone, it becomes a different experience and there’s not much connection between the two. So there are some really great features in the Hyundai.

I. To use their in-car navigation to access, the heads up display will tell me the next turn if I’m using their navigation. But if I’ve got the car play in there, it won’t. There are still some limitations. I did see at CES actually that. Amazon Alexa is working with hold on. I have to make sure my Alexa doesn’t talk to me to put it on mute the Amazon Alexa is working with GM and they’re making, they’re taking over the whole car experience where the navigation and everything is all integrated with Alexa and there’s no, at least it doesn’t appear to be, there’s no kind of handshake between the two or no need to go back and forth so you can, talk to Alexa and say, open my garage door.

Or Alexa where you add this to my shopping list and oh, by the way, where’s the next, where’s the closest Safeway? So that kind of integration inside the car where you don’t have to think about or switch manually to, to the experience you’re used to and you’re just using one experience in the car, I think that will be really fantastic.

Bruce Aldrich: What else do they need to add to the head up display units? They have navigational things. They have the speed the posted speed. What else do they have? A few things, but not a lot. Would you like to see more up there on the. Out there in front of you.

Valerie Antkowiak: It’s interesting with the Hyundai one of the reasons I really liked it is it had a lot of customization available on that heads up display.

And so I can see the next turn, I can see the posted speed limit. I can see if there’s a car in my blind spot, and I have all of that turned on. But sometimes it’s distracting, like especially the blind spot notification. It scares me sometimes. Sure. Where it’s fine if it just keeps at me and I can see it in the mirror, it’s almost too much.

I’m not, I can’t think of another thing I’d want on there today. But maybe there is something I can also, it’ll also tell me like what the radio’s tuned to. It’s got a lot of information on there. Where I drove the Acura and it didn’t have quite as much. It just was pretty much the basics the speed limit and probably would do the turns as well.

James Raia: That’s speaking of the Santa Fe, that’s, it’s nice that we had that communication at the meetup and it’s a little self-serving here, but I’m I was appreciative of your letting me know that you bought the car and, but what I really noticed about your video is how natural you are. And the editing process.

You, you took the YouTube watchers through. I don’t know, maybe a dozen different items. But the way that you did it was you’re, you just seem to be very comfortable in front of the camera as opposed to when we did car videos, I was always called the robot because I wasn’t very natural. Very robotic.

Very robotic. Did you have some, Valerie, did you have some background in front of the camera before and what’s that experience been like? And you’ve made all these videos and you take people through a variety of things. What is that experience like and how did you get so good at it?

Valerie Antkowiak: Oh thank you very much. Sure. That’s a great compliment. Oh, it’s funny because, I worked in marketing at Intel for a long time. I was there for 18 years and I did all kinds of videos throughout my career. And obviously video production has changed a lot over the years before the iPhone.

But we used to, I remember I paid. I paid almost $150,000 to get a video done. Oh my gosh. Holy smoke smokes. That wasn’t that, and that wasn’t that long ago, right? Yes. Yes. You, by the time you hire professional crew and I’m sure that I worked on videos that cost more than that.

By the time you hire professional crew, and I remember some of the, the partners we use, the vendors we use, they use film instead of digital. Yes. So it film Okay. What’s that? What’s that? I know. Crazy, right? Yeah. But the, what’s funny about it is that, you have this corporate mindset of I’m going to hire an agency and they’re gonna, sit down with me and figure out what you wanna do and all that.

And you pay a lot for that. Service and for that quality, right? But now in the YouTube world I, it feels like those kind of videos are almost dismissed. Especially if you’re trying to do something like how to, or smart home, or, how do you fix your sprinkler system or things like that.

Nobody wants to watch these super polished videos that come from the companies. No. They wanna watch real people who have the product and can show you how you know what’s good and what’s bad about it. And so I think that the adjustment for Mark and I, after all this time in the corporate world to doing a YouTube video has been an adjustment.

And I think we’ve learned a lot over the last couple years. And one of the things that my husband pushed me to do is he said, I’m so boring on the video. You need to get on there. So he is really pushed me to get on there and which we also try to do it together as much as we can because it, there’s a perception that smart home technology is so difficult to use and that, people can’t figure it out.

And in some of the the blogs and things we follow, there’s something called the WAF or Wife Acceptance Factor.

James Raia: Great one. Yes.

Valerie Antkowiak: Of these bloggers and YouTubers, they talk about the technology they installed and does it have a high WAF And it’s for me, it’s if the stuff doesn’t work in the house, I’m not going to use it.

And if it doesn’t work and you can’t figure it out, there’s it’s just dumb. There’s no. Need for me to have a special education to be able to unlock my door, open the garage door. That’s true.

Bruce Aldrich: I agree. I agree. I get most of my techy stuff, like you mentioned, light bulbs and door locks and stuff.

I get it at Costco, and if it doesn’t hook right up, take it back.

Valerie Antkowiak: Exactly right. And that’s the way it should be. It shouldn’t have to be this big, mysterious thing that only some people can figure out. And some people love that and it’s works for them and they, they wanna go to that extent to set things up.

And they can only control it. That’s great. How have at it. But our perspective is we wanna talk about smart home technology for normal people that everybody can figure out how to use. And I think having both of us on there. Husband and wife, both able to talk about the technology, hopefully in a way that relates to people.

That’s really our goal. One,

Bruce Aldrich: one of the new things is the car apps, right? You mentioned the Hyundai Blue Link. That’s their Yeah. Name for it. But you can actually, I guess you can adjust the temperature. You can turn the motor on and off, lock the car, find out where it’s parked. What else does it do?

Valerie Antkowiak: Oh, it’s really great. You can also get you can get your driving statistics so you can see a report I haven’t spent that much time investigating it, but you can get the, you can see obviously your mileage, right? But you can also get statistics on are you breaking a lot? And, how the car is operating so you can get those kind of statistics. You can also set like a perimeter for the car. So if you take your car and to a valet, you can set a valet perimeter so that if the car goes beyond a certain radius of wherever you are, it’ll send you a notification.

So it’s really got a lot of really interesting, great features. Also has, simple things like a parking timer. So if you’re in a if you’re at a parking meter, you can set the timer on your. App and it will tell you exactly when your parking meters expired. And that’s very simple technology. It’s just a timer.

The fact that they thought of that and they made it so accessible right within their app, I think is really great.

Bruce Aldrich: So that’s something that’s, this is really a new thing that I can see. This is good. It’s all, yeah, it’s all good.

Valerie Antkowiak: Yeah, it’s great. So my husband’s car, the Ford escape the 2017.

It also has a Ford app that goes with it. It’s called Ford Pass. And the Hyundai has a lot of those similar features. But one of the things that the Ford Pass app has that we really like is that you can connect it to your Amazon Alexa inside your house and you can. How much gas you have left in the car.

Oh. So if you’re home and you’re thinking, geez, do I have to go to the gas station before we go out today? You can just say, Hey Alexa, ask Ford Pass how much gas I have, and it’ll tell you exactly how many miles you have left on the tank.

James Raia: That’s great. So it’s fantastic.

Valerie Antkowiak: Interesting.

James Raia: Yeah. The other That’s really

Valerie Antkowiak: great but, oh, go ahead.

James Raia: I was gonna say that a little side note to that a couple weeks ago was just leaving our home in Sacramento and. I was into West Sacramento, I’d only driven about four or five miles. It was nine o’clock in the morning, and I got the wonderful techie feature where the cup of coffee comes on and tells you, time to take a break.

You’re getting tired. And I just started in my drive. So sometimes there’s a little backfire. They don’t work as well as they should or. Maybe I was nervous. Yeah. Maybe the cup of coffee I had earlier that day had made my hands jitter on the wheel or something. I’m like, but I just laughed the whole way home.

I said, I’m just starting and I gotta take a break already. It didn’t make any sense. Didn’t make any sense. So yeah, going. That’s really interesting. Yeah. Yeah. Going back to the Santa Fe outside of the technology and laying it on a little bit heavy. I was su I’m surprised every time I drive a Hyundai.

That the gas mileage estimates seem to be understated, and I don’t know if you guys have experienced that. Driving the car to LA and back a couple of times the Santa Fe and the Santa Fe Sport, the mileage was better than estimated. Have you guys experienced that away from the technology world? Oh yeah,

Valerie Antkowiak: definitely.

Yeah, definitely. Because that was one of the, and I really wanted. Honestly, either a hybrid or a electric or a plugin electric kind of SUV. Yes, that was something that I was looking for. So that was something I was a little disappointed about with the Hyundai, that it seemed to have chincy mileage.

So I was disappointed about that, but I was really pleasantly surprised. ’cause I, we’ve done a couple trips now to LA and back, which frankly is unusual because. Normally I don’t drive that much.

James Raia: Yes.

Valerie Antkowiak: But love the car. And I was really impressed with the mileage. It’s definitely better than I expected.

I think one of the trips that said we got 31 miles to the gallon, the other one was a little higher than that.

James Raia: Yes.

Valerie Antkowiak: So I’ve been really impressed. And even going over the hill to Tahoe is. Getting pretty good mileage. So it’s definitely getting better than what they, I think they, I forgot exactly what they advertised, but I wanna say it was more like 22 to 25, something like that.

James Raia: Yes. And I’ve been

Valerie Antkowiak: really pleased with the mileage

James Raia: Yes. That we’re getting, I think the same way too. And with the, going back to the videos what dawned on me is what kind of reaction and there’s one, or do one or two videos come to mind that. That you thought might get a large reaction and didn’t, or vice versa, where it was not just another video, but something that you did and it was fine and the reaction was surprising.

Have you had extremes at all?

Valerie Antkowiak: We’ve been doing the videos pretty seriously for a couple years, but I think the one that surprised me the most is probably one of the very first product videos we did.

James Raia: Yes. I

Valerie Antkowiak: got a I got a smart Vitamix for Christmas one year. And the, it came with a, it comes with a scale that you can connect to the Vitamix and you follow a recipe.

It tells you exactly what to put in and you can make something out of it. Yes. And so what are the, I wanted to use it for smoothies. So I decided to make a smoothie one day and Mark said, Hey, let’s shoot this. This will be fun. So we did a video and I did it in one take.

James Raia: Great.

Valerie Antkowiak: And it was real. It was effortless.

And and this is a time where I kept saying, I don’t wanna be on the video, or you do it. Yes. But it was easy and it was fun and it was just effortless. And and that’s gotten us, it’s one of our most popular videos and I think I did it one take, it probably took us a total of an hour to edit and post up on YouTube.

So that was a really nice surprise.

James Raia: That’s great. Good example. Yes. I think, yeah it falls into other categories of whether, if you’re training for a marathon or something and you don’t have any expectations, you sometimes you run your best time or in other walks of life, you’re just not thinking about it too much.

You just do it and it comes out great. And like you said, you got a lot of views on that one. Sometimes you prep and it, it backfires ’cause you’re worried about it too much. Maybe.

Valerie Antkowiak: Yeah, no, I agree. I think it’s best when it, the videos are best when we really have natural enthusiasm for the product and we really enjoy using it.

And I think that comes out on the video and for both of us. And Mark just did a video yesterday about a automatic water shutoff that we put on our recycled water and our development. And it was really easy to install, super easy to use, and they had some really nice touches in the box. And that video for him, it took him so it, it took him half a day to do it between installing the product and then editing video himself.

And that naturally just comes out on the video ’cause it’s a really well designed, built product and it was easy to install and that comes through and those videos are the easiest ones to do.

James Raia: That’s great.

Bruce Aldrich: Valerie, it seems like an easy video for you and Mark to do would be a particular car that has over-the-air connectivity, a large touchscreen.

You like touchscreens, I understand. Oh yeah. And it’s electric and the name is Tesla. What’s your aversion to them? Is it the price point or other things?

Valerie Antkowiak: It’s funny because I have a really good friend Bonnie Norman, who has she, I think she’s got two or three Teslas.

I can’t keep track ’cause she’s got a Roadster and she’s got a Model X. I think Anna Model three, and she’s a real advocate for Tesla. I’ve known her for years. I actually just saw a little reminder on Facebook nine years ago, a picture of her Roadster. And she used to live in Loomis. Oh. She used to live in Loomis and now she lives up in Washington.

But. She is very enthusiastic and she’s one of the first people that really created the Tesla referral program. So I don’t know how many hundreds of people have bought Teslas because of Bonnie. When I was in the market for a new car going back like a year and a half ago, because I had this beautiful old Audi 2009, but it was just old and need to be replaced.

So I’ve been looking at cars probably since 2017. Wow. I got a referral from Bonnie to go look at a Tesla. And so I went out to Roseville where they have the Tesla dealer, Rockland, and I drove model S and I drove a Model X and I really expected to like the Model X, ’cause I wanted an SUV.

But I got in and I drove it and I just thought it was too big. It had this kind of big bubbly, thing over the top with a big sunroof, and I didn’t like the doors that open on the side. I just thought I, I got in the car. Just didn’t like it. I really expected to love it and I didn’t like it. And so I drove the Model S and it’s a great car.

It’s a beautiful car. And the technology. Fantastic. It’s got this gigantic screen in the middle. It’s got cameras all the way around so you can see at any time while you’re driving. If there’s somebody in like way in your blind spot, you could totally see way in the back camera. You can see everything.

It’s, the screen is huge. It’s beautiful. I tried the I didn’t drive it that far. I didn’t try the autopilot, but I did try the automatic lane changing and the first time it happened I don’t. I’m guessing you’ve probably driven one, but when you turn on the turn signal, you pull it down like you’re gonna make a right turn or change lanes, sorry to change lanes to the right lane.

And before you can even think about it, the car goes and all of a sudden you’re moving into the next lane. And the first time I did it scared me. So I pulled the car back. I thought, wait, that’s way too fast. I can’t even glance over my shoulder for a second or look in my mirror. I have to just, I let the car go.

Yes, car just goes. Yeah.

James Raia: Yes.

Valerie Antkowiak: Yeah, the car just goes and and then I calmed down and I did it again and I just let it go and I could not believe that technology, how it was just able, ’cause the car knows, it doesn’t need to wait for me to look. It knows there’s a spot there and it can get in there and it’s fantastic and that technology is so great.

But what came down to me with the car is when you think about it practically by the time you get the decent sized battery and you get the leather seats and you get the because you’re not gonna buy a Tesla and cheap out on that stuff, right? No. By the time you do that, you’re looking at almost a hundred thousand dollars.

James Raia: Right? And

Valerie Antkowiak: then then with the power in California is expensive, right? So plugging in your car at home isn’t necessarily gonna save you money. ’cause our power with pg e is some of the most expensive power in the country.

James Raia: Good point. So

Valerie Antkowiak: if you’re really gonna take it to the next level, you gotta get solar.

And then that’s another $30,000 to install the solar in your house, right? Because I don’t wanna lease it. I would wanna buy the solar. And I thought geez, by the time I could buy two cars with that money. And then after we went through it, frankly, after we went through the power outages. This year in Sacramento, our power was out three times, and one time it was out for four days.

What are we gonna do if we have an electric car? That’s right.

Bruce Aldrich: No, you’re laughing. But I agree with

James Raia: you. Yeah. You’re making perfect sense to me.

Valerie Antkowiak: So that’s what really, and and I think Bonnie would’ve loved for me to buy a Tesla and I would’ve loved to buy a Tesla. And I wanted, the part of the experience about having a Tesla is being a Tesla owner and being able to connect with that community.

It’s a fantastic community. But I just can’t, I can’t imagine spending all of that money and upgrading to solar and then you gotta get a power wall. And I just thought, I could buy two cars. And I figured also maybe by the time. I, this next car, my next car is probably gonna be totally different.

Maybe I won’t even own a car. Maybe I’ll lease the car and use it when I need it. Maybe the car will just show up. There you go. When I need it, I’ll pay for a subscription. I figured this car, I kept my other car for 10 years and so this car seems good enough to last that long. Hyundai’s got a great warranty and I figure that.

In 10 years, something else is gonna be better even than that Tesla.

Bruce Aldrich: I think you’re right. And what is, price of the oil right now is like 30 bucks a barrel or something.

James Raia: Yeah. I was gonna say if you were doing up to six figures, you could and maybe more now considering the cost of the energy, you could have a fleet of Santa Fe and at your house for the cost of one Tesla.

Yeah. Not to compare, apples to apple apples, but yeah, that’s the price point’s a little is discouraging. It’s still an elitist, I think it’s still an elitist car. And, yeah. And I think that was one of Mr. Musk’s. He didn’t have quite the vision that he thought to make it a populist car because it hasn’t quite

Bruce Aldrich: Well, he is got the three, it’s, he’s

James Raia: got the three.

It’s cheaper. Yeah. But it’s not cheap.

Valerie Antkowiak: Yeah.

James Raia: But the other one that you, the three is

Valerie Antkowiak: also not cheap and it looks like a Toyota Corolla.

James Raia: It does. It very much does. Along this, and I

Valerie Antkowiak: did, I, at the time I didn’t look at the three, ’cause it was not really available to buy, but I saw some, and I didn’t like the Aetna actually, the electronics wise.

I didn’t like the. Screen because it they just plugged it in the top of the dash and it looked like somebody stuck an iPad in there. And so that was I definitely didn’t want that one either.

James Raia: No. A couple of things to follow up with what you were discussing is that you may have seen, and you may not have heard about the new downtown Sacramento we’re the test, we’re the test capital of the world for all these new.

Alternative driving situations. And Tesla’s now gonna be part of a company called 360, where you pay a flat $250 a month, and you can use in the grid of downtown Sacramento, you can take a, any of the fleet of Teslas that they’re going to have for a maximum of four rides per day inside the grid of Sacramento.

And you just pay a flat fee per month. So we’re the national Guinea pig for this new. Tesla drive on demand service, it’s just starting up. So I think Bruce and I are gonna have to investigate that and perhaps you and Mark will as well. It’s just, I, whether it’ll fly or not, I don’t know, but it sure sounds interesting.

Valerie Antkowiak: It sure sounds interesting and I really think that’s the way cars are gonna go in the future. I went to a conference it was actually a drone conference an unmanned vehicles conference a couple years ago, and the guy who was a keynote speaker got up there and he said, your kids are not gonna own a car.

He is just, that’s the way the market’s going. So if you think about it, it’s a kid who’s born today is not gonna own a car that’s not that far away, that’s right. So I really think that’s where the market’s going and Americans are not gonna wanna give up their cars, per se.

I think it’s gonna take a while to transition, but I think more and more people are going to be using these alternative models. There’re, there’s, I, there, I know there’s companies that are having they’re selling packages where you get the. The car and the insurance and everything, and you just pay by the month, and then when you’re done, you just return it.

James Raia: Yes. So I

Valerie Antkowiak: think there’s a lot of ways that this is gonna happen. And with autonomous driving, maybe it’s gonna be even less, even less obvious to own a car. Or have a reason to own a car.

James Raia: This may sound odd, but CC, would it be okay to ask. With you and Mark, number one, where you live, and number two, your ages, because I think the autonomous driving as you mentioned, whether it’s children or grandchildren will be the future is now pretty much.

But how do you guys feel as experts? Would you feel comfortable as I’m just gonna say mature adults because I really don’t know your ages. With an autonomous vehicle.

Valerie Antkowiak: We’re in the suburbs, right? So we’re in El Dorado Hills. And I think that’s where it gets a little complicated because even services like Uber, it’s only been in the last maybe two years where there’s enough Ubers in our area where we can use them effectively.

Yes. It used to be we actually knew both Uber drivers in the area. Yes. One guy was in Folsom and one guy was in our neighborhood. As it’s expanded now, more and more, Uber and Lyft drivers are available in this area. Probably more Lyft drivers now than Uber drivers.

James Raia: Yes.

Valerie Antkowiak: So it that, living in the suburbs really has a different perspective.

If we were in downtown Sacramento, I don’t know even know that we’ve have two cars. We might just have one, right? Yes. Yes. And I think that really changes your perspective. But, with autonomous driving there’s. I think the comfortableness, the where our comfort with the technology because we’re techies, right?

And I think we trust computers maybe more than other people do. And I would be totally comfortable with it. I think it’s, I think, what I worry about are the other drivers, right? Yes. If everyone’s not in an autonomous car, how does that really work? So it, but I would be.

Comfortable with it. I’m comfortable with the technology and I’m hoping for the day that the Tesla comes and picks me up at my house.

Bruce Aldrich: You’re the person that won’t even, don’t worry about it. Sorry. You’re the person that won’t even accept the automatic lane change now. Now you say you want the computer to run the car.

Valerie Antkowiak: That’s

Bruce Aldrich: hilarious.

It’s

Valerie Antkowiak: crazy, isn’t it? But it’s, and then that’s I think another thing about the Hyundai and going through the technology features, because there’s already a lot of features in these cars, right? Yes. The Hyundai Smart I think it’s called Smart Cruise Control.

James Raia: Fantastic. Where

Valerie Antkowiak: you basically Yeah you, set the cruise control and then you let the car drive itself when you’re on the freeway. And it was, it took me a while to trust that technology and, ’cause we had it in mark’s Ford Escape too. And he uses it all the time. He uses it just to drive around town and for him it’s because he wants to make sure he is not speeding, but he uses it.

Even on the street that’s 25 miles an hour. So when I drove his car a few times, it took me a long time to trust that technology that the car would actually stop. And the first time that you turn on the automatic cruise control and then you are in a big traffic jam and everybody comes to a halt, it’s scary.

It’s a little scary. Yes. Car doesn’t. Yeah, the car does start stop. The car starts stopping later than you would as the driver, right?

James Raia: Yes. But it

Valerie Antkowiak: still stops.

James Raia: Yes.

Valerie Antkowiak: And it takes a while to adjust to that, but once you adjust to it, it’s so great. And I had to stop using it when I drove his car because I didn’t have it in my own car.

And I was worried that I would expect my Audi to stop when the cruise control was on,

Bruce Aldrich: I think.

Is all this stuff in the car this technology, is it distracting or is it less distracting because it’s taking care of things for you?

Valerie Antkowiak: I think it’s less distracting because it takes care of things for you.

I just think you always have to understand that even these features are fantastic and they work really well, and obviously a car company is gonna test these really well ’cause they wanna make sure everyone’s safe. But you can’t trust it. Not today. It’s not completely autonomous. You have to pay attention and you have to be ready at all times to grab a wheel and take control.

And my Hyundai will tell me if I’m driving in the if I’m got my cruise control. Hands off the wheel, it’ll start beeping at me and say, put your hands back on the wheel. I was actually gonna put that in the video. Yes. But mark thought it was a bad idea and maybe I, I don’t wanna encourage people to drive without their hands on the wheel.

But you really, the technology is great, but you have to always be at attention because you don’t know. What is gonna happen? You don’t know what the other drivers are gonna do. Your car doesn’t know what the other drivers are doing. You really have to watch it. So even though I can let that car stop in traffic all the way to a dead stop and then I, can let it go by just tapping on the gas when it’s ready, I need to be paying attention and I’m still need to be able to take control.

It is less distracting, I think, in the sense is that you’re not gonna make silly mistakes, but you can’t let that be an excuse to, be listening to a really intense podcast or

James Raia: reading

Valerie Antkowiak: a book. Reading a book. Yeah. Netflixing or texting. You gotta be, you still gotta be careful and sure.

You still have to be in control. You’re in control of a pretty powerful machine.

James Raia: That’s right. The other thing that comes to mind is whether. Bruce and I have driven to a lot of events together. A friend and I walk to coffee every Wednesday and we see the driving habits of people who probably shouldn’t be driving or whether it’s with my wife or any other friends.

One thing I’ve noticed on the freeway with increasing regularity is the number of people who. Think that they should be right on your rear end, so to speak, on tailgating. Tailgating, yeah. And with the feature that you’re discussing, I think you can adjust it, what, three or four different lengths? So let’s just say you have it at, what, 80 feet?

Let’s say. I’m guessing that’s one of the settings, and you have it at 80 feet, which is perfectly safe. But there’s someone who thinks that space between you and the car in front of you is. Wide open territory and that you ought to be closing down on them and they’re angry because you’re being safe.

It doesn’t make any sense to me, but it just seems to be happening more and more with, at least in my driving experiences. Is that the same for you? Yeah.

Valerie Antkowiak: Oh yeah, for sure. I, you can change the settings. There’s four different settings

James Raia: Yes.

Valerie Antkowiak: In the cruise control and so you can change that. And so normally when I’m driving around town, I have it there’s four bars.

I usually have it on three bars, yes. Which gives me like a nice stopping distance in front of me, and I feel a lot more comfortable that way. So if I’m driving around town, I have it on that. But when I was driving in Los Angeles and on. On five and 99 on the way to Los Angeles? Yes. I had to turn it down to one because otherwise somebody was always cutting in front of me in traffic.

James Raia: Yes.

Valerie Antkowiak: And it’s irritating

James Raia: to say the least. Yes. Yeah,

Valerie Antkowiak: no kidding. So I wasn’t super comfortable with the distance honestly, but I got used to it and I just decided it. Gonna be a lot more effective if I had it on one bar instead of three bars because those cars sneak right in front of you.

James Raia: That’s right.

Valerie we wanna thank you. We could talk all day because obviously you have great expertise in this area. And we wanna encourage our listeners to visit app, a PP MY home HOM e.com, where Valerie Ann Kak and Mark your husband’s name is f. Mark Palone. Mark Palone. Thank you. Husband and wife team.

They do great things. It’s gonna be a it’s already a very popular site, but it’s gonna be more unpopular because we’re coming into all these new things in the automotive world. That you guys are experts in. So we wanna thank you for being our guest today. And please visit again app my home.com and please also visit the weekly driver.com.

Thank you Valerie for bringing our guest today. We really appreciate it.

Valerie Antkowiak: No, thank you so much. It’s been a lot of fun.

James Raia: Okay, talk to you soon. Bye-bye now.