Quick, when you think of features you want in your next car, what is it you want most? Better handling, more efficiency, sumptuous comfort, great acceleration, seamless Apple CarPlay/Android Auto integration? Of course not, that’s all bullshit, isn’t it? What you want is to be able, with a simple spoken command, to demand your car write a fully-fleshed out Family Guy spec script using the power of AI! Right? Isn’t that what you want? Or to hear answers to questions and know that those answers might actually not be right? That seems to be what Volkswagen thinks people want, because I’m not sure why anyone would want ChatGPT integration in their cars, which is what VW is premiering at CES later this month.
Maybe I’m being too harsh. Maybe there are twos or more people who find that having ChatGPT access on their phones and laptops isn’t enough, and they need it integrated into their cars as well. I mean, VW’s implementation is voice-activated, which is something. Here, this is how VW’s press release describes it:
Wolfsburg—At CES 2024, the world’s leading electronics trade fair from January 9 to 12, Volkswagen will present the first vehicles in which the artificial-intelligence-based chatbot ChatGPT is integrated into its IDA voice assistant. In the future, customers will have seamless access to the constantly growing artificial intelligence database in all Volkswagen models equipped with the IDA voice assistant and have researched content read out to them while driving. Cerence Chat Pro from technology partner Cerence Inc. is the foundation of the new function, which offers a uniquely intelligent, automotive-grade
ChatGPT integration. Volkswagen is the first volume manufacturer that will offer Chat GPT as a standard feature from the second quarter of 2024 in many production vehicles. The feature is being considered for the United States.
The ChatGPT integration will be available on ID.7, ID.4, ID.5, ID.3, the all-new Tiguan, the all-new Passat, and the new Golf. Since just what the hell one would want to do with car-integrated ChatGPT is still somewhat lost on me, I decided to ask ChatGPT:
- 1. Hands-free communication: ChatGPT can enable drivers to interact with their vehicles using voice commands, allowing for a safer and more convenient driving experience.2. Personalized assistance: ChatGPT can provide personalized recommendations, suggestions, and information based on individual preferences, such as navigation assistance, music selection, or restaurant recommendations.3. Natural language interaction: ChatGPT’s ability to understand and respond to natural language queries can make it easier for drivers to access information, control vehicle settings, or perform tasks without the need for complex menus or interfaces.4. Entertainment and productivity: ChatGPT can offer entertainment options like playing music, audiobooks, or podcasts, as well as providing access to productivity tools like calendar management, reminders, or voice-controlled messaging.5. Enhanced driving experience: By integrating with various vehicle systems, ChatGPT can potentially enhance the overall driving experience by providing real-time traffic updates, weather information, or even proactive maintenance reminders.
It’s important to note that the desire for ChatGPT in cars may vary among individuals, and preferences can be influenced by factors such as technological comfort, privacy concerns, and the availability of alternative solutions.
Huh. Okay, those are not a bad set of reasons, except, of course, like all things from ChatGPT, there’s no way to confirm if any of them are, you know, true. Still, in this case, ChatGPT got lucky, as a number of those reasons are very close to what VW describes in the press release:
For example, the IDA voice assistant can be used, for example, to control the infotainment, navigation and air conditioning, or to answer general knowledge questions. In the future, AI will provide additional information in response to questions that go beyond this as part of its continuously expanding capabilities. This can be helpful on many levels during a car journey: Enriching conversations, clearing up questions, interacting in intuitive language, receiving vehicle-specific information, and much more—purely hands-free.
A lot of this sounds like a combination of current voice command sort of stuff along with, it seems, a way to talk to your car if you’re lonely and bored on a drive. Or, “enriching” you conversations with your MeatGPT-enabled human friends. I bet that’s going to be great, and not just something you play with a few times in the first three months you own the car and then forget about.
[Ed Note: Jason has strong feelings about ChatGPT, though when I read this, I just think VW is adding an intelligent “assistant” to its cars. Doesn’t seem like a terrible thing, but how it’s executed will be key. -DT].
When we first saw this press release, a lot of my colleagues were tempted to make Herbie the Love Bug references, something that I think would have been woefully misguided. You see, Herbie is inherently and distinctly non-verbal, where ChatGPT is completely verbal. Herbie was more akin to a highly intelligent and emotional animal with an iron will than a human. A better analogy would be KITT, the very loquacious Trans Am from Knight Rider, but KITT wasn’t a VW, at least not openly.
Regardless of how or why VW decided to do this, the good news is they at least seem to be taking privacy seriously:
ChatGPT does not gain any access to vehicle data; questions and answers are deleted immediately to ensure the highest possible level of data protection. This is facilitated by Cerence Chat Pro, which leverages a multitude of sources, including ChatGPT, to enable IDA to provide relevant responses to nearly every query imaginable.
It’s good that questions and answers asked of the ChatGPT are deleted immediately; anything that you wouldn’t absolutely want deleted immediately is probably a boring question or whatever, anyway.
I’m still not convinced that anyone was really clamoring for a ChatGPT-enabled car, and all of this does feel like a shameless bit of hopping on whatever dumb tech bandwagon is currently being talked about. I was going to say it’s not hurting anyone, but the truth is ChatGPT will tell you things that aren’t true, with full, unearned confidence. It lies. I’m not sure I need something else in my car that lies.
I wouldn’t pay a penny more for ChatGPT. But I’d pay a $1000 more for a much better clutch than they put in my GTI Mk7 so I don’t have to replace it after a simple Stage 1 tune. Also a better water pump. How about a sunroof that doesn’t leak and a built in front, back and side webcams with removable SD cards and playback on the infotainment system. Is that too much to ask for?
What, does the clutch slip if you turn up the power even a little?
Eventually yes.
Truly, the lack of dashcams in cars is mind-boggling to me. I just installed two separate Viofo A119 ones in my 2012 Prius v for front and back, and if I get bored later this year I might throw in two more in the side rear corner windows.
USB power points at the front and rear of the headliner would actually be useful features. Would make running power for dashcams so much easier.
I don’t trust car manufacturers to choose cameras for me. A lot of Tesla cams look like potatoes with astigmatism. I’m guessing Toyota’s will be a complete, expensive PITA to replace if it fails. Plus I DON’T want integration of a dashcam and collision avoidance system.
Those Viofo A119’s are fantastic, particularly the V3’s. The A229 Plus will be the next one I get, when I decide to upgrade the system in my Niro (and the A119 V3 will get passed down to my Santa Fe)
My problem is that there’s no dashcams on the market right now (to my knowledge) that do 4K 60fps. According to Viofo support, it’s a limit of current-generation microSD card read/write speeds.
I’d love to have front and back dashcams be run from one system, but until that’s possible while still getting at least 1440p 60fps from both, I’ll be running separate ones.
Right now clarity is more important for me than frame rate. I drive a lot at night, so having something with the Sony Starvis series of sensors is an absolute must. It’s shocking how many “high end” dashcams have absolute trash night sensors.
What really gets me is that almost all modern rearview mirrors have 12V going to them. It should cost less than a buck to add one or two USB power ports to the back of the mirror or that sensor pod that the mirror attaches to.
USB ports do not use 12 volts.
No, but the USB chargers you plug into the lighters convert 12V down to USB-friendly 5V. So the chipsets exist and are as common and cheap as a speeding Altima.
Will the vehicle purchases also come with NFTs?
While I think ChatGPT for a car isn’t a particularly useful feature, I do think it’s a wild exaggeration to compare it to cryptocurrency bollocks.
The comparison is more based upon “We need to seize on the latest tech buzzword!”regardless of actual usefulness. ChatGPT may actually offer some purpose, but there’s no getting around how AI is the new NFT in terms of “we will just use this term to try to get people excited”
*Sad Jensen Huang noises*
Can I use it to come up for excuses when being pulled over for speeding ??
“I apologize for my speed. I was in a hurry as I received an urgent call from a family member who needed immediate assistance. While I understand that it doesn’t excuse my speeding, I was genuinely concerned and trying to reach them as quickly as possible. I acknowledge that I should have been more mindful of the speed limit, and I’ll make sure to drive more cautiously in the future.”
Nice! I was thinking when in the drive thru and they say the ice cream machine is broken, to craft a different response than “this is bullshit!”
Alright, how many of us are going to end up being Will Smith in I,robot?
IT’S THE GODDAMN ROBOTS JOHN!
Isn’t ChatGPT separate from the GPT-3 they would probably use? I’m not an expert but I’m under the impression that it’s more of a software package you can apply to specific needs, rather than using ChatGPT itself.
I don’t want it in my car, but I wonder how much of this is marketing speak that doesn’t explain what’s actually being done.
Ah, 2001 A Space Odyssey in a VW.
“VW open the doors”
“I am afraid, I can’t do that Dave.”
“Ummm, VW my name is not Dave…”
Well, after all, the article is illustrated with a 2001 Series PET.
Didn’t even catch that one.
It helps that I learned BASIC on a PET in high school and to this day have two of them, one with the small keyboard as above and one full-sized. One of them even works!
VW’s ID cars have had such horrid and clearly cost cut interfaces, like the button that changes the window switches from front to back because they on’y included 2, that it’ll just be all of the physical buttons and commands replaced by voice commands that won’t work
And after 3 failed attempts it will throw a CEL.
Except in the ID.Buzz
“VW, get me directions to the nearest Dave & Buster’s”
“…Dave’s not here, man.”
As a Dave and a long ago stoner I appreciate this ref.
So you can say, depress the clutch pedal, select first gear, lift the clutch pedal while balancing the engine revs with the right foot, and it will do it! Who needs a driver’s licence…
I wonder what the answer will be to “explain diesel gate.”
Nein!!!
“In the event of a power outage, an electrically operated gate may be powered by a diesel generator. That is the only answer I am authorized to provide.”
Or you could if the new GTI was going to come with a manual transmission
The GTI or R that you can talk with only comes with automatics
Mercedes-Benz has asked me a few times (on their phone app) to join their ChatGPT beta, but not seeing any point to it I keep declining. The voice assistant works well enough without adding that to the mix.
I’d be happy if the VW app would notify me that I locked my car doors after I parked it and not just when I have unlocked them to get in and drive it.
I’d be happy if VW app even stayed logged in in the first place. After missing notifications for few weeks i started the app for it to show me log in screen.
it is useless to provide any alerts VW markets because it never stays logged in.
Looks like a cheap way to add basic voice functions, and ChatGPT can be fed information such as the operating manual so it would likely be accurate, perhaps no worse error rate than a bespoke human programmed system.
Beyond that I wouldn’t trust it for restaurant reccomendations in a new city.
Man, where is Rootwyrm when you need 5 paragraphs of lethal vitriol about this for a laugh?
Where IS Rootwym? I haven’t seen a comment from him in a while…
MeatGPT LOL
“Negative. I am a meat popsicle.”
Talking meatsticks
“ChatGPT does not gain any access to vehicle data; questions and answers are deleted immediately to ensure the highest possible level of data protection.”
For sure. FOR SURE. I fully trust this.
“But we have ways to make you talk.” NAZI catch phrase, still relevant.
It’s stuff like this that makes me want to buy an unnecessary-for-me regular car and store it somewhere so when my current ride gives it up, I have something ready to go that’s not something like this.
I was amazed to learn the Nissan Versa still offers a manual. And that you have to get the base version actually makes it better…the tech is minimal at best.
Volkswagen is unfathomably out of touch. The single biggest complaint people have about their vehicles these days other than the woeful reliability is the over abundance of poorly thought out techno wizardry. Literally no one asked for the porta potty fire of their current infotainments/haptic tech hell world interiors, and if they actually paid attention to the rest of the industry they’d have known that everyone who tried this crap before them had to go back on it immediately.
But nope! They thought they knew better than their customers and in typical German fashion overengineered a ludicrously complex solution to a problem that no one had. Everyone hates it and they’re now in panic mode trying to rush something else along.
So what are they doing! DURRRR! THE CUSTOMERS WANT MORE TECH! GIVE THEM MORE TECH! WE’VE FAILED SPECTACULARLY ON THIS FRONT BUT THE 17TH TIME IS ZE CHARM!
They’d be better served using their resources on making their ICE powertrains less prone to sucking mondo ass, designing something that isn’t the visual equivalent of full eye contact missionary sex on an Evangelical wedding night, or re-engineering goddamn buttons into their cars.
BUT NOPE! AI. Surely that’ll turn things around. I was going to ask “who the fuck is even buying these things anymore” but then I remembered I bought a new VW in 2020 so that’s a bit of a self-own. I got out of it in less than two years due to the…well, VWness…but still, I rushed to buy a GTI when it was time for my first nice car. Never again. Fool me once, etc.
The irony of these choices is that, at least in this country, VW’s interior quality, touchpoints, etc. were half the reason people put up with their cars.
With most of their enthusiast lineup gone and interior quality evaporated, I’m not 100% sure why anyone is choosing a VW these days.
Same reason anyone bought a GM from about 1980 to 2010. Brand loyalty can be a hell of a drug for some people.
As someone who spent most of their childhood in Fords, I concur.
So true. Used to be a VW Fanboi… now I won’t even wear my VW baseball cap that used to be my favorite work cap under the hood in the garage. Sad situation all around.
Make it ironic, “VW Emissions Compliance VP 2015”
Sort of like my friend’s “Enron Ethics Department Employee of the Year 2000” T-shirt, or their more recent “Alameda Research Risk Management Dept.” T-shirt.
So I searched:
Wasn’t bad.
They are fine. I love my GTI Autobarn and everything works in it as expected.
I pressed steering wheels buttons by accident 0 times in 2 years.
I adjusted HVAC temp in October and GTI was fine with directing air and fan speed by itself since then.
Radio and HVAC controls are not complicated at all in my GTI. If you thing they are you should not have a license to drive if it is too hard for you to change temp.
My co worker that has 2022 ID.4 says VW laser cruise control works way better than in his Ford.
I’m getting performance out of 2L turbocharged engine that my 3.9L 32 valve V8 in 2001 Lincoln LS had while useing half the fuel.
Well ok, if it will help me write my Minions erotic fan fic while driving I’ll make my next car a Volkswagen (I have no idea if you can do that with ChatGPT).
I could try for you but I really don’t want that in my chat history 😉
Does it work in incognito mode?
Eh, you can delete chats which will remove it from the chat history displayed to you. No way to verify if OpenAI (or whichever GPT provider you’re playing with) is actually deleting that chat or just flagging it not to be displayed. I’m sure it’s harmless but lets say that gets leaked to the public somehow and you’re trying to explain your minion erotic fan fic in a future job interview.
No, it was just a joke, see the comments of my favorite autoblog were blah blah blah 🙂
Haha. I’d definitely think they’re flagging them to not be displayed. How else will the AI become sentient? Oh god I just thought of a sentient AI creating minion murderbots who use dialogue from the erotic fan fiction while they’re killing us…
“lets say that gets leaked to the public somehow and you’re trying to explain your minion erotic fan fic in a future job interview”
If you make it to an interview with that already in your file I think they’ve got more explaining to do than you.
I won’t ask you to take that risk. Torch could give it a shot and blame the pain meds if anybody finds out.
Too late, but I’ve skipped Minions and I’m now trying to convince it that the 1986 documentary “The Voyage Home” directed by Leonard Nimoy was based on real events. It’s currently asking me how a pregnant humpback whale managed to pilot a stolen starship.
It was a very clever Whale.
Username does not check out…
Better Minions slash-fic than “My Little Pony” slash-fic. I was on a plane once and the dude next to me was reading some of THAT. My problem is that I’m a speed reader and I had gotten through most of a paragraph before my brain actually processed it. That incident still scars me.
So do I because while it may be impressive as overgrown autocomplete tech it’s completely over-hyped and misunderstood. It was fun to play with for a brief minute but you can hit the limitations pretty quick, especially if you ask it any math questions. It does however have its uses, for instance ask it to whip up a resignation letter for you and it does just fine. VW adding ChatGPT to their cars just stinks of a few years ago when every company was adding “blockchain” to their whatevers whether it made sense to or not. It’s a clear attempt to seem up-to-date and relevant in a press release and it works for the most part. And let’s be honest, VW is only the first to add GPT to their fleet, you just know every other auto manufacturer is gong to jump on the “AI” bandwagon too until the next cool yet misunderstood new tech comes out in a few years.
Our executives at work got excited and asked for some ChatGPT crap, so we developed an app with it. I was underwhelmed once I took a peek under the hood. Yawn. They have great PR, that’s for sure.
We have one “member” of our team who keeps over-promising its capabilities and spending time “developing” this or that feature using it. So far they’ve yet to fulfill their stated promises. The hallucinations Jason mentions makes it hard to trust any output you may get from GPT in production.
Add to that: Acura giving some of the first Integra reservation holders…an NFT.
No, I don’t want to spend 5 seconds talking to my car to turn on the air conditioning. I want to hit a button. Ya know, that little bit of plastic that I know exactly where it is from muscle memory and requires no conscious thought to do.
Also, if I’m talking with a passenger about something and we need to know right then, there’s this amazing device called a “smartphone” that they already have! Or just use mine.
Considering that VW is worried about Chinese companies stealing EU market share, the work that went into this could have gone into stuff like getting their existing software working better for better range or better charge speeds. Quit pretending they’re Tesla. They’re not and they shouldn’t be Euro-flavored Tesla.
“Hey ChatGPT, please open the glovebox since VW saved $.13 by omitting a physical latch.”
“I can’t assist you with that, as I am only a language model and don’t have physical capabilities to interact with the real world.”
“Thanks ChatGPT.”
Hey ChatGPT, go fu** yourself!”
“I can’t assist you with that, as I am only a language model and don’t have physical capabilities to interact with the real world.”
“Thanks ChatGPT.”
I mean, if you have no passenger in the car and can’t (and shouldn’t) look at your own phone…well, in my case I ask Google with Android Auto, but I imagine that’s more or less similar to this idea.
I don’t think it’s a horrible idea, but it should be way, way down anyone’s list of reasons to buy a car.
So, VW owners will be the first ones to die in the robot uprising.
Not necessarily! I bet some will become pets.
As long as I’m wiping up where my Bug has peed oil, I am not the pet in that relationship.
Given that AI chat bots that get released into the wild have, in the past, quickly become racist/Nazi-like, I’m not sure this is going to be a good look for VW…
Me: “Hey VW, play 40’s Junction on Sirius/XM”
VW: “Now playing InfoWars on…”
Me: Immediately drives VW off bridge into the river
Maybe Disney+ will have a new series showing Harrison Ford punching Volkswagens.
First thing I thought when I saw this article.
VW really has taken up the stance of “The customer doesn’t know what they want, WE DO!” and its a big shame.
“Physical controls? No we’re giving you haptic sliders without a backlight, and steering wheel controls that you will constantly trigger when turning because its sooooo much better than normal buttons” – Meanwhile, Mk8.5 is supposedly going to remove all of them because everyone hates them
“Manual GTI? Oh no nobody wants that anymore, Mk8.5 will be auto only because the DSG is soooo fast why would any silly person want a manual?” – GTI sales have historically been above 40% in the US, even including mk7/7.5 where the DSG is legitimately great
“Lets add Chat GPT because BuZzWoRdS SeLL cArS” – we’ll see on that one
For reference, I had a Mk7.5 Golf Sportwagen 4motion with a 6-speed for a bit over 4 years, put almost 60k miles on it, and was really considering a Mk8 GTI to replace it, until I sat in a Mk8 R at an Autocross , and that interior was so atrocious it pushed me into a CX-30 Turbo
Those Sportwagens are sweet, if I wasn’t tall and unbendy or I’d own one
It was a great car, drove extremely well for what it was, had decent features for the price (especially when I got mine for $5500 off a 25k MSRP new) but man am I glad I dumped it when I did. No problems entire time I owned it until the DAY before I went to trade it in on my new CX-30 and it threw a low coolant warning light at me since those EA888 engine ruin water pumps like crazy. Not to mention lots of other little VW things that tend to pop up on them, and I strongly doubt I’ll ever own another post 00’s VW again
As a former GTI owner, this is the way.
They are fine. I love my GTI Autobarn and everything works in it as expected.
I pressed steering wheels buttons by accident 0 times in 2 years, 23000 miles.
I adjusted HVAC temp in October and GTI was fine with directing air and fan speed by itself since then. Sometimes I turn on AC when windows fog up in the rain
Radio and HVAC controls are not complicated at all in my GTI. If you thing they are you should not have a license to drive if it is too hard for you to change temp.
My issue isn’t that they are hard to use or complicated, but not even remotely ergonomic, and require taking your eyes off the road to use compared to the Mk7.5 interior. Also, my GSW was a base S trim, so no auto climate, which means I had to constantly adjust all climate settings, which on a base Mk8 would be an awful lot more annoying than just twisting a few knobs blindly via muscle memory.
If that system works for you that’s absolutely fine and great, but for me (and most automotive press/general public) it is a major detractor. And I think it’s fair to say that the haptic everything has been a legitimate fiasco for VW, so much so that they are planning on bringing back physical controls for HVAC across their entire lineup as soon as possible, including for the Mk8.5
I feel like VW has been in Principle Skinner meme mode for ages now and can’t recognize what people actually want. What is up with their obsession with removing or omitting things people want (buttons, backlight interior, user friendly HMIs, quality & reliability, an actual truck in the US market, etc) and giving us stuff no one asked for (touch only, slow/crappy HMIs, the Arteon, ect).
No, it’s the people who are out of touch.
The quality thing is the most galling I think. Like a lot of things in our society, it seems like VW is trading on a reputation from decades ago, not something it currently offers.
Is there a single US market VW product that’s any better than middle of its class right now? That’s a serious question, because I don’t think there is. The Taos has 0 to offer that its competitors don’t. The Tiguan is an objectively terrible choice in a class with the CRV, RAV4, etc solely because of reliability.
The GTI and Golf R are almost irrelevant. The Ns run circles around the GTI for the same money/without the hellish interior and the Golf R is more expensive than a fully equipped GR Corolla AND the same price as a Civic Type R. You can also get a base S3 for the same price as the Golf R…which offers you way better color options and most of all, BUTTONS!
The Atlas is so far behind the new Pilot, CX90, etc. that it’s laughable…really the only thing I can understand buying over the competition is the iD4. It offers decent range, looks somewhat normal by EV standards, and is from a normal manufacturer rather than one of the startups or Tesla. I personally wouldn’t want one at all but I get why people are buying them even if they’re very average products.
I have a friend who was considering small CUVs…I’m nothing but fair, so among other options, I suggested looking at both the Tiguan and the Taos. She was turned off by their lack of reliability coupled with no real other redeeming features.
I really wanted to like the Atlas, but the more I learned about it, the more I kinda shrug. And notice how bland it looks (pointed out to me here, and now I can’t unsee that).
At least a few years ago, VW was throwing money at people to buy the Atlas. My brother bought one (stop me if you’ve heard this one, he wanted the minivan, but his wife wouldn’t even consider it) and it’s a perfectly competent 7 passenger CUV. If you can get one cheap I can see why people buy them.
Yeah, that and the Ascent are two that have proven popular despite being dull/not really top-of-class, but for non-car-people it does the job just as well. They’re never top of list if someone asks what to get in the segment, but the gap between best and worst entries in the segment isn’t that big any more IMO. The Pilot and Grand Highlander would be my go-tos but they each have their own teething issues to work through and that’s not even considering pricing and availability. A repeat-Toyota-buying coworker got a new Grand Highlander a few months ago and is among those apparently experiencing front end issues.
It’s amazing to me that instead of fixing these glaring HMI issues (so glaring that their CEO promised publicly to fix them), they are focusing on ridiculous gimmicks.
Just curious–what’s wrong with Arteons?
1). It’s powered by the EA888, which is prone to going kaput without notice in addition to other assorted VW nonsense.
2). It’s as expensive as an actual luxury sedan once it’s comparably equipped.
3). It has haptic nonsense on the steering wheel instead of actual buttons.
Fair enough. I liked the name and the look, but knew nothing else…I don’t have personal experience with VAG and I don’t intend to change that, after everything I’ve been reading on this site whenever they come up.
Hell….a friend had asked me to replace the headlight bulbs in their 2008 Jetta and holy shit, the idea that if your hands are too big, you have to remove the bumper? I got lucky that they hit a deer and totaled the car before I could do it.
Bumper removal for “easiest” headlight access became a not-uncommon thing at GM from that era too and probably other brands. I’m glad my dad’s old Aura never burned out a headlight while he had it and I didn’t have to attempt that (although the hundred+ IIRC he had to drop to replace the CHMSL when one [1] LED was out wasn’t too cheeky).
The market for sedans is shrinking, let alone large, premium-ish ones with an economy car badge. At least it now has the more powerful engine and AWD as standard (at least here in the US, idk about elsewhere) so it’s pretty dang quick. Personally, besides the R, it’s the only VW I like, but boy did they go after a niche market with that one. You would have thought they learned their lesson with the CC or looked at some market trends for sedans vs trucks & SUVs. They already got the Amorak, I think they would have been better figuring out how to federalize it and build it in the US. At least they would have been going after a much larger, growing market.
Not even considering all that, I also think it’s a weird fit for the US market because VW has been specifically gibing us more and more watered down products instead of giving us the full-fat VWs for over 10-15 years now (Dodge based Routan vs Eurovan/Transporter/Multivan, Atlas vs Touareg, US Passat vs European Passat, no more Golf, no more wagons, decontent-ed Jetta & Tiguan, still no ID Buzz, etc).
I didn’t think it would be so easy for something to make me to stop wishing they’d bring the ID.3 to Canadian markets, but they did it in one!
What is ChatGPT?
To answer that question, we need to look back to the age of tulip bulb markets…
It’s the Zuckerberg of Groks.
Do you hear that? It’s a crash into the waves, followed by the subsequent splash of the shark landing the jump.
Dear automakers: don’t worry about unnecessary tech-for-the-sake-of-tech options until after you accomplish your primary responsibility of producing cars better.
I think it’s the Fonz that’s making the splash landing, not the shark itself. The shark is being jumped, after all.
I haven’t had my coffee yet, but you make a fair point. Heh.
This is the kind of thing you could have run by your VW ChatGPI before posting
Sorry to get pedantic on a Monday like that.
No worries, I understand. There’s an implicit obligation to do so, coffee or not. If it was the other way around, I would’ve done the same!