- You may have recently heard
about Ford manufacturing respirators,
and Lamborghini churning out masks to fight COVID-19,
but car companies have been making products other than cars
for a long time, from the Aston Martin condo
to Bugatti's hookah,
to a mechanical freakin' heart made by General Motors.
And why does Volkswagen make sausages?
Stick around to the end and see the most insane products
that car manufacturers have made,
and find out what sort of crazy collaborations
we can expect to see next.
This is WheelHouse, baby.
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Probably the most common alt car products
we see are collaborations,
where the carmaker contributes research, design,
and brand recognition,
while an outside party actually makes the product,
like the high tech mPiano from Porsche and Alpha Piano.
The M in mPiano stands for mechatronic,
like the mechatronic units found in many car gearboxes,
especially in Volkswagens, Audis, and Porsche.
In the mPiano, mechatronic refers to the actuators
underneath each key that allow you to manipulate
the pitch and resistance through an external app.
This isn't even the first piano
Porsche's been involved with.
They also teamed up with Bosendorfer,
(chuckles) I tried,
an almost 200 year old piano maker
to make a nearly $300,000 grand piano.
Okay, sure, that's impressive,
but can it play "Runaway"?
Ferrari made the jump from car to lifestyle
when they partnered with Cobra and Puma Golf
and released a luxury golf line.
They busted out all those corporate luxury buzzwords,
like handcrafted elegance, and sophisticated functionality,
and fugly-ass shoes.
But the shoes aren't the star of the line here.
That would have to be the bright red $2,000 driver
made of carbon-fiber composite, titanium alloy,
and perfectly balanced with internal tungsten weights.
You can cart this club around in your $2,400 golf bag
made of the same Poltrona Frau leather
you'll find in the Ferrari FF,
one of my favorite shooting brakes.
The leather is known for its "supple, spicy aroma,"
and is described as having
"a particularly Italian sensuality."
Mamma mia, I want to (beep) my golf bag.
Collabs are one thing, but a lot of car companies
actually make their own non-car products
instead of using outside manufacturers.
A perfect example of this is Nissan,
who has wowed us with not one,
but two autonomous office chairs.
They first started with the Intelligent Parking Chair,
an office chair that returns to its original position
with a simple clap.
Then came the Pro Pilot Chair,
which does more than just park itself.
It self-drives with you in it
by detecting its relation to the seats around it.
Now before you get too excited,
neither of these chairs are available to buy.
They were developed as a marketing ploy
to show off Nissan's new self-parking
and self-driving technologies.
Not cool, Nissan.
You've probably heard about the Powerwall
that Tesla's been manufacturing,
a rechargeable lithium ion home battery system
that stores solar or grid energy for on-demand use.
It's not the first of its kind,
but it is probably the sleekest one out there.
Elon Musk has touted the Powerwall,
when used with solar panels,
as a way to become totally independent of big-grid energy,
but even a 3,510 kilowatt hours option
isn't really enough to power your home
unless you're way off the grid, like Shrek status,
and if you're livin' that Shrek life,
you probably can't afford the solar panels
and power inverter you'd need to make it all work anyways.
For the city-living Farquaads of this world
like you and me, the Powerwall would be great
as a backup supply for outages, or a way to cut costs.
Then again, Musk also named his kid whatever this is,
so I dunno.
Okay, we have to talk about these Volkswagen sausages.
Since 1973, Volkswagen has been manufacturing currywurst
at the same plant in Wolfsburg
where they make a bunch of their cars,
like the Golf and the Tiguan.
The sausage is even considered a Volkswagen original part,
I'm not (beep) you, with its own part number,
199 398 500 A.
VW originally started producing sausages
to feed the workers at the various canteens
within the factory, and they still do.
But once the outside world found out that their currywurst
was the currybest, (audience laughing)
VW started selling them at supermarkets
and football stadiums.
They even give them away as freebies
to Volkswagen customers.
But this isn't just a cute side hustle, okay?
For many years now, Volkswagen has produced
more sausages than cars.
We're talkin' 20,000 pork tubes a day.
In 2018, they made 6.81 million of them.
VW even introduced a vegetarian option in 2010,
but unfortunately Americans,
we can't get our mitts on these things
because of import restrictions on uncooked meat.
I just hope they don't taste like crayons.
It's a Volkswagen joke.
A lot of car companies were making other products
before they even got around to making cars.
Case in point, Toyota, which actually began
in the automatic loom business,
and it wasn't even Toyota, it was Toyoda.
In 1924, Sakichi Toyoda
invented the Toyota Model G automatic loom.
It was innovative, because it used the principle of Jidoka,
which meant that if the machine detected a problem,
like a broken thread,
it would stop itself do the problem would be corrected,
rather than doing a quality check at the end
and finding out that you have a bunk product.
This system is also known as autonomation,
or intelligent automation,
and is used in Toyota's car production to this day.
The loom's nifty ability to detect issues mid-process
was a game-change in the loom business,
as it cut way down on wasted resources and overproduction.
Obviously, loomheads at the time were like,
"Gimme, gimme, gimme."
And Toyoda sold the patent in 1929
to the British machinery company Platt Brothers,
which gave him the capital
to start up his automotive business
with his son, Kiichiro Toyoda.
They eventually changed the D to a T
because people thought Toyota sounded better,
but more importantly because changing it to a T
meant the name could be written
with exactly eight strokes in Japanese lettering.
Eight is a lucky number in Japan,
and they thought it would welcome in
good fortune and prosperity,
which is the same reason I eat eight Pizza Rolls every day.
Eight times three Pizza Rolls every day.
Okay, so Toyota made cars, blah-blah-blah,
we don't care about that right now.
We care about the fact that in 2009,
they also made a brain-machine interface,
allowing wheelchair users to control movements
of an electric wheelchair
with their freakin' mind, Professor X-style.
An electrode-covered helmet measured brain waves
and picks up when the user is concentrating
on a type of physical movement,
and translates that activity
into steering instructions for the motorized wheelchair.
How cool is this, guys?
How did this happen in 2009
and I'm just now hearing about it?
Look, I tried to find an update on the current technology,
and I weirdly couldn't find anything from the last decade.
That's fine, right?
Probably nothing to worry about, right,
when a multinational corporation
developing mind control technology
then just goes full ghost mode on it.
I'm not worried.
Toyota has developed a ton of cool stuff,
including a line of humanoid robots
that we'll get into later,
but did you know that Toyota
also manufactures prefab houses?
That's right, like hundreds of thousands of them,
and they've been doing it since 1975,
which means they were crankin' out homes
before they were even makin' Camrys.
We just don't hear about it much here in the U.S.
because the residential production
is pretty much limited to Japan.
There are a bunch of different models, and price points,
and honestly, for a house that you can order
out of a catalog, these things are pretty sick.
Plus, where a conventional construction
can kinda drag on, these puppies can be assembled
in about two months from start to finish.
That's pretty amazing.
For something a little more high end,
you have Aston Martin's 66-story
downtown Miami luxury condo tower,
which they literally call "a car made into a skyscraper."
That's a little much.
Aston Martin is handling the interior design
and corporate branding,
but they've partnered with outside developers
to actually construct the dang thing.
Living in the Aston Martin condo
comes with some extremely bougey perks,
like a superyacht marina, multiple movie theaters,
and virtual golf.
The most expensive unit is a 19,000 square foot
triplex penthouse that'll run you a cool $50 million.
But the sickest part of that unit
is that it comes with an Aston Martin Vulcan,
makes 820 buff horses, and it's the last
of a run of only 24 cars, valued around $3 million.
So when you think about that,
the apartment's only $47 million.
So worth it, such a good use of money.
BMW, Jaguar, Lamborghini,
all of these car companies didn't even start in cars.
Before Jaguar was makin' slick, speed-punching E-Types,
they were in the business
of manufacturing motorcycle sidecars.
Mitsubishi started in ship building.
SAAB started in aircraft.
Even Peugeot, the world's second-oldest automaker
behind Mercedes-Benz didn't start in cars.
Peugeot started in the early 1800s
as a steel foundry that made things like coffee grinders,
umbrella frames, and band saws.
They still make salt and pepper mills to this day.
My mom actually has a Peugeot spice grinder.
Pretty sick, put some nutmeg in there
and put it on your whatever.
The iconic lion you see on their badge
actually first showed up on their saw blades.
Armand Peugeot added it to symbolize
the toughness of the saw's teeth,
the strength of steel, and the speed of the cut
like a bounding lion.
Dude, it's just a saw, man.
It's not just a saw, it's a Peugeot saw.
One of the wildest entries into the car world
came from Ferruccio Lamborghini, who only got into cars
to spite Enzo Ferrari,
and if you haven't heard this story before, allow me.
Lamborghini was a mechanical whiz
who after serving in World War II
started a company that built tractors
out of surplus military vehicles.
His business took off.
By the 1960s, he was manufacturing oil-burning heaters
and air conditioners too.
With all of his hard-earned cabbage,
Lambo bought himself a bunch of sports cars,
one of them being the Ferrari 250 GT with a V12 engine.
But he kept having issues with the clutch,
to the point that he brought the complaint
to Enzo Ferrari himself.
Ferrari felt insulted.
He got all aggrums, like "the problem's not with the car.
"It's with the driver.
"Now go play with your little tractors, okay?"
And Lamborghini was like, "Hell no.
"I'm gonna make my own sports car
"and hire ex-employees to do it."
And then everyone was like, "Damn, son."
And then, Lamborghini did it.
He founded an auto factory.
He built a V12 engine.
He dropped it into his Lamborghini 350 GT,
and watched it rip to 158 miles per hour in Ferrari's face.
It's amazing to think that if Ferrari had just known
how to take some constructive criticism,
we would've never gotten the Aventador SVJ.
It's a pretty wild story, and if you wanna know more,
check out the Up to Speed on Lamborghini.
It's an oldie, but a goodie.
Everyone knows that the white and blue
on the BMW badge is a propellor in the sky, right?
But did you know that the three points
on Mercedes-Benz's logo
represents mobility on land, sea, and sky?
Land is pretty obvious.
You've got everything from your 1950s Gullwing coupe
to today's C-Class.
On the open ocean, you had the 46-foot luxury motor yacht
that Mercedes developed with Silver Arrows Marine.
The Arrow 460 Gran Turismo was released in 2017.
It fits up to 10 people and has a max speed
of 44 miles an hour.
But this yacht isn't just a boat made by a car company.
Look at this thing.
Look at those automotive proportions.
It really does look like a car in the water.
Just a tad more expensive at $1.7 million.
Okay, so land, check.
Sea, check.
Sky?
Look no further than the Mercedes EC145 twin-engine,
turbine-powered luxury helicopter.
Mercedes didn't manufacture this aircraft.
A company called Eurocopter did,
but they did design the interior,
modeling it after their luxury class cars.
This sky-whip will run you a horrific $8.5 million.
War, what is it good for?
Havin' car companies
manufacture military vehicles, that's what.
Chrysler, GM, Fiat, Subaru, BMW, Volkswagen, Dodge,
they all lent their manufacturing skills to the war efforts.
It's super interesting.
I actually can't get into it now
or else this will be a two-hour long WheelHouse,
but if you wanna learn more about the tanks
and bombers made by your favorite car brands,
let me know in the comments
and we'll see what we can do makin' a video about it.
Making a military grade destroyer is one thing.
Car manufacturers sending their cars to space
like Tesla did with their roadster
takes a whole other level of engineering.
But did you know that Tesla
wasn't the first car manufacturer to go into space?
Ford, Chrysler, and GM all played a big part
in NASA's early Apollo missions.
After Ford acquired the battery, radio,
and TV company Philco, the newly-branded Philco-Ford
built NASA's Mission Control Center in Houston,
implementing new technology that allowed for
way more sophisticated communication
between the astronauts in space
and their counterparts here on Earth.
Chrysler built the first stage
of the Saturn IB rocket booster
that helped us blast to the Moon,
and in 1971, GM and Boeing teamed up
to make the Lunar Rover, churning out an electric vehicle
long before the Chevy Volt or Chevy Bolt.
Their creation was such a success
that NASA used similar models for the Apollo 16
and 17 missions, and all three of these GM Rovers
remain on the Moon to this day.
Talk about "Dude, Where's My Car?", right?
Love that movie.
Some car collabs are just downright weird,
like the Mustang cologne by Estee Lauder
that my friend Cody used to wear in high school.
Love you, Cody (laughs).
But there's also Isaac Mizrahi's Chevy Malibu-inspired
women's fashion collection,
which I can only describe as
"going to a meeting at the beach."
This lavish lady can get her tootsies
on some $110 driving moccasins, or chance a $260 tote bag.
Who bought this?
If your mom did, tell her to hit me up.
Perhaps the most egregious of these collabs
is the Bugatti hookah,
created alongside luxury shisha pipe maker Desvall.
Now, Bugatti isn't the first car company
to put out these Middle Eastern-style pipes.
The Porsche-designed shisha came out in 2011 for $1,950.
Then, two years later, Bugatti was like, "Oh, dude, sick.
"We could do that too,
"except we're gonna jack up the price by literally 5000%."
That's right, Bugatti's hookah cost $100,000.
It's insane.
If anyone tries to convince you
that a pipe is worth 100 grand,
they're blowin' smoke up your ass, am I right?
(audience laughing)
Now let's talk about beeps.
I'm not talkin' honks, I'm talkin' about
beep-beep-boop-bop beep, 'cause it's robot time.
Who remembers in '05 when Toyota debuted an entire series
of humanoid partner robots that were in a band that slaps?
♪ We are falling into the circle ♪
(beep)
- Toyota is truly out here with human support robots,
a basketball robot, and a whole line of assistant robots
that were set to debut at the 2020 Olympics and Paralympics.
I guess we'll have to wait 'til next year for those things.
In 2013, Toyota helped develop
Japan's first robot astronaut,
and first-ever companion robot in space called Kirobo.
Kirobo is a high-functioning mini robot
with a range of capabilities.
It's got facial, voice, and speech recognition,
speech synthesis and video recording.
Sounds like everything an iPhone can do, right?
Wrong, because Kirobo is specially designed
to navigate zero gravity environments
and assist Commander Wakata,
the first Japanese commander
of the International Space Station.
He helps with all these different experiments
all while being cute as hell.
I actually don't think I've seen a cuter robot,
oh my God, there's a mini Kirobo?
Toyota's not the only carmaker toying around with robots.
Honda bopped on over to the beep-bop zone
way back in '86 when their R&D Robotics Team
set out to develop a robot
that could move and walk like a human.
They went through the E-Series, P-Series,
and 11 iterations later, arrived at ASIMO,
which stands for Advanced Step in Innovative Mobility.
ASIMO made its U.S. debut in 2002
as it rang the opening bell at the New York Stock Exchange,
and made history as the world's only humanoid robot
that can go up and down stairs independently.
Now obviously, the Boston Dynamics robots
have completely eclipsed ASIMO,
but it was pretty awesome at the time.
In 2010, Honda was able to apply the same sort
of mind control technology from the Toyota wheelchair
to ASIMO, thereby allowing a user
to think of a limited number of gestures,
and ASIMO will do it for them.
He'll just freakin' do it.
Since then, ASIMO has learned sign language,
mixed drinks, and even conducted orchestras.
It's awesome to see automakers use their power for good,
especially now at a time when we really have to
take care of each other.
I'm talkin' Ford and Peugeot,
who are manufacturing respirators to fight COVID-19.
Lamborghini, they're manufacturing masks and shields.
Volkswagen, who teamed up with fabric company Faurecia,
Faurecia?
Faurecia, to make medical gowns.
GM is helping produce 10,000 ventilators
and 1.5 million masks every month.
But this venture into medical equipment
is nothing new for them.
In 1952, GM worked with Doctor Forest Dodrill
to create the first-ever mechanical heart,
which made open-heart surgery on humans possible.
That's a really huge deal.
So many people owe their lives
to this 12 cylinder engine-looking device
and the foundation it laid
for advancements in heart surgery, it's so cool.
So what's next?
What insane, technologically advanced,
generally unnecessary car collab is on the horizon?
Porsche and Boeing are teaming up
to explore the world of autonomous electric luxury aircraft
with vertical takeoff and landing capabilities,
kinda like a quadcopter for humans,
but even a flying car feels like small potatoes
compared to Toyota's Woven City.
That's right, Toyota is creating an entire city.
They're building it on a 175-acre plot
that used to be the site of a Toyota factory
at the base of Mount Fuji.
The high-tech metropolis
will be powered by hydrogen fuel cells
and function as a living laboratory
for Toyota engineers to implement
and study various technologies,
including autonomy, robotics, smart homes,
and personal mobility.
That's just insane.
Let me know which of these products you wish you had,
and which ones you wished did not exist.
Thank you for watching this episode, it means a lot to me.
A lot of work goes into these things.
This is actually the second time I had to film this
'cause I messed up the first time.
Very aggravating, but a lot of editors
spend a lot of time making these videos really good,
and would just mean a lot for us
for you to drop a like at the very least,
and maybe consider subscribing to our channel,
and we really love doin' it for you guys.
Thank you for watching.
Be kind, I'll see ya next time.