Doug DeMuro: The Inside Scoop on Cars

Guy Kawasaki:
I'm Guy Kawasaki. This is Remarkable People.
I'm on a mission to make you remarkable.
Helping me in this episode is the one and only, Doug DeMuro. If you're a car guy or gal, these YouTube intros will sound familiar to you.
You know that I love cars, and if you didn't, you do now.
Today's guest not only loves cars, but he has made his passion the foundation of his success and career.
Doug received an economics degree from Emory University in Atlanta.
After graduation, he spent three years working for Porsche Cars North America. Doug has created a YouTube channel starting in 2013 with a focus on cars.
He now has more than four million subscribers, and his videos have been watched more than one and a half billion times.
Doug is also an entrepreneur. He started an automotive online auction site called Cars & Bids. He focuses on cars from the 1980s and after.
Currently, Doug lives in San Diego with his 1997 Land Rover Defender 90, go figure, a 2005 Ford GT, a 2012 Mercedes-Benz E63 AMG wagon, and his wife and his dog, Noodle.
I'm Guy Kawasaki. This is Remarkable People.
If you're not a car person, you should listen anyway. This is one entertaining episode.
With no further ado, my buddy, Doug DeMuro.
Doug DeMuro:
This is Remarkable People.
Guy Kawasaki:
I'm a huge fan, you have no idea. I have watched hours and hours and hours.
Doug DeMuro:
Thank you. I appreciate that. I appreciate that.
Guy Kawasaki:
You're second only to Yellowstone as far as hours consumed.
Doug DeMuro:
I appreciate that. That means a lot. A lot of effort goes into these videos.
Guy Kawasaki:
Well, what's in your current stable these days?
Doug DeMuro:
The car I drive the most is a convertible Mercedes G wagon, which is just about the ugliest thing in the world. It looks like a regular G wagon, but shorter and wearing a toupee. It's so stupid, but I love it. My wife loves it, we drive it around.
And I have an old Land Rover and a new Land Rover and a Ford GT, which is a really special car, and Audi RS Two station wagon. It's a lot. It's an enormous amount to keep track of and to maintain, to deal with, is what I've learned.
Guy Kawasaki:
Now, of that list of cars that you own, the one I find the most surprising, or the ones I find most surprising is Land Rover. Now, why would you buy a Land Rover given its reliability reputation?
Doug DeMuro:
Well, the old one is just a cool car. And old cars in general break, and that's just how it is. But the old Land Rover's bad too. And so that car has been very special. I used that as my wedding getaway car and we had it on our honeymoon and I'll always keep that probably.
The new one, I don't know. Land Rover does have a lot of issues and I've had Land Rovers in the past that have had a lot of issues. But new cars in general, even Land Rovers, are not really so bad. And that's certainly true of my new Land Rover. I've already done 26,000 miles in that car in a year and it's been fine.
So no complaints. I wouldn't get one used, I'll put it that way, unless it was a vintage one that I really was paying attention to and knew I wanted to own it and maintain it.
Guy Kawasaki:
I'm just checking. I found many things interesting about your background, but working at Porsche North America as a start, like holy cow. So what did you learn or unlearn there?
Doug DeMuro:
Yeah, that's a good question. I learned a lot actually. And not a lot of people think about this, but I learned an enormous amount about the car industry.
So I was the vehicle allocation person at Porsche. So basically, I was responsible for making sure all the right cars went to the right dealers at the right time, that sort of thing. And that's the point person in a car company. What gets distributed, where and when, and how many.
And so it was a really cool experience to learn how it all works, how dealerships work, how invoicing and sales, and what's desirable and what our dealers do not want, and how do they weasel out of some things.
And it was a very interesting, very, very interesting job. And it was Porsche, but frankly, I think it would've been an interesting job at any automaker.
Guy Kawasaki:
And in that job, the timing may have been right. Did you ever get a request from Stevens Creek Porsche-Audi saying, "Steve Jobs wants a black Cabriolet tomorrow?"
Doug DeMuro:
Cars like that, the dealers got open allocations for and they could just build them. And so exact units didn't necessarily come through me unless they were very special cars.
But I'm sure I distributed the allocation, and they ordered that car for him at some point. And as you can imagine with Porsche, there were a lot of celebrities and crazy stories and people who needed cars. We had people fly cars over on airplanes, which now is actually not all that uncommon.
But back then it was a crazy... One guy a year did it or something. And it's incredibly expensive.
Guy Kawasaki:
I think Steve did that once.
Doug DeMuro:
You just got to have it. The thing is, if they put the car on a boat like normal to the west coast, it takes about four weeks and an airplane takes about a couple days. But the cost is $30,000 or $40,000 more. So if you're paying thirty or forty grand for a few weeks, it's just insane to me. It would be nice.
Guy Kawasaki:
I knew someone very highly placed in the Audi organization. And back then it was Porsche-Audi together. And so once I was about to buy a Porsche and I told the guy, "Will you go contact PCNA and tell them it's Guy Kawasaki who wants one?"
And so he did that. He talked to the general counsel of Porsche at the time. And he said, "My friend, the general counsel said that everybody who buys a Porsche is special."
Doug DeMuro:
That's right. It was insane. And after a while, you're just numb to the request. It doesn't really matter anymore because everybody's some guy with fifty million dollars. It doesn't matter. All of them are buying our cars. So the twelfth guy and the eighteenth guy who wants this special option has got fifty million dollars, get in line, dude. This isn't anything.
Guy Kawasaki:
Were you involved with the Martina Navratilova ostrich leather? There's some weird cars, man.
Doug DeMuro:
Yeah. I don't remember that there was ostrich leather, but I remember there were cars for tennis players and race car drivers and that sort of thing. And I never really understood any of that. The executives would just come to me and say, "Hey man, you need to get this spec to this person and this dealer at this time.
I was like, "All right, got it. Understood."
Guy Kawasaki:
I'll tell Hans to fire up the factory.
So I'm interested in your business model. So is it about gathering eyeballs and selling YouTube ads, or is it promoting Cars & bids?
Doug DeMuro:
Cars & Bids has become a big part of my life these days, but the business model is really both. So the YouTube channel is still where the vast bulk of my income comes from. And it's still number one in new car reviews here in the US. That's it, everybody watches.
And I try not to shill for products in the videos, the YouTube ads do a good job of keeping the income rolling in. Because I feel like as a journalist, if you start going out there and specifically talking about certain products, whatever, it's not really a great look.
But I think the viewers feel that way too, because the views have always remained really strong. And I think that most of them think I'm a pretty objective source for info.
Guy Kawasaki:
So how do you position Cars & Bids against Bring a Trailer?
Doug DeMuro:
It's an interesting thing. Bring a Trailer is a huge success. They're a massive business and they're doing really well. But Cars & Bids, we feel, has a few big differentiators. The biggest of which is we're only focusing on cars from the modern era, from the 1980s and up.
But also, Bring a Trailer has gotten now to be so massive that we're finding that some stuff is getting lost on Bring a Trailer, to be totally honest.
We have cars that are coming to us having not sold there after having failed to meet their reserve or whatever. And we're getting more. We have a running spreadsheet among our team. We have fifty or sixty cars that have not sold on Bring a Trailer and come to Cars & Bids and sold for more money.
And that's a big deal for us because when we first launched, we thought we'd have to compete on the fringes. And now it's pretty clear to us that we can compete in the actual heart of this. Especially where they're running 500 auctions at any given time, it makes it a little hard to find stuff sometimes.
And they got twenty BMW M-Threes live, your car's not special, but it's special to us.
Guy Kawasaki:
The innovator's dilemma. So listen, I really love cars. And so I'm going to go deep. Maybe I'll lose a lot of my audience, but I'm going to go deep. I really am curious about some stuff.
This is a special moment for me, all right? I know a little fanboying out here.
So let's talk about the review process.
So first of all, are you on the press list? You just send an email to someone at pcna.com, you say, "Listen, I want a GT-Three in black with rear wheel steering, stick, and I'm going to review it." And bad-a-bing, bad-a-bang, you've got a car.
Doug DeMuro:
That's a great question. So that's the biggest question. And the answer is it depends on the automaker. Some automakers have realized the value of YouTube and the benefit of YouTube, and they have responded in kind with providing what I need.
Now, it's not as simple as saying, "I need this color and this spec." They only build maybe three or four press cars for my area or whatever, and they just send me what they have.
But some automakers haven't and some automakers, it's still a fight. And sometimes it's still a big fight. And sometimes I just give up and go to dealerships who do understand. All the dealers understand because they're dealing with the customer day to day, and they know how much the customers are watching videos in order to make car decisions.
But the automakers, some of them, maybe half, are still in a world of print media and don't really get why some guy wearing shorts on YouTube is someone that's important. And I don't mind, that's fine. I'm not here to convince them. I've convinced their customers.
And to me, that's all that really matters. I will find the car one way or another. I just need to keep getting viewers to come in. And eventually they'll all come around. I would say about half of them have figured it out and are in my world.
Guy Kawasaki:
You want to name names, who doesn't get it yet?
Doug DeMuro:
Let me think.
Guy Kawasaki:
Just narrow down the country.
Doug DeMuro:
It's not that simple. You would think it is, but it isn't that simple. I have not had an enormous amount of luck with Mercedes-Benz, which is funny because I've owned a lot of Mercedes-Benz cars.
However, Audi and Porsche, they get it. They understand preps because they're going after younger buyers, in Porsche's case, or because they have the younger buyers, in Audi's case.
And so they understand the benefit of that. And it goes that way throughout. The big three American automakers are pretty good, but it can be hard to shake stuff loose. Tesla, of course, doesn't even have a PR team. You got to find a guy who has one, but I've gotten pretty good at that.
And the Japanese, I don't know, it's fifty/fifty. And Nissan has never really done much with me, but their cars aren't that desirable, so I've never really worked that hard at it. Hasn't really mattered at all that much.
Guy Kawasaki:
Up to about a year and a half ago, I was a Mercedes-Benz brand ambassador. From the corporate, not America. It was Roger Federer and Guy.
Doug DeMuro:
And Martha Stewart.
Guy Kawasaki:
That's the only time my name is mentioned in the same sentence, but I could have helped you a year and a half ago.
Doug DeMuro:
I'm in contact with all the automakers, but it's just a question of priority. Some of these automakers, they'll get Doug a car eventually, but the car's been out for six months by then.
And I don't wait. I openly will tell automakers, "If you're not going to get me one, I'm going to go to a dealer." And they don't like that. They really don't like you circumventing their process, but I don't really care what they like.
My goal is to get the cars to the people as fast as possible, because obviously speed matters in our business. And if they say to me, "Hey, we wish you hadn't gone to the dealer for that car.
We could have had you a better spec. We could have given it to you for longer." My response is, "I got the video up a month sooner." And that mattered. That was a big deal with the audience.
Guy Kawasaki:
Partially based on your review, I just picked up a Ioniq Five all-wheel drive limited. So if you can't get one of those, you can have mine.
Doug DeMuro:
I actually have one of those coming in a couple weeks, which I'm really excited for. Because I filmed that walk around of it, which was cool, but I haven't gotten to drive it. So I'm really excited to drive it and check it out.
Guy Kawasaki:
Have you ever wanted to get a Peace Van, which is a Metris upgraded to be a weekend camper? I have two of those actually.
Doug DeMuro:
And actually vans are so hot right now. That's the thing right now. I'm trying to get through as many vans as I possibly can.
We're selling them like crazy on Cars & Bids and they get crazy views on YouTube too. Everybody wants to be in vans right now.
Guy Kawasaki:
If you want a Metris converted to a weekend camper from Peace Vans, I have two. Feel free... Be my pleasure and honor.
Doug DeMuro:
What are you doing with both of them? You're using one. What are you doing with the second one?
Guy Kawasaki:
It's a long story. So I got one and then my son loved it. So I said, "Ha, I don't want to fight him for it." So I bought another one and now he says... So, anyway, it's a long story. I got two right now. So if you want one, let me know.
Now, a serious question. So how much can a car reviewer say negative without worrying about, "Oh shit, Mercedes is not going to send me the next car if I say that the EQS looks like a deflated jellyfish." What's going to happen?
Doug DeMuro:
You don't like how it looks? I like how the EQS looks, but I'm in the minority. There's no question most people hate it, but I think it's cool as hell. I finally saw one. Actually just a normal one on the road the other day. And I'm like, "I love it."
That's a good question, and I don't know what the answer is quite yet. I have at times clearly said things that the automakers didn't like, and I was not early in the list to get a car next time.
But again, to me, it doesn't matter all that much because I have other outlets where I can get the cars from. The dealers don't seem to really care that much.
And at the end of the day, hundreds of private owners email me every single day. And obviously they're not going to be the first person to get the car. Yeah.
But if I have to wait a month because I said something bad that was true, so I wait a month to get a private owner's car, then I'll do that. Doesn't matter to me that much.
Now, some of these journalist outlets, the media, they can't really do that. The press cars are their golden goose. And so I do worry about sometimes the truth aspect of some of my colleagues' reviews.
Guy Kawasaki:
Hmm. I have to ask you, why do you stand in the back of a car?
Doug DeMuro:
Because the car is the most important thing. It's not me. And it's interesting that there's some distinction. Some people stand in front of the car. I'm not the video. You're here to watch the car. And I really believe that.
People like me to an extent, but if you go and watch some of my lesser viewed videos, people don't like me enough to watch a Pontiac Vibe review. They want to watch the car. That's what they're here for, so I think that's it.
Guy Kawasaki:
In your Harley Davidson, I don't know what model truck that is, the Harley truck, you can just see your head. That was an ad, but...
Doug DeMuro:
I remember that. Some of those vehicles, I guess I should maybe stand in front of some of those. I've never actually even thought about it. Part of the problem is that I wear shorts in every video and people just hate that.
And so standing behind the car allows me to at least conceal the shorts in the intro. And by the time they get inside the car, they're hooked. If I stand in front of the car, they turn it on, they're like, "Look at this jackass wearing shorts. I don't need any of this. I don't need to be a part of that."
Guy Kawasaki:
Okay, there's a segment. How many takes are you doing to get that? I'll do my Doug DeMuro impersonation. "And this is the 2022 Ioniq Five."
Doug DeMuro:
Those takes are usually three or four takes, the shots where I'm standing up next to the car. The ones where I'm inside the car going over the stuff, that takes less takes, but it's still a process.
It usually takes me about six hours, five hours to record one of these videos. The runtime is twenty-seven, twenty-eight minutes.
So it's a real thing. And the automaker sometimes, "Hey, we'll give you two hours with this car. Hey, we'll give you an hour with this car." And so that's not... "Okay, then what? You going to give me another three?"
People think, "Oh, hey, can you come to my house and film a video in forty-five minutes? The video's only twenty-five minutes long. So you must be able to..." No, that's not how it works. It takes a long time.
Guy Kawasaki:
It took you fifteen minutes to explain the Targa roof. So I know you can't do the whole-
Doug DeMuro:
It's complicated. That roof is complicated. I always wondered-
Guy Kawasaki:
It is complicated.
Doug DeMuro:
... It was like magic. It was like, "How does the top go up and it go back?" I never really understood, but I get it.
Guy Kawasaki:
And twenty years from now, people are going to regret buying a Targa, there's just no-
Doug DeMuro:
I wonder about that a lot about all the cars that I film is, how are these things going to hold up? How is the tech going to hold up? How are these complicated processes going to hold up?
I think about that all the time.
An Ioniq Five is cool, but would you want to own that thing in twenty years? I don't know. Battery's depleted, the tech is not new.
Guy Kawasaki:
This is coming from the guy who buys two Land Rovers, but I digress.
Doug DeMuro:
The new Land Rover, the one that is my daily driver car, I got an extended warranty on that because you have to with Land Rover. And about 20,000 miles before that warranty ends, that car is gone. I don't want any-
Guy Kawasaki:
Gone?
Doug DeMuro:
... Part of that.
Guy Kawasaki:
So that's a good question. Do you recommend people buy the extended warranty?
Doug DeMuro:
Only if they're buying a car that is absolutely known for its horrible reliability and if the warranty is coming from a reputable company. The warranty came directly from Land Rover, so I'm pretty confident.
Guy Kawasaki:
Okay.
Doug DeMuro:
And if you actually plan to own the car that long. I will own this car to 100,000 miles or 75,000 or whatever.
Guy Kawasaki:
Okay.
Doug DeMuro:
But a lot of people buy them thinking they'll own it forever. "I'm going to have this car forever." And then they end up selling it in a year and the warranty's not used and they can't get their money back. Don't do that.
Guy Kawasaki:
Now you said the end product is thirty minutes. There's six hours of recording. How many hours of editing is there?
Doug DeMuro:
I think three or four. I think my editor's done about three or four hours. And then obviously getting to the car, which isn't always easy. Sometimes they're local, which is great. And sometimes... Tonight I'm driving up to Thousand Oaks, which is four or five hours from me, to film a car tomorrow morning.
And so that's an overnight hotel stay and ten hours on the road, and so it's not always that easy.
Guy Kawasaki:
So if you shoot it tomorrow, when does it hit YouTube?
Doug DeMuro:
That's a good question. People are always wondering that. The answer is it depends on the car. The new cars, they go up quick because they're relevant now. And if you wait to put up a video on a Lucid Air a month even, you could lose a third of your views because other people already have.
But an older car... And some of the people whose older cars I film, they get upset like, "Where's my video?" And it's, "Well, it doesn't matter. It doesn't matter if your 1990s car goes up today or a year from now, it's going to get the same views because its relevance is no different."
And so the new cars always have to take priority. Which is upsetting to me as a guy who likes some of these weird and quirky older cars. But it's just the way the business works, so you can't really change that.
Guy Kawasaki:
So how long? I need a number here, Doug.
Doug DeMuro:
I can turn around a video... I shot the Bronco Raptor on a Wednesday and it was up the following Monday. But I can turn them even-
Guy Kawasaki:
Wow.
Doug DeMuro:
... Quicker than that. I shot the Corvette ZO-Siz on a Tuesday and it was up the following Thursday. I can turn around in a day. If I could go home that night, edit it and get it up the next day.
Guy Kawasaki:
You do the editing?
Doug DeMuro:
No, I have an editor. But in situations like that, where it's so tight, it doesn't make sense for me to send him all the files, because he's in Arizona. He has to download all the files, then he puts it together, then he sends me a draft.
It's too long. In a quick turnaround like that, it's easier for me to just do it all myself.
Guy Kawasaki:
And are you using Premier when you do that?
Doug DeMuro:
No. I use iMovie, the finest video editing.
Guy Kawasaki:
Oh, frick, man. That's two strikes against you: Land Rover and iMovie. Oh my god. Okay.
Doug DeMuro:
The thing that I learned is simplicity is key, especially on YouTube. People think, "Oh, I'm going to make the best this, the best that." That's not necessarily what people want. You can go on TV and watch really high production value content. On YouTube, people just want to click on something, find out what a guy has to say, click on the next thing, whatever.
They're not necessarily looking for four thousand drone shots of the mountain you're about to climb and all that stuff. People get bogged down in that stuff and it takes them a month to make a video. And that's not necessarily what people are interested. In my opinion, anyway. Some people will disagree.
Guy Kawasaki:
Okay. Now, did someone instruct you to use your hand in such evocative ways or is that a natural Dougism?
Doug DeMuro:
No, I think it's natural. And actually if you watch the earlier videos, I don't do it because I was nervous in front of the camera.
Guy Kawasaki:
Well, you've definitely got over that.
Doug DeMuro:
Oh yeah. Now it's like everything is whatever and people seem to appreciate it too.
Guy Kawasaki:
Okay. Next question. So I can't tell, what gets you more excited, a cool feature or a quirk?
Doug DeMuro:
I think it depends on exactly what it is, but it's both. When I filmed the new electric cars, I did the Lucid Air and I did the Rivian, and those are both really cool. And they have some weird quirks.
But mostly it's interesting to see where those brands are innovating. What kind of features they're coming up with that are different. And so for cars that are new and cool and special and innovative, I think it's that. It's seeing what they've come up with.
But for the older stuff, it's interesting to see some of these bizarre decisions that were made terribly in the eighties and nineties and some of the weird quirks that automakers did.
Guy Kawasaki:
Okay. Next question for someone who does a lot of video recording, I am amazed by your ability and frankly, other YouTube car reviewers. I don't know how many takes it was, but they said, "Well, the 2022 911 GT-Three, when you put it in the sport chrono mode, it lowers by six and a half millimeters, and it jacks up the horsepower from 405 to 407 and a half. And that means the zero to sixty is now 3.1 seconds instead of 3.2." How do you memorize all that shit?
Doug DeMuro:
I appreciate you asking that. No one has ever asked me that before and I think people just assume that it happens. But it's hard, that is not easy. And I'll tell you, and this happens to me at least once every couple weeks, there is nothing worse than you get through one of those lines, and you've said nine numbers, and you look at your shot list or your notes, and you got the last one wrong and you're off by six.
And you just know that you're going to get nailed on it in the comments. So you got to go back and you got to do the whole thing again. And so in your mind, you're thinking 400, 403, 6.4 seconds.
And those are the numbers you've got to hit. And people will often say to me, "Your delivery is this, that. Why do you talk too slow, too fast?" It's because in my mind, I'm just thinking about these numbers. I don't care about the rest of the line, I got to get this stuff right.
Guy Kawasaki:
It's disc access problem.
Doug DeMuro:
The right way to do it, of course, would be some sort of teleprompter situation. But it isn't necessarily relevant often enough for me to lug that around everywhere.
And I don't necessarily want to be reading while I'm doing it. I want to seem like I'm engaged in it. Because I am generally. But sometimes those numbers make it a little challenging.
Guy Kawasaki:
Okay. I'm amazed. So speaking of the Raptor, when you open up the fuel door and you see the little icon, do you say, "You know, in the other Broncos it's this. But in the Raptor, it's this?"
Did the PR people at Ford tell you, "Hey, Doug, be sure you open up the fuel door and look at the icons?" Or do you just go over each car with a microscope so you see something like that?
Doug DeMuro:
Yeah. It's to the point now where... The Ford PR people did point that out to me, but I don't miss stuff like that. I've gotten really good, and it's funny because when I'm not doing a new car, I'll meet the owner of an older car, and they almost all say this to me. "I don't know how you're going to make a video on this because there's nothing quirky about this car."
And the truth is what actually is the case, they've lived with the car for the last seven years. And so in their mind, there's nothing quirky about it.
But really if you're coming at it with a fresh set of eyes, knowing what the audience views to be quirky, you can find a lot of quirky stuff about just about any car. And I've gotten a good eye for that sort of thing, for figuring out exactly what is going to be seen as interesting or weird to the audience.
Guy Kawasaki:
This is a good example of quirk. So I noticed that every review of a modern 911, they go back to the engine and they say, "All right, so you see that there's nine slots, and then there's two brake lights. And that's symbolic of 911."
And I swear of God, probably Hans and Dieter are in Germany saying, "What the hell are these Americans talking about? That wasn't on purpose, we just put that there."
Doug DeMuro:
Porsche insists that was on purpose.
Guy Kawasaki:
Really?
Doug DeMuro:
Which I find to be insane. But I literally just before this, just thirty minutes ago, was watching my review of the 911 GTS, and I mentioned that exact thing, but yes, Porsche insists that was an intentional little Easter egg put in there to...
Guy Kawasaki:
And do they insist you unveil the Easter eggs?
Doug DeMuro:
No, not at all. Not at all. In fact, they assume that most people won't, but that's my thing. So to me it's worth covering. And sometimes stuff like that isn't mentioned. In the Bronco Raptor review, watch the other Bronco Raptor videos, they didn't cover all of the weird little Easter eggs, which is fine.
It's not necessarily everybody's audience, doesn't necessarily want to see all that stupid crap. But mine does, and I love it personally.
Guy Kawasaki:
What kind of camera are you using when you-
Doug DeMuro:
I use just a Sony Four-K camcorder.
Guy Kawasaki:
Just one camera?
Doug DeMuro:
And then also my iPhone. Anytime you see me in the shot speaking, that's the camcorder. And anytime you see me showing a little detail or whatever, that's my phone, just because it's so much more compact.
Guy Kawasaki:
And when you're on the road, do you have GoPros stuck to the windshield?
Doug DeMuro:
No. I just use a Ram Mount like a motorcycle mount with my phone and that's it. No GoPros.
Guy Kawasaki:
Oh my god, really?
Doug DeMuro:
It's a low tech simple setup, but it seems to work.
And I will point out one important thing is that my viewers don't care quite as much about the drive as they do about the little quirks and stuff. If I really was doing a hardcore performance drive, wanted to show every aspect of the car, I would bump up the production value, but my viewers want to see 85 percent quirks and 15 percent drive.
Guy Kawasaki:
Because one of the questions I was going to ask is have you ever considered doing the drive before the walk around and all that, but apparently not because your users, they don't care about the drive.
Doug DeMuro:
It's not that they don't care, it's just that I have an enormous contingent of people who tune into the channel just to watch the quirks, regardless of whether they're interested in the car. And the drive is primarily interesting to people who are actually interested in buying the car. You wouldn't watch a guy-
Guy Kawasaki:
That's me.
Doug DeMuro:
... Right. You wouldn't watch a guy driving a Honda Ridgeline. Who cares? But you might watch how does the ice chest in the bed work? That might be-
Guy Kawasaki:
Is there a drain?
Doug DeMuro:
... Be interesting to a lot of people. Exactly. And so I think that's what happens. I think that the people who stick around to the end are the ones interested in buying the car. Except for my videos about crazy supercars, Ferrari F-Forty and 918 Spider and that sort of thing. People watch those drives almost as much as they watch the quirks.
But Ioniq Five, I think a lot of people, they see that car and it's insane looking. And so they're like, "Okay, what is this all about?" And they watch the quirks, but ultimately as an electric car, the drive is only important to the people who are now actually considering, "Okay, do I get an Ioniq Five? Do I get a EV-Six, do I get a Mach-E, a Model Y?" That sort of thing.
Guy Kawasaki:
When someone clicks dislike or like, do you have any feeling about whether they're saying, "I like the video," or, "I like the car," or, "I dislike the video," or, "I dislike the car?"
Doug DeMuro:
I think it's about the video.
Guy Kawasaki:
Okay.
Doug DeMuro:
And I've learned that when I go negative in a video, I get way more dislikes, even if it's generally accepted to be true. There are evangelists of every brand, but it turns out those people exist for almost every brand.
So I just did a video review on the Mazda MX-Thirty, which is a horrible car. It's an electric car that they came out for compliance reasons, and it's just a truly terrible. It has 100-mile range and costs $40,000. It's laughable.
So I mentioned in the video that it's just a terrible car and I got 2 percent more dislikes than usual. And I'm thinking, how could anybody disagree with me? But there are Mazda fans out there. I guess everybody at Mazda corporate disliked the video.
Guy Kawasaki:
And you don't interpret that as, "Oh, they're just like me, they agree, they dislike the car?"
Doug DeMuro:
No, no, because I'll do it on cars that are not as universally disliked and I'll still get more dislikes. And my like count, it's like 98 percent likes, but I can see sometimes it does drop to ninety-six, ninety-four, and I'll look and say, "Okay, what was it?" And there's always a reason.
It's always some car that I reviewed positively that most people don't like or a car that I reviewed negatively or some factor.
Guy Kawasaki:
That's all I have to learn about the nuts and bolts of reviews. So now back a little bit higher, okay, in three years, what do you think the range will be of a Tesla?
Doug DeMuro:
That's a good question. The range numbers just keep increasing and you get to a point where it maxes out. It's like how airplanes don't need to be able to fly further than halfway across the globe. Like at some point 600 miles, it's not relevant to anybody anymore after that.
There are a few people who are doing long road trips, but you're talking about now such a small use case. But I think 500, 600 miles is not going to be out of the realm. I don't know about three years, but not that long in the future.
Guy Kawasaki:
And at that point, what's the magic number for range anxiety to go away?
Doug DeMuro:
I think it's 350. I think most people are happy at even 250. Obviously it depends on your exact life situation, but I think 250, 300 for the vast majority of people is enough to not have anxiety. I think 500 is, how could you at that point have anxiety?
And I think in a few years we're going to stop measuring electric cars based on their range. Right now that's a big topic of conversation when electric cars are announced, but someday batteries and such will advance to the point where 300, 400, 500 miles, every electric car is like that, and people will start to focus on other stuff. Namely the technology in the cars.
Guy Kawasaki:
Having been an owner of a Ioniq Five for about three weeks now, the first three times I went to a public charging station, I could not get the charging station to work.
Doug DeMuro:
Interesting.
Guy Kawasaki:
And so I think the biggest issue is... I live in the Santa Cruz area. If I were driving to, let's say, LA, I wouldn't take the Ioniq Five because I don't know if Electrify America or EVgo along the way is going to work.
Doug DeMuro:
And the apps have reviews of the charging station. And sometimes the Electrify America, it'll even tell you in the app, "Hey, this one is down," or whatever.
Doug DeMuro:
But I had a similar problem. I had a Rivian for a week and I don't have a charger at my house yet. And I went to a public charger and it worked fine, but it was janky, and I had to plug it in three times while it was charging.
I will say last year I reviewed a McLaren Speedtail, which is a three million dollars crazy, exotic car. One of the coolest cars I've ever reviewed. That car is a plugin hybrid. And the way that it charges the plugin battery is you pull over a inductive charger and you position the car correctly on the inductive charger and it begins charging the battery.
And I don't know if this is the future. There are a lot of limitations with that particular car. But to me that seems like the best way to solve this problem.
Imagine if you, with your Ioniq Five, had a mat that you brought with you everywhere. And almost like a phone, an extra battery, and you could just stick it on the ground, pull over it. You're charging while you just sit there.
That would be something. Or charging stations become that as opposed to something where you have to make a physical connection with the car, which is obviously not as reliable.
Guy Kawasaki:
Case in point. Who plugs in a phone to charge it anymore?
Doug DeMuro:
Yeah.
Guy Kawasaki:
But you blew past a little detail here, so how does one go about getting a three-million-dollar car to review?
Doug DeMuro:
That particular car... The super cars and the hyper cars, the automakers don't give those to journalists. But the good news is I've reviewed so many of those that I have a big following in that community. And so that particular car was owned by a group of people in Ohio called The Triple F Collection who have an enormous, wonderful collection of amazing cars. And they are really good about sharing them with anybody who wants to.
And so I came out there and filmed the video with that and a couple other cars. And that's a way you have to do it with exotic cars like that.
I just filmed the video with the Ferrari Monza, which is a single seat race car that Ferrari is making. And it was the same deal. Ferrari only makes 500 of those for the world. They don't care about getting one in the hands of a journalist. They're not trying to sell that car.
It's already sold. But there's eventually someone will reach out to me and say, "Hey, I have one of these. Do you want to review it?"
I've now done so many Koenigseggs, and Bugattis, and Ferrari, and McLarens that the owners of those cars can trust that I've never had a loss. I've never had a problem. And they can trust that.
Guy Kawasaki:
So do you have the Sultan of Brunei on speed dial and you say, "Hey-"
Doug DeMuro:
God, I wish. That guy, I would give anything. I would give anything to go down there. I would review those cars for free. No YouTube ad revenue. And I would pay my own way to go down there. He has some of the coolest cars that have ever been conceived at any time.
And there are a lot of them are one off cars that he had commissioned by Bentley and Ferrari. Imagine having that kind of money, it'd be pretty cool.
Guy Kawasaki:
Well, if I interview him for this podcast, I will take care of you, Doug.
Doug DeMuro:
They're kind of gun shy about that collection now. Because I guess the collection was bought by his brother, who then ran into legal trouble. And at some point I heard they were quietly trying to sell some of the cars. I don't know what the deal is now.
Guy Kawasaki:
I don't hang with them, so I wouldn't-
Doug DeMuro:
Yeah. Right.
Guy Kawasaki:
All right. Next question. So do you feel any guilt? That's a strong word, I realize, Doug. Do you feel any guilt about owning or recommending an internal combustion car at this point?
Doug DeMuro:
Not at this point. And I hope that forever people will be able to enjoy internal combustion cars as fun weekend vehicles. I hope that lasts at least through my lifetime.
Because I think that's an experience that electric cars can't really replicate is the enjoyment on a mountain road or a back road or the manual transmission and rev matching. And there's something about that.
But I do take very seriously my role in being able to tell people some of the benefits of electric cars if they're not necessarily certain about them yet. And that's a big deal for me because a lot of my audience is car enthusiasts. And a lot of car enthusiasts are very skeptical of electric cars.
And I'm not. I love electric cars. I think they're great. I think many great things about them. And I try to make those benefits very obvious. And I try to explain it very clearly.
And this year, my car of the year was an electric car, the Rivian. Two years ago, it was the Model Three Performance. And so I do try to make it a very big part of the channel.
To the extent that I should do more or feel guilt about it, I'm not there yet just because there are still so many internal combustion cars and that's still such a high percentage of the market. And I just have to go where the viewers are.
But I think in a few more years, I'm going to start trying to convince even more people to start to make that switch.
And I think frankly, the automakers are doing a good job of themselves. They're making desirable electric cars.
Guy Kawasaki:
Yeah. The Ioniq is highly desirable. It's the infrastructure that's the problem, in my humble opinion.
Doug DeMuro:
Honestly, cost is a problem too. There's electric pickup trucks now, but most of them cost $100,000. That's not feasible for people who are looking at a Toyota Tacoma.
And I think that as cost comes down, too, people will start having less of an excuse not to have one.
Guy Kawasaki:
Now, do you have any qualms about naming a brand new truck from a brand new company as car of the year?
Doug DeMuro:
Yeah.
Guy Kawasaki:
Aren't you worried about?
Doug DeMuro:
Yeah. Absolutely. And I almost didn't for that reason. Because I don't trust it. And they have a lot of defenders, as does Tesla and Lucid. But I don't trust any of those companies.
Tesla has already proven that parts supply is a bit of a challenge. You get into an accident with a Tesla there's horror stories all over the internet. There's horror stories all over the internet of people who just trying to get simple services done and can't do that with their Teslas.
It's hard to upstart a car company. It just is.
Guy Kawasaki:
Yeah.
Doug DeMuro:
Production is hard. It's one thing when you're making an app. It's hard to make a car and to provide the network and the repair network and the accident repair network and the parts supply network. It is really tough. And yeah, I have some qualms about Rivian.
Now, Rivian has an enormous amount of investment from some legacy brands that I take seriously. And so, as a result of that, I take Rivian more seriously than I take some of these other electric startup companies. The car is incredibly good.
And so I have a strong hope that they will be able to get production going and that they will get these out to people and everything will be fine. But yeah, I definitely think about that.
Now, the car, they're having trouble with production. So this is a good question.
Guy Kawasaki:
Newsflash.
Doug DeMuro:
... They were saying in June they would have these on the road. I am following the Rivian hashtag on Instagram. And, "Oh, I got my Rivian today!" And you click on the profile, and they work at Comms at Rivian.
Oh, they work at Battery Development at Rivian. I don't know how many of those are being sold actual people right now. And it seems like it's going a lot slower than they thought.
Guy Kawasaki:
Okay. What is your advice for the best first car for a teenager?
Doug DeMuro:
Safe and reliable. That's it. Safe-
Guy Kawasaki:
Which is what?
Doug DeMuro:
I don't know. It depends on your budget, I guess, but you can't go wrong with a Toyota or a Lexus or a... Used, obviously.
New if you have the budget for it. For sure. Because safety is the biggest thing, I think, with a kid. They all crash their cars. And so if you can get your kid a Civic or whatever, do that, or it doesn't matter, just the safest, most reliable car you can possibly get. That's what you should be getting your kid.
Guy Kawasaki:
And do you think that they should start with a stick or forget it sticks are just dinosaurs?
Doug DeMuro:
Yeah. It's over.
Guy Kawasaki:
No point?
Doug DeMuro:
Nah, no point. Not even in Europe. People used to say, "At least you need to learn how to drive a stick in case you go rent a car in Europe." That used to be the big thing for Americans would say.
But the last few times I was in Europe, they gave me an automatic without me even asking for it. It's becoming even more and more common in Europe, which is a shame. I love driving manual, but it's not relevant in today's world. Unless you're an enthusiast.
Guy Kawasaki:
Okay. And what about the concept of, God forbid, you want to do work on your own car? Think that's dead?
Doug DeMuro:
It's not dead because there are still so many internal combustion engine cars and some of them are still relatively simple. But it will die. You got to figure as electric cars permeate... Porsche is a great example. The rear of those Porsches, the 992... You can't get an engine anymore in a 911.
You can open a flat where you can fill it with fluids, but it's going to be harder and harder to work on cars yourself.
But I don't think it's going to be impossible for a long time. And I think people find a way. What tends to happen is as cars become more advanced, people say, "Oh, you'll never be able to work on these again." And then they get cheaper, and weird third party solutions for stuff starts showing up and it seems to make itself work out.
Guy Kawasaki:
Okay. Do you think all this lane keeping assistance and adaptive cruise control and LIDAR and all that stuff, you think it's making us better drivers or worse drivers?
Doug DeMuro:
That's a good question. The truth is it probably doesn't matter because it's making us safer in the sense that it's there.
It's probably making us worse drivers, you and me on a day-to-day basis, but it's probably making road use safer and that's more important.
Guy Kawasaki:
I'm going to maybe use a little lightning round.
Doug DeMuro:
Okay.
Guy Kawasaki:
Okay. So it's A or B.
Doug DeMuro:
All right.
Guy Kawasaki:
Plaid or GT-Three?
Doug DeMuro:
Wait, do I get to pick... What is my life situation? My current life situation? Plaid.
Guy Kawasaki:
Yeah. Whatever.
Doug DeMuro:
Plaid. Plaid. Plaid.
Guy Kawasaki:
I'm not asking if you're the Sultan of Brunei.
Doug DeMuro:
Both. No, the plaid. I would get a plaid. I'm not as obsessed with the GT-Three as a lot of people are.
Guy Kawasaki:
Okay. Cabriolet or Targa?
Doug DeMuro:
Targa, definitely.
Guy Kawasaki:
PDK or seven speed?
Doug DeMuro:
Depending on your use case. For me, it would be a manual.
Guy Kawasaki:
Okay. RS-Three or M-Two?
Doug DeMuro:
M-Two.
Guy Kawasaki:
Wow. I think I know the answer to this one. Ford 150 Lightning or Rivian?
Doug DeMuro:
Rivian, but I do love the 150 Lightning and it's a lot cheaper, the Ford.
Guy Kawasaki:
Okay. iOS or Android?
Doug DeMuro:
iOS. But I don't-
Guy Kawasaki:
Mac or-
Doug DeMuro:
Mac. Mac for everything. iMovie and all that.
Guy Kawasaki:
Which model Mac?
Doug DeMuro:
I have a MacBook Air that I got three days ago because the prior one broke.
Guy Kawasaki:
Oh, Michelin Pilot or Pirelli P Zero?
Doug DeMuro:
I don't care that much about tires, but my friends tell me the Pilot Sport is the one. So that's what I have on my sports car.
Guy Kawasaki:
Okay. Ioniq Five or EV-Six?
Doug DeMuro:
Ioniq Five. I actually just reviewed the EV-Six. The video's not up yet because it's next week, the driving embargo. They're the same, but Ioniq Five's just cooler. It just looks so cool. I love it.
Guy Kawasaki:
Okay. AMG GT or SL?
Doug DeMuro:
AMG GT for sure.
Guy Kawasaki:
Really?
Doug DeMuro:
Yeah. The new SL seems appealing, but I haven't driven it yet. But prior SLs have been such old man cars and AMG GT is a fun, exciting thing.
Guy Kawasaki:
Are you into the smooth bubbly kind of design, or the angular Ioniq Five kind of design?
Doug DeMuro:
I think I've moved past the smooth. I like weird. I'm around cars all day, every day and that's all I do and think about... So I like weird. And so when someone comes out with something like the Ioniq Five, I'm like, "Yes, this is what I'm looking for. This is so bizarre that it turns heads. That's what I want."
And honestly, that car is getting a ton of praise in the press right now for its design, and Hyundai and Kia both have done such great things with design that I think that hopefully that car proves, that other automakers should follow suit and maybe take some more risks.
Guy Kawasaki:
Do you think South Korea is the new Germany?
Doug DeMuro:
It seems like it, right? The Kia Telluride is the hottest SUV on the market and it has been since it came out three years ago because it's gorgeous.
And the Hyundai version, the Palisade, is also attractive. The Ioniq Five is like that. The Stinger, so many Kia and Hyundai models are so attractive.
Now, part of the reason for that is they hire Germans to design the car, but it seems to have worked.
Guy Kawasaki:
Here's a personal question. I'm going to offer you a favor here. Now don't take this as an insult-
Doug DeMuro:
Okay.
Guy Kawasaki:
... Would you like me to have someone design a new YouTube header for you?
Doug DeMuro:
What? You don't like my fantastic green YouTube header that I've had for the last five, eight years? Brilliant.
Guy Kawasaki:
I'll take that as a no.
Doug DeMuro:
I actually have a guy who does design. Because he does my thumbnails for my non-car reviews when I'm just sitting in the garage, and everybody loves these thumbnails. And he's always like, "Come on, let's do something new." But I don't really care.
Guy Kawasaki:
Okay. Okay. Just thought I'd offer. And by the way, this is a mystery to me. So what happened to More Doug?
Doug DeMuro:
Well, that's an interesting question. A lot of people wondered. I'm going to send them link to this podcast every single time I get asked this going forward.
Guy Kawasaki:
Yeah. Okay.
Doug DeMuro:
The YouTube algorithm is a beast and trying to figure it out is a challenge. And I devote an enormous amount of time and spreadsheets and charts and graphs to doing just that.
And what I learned was that it seemed to me that I was getting similar views or more views by putting those More Doug videos on my main channel. And also I get a higher ad rate on my main channel because it's has so many more subscribers and a larger reach and that sort of thing.
Last spring, I took the risk of taking some of the More Doug videos and putting them on the main channel just to see what happens. Sort of an experiment.
And what happened was they have performed better, and they have gotten more money and they haven't been a detriment to the videos on the main channel. And so I think that was the right call. So I still do those More Doug videos, but they show up now on Sundays on my main channel.
Guy Kawasaki:
I went to the More Doug last night and there's nothing at the home. There's nothing on the playlist. There's nothing on the video. What happened?
Doug DeMuro:
And it's sad. It's crazy to imagine abandoning a channel with 750,000 subscribers.
Guy Kawasaki:
Yeah. Yeah.
Doug DeMuro:
But the other channel has four and a half million subscribers and the videos are just doing better. And I have the percentages and everything. It seems like I'm getting something like 20 percent or 30 percent more views and making at least 30 percent more money by putting those same exact videos on my main channel.
And so it is sad because I can't do some of the creative stuff that I was doing on More Doug. I've reviewed some houses. That was interesting.
Guy Kawasaki:
Yeah.
Doug DeMuro:
But at the same time, if you're smart about it, it's just a better way to do it. And I've realized that I can use some of these weekend videos to do second reviews of cars, where I've already reviewed the main version of it.
When the 911 comes out, I've reviewed that and the GT-Three, then the GTS comes out and I can do that on Sunday. Still on my main channel, but it's a shorter format, and that's the right way to do it, I think.
Guy Kawasaki:
I would say that it's working.
Doug DeMuro:
Yeah. So far so good. We'll see. We'll see how the next few years go.
Guy Kawasaki:
Although there's no more air cooled 911s, but okay.
So I have but one last request for you.
First of all, I have to say, I really enjoyed this. Can you tell?
Doug DeMuro:
Yeah.
Guy Kawasaki:
And I don't want to slam the competition, but I watched you on a podcast, a YouTube whatever, where you were the guest. And this was fairly recently. I can't remember what the name of it was, but the guy would not let you talk.
Doug DeMuro:
I think that there are some podcast hosts who get into it because they want to get their info out into the world.
Guy Kawasaki:
Yeah.
Doug DeMuro:
And I think that's not necessarily always the best way to do it. And I try to explain to those people, amateurs aren't as good. And that's just the reality of it. But some are really good. And some aren't, I've been on a lot of podcasts and it's interesting to get the variety.
Guy Kawasaki:
I'm all about the guest.
Doug DeMuro:
I appreciate that. And I'm all about the car. That's why I stand behind the car. That's why you asked... I appreciate it. I think that's what people are looking for.
But sometimes it's... Yeah, the podcast hosts, it's a little bit tough for them to keep that in mind. They got a microphone. They want to speak.
Guy Kawasaki:
I thought you were going to say, "Oh yeah, Guy, I've been meaning to get around to redesigning that header. So yeah, go ahead. Knock yourself out. Do it."
Doug DeMuro:
All right. I'll do that. No, I got a guy named Mike, is his name. I'll have him do it. He's going to do a great job.
Guy Kawasaki:
Okay. And people all hate it. So I thought you'd say yes to that. Then I was going to ask you for a return favor. So I'm going to ask you for the return favor anyway, because I'm just that kind of guy.
Doug DeMuro:
Okay. All right. What do you got?
Guy Kawasaki:
So I want to record you saying, maybe even multiple takes, the Doug "This is Remarkable People!" Can you do that for me?
Doug DeMuro:
Yeah. Do you want me to do it right now or later when I'm standing in front of a car?
Guy Kawasaki:
No. Right now, right now.
Doug DeMuro:
All right. Ready? Ready?
Guy Kawasaki:
Yeah.
Doug DeMuro:
This is Remarkable People.
Guy Kawasaki:
Oh, I love that, Doug.
Doug DeMuro:
Thank you for having me. I appreciate it. And I'm glad you got the Ioniq Five. It's so cool. Now you're thinking about getting a 911 or you got one already?
Guy Kawasaki:
Okay. Now we're going into Guy justification mode.
So now getting a 911, that has been with me since intermediate school. So it's not like I'm some dumbass venture capitalist in Silicon Valley who just sold his shares in Theranos and is now going to go buy a 911. This is in my DNA, it's so deep.
So I figure, I use an Ioniq Five and my house has solar panels. So I could charge it off the grid, be self-sustaining day-to-day.
But then, I think I do my best thinking driving a German car with a stick shift. And so that's a 911. And so I think I should just have an Ioniq five for the 95 percent of my driving and 5 percent.
I wish they would make the base Carrera in a stick, but you can't. So you got to get a 911 S.
I would be tempted to get a Targa, but man, I just look at... So many things are opening and closing and clam shelling and all that, that there's going to be some tennis racquet on the back seat and it's going to catch the... And it's going to break. And oh my god.
I had a Cabriolet and, on a Mac Two keyboard, it got caught and broke the thing and it was never the same. So that's why I don't want to Targa. So I think the car is a 911 S.
Doug DeMuro:
Yeah. They're amazing. I think that you can justify that. Now the hard part right now is finding one.
Guy Kawasaki:
I'm going to say I'm a friend of Doug, the F.O.D. Plan.
Doug DeMuro:
I don't think that buys you anything anymore over there.
Guy Kawasaki:
No?
Doug DeMuro:
If anything, they might push your order back, and be like, "Ah, that guy's not anything."
Guy Kawasaki:
So do you think I should get rear wheel steering?
Doug DeMuro:
I don't notice a huge difference and I don't think you'll notice a huge difference unless you're really on the racetrack. And it's pretty expensive, but it is a cool thing.
Guy Kawasaki:
I think the less complication you put on it, the less there is to break.
Doug DeMuro:
That's the ethos of the 911 from when we were younger. That's what it was: a car that was a simple, fit-like-a-glove performance car without all this stuff.
Guy Kawasaki:
So that my friends is Doug DeMuro, the most popular car reviewer on YouTube.
If you're thinking of buying a car, be sure to go to his YouTube site and search for a review of it. If nothing else, you'll be highly entertained.
I'm Guy Kawasaki. This is Remarkable People.
I want to help you buy a remarkable car.
My thanks to my team, Jeff Sieh, Shannon Hernandez, Peg Fitzpatrick, Luis Magana, Alexis Nishimura, and Madisun Nuismer.
Until next time, keep the pedal to the metal, Aloha and Mahalo.